Elizabeth Vander Leeuw

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Zibby Owens: Welcome, Liz. Thank you so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Lose Weight."

Elizabeth Vander Leeuw: Thank you so much for having me, Zibby.

Zibby: It's my pleasure. Let's start by your telling listeners who you are and what you're doing on my podcast. 

Liz: Gosh, what am I doing on your podcast? [laughter] My name is Liz Vander Leeuw. I have a health and wellness business here in Charlotte, North Carolina. I've lived in Charlotte for about four years now. I moved here from DC. I have two daughters, Charlotte and Ellie. They're six and three. They're a handful. I have a husband who's a handful too. I know firsthand the struggle of moms trying to do it all, trying to be it all, and fit health and fit weight loss in as well. I work strictly with moms. I can work with women of all ages. I've worked with a lot of women in their twenties before, but I've found that this is really my niche because I'm in the trenches too. I'm in the thick of it. I know all of the same challenges that my clients are going through. I'm literally going through them too. That's just a little bit of background about me. I got my Integrative Nutrition Certificate, I think six or seven years ago now, from the Institute of Integrative Nutrition.

Zibby: I did that too.

Liz: You did? Awesome. I think that I saw that you used to run Weight Watchers groups and that sort of thing.

Zibby: I did. This was in a past life, but yes, I did all that stuff.

Liz: It was so interesting to me because Weight Watchers now is basically what I learned in school, which is more of a holistic program, your primary foods, your secondary foods. You're taking your entire life into account. It's not just necessarily calories in and calories out. That's basically what I learned in school. I learned every dietary theory out there. I learned that there's really not a one-size-fits-all situation. I don't have a lot of these online programs that some health and wellness professionals will sell where it's like, here's your one program that's going to be six weeks. I'm going to send it to your inbox every week and not check in on you. My programs are very bespoke because every individual is unique. Everybody needs different things, different foods. One man's food is another man's poison. 

Zibby: What has worked for you? Let's go back. How did you become interested in working in this field? What has your own journey with your own body been like? Is that relevant, or was this just a side interest for other reasons?

Liz: Totally relevant. I feel like I had quite the health journey myself. I'll start there which will lead us into why I got into this line of work. My husband and I grew up in New Jersey. We were high school sweethearts. He went to Georgetown University. I went to American University. I wanted to be little miss Elle Woods, politics. That's why I went to DC. That's what I wanted to do. I worked on the Hill for a little while. I worked on a presidential campaign. I worked in PR firms. I did mostly fundraising. Ended up doing a lot of fundraising for nonprofits and education associations. DC was just a rat race. Super fun place to live in your twenties, but stressful rat race. My husband works in finance. There were weeks he worked 120 hours. We weren’t really taking care of ourselves. When I was in college, when I came to American University as an eighteen-year-old, I didn't just gain the freshman fifteen. I gained the freshman fifty. I did not know how to make healthy choices. I was emotionally eating. I'm the only child. I was away from home. I didn't really have the tool set to be on my own yet. I struggled with emotional eating. I struggled with all that weight gain. With that weight gain came lots of really fun things like weight-related issues, thyroid issues, pre-Hashimoto's disease. I was also diagnosed with chronic Epstein-Barr, which is something that I still struggle with today. I decided when my husband put a ring on my finger when I was twenty-two years old right after college, I said, I've got to lose this weight for my wedding. It was not about the health. It was about vanity. I wanted to look perfect in my wedding dress. I lost over sixty pounds in about two years. We got married.

Zibby: Wait, slow down. Hold on. Sorry, I want to hear the end, but I want more details. When you were eating emotionally in college and gaining all that weight and developing associated health issues, what were your habits like? Were you eating fast food? Were you hiding sweets? Was it a combination of a lot of things? What was your eating like prior to that? Had you ever thought about eating? Had it ever been an issue, or you had just always been sort of thin and you didn't have to think about it?

Liz: I never had to think about it. Prior to that, I did ballet from the time I was three until I was eighteen. I was naturally thin. I had a ballerina's body. I didn't really have to think about what I ate. My mom, who always struggled with her weight -- from the time I can remember, she always did. Still does. She would always provide what she thought were healthy options. She wasn't really well-versed in any of that herself. I really just didn't know even what portion control was. When I went to the cafeteria, it was free-for-all. I would just eat whatever I wanted. If I had a particularly stressful day, I'd eat late at night. I remember my roommates and I going to Krispy Kreme in the middle of the night and thinking that that was a good decision. I would never hide food. It never got to that point for me. I was using food as a way to cope with things that I wasn't coping with, if that makes sense.

Zibby: It does make sense. It sounds very familiar. I'm sure a lot of people listening can relate to that. So you gained the weight during college. Then you decide to lose the weight for the wedding, which I'm sure, again, so many people can relate to. That's every bridal magazine. How did you do that? How did you lose all that weight?

Liz: I really did it through mainly exercise. That was something that had been kind of missing from my life in college. I started to exercise every day. It got to the point where orthorexia was setting in. I was so consumed with what I was putting in my body, every calorie, every gram of fat. I went from one end of the spectrum to another end of the spectrum. Neither of those are healthy places to be.

Zibby: For those people who don't know, what's the different between anorexia and orthorexia?

Liz: Anorexia is an eating disorder where you're actually just not eating or you have distorted ways of eating. I was eating. With orthorexia, it's more of, you're focused too much on what you're eating. You're focused too much on the calories in, the calories out. It's not just that you focus on it too much. It can overtake your whole life and your whole brain. That's kind of what was happening for me. It really ended up not being a very healthy situation. I thought I looked great in my wedding dress, but then I just kept taking it further and further. I got down to a double zero. That wasn't healthy either. Sure, I was eating and I was making these great meals for my husband and I, but I certainly wasn't eating enough. I wouldn't say that I had an eating disorder because I have so many friends that have struggled with true eating disorders. This was definitely something that was more emotional and mental going on with me. I had been diagnosed with Epstein-Barr. I'd been diagnosed with all these different issues. Losing the weight certainly helped, but I still had a lot of health-related issues. I also had an immunodeficiency and IGG deficiency. I had a lot going on that I thought, let's just take ahold of this. I have this super stressful life. I don't necessarily like my job. 

I started to look into health and wellness programs. IIN really spoke to me. I decided to go back to school. I was working, did that for a couple of years. I got pregnant. It wasn't really a super planned thing. It kind of just happened. I'm working full time. I'm doing this IIN program, this nutrition program, pretty much full time. Now I'm pregnant. I definitely gained the appropriate amount of weight during pregnancy. It was not super hard for me to lose the weight afterwards. I think that I could attribute that to my orthorexia habits. The process of going through IIN, it was just such a healing process me. I was able to shed all of my issues with food and focus on health. It was no longer about dieting. It became a focus on health. Since then, I've had another daughter. Through both pregnancies, I gained the appropriate amount of weight. My second pregnancy, I probably gained too much. I've gotten to the point now where I'm really healthy and happy and balanced in my body. I've been able to sustain that for the past, I'd say, six years now since my first daughter was born. I think that when you become a mom, it has a way of just clearing out all the BS. You prioritize. You can get your head on straight. I think that the process of IIN and also having my first daughter really helped me to heal all of that. It's something that I really enjoy working on with my clients. If you struggle with emotional eating, if you struggle with orthorexia, not only am I trained in all that, but I lived through it. You can break free from it.

Zibby: When did you put the shingle out and start your consulting wellness business?

Liz: I did that after my first daughter was born when we lived in DC. I did that with a few clients for about two years. Most of my clients just wanted to lose the baby weight and wanted to lose the baby weight. It wasn't really focused so much on health and wellness as much as I always tried to direct the train that way. It just seemed like there was a disconnect there. At the same time, I also started working for a website called Unconventional Kitchen, running their back end, helping them. It was a website for moms to go to for healthy habits, healthy recipes, that kind of thing. I [indiscernible] created recipes for them. That was a really fun thing to do with my degree as well. Through that, through working with Unconventional Kitchen, I started to consult for her and then consult for some other clients in the health and wellness industry who I realized didn't necessarily have business acumen. They had the passion to do this, but they didn't necessarily have the business acumen to run a business. I started to do that and kind of got away from the health coaching for about two years. Once we moved to Charlotte, I realized that while I was making a lot more money doing what I was doing with business consulting, it just wasn't feeding me the way that I needed to be fed. I decided once we were back in Charlotte to start with health coaching again. I did have a baby in between there, so I took a little hiatus. I also noticed that in Charlotte, the health and eating habits are very different than what they were in DC. I find that I'm making a little bit of a bigger difference here for people, if that makes sense.

Zibby: That makes sense. What did it feel like for you to have the whiplash effect of having gained fifty pounds and then all of a sudden being a double zero and being in a dressing room? There must have been a moment where you were like, oh, my gosh, look what is going on. Did that happen?

Liz: I don't even think that it's a look-in-the-mirror moment. I think that it's when you look back on photos. I remember looking through -- my husband and I went to Greece on this amazing trip through the Greek Islands. Take me back. [laughter] 

Zibby: Take me with you.

Liz: We got home from that trip, and I would always put together these Shutterfly books because I had time to do it then. 

Zibby: PS, I have my teenage son make my photo albums for the whole family. Once your kids get old enough, I pay him like twenty bucks an album. FYI. I don't know if that's bad parenting or not, but I get my albums done. Helpful tips for people who have photos stacking up. Okay, go ahead.

Liz: A hundred percent. I have not done one since my first daughter was born. I remember looking back on that book after the trip and thinking, who is that? She's really skinny. Maybe she's too skinny. Is that me?

Zibby: Did anyone say anything to you? Did you family or your friends? Did anyone say, maybe you're getting a little too skinny?

Liz: For sure, my parents. Even my husband was like, "You're beautiful no matter what." He has loved me at every single size that I have been. He would say, "You don't need to focus on this as much." For him, it was less about how I looked and more about what I was putting my energy towards. I do remember his grandmother, who's very outspoken, always liked to talk to me about it. [laughs] For sure, people noticed. People reached out. I think it's something that no matter what other people say to you or what other people think, it has to come from yourself to actually do something and change it.

Zibby: Where are you now personally in terms of how you feel about your body and all of that?

Liz: Now that I have two little girls, six-year-old and a three-year-old -- we're in a pandemic, so let's just throw that in. Let's say pandemic aside, I feel awesome. I have felt awesome for the past, I'd say, three years since my second daughter was born. I gained weight during that process. The weight did not come off as quickly the second time. I probably still have some of that weight on me now. I'm one hundred percent okay with it. I love how I look. I love having some curves. I'm always going to have more of a tiny body, but I feel like I look healthy. I feel healthy now. It's so much less about how I look. How I feel is everything. I want every mom to feel as good as I feel. Once you get that feeling of not feeling so exhausted all the time, of not feeling like you have to constantly be focused on your weight and what you're consuming, I think that the whole world opens up to you in a new way. Does that answer your question? Do you want to know what size I am now?

Zibby: I do not. I do not want to know what size you are. I'm happy to know that you feel good and that is the overarching lesson. I'm really interested in this concept of orthorexia because I talk to a lot of women who confess to feeling overwhelmed and completely consumed by what they eat. Now I'm wondering looking back, all I did was count points for years at a time. Was that orthorexia? How would you know? If there's someone listening who thinks, geez, gosh, I cannot stop thinking about my weight, what can they do? What are your three tips for people who may or may not be orthorexic? 

Liz: I think the first tip is to just, I don't want to say own it, but acknowledge that it's there. Give it a name. Just like when you're in therapy for any other situation, you have parts of you. Orthorexia is a part of you, so name that part and know that it's there. I think that it's really important to talk to that part. If that sounds kind of silly or woo-woo, I think it's really important that if you're struggling with anything between orthorexia, anxiety, any of that, you need to talk to that part and let it know that it's not in control of you. You're in control. You drive the bus. That would be a big sign for you. If you feel like, I'm not driving the bus right now, something else is, something else is taking control, I think that would be the biggest wake-up sign for you to realize that maybe there's something worth exploring here. Maybe there's something that we need to heal here.

Zibby: If people want to work with you directly, do you do it virtually or do you have to be in Charlotte?

Liz: Right now, I work with pretty much only people in Charlotte. I have one client in New Jersey. I like to work with people in person, but everything's virtual right now. I can work with anybody anywhere virtually right now. The one thing that I love to do is my fridge and panty makeovers. That, I always feel like I need to be there with you to do it. I can do those virtually too. It's a sad time. I miss being with actual human beings.

Zibby: Ugh, me too. How can people find you?

Liz: You can find me on Instagram, it's @liz.vandy.health.charlotteCLT, or my website which is lizvandyhealthandwellness.com.

Zibby: That was too fast. Liz Vandy, V-A-N-D-Y. Lizvandyhealthand -- spell out and or ampersand? And, A-N-D?

Liz: Spell it out, yeah.

Zibby: Healthandwellness.com.

Liz: Lizvandyhealthand -- spell it out -- wellness.com. I got to get better at that.

Zibby: In addition to owning orthorexia and everything else, and I know your sweet spot is helping moms, do you have any advice in general for the busy mom who really wants to be healthy and just doesn't have the emotional bandwidth? What you were saying about before you had kids, before you have kids and maybe before you have kids and a job or whatever else you're doing in life, you might have had more mental headspace to focus and make smart choices. I remember before I had kids, I would go through a cookbook and be like, ooh, I could totally make that. I would spend two hours after work. I would make it. It would have three points or something. It would be amazing. I would be so excited. Now I'm like, did I eat? I think I ate today. I don't even have the focus on it sometimes. What are just a few things busy moms who are distracted, or not just moms even, just busy people, even though we're home -- it's not like we're running around as much, necessarily. Even though we're mostly at home, what inspiration and tips can we have for not mindless partaking in some of the habits that maybe we know are not the best but we do them anyway? Then what? 

Liz: Gosh, it's hard. It's so hard right now, especially with the pandemic. I'm trying to normalize pandemic weight gain because it's just a different time. In general for busy people, the first thing I would say is accountability, either working with a coach or just finding someone who's in the same kind of life space as you; if you're a mom, maybe finding another mom who has about the same amount of children and about the same age as your children going through the same struggles. Keep each other accountable. I think that for most of my clients, that's what they want me for. They want me to keep them accountable. I'd say that's numero uno, is just keeping it front of mind but allowing someone else to hold you accountable so that you're not constantly doing it for yourself in your mind. Specifically for moms, I'd say it's the same old kind of adage of put the oxygen mask on yourself before you put it on everybody else. Moms, we don't have time to take care of ourselves. We're taking care of everybody else before ourselves. I really feel like we just have to reverse that. We have to reverse the mom psychology, that martyr psychology, in order to be able to focus on what we need to focus on. The last thing I'd say if you aren't working with a coach who's well-versed in this or you don't know anything about what this is, I would google intuitive eating so that you can begin to understand how to become a mindful eater and how to be in control of that yourself.

Zibby: Amazing. Wow, so many tips. So much to think about. Thank you for sharing your very personal story and your whole journey and how it's led you to helping other people, which is really beautiful. It's amazing that you've decided to do that and got out of the DC rat race and instead are helping women where they're struggling a lot and making real change. I think that's awesome. PS, I love your sweater. For people listening, I'll put this up on YouTube, probably. You're wearing this gorgeous magenta sweater. Where is that from? I have to maybe find a sweater like that.

Liz: It's Halogen, just the regular Nordstrom Halogen cashmere sweater. They make a million colors of them every year. I saw this color and I was like, I must have.

Zibby: I'm obsessed with that color. It's amazing.

Liz: Thank you.

Zibby: Very uplifting. That was off topic. Anyway, thank you so much for coming on. I will be thinking of you. I hope I meet you in person.

Liz: It was so nice to meet you. Bye.

Zibby: Take care. Buh-bye.

Cameran Eubanks Wimberly, ONE DAY YOU'LL THANK ME

One Day You'll Thank Me: Essays on Dating, Motherhood, and Everything In Between Buy on Amazon

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Zibby Owens: Cameran Eubanks Wimberly is the author of One Day You'll Thank Me: Essays on Dating, Motherhood, and Everything In Between. She is an alumna of Southern Charm, the hit Bravo reality series, and also The Real World. She is a real estate agent based in Charleston, South Carolina, where she lives with her husband Jason and their daughter Palmer. I recorded this conversation with Cameran through Anderson's Bookshop on a late night when everything went wrong with our technology. This episode could've probably been filmed in fifteen, twenty minutes, or something like that, but it took us almost an hour and fifteen in the end. It was really fun. We had a lot of laughs. Forgive any awkward cuts in and out due to Wi-Fi and technical issues.

Welcome, Cameran. So excited we get to chat. I was worried that wasn't going to happen, but how delightful.

Cameran Eubanks Wimberly: Me too, honestly. I was thinking, oh, gosh, this is not going to work. Thank y'all so much for being so patient. I wish I could see you and see your faces and say hey to you. Thank you, Zibby, for doing this.

Zibby: It's my pleasure. Got to hone my little stand-up skills. [laughs] Cameran, first of all, congratulations on writing your book, One Day You'll Thank Me.

Cameran: I'll thank you today.

Zibby: Thank you.

Cameran: Thank you so much. It was so hard for me to come up with a title for that book. You're like, what do I want to call my book? My god, this is a big decision. I thought about that because that is one thing my mom always used to say to me. One day you'll thank me for this. That's how the book came to be.

Zibby: That's a great title. I love it. It's perfect. Cameran, what made you write a book? How did this come about?

Cameran: Obviously, being on reality television, it gives you a platform and an audience for a brief window of time. I was joking earlier today that in a few years I will just be a washed-up reality television star. If I'm going to write a book, now is the time to do it. Really, being on Southern Charm, you obviously have access to social media. People can DM you on Instagram. Women would DM me nonstop about relationship advice, asking me about my indecision to have a child. It seemed to really resonate with a lot of women. Women would write me and say, oh, my gosh, I resonated with you with your whole breastfeeding quandary. I'm sitting here in my DMs counseling these women. I may as well just put it all in a book that you can hold and is tangible.

Zibby: Perfect. I bet that has not stopped the DMs. I bet you're [indiscernible/crosstalk] say that.

Cameran: I get even more now. I feel so guilty because I can't get to them all, but I do. I try to read as many as I can.

Zibby: When you sat down to write about new motherhood and this whole thing, how did you go about it? Did you decide, all right, I'm going to start from way back when in dating and just go all the way through? How did you even decide on the scope of the book? Then what was it like just getting it all down and reliving it?

Cameran: I still get asked about The Real World all the time. Some of y'all are probably too young to even have been old enough to watch it back in the day. The Real World used to be a pretty big deal in its heyday back when I was on it. I figured I may as well start the book with The Real World because that's a question I get all the time. Then there were parts of my life on Southern Charm that I didn't really talk about it. I really didn't talk about my relationship. I kept that private. I kept Jason private. I kept my marriage off the air. I knew I wanted to use the book as a way to be more open and honest about that so people could feel like they really got to know me. Then I would get into bed. I would drop Palmer off at school. I'd get cozy. I'd get in the bed. I'd just start writing. It was easy. It came pretty easy to me. The whole process was about a year and a half total.

Zibby: That’s not too bad in the grand scheme of book project world. Amazing. Tell me about what it was like debating whether or not to have a child and your initial reluctance which you were really open about in the book and I so appreciated because a lot of people don't discuss it or they feel very judged about that.

Cameran: Speaking of, here's Palmer and Jason really quick. They want to say hey to y'all. Hold on. Palmer just had her bath. Hey.

Zibby: Aw, so cute.

Cameran: Here's Jason. He's real. He exists.

Jason: Palmer, show them your little Elvis. 

Zibby: Hi, Palmer.

Cameran: Ok, buh-bye. Sorry.

Zibby: So cute.

Cameran: The question was...? Before I got interrupted.

Zibby: It was about being so open about whether or not to even have children.

Cameran: Having a kid is a pretty big deal. Bringing another human into the world, I think, is a decision that should not be made lightly. For me, I was never the little girl that played with baby dolls and had this dream of having a big family. I felt guilty for a long time because after you get married, people start saying, when are you going to have a baby? I was in my thirties. To make a very long story short, it finally got to the point where I started to think, I might regret not doing this. I'm getting older. If I'm going to do it, I should probably do it now. I know I'm not going to regret having a child, but I might regret not having one. I'm so glad that I did it because it's the best thing that's ever happened to me. It's also the hardest thing that's ever happened to me. It's all the things. Motherhood is all the things.

Zibby: Yes. Thank you for being so open and sharing. Cameran, when you were leaving the hospital with Palmer and you were trying to deal with the car seat, you said, "What the heck do I with this?" I feel like that is basically the big question in all of parenting. What do we do with this? What do we do with this situation? How do we put in a car seat? What do we do as all the things change? Tell me about that. What do you do with all of the uncertainty? How the heck do we do this?

Cameran: One theme that I tried to make common in the book is when you become a mom, there is something kind of primal that takes over. It's like a superpower that you've never had before. You all of a sudden get this keen intuition. At least, I did. You can read all the books in the world and take all the advice in the world. Ultimately, it's really only you that knows what's best for your baby because your baby is unlike any other baby and you are unlike any other mother. That is what I tell people. Then obviously, with stuff like the car seat and all that, thank god we have Google. Back when my mom had me, if she had an issue with the car seat, she was screwed. At least now, you just get on your cell phone. You can watch a YouTube video. I remember the stroller I got, I used to always have trouble unhinging it. I would just get on YouTube and watch the video, and it was no problem.

Zibby: I think I took my car seat to the fire station, honestly. I feel like that was where you had to go to get it installed properly. I didn't go myself. I think my ex-husband did or something. So crazy. In addition to leaving the hospital, you got the car seat in, and then you went home and you had six weeks of what you called the baby blues which sounded very much like postpartum depression. My heart was just breaking for you crying every day for six weeks. Tell me about that feeling. You were beating yourself up for being sad on top of being sad. Tell me about that.

Cameran: It's weird. When I was in the hospital, they give you a little questionnaire to ask -- of course, you've literally just had the baby, so I don't think your hormones are necessarily raging at that point. When I left the hospital, I felt totally fine. Then a couple days after being at home, I remember one night I started crying. I looked at Jason and I said, "I can't believe we did this to our life. We had such an easy life. We used to sleep. Why did we do this?" Of course, you feel so guilty feeling that because you love this little baby. You would step in front of a car for this child, but you also feel just -- it's hormones. You can't help it. It's not your fault. It was extremely hard for me. At the same time, I knew in the back of my head, this is not who I am. This is not really the way that I feel. This is a chemical reaction happening to my brain. It's not going to last forever. I at least was aware of the fact that it was not my fault.

Zibby: That is a lot of to be able to identify that and go easier on yourself for it, especially when you're in the throes of it.

Cameran: My mom had it. She, luckily, talked to me about it. I knew there is a genetic component to it.

Zibby: So you were on the lookout.

Cameran: Yes, I was on the lookout.

Zibby: You had a whole chapter about, what about having a second child? Clearly, nobody is satisfied with whatever you do. Whether you have a kid, great. Now they want another kid.

Cameran: If it's two girls, you have to have a boy.

Zibby: How do you deal with this public pressure? This is your life. All these people are weighing in on it. How do you deal with that? Also, talk about your decision that one is enough for you. That's fine.

Cameran: What I tell people and what I have learned through all this is just don't talk about these things with women. Don't ever ask a woman, when are you going to have another child? Are you going to have a baby? Are you thinking about having a baby? When are you going to get pregnant? You never know what that woman is going through. For all anybody knows, I could've been trying to have a baby for the last six months and had two miscarriages. Nobody knows. It's best just to keep your mouth shut and leave bringing a child into the world up to the person that is actually doing it and not give your opinion. Don't ask. Obviously, people don't mean anything by it. They can't help it, but those questions can end up hurting somebody that might be having issues with it. I say don't ask the question.

Zibby: That's a great point. Yes, you never know in so many areas. You just never know what anyone's going through about really anything.

Cameran: You really don't. You don't know what people are going through. For me, again, it just goes back to me trying to be self-aware, tuning out societal pressures, and going with my gut. Obviously, my head says, oh, gosh, Cameran, what a horrible mother you are. You need to give Palmer a sibling. Don't be so -- what's the word? I don't know. Then in my gut, in my heart, which I think is the part of you that you really should listen to, will say, Cameran, more than one is going to put you over the edge. You are going to be overwhelmed. You're probably not going to be the best mother to two as you can to one. Obviously, there are women out there who can mother five and six children. They're spectacular at it. I wish I could be that person, but I'm not. I try to be self-aware and know that one is my limit. I would rather give Palmer a happy and sane mama rather than a sibling. I never say never. I could wake up tomorrow and change my mind, but that's where I am now.

Zibby: I don't want to pile on and be another person asking you about all these decisions in your life, so I'm just going to let it go at this point. [laughs] You do whatever is right for you. 

Cameran: It's like Shakespeare said. If I was to ever get a tattoo, it would be, to thine own self be true. Be true to yourself. Don't worry what other people think. It was funny, I was talking to somebody earlier today. She said, "You need to have another because when you have two, it's actually easier for you because they play together. One is actually more work." I'm like, oh, god, maybe they have a point.

Zibby: I have four kids. It is not easier. It's another person, for gosh sakes. It's another person. If nothing else, it's another set of forms for everything.

Cameran: I know, but you're going to be so well-taken care of in your old age. You're going to be a queen on a throne.

Zibby: Yeah. Although, the other day they were talking about where they wanted to live. They're like, "We're just going to take this house because either you'll be dead or you'll live somewhere else." I'm like, I'm booted out of my own house already? What is going on? [laughs] 

Cameran: There's someone saying, "What about hubby? He must be okay with just Palmer." If was down for it, he would have another child for sure. He would have another. He obviously loves Palmer and is very happy with our one, but he would have another one. He wants a boy. I would get pregnant, and I'd have twin girls.

Zibby: [laughs] Tell me about the way that your work and your public life -- how do you integrate that with your personal life? How do you turn it on and turn it off?

Cameran: For me, I did The Real World when I was nineteen years old. I hate even using the words fame. To me, I consider someone famous if they have done something notable or if they have a talent. I don't consider reality television people famous. What have we really done? We just live our lives on a TV show. The Real World gave me that little taste of what it feels like for people to all of a sudden recognize you on the street. I truly compartmentalize it. I try not to even think about it a lot. I feel like I'm a normal person. I live my life as a normal person. I do not consider myself a celebrity by any means. If anything, it kind of weirds me out that anybody could even perceive me as that. I'm kind of boring to live that exciting of a life.

Zibby: What kind of plans do you have going forward? You are an amazing mom. You're obviously so invested in Palmer. She's all over your Instagram. You're so lucky in that way. What do you have coming next? You have this amazing book coming out. Are you looking to do more?

Cameran: I don't know what I have next. I think I'm done with reality television, for sure, at least in the context that I have been on it. I think if I were to ever go back on it, it would have to be no drama, maybe like HGTV. That's my new speed of reality television. I don't like the fighting. I don't like the vitriol, the toxic -- it seems like the whole reality television world is taking a dumpster dive lately.

Zibby: Cameran, if you can hear us, to all the people here, do you have any words of wisdom or anything to say to them about your journey and this book and why it's so important to you?

Cameran: Oh, gosh, that's such a huge question. I'm thirty-seven years old. I have a little bit of life behind me. What I have learned from motherhood and life in general is, one, be true to yourself. Listen to that inner voice. Learn to decipher what is your head talking to you versus what is your heart. I've been reading a lot of books about this lately. It's helping me a lot in my life, listening to my heart instead of my head. I think the heart will always lead you in the direction that is good for your life. That would be my biggest advice. I would say to girls that are not married and do not have children yet, take your time. It is not something that has to be accomplished by a certain age like society tells you. Live your life. Learn your lessons. Say yes to many different men so you can, I don't want to say test drive. That sounds bad, but so you can learn who is the best partner for you and also as a potential father of your future children. Be open. I guess that would be my advice.

Zibby: That's great. That was great. You pulled that out perfectly. What about one more piece of advice for people who would like to write a book, aspiring authors?

Cameran: Oh, my gosh, just do it. Get on your computer and start writing. It can be very cathartic. I feel like writing a book, it's kind of like going to therapy with yourself because you learn a lot about yourself in the process of doing it. Just get on your computer and start doing it.

Zibby: Amazing. I love it.

Cameran: Bye, Zibby. I'm so sorry we had so many technical difficulties.

Zibby: That's okay. Bye. Thanks.

Stephanie Thornton Plymale, AMERICAN DAUGHTER

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Stephanie. Thank you so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books." 

Stephanie Thornton Plymale: Thank you for having me.

Zibby: I could not be more excited to talk about American Daughter: A Memoir. I'm showing the cover to anybody watching on YouTube. Stephanie, this book, I opened it early on Saturday morning. I was like, I'll just read few pages now. Then I'll go work out or do something or deal with whatever. I stayed in one spot for four hours and read the entire thing. I could not put the thing down. It's so good. It is so, so, so good. Congratulations.

Stephanie: Thank you. I'm so happy to hear that from you. I can't wait to hear what you think about it and what your thoughts are. I can't wait.

Zibby: First of all, why don't you tell listeners what this memoir is about? 

Stephanie: You know, you read the memoir, it's so hard to say in just a brush stroke. Basically, after about fifty years of complete silence and living in shame with my story, I decided to come clean and write my story of my past of living homeless, in foster care, a severely mentally ill mother with multiple personalities, drug addictions, and just this life of homelessness that I had all the way up until I got married. Simultaneously, my mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer. I was estranged from her because of the stalking order of her trying to take my life and burn my house down and horrendous things. I decided at that time it was time for me to get answers. I went in to do a series of interviews with my mother because that's the only way she would talk to me, is do an interview with her. Then what came out, the shocking, horrific crime that happened against her and then the reconciliation and the process of healing our relationship and many, many other layers that come out in this memoir and in my book to the point of the end where my mother and I fully reconcile.

Zibby: It's so much more than that, as if that wasn't enough. That's what was so remarkable about this book. First, it's all of just your ability to overcome the traumas of your early childhood and your retelling of all of what happened to you and all those scenes where I'm literally sitting there with my hand over my mouth reading because it's like, oh, my gosh, I can't believe this happened. It's also, what I thought was really beautiful -- first of all -- I'm so excited to talk about this. I can't get words out. Part of your background -- I don't want to give it away because I had no idea it was coming, but your own story throughout history, where your family came from was also unbelievable, especially the way you unveiled it the way you did. The third part that I really loved is that it's really a love story between you and your husband. You had this whole moment of almost cheating. It's really a love story. I feel like it has every element, the mother, the adversity, the love story, and it's true, which is what the craziest part is.

Stephanie: It's a true story.

Zibby: Even your mother's ability to overcome adversity, oh, my gosh.

Stephanie: There's so many layers for me. I appreciate how you brought what I said in bringing in what you said because it is hard to really distill it the way -- it's almost impossible to distill it into this brush stroke. We can go into more, but you did a good job.

Zibby: Thank you. Why did you write this? Why did you decide to take your story and put it in memoir form and do such a good job? [laughs] 

Stephanie: I started writing the minute I started working with my mom. Even before then, I started to write my story before I knew the whole story. Once this started to come out, these revelations and my relationship with my mom and, really, my failing in my marriage that was able to be restored, just everything needed to be told. It also started to feel like a story that was for everybody, and it is. It's this American story. It's the story of the failings of America. I fell through every crack. I fell through the education crack; my mother, a mental health crack. Our family just fell through every crack possible. Then I'm also the American story of being able to succeed in the opportunities that I've been able to have. It's a story of our history, even. My family is the history of our country that came out of this. There's just so many reasons why this story needed to be told. People will say -- I was just telling my staff, we were talking about this -- that I'm brave. It's not about being brave. I feel free. I don't have to live in hiding. I don't have to live in shame. I'm an open book. There's something just so freeing about that.

Zibby: You are an open book that is now sitting here open on my desk. Literally, you are. I could imagine that would be freeing. I don't know how you were carrying around that heavy load for so long. I don't know how corrosive that must have been in so many ways, keeping all those secrets. What was that like?

Stephanie: It's exhausting. It was exhausting. Before I could even meet with somebody -- my husband had a big career as a CEO. I was always having to meet and entertain people. I'd have to make a plan of what questions and how would I answer them before every time I met a new person if they said, where are you from? Where'd you go to school? How many siblings do you have? I don't know. One was kidnapped. I don't know if I should add him. There was no way for me to tell my story and be normal. It was exhausting. That's why I say I'm just so free now. It's all out there. I had all this external success, but inside, I was just broken. I was empty. I was a shell of person before I started this. Now everything's integrated. I get to be a whole person. Even my name, Thornton, I took my name back. I didn't even have a name. I didn't have a grandparent. I didn't have a cousin. I had nobody. I had no history that I knew of. I took it all back. I'm just so whole now.

Zibby: Wow. It's amazing. It's just amazing.

Stephanie: I don't know what it's like to have had these things either. Even when I was living in the back of station wagon eating seaweed, I didn't know any better. I wasn't unhappy. I was with my siblings. We were all together. I truly love the beach still. We lived in the beach. I've had to come to terms really through the process of writing my book. I lived outside. I lived in a car. I went to the bathroom outside. We ate seaweed. This was my life that I had. I didn't know any different. Even today, it shocks me. We were living like animals outside. That is sometimes just staggering for me.

Zibby: You even bring in your own parenting in this book. Even the way you adopted your daughter, this international adoption saga that ended beautifully with your daughter, but even your point of view of being able to say, look, this was what my daughter was like when she was eleven. Listen to what was going on with my mother and what was going on with me. Yet you have three children that are being raised totally "normally" in a very comfortable environment. Yet look what happened. 

Stephanie: I tried to raise them idyllic. I tried to be the opposite. I tried to give my daughter everything that I didn't have, which isn't always great at all. That was that façade that I put on that you read about that I think we all do in a way. We can hide behind this. I could hide behind this interior design business or all of this, but it's still there.

Zibby: Do you still do interior design, or do you only run your schools?

Stephanie: I just do it for fun. If you follow me on Instagram -- I think you're following me.

Zibby: I am, yeah.

Stephanie: I am constantly redesigning stuff. I'm constantly styling. I do that for the school, but it's just my fun passion. I don't have time to work with clients anymore. I just run the schools. Then now I'm doing a lot of philanthropic work and stuff with the book and starting a podcast and starting on my next book. Design, you'll see on my Instagram, it's my love.

Zibby: Slow down. Go back for a second. Tell me about the next book and the podcast.

Stephanie: I'm starting a podcast called "Overcoming." I'm interviewing extraordinary people who have been through extraordinary circumstances who come out on the other side to share their story, their strategies to help inspire other people to share their stories and to gain more strategies on how to overcome. It's all about overcoming. Don't we all need that right now after the pandemic?

Zibby: Yes.

Stephanie: That's what I'm doing. My book working title is called Overcoming. I didn't share everything in American Daughter. [laughs] 

Zibby: Oh, my gosh. That, I find hard to believe.

Stephanie: Oh, no, I scaled it. People say, wow, you just really let it out. It's like, no, we actually had to edit a lot out for this book to make sure that this book was just perfectly aligned with the story. There's still more of overcoming.

Zibby: I can't wait.

Stephanie: If you think about being homeless all the way up until I got married, I was in and out of cars, foster homes. I fell through that whole system, aged out, got kicked out my senior year for not getting my tags done on my car. I had to live with no parenting, no guidance. Can you even imagine your senior year? I think about my kids and how vulnerable they are. To be in their car staying in somebody's sofa their senior, it's just astounding how much I fell through these cracks.

Zibby: What is like then if your child complains about something? Are you just like, don't even?

Stephanie: [laughs] I'm not. They don't like me to do that. They're not into that. I've never been like that. I never shared my story with my kids. They never knew until I wrote this book. They only had glimpses of seeing my mother. They knew there was a stalking order. I shielded them from everything. They found out about my story when I wrote this book.

Zibby: What was like for you?

Stephanie: I just wanted to protect them from everything.

Zibby: What was it like having them now learn it? What was that experience like? Did you hand them the copy of the manuscript?

Stephanie: Literally. 

Zibby: Literally, you were just like, here, this is what happened?

Stephanie: Yeah, literally. Here it is if you want to read it. Here's the story. They lived also with their mother not being truly a whole person either. I hate that about the story because they didn't get to find out about their history. If I was raising my kids now, I'd be sharing these wonderful successful things from my family. I'd be sharing the horrific parts of our American heritage that we all have in terms of the Washingtons, the horrible things they did, the good things that they did. They never got to grow up knowing their heritage, but my grandkids will. If I had the story, that would've made them more whole too instead of a mother who had no history, no background, and shared nothing.

Zibby: Don't beat yourself up, seriously. I'm sure you've done an extraordinary job. You can sense how much you love and dote on your kids in the book. I'm sure they're amazing people in their own rights. I'm sure you did a fantastic job. Whatever you needed at that point to get through, that's what you needed then. Now you're ready for this. 

Stephanie: Exactly. I don't have any regrets. I do feel like I really tried hard having no skills. If you think about it, I had no parents. I was really homeless, orphaned. Then I decided to have a family with no skills. I just had to muddle my way through. For me, being as loving and doting on them was a safe thing to do. 

Zibby: The process of writing this, were you sobbing over your keyboard? What was that like?

Stephanie: Oh, my gosh, it depends on the parts. It depends. When I found out about my mother and what happened to her, so during the interview when she told me what had happened and she said, "Go look it up in the papers, 1953, and you'll find out," I still didn't believe her. You have to understand my mom's been in and out of psych wards over a hundred times in my lifetime, or jail. Anything she says you would take with a grain of salt. To find out what happened and to have never asked the questions that I wished that I had earlier -- but it was about the right timing. To find out what happened to her felt like somebody kicked me in the stomach a hundred times. The physical pain of what she went through being abducted and getting raped, it was horrific, but it also then created a lot of compassion that I had for her. Even if you read the first chapter, my mother describes trying to end her pregnancy with me. Just like we're sitting here talking, my mother told me with no emotion -- and I wrote it that way. If you read chapter one, this is right out of her mouth exactly how it went down in the interview. She had no feeling or compassion. Stuff like that is really hard to learn and to process. That was hard. What I'd like to say is that once I realized what happened to my mother, her personalities, her mental health, her addiction, it all made sense. It all made sense at that point. My compassion for her grew. Also, I was to a point in my life where I mattered. I never mattered. I never mattered to my mother. I never mattered in the system. I never mattered. I matter now. I mattered and I was still going to get the answers. She was still going to keep going through with the interviews. These interviews went on for two years. She wanted them to stop. I set the next one up week after week until I was done. That was two years later. The interviews went from being interviewing her to us having a relationship and forming a bond and love that we never had. That was very meaningful.

Zibby: The way that you wrote it and the way you discovered and shared your discoveries, we all -- well, I can't talk for anybody else. Now I need to find people who have read this book so I can talk to them about it too.

Stephanie: In your group, your book club.

Zibby: In my book club, I'll do it, yes. We'll do it in my book club. We all felt that too. We all went through that period of, oh, my gosh, that's what happened. Then you have to go back in your mind and say, does that change the way I view this person now that I have this information? Can I reshuffle and readjust like a filter or something when you have new data? It's just crazy. 

Stephanie: I've only met one person who said, "I cannot forgive your mom. I do not care what happened to her." I had only one person.

Zibby: What happened to that person? That person probably has a lot of stuff they're carrying around too. Most of the time, people's reactions to things are based on their own stuff.

Stephanie: Most people -- which was important to me that my mother's story be told and that people would have compassion on others with mental health issues because I did. I did. I grew up in a way that I'm so thankful that I don't have mental health issues. Most of my siblings do. They didn't quite come out. So often, it's just not the fault of the person. It's what's happened to them. You see that in American Daughter. You see what happened to my mother. It makes perfect sense how this can happen to somebody.

Zibby: I know you were clearly protecting the privacy of some of your siblings. In my greed at your story, wanting more and more, I was like, I want a picture. I almost googled and was trying to -- I was like, I can't do this. This is creepy now if I'm trying to google your siblings and your mom. I was like, should I try to look up the articles? Maybe I'll look and investigate.

Stephanie: Well, they're out there.

Zibby: I know. I'm sure.

Stephanie: People do. People do all the time. I notice if I google myself, I see what other people are googling. [laughs] 

Zibby: Exactly, what fills in after.

Stephanie: We all do that. In Overcoming, I'll probably share more about some of the stuff that people really are interested in similar to you where they just wanted to know more. It's not going to hurt anybody by sharing.

Zibby: Are your siblings that you're still in touch with and that are remaining, are they okay with where you've --

Stephanie: -- You know Dominic who was kidnapped. He lives in New York. He's living his life. He's had a rough life, prison stays. It's to be expected. He had a really rough life. Other siblings, one of my siblings has been diagnosed with five different mental illnesses. He makes my mom look like a walk in the park, to be honest. It's really, really scary. A lot of this trauma and honestly, illiteracy -- I didn't learn to read until I was eleven years old. We lived outside. We did not go to school. The first time I went to school was in my foster home where I was held captive, is what I like to say because I was literally tortured there, was my first time in school. You imagine how traumatic school was for me. My siblings, they were barely literate. Your early childhood is so traumatized like this.

Zibby: I love how you talked about the boyfriend who worked at RadioShack sitting there teaching you how to read. That was just beautiful, heartbreaking but beautiful, and even how you described Rick and your complicated feelings about him and everything. Can I just read a paragraph? Is that okay?

Stephanie: Sure.

Zibby: When you were talking about Rick and how he always used to tell you that you were beautiful inside and out and how he said that to you over and over again, and then you said, "On the morning of his funeral, a homeless woman came up to me in Starbucks drawing closer than a stranger would. With no alarm at all, I let her reach out and touch my face. 'You're beautiful,' she [indiscernible]. 'I can see you're beautiful inside and out.' It was Rick's mantra to me, and in that moment, I had no doubt that the message was from him. The gift of it knocked me out, rocked me from my roots of my hair to the soles of my feet. It was a moment as otherworldly as the one in that vintage bar at the piano when music flowed from beneath my hands with no explanation. That was my first memory with Rick, and this would be my last, both of them shimmering, glittering with mystery." Beautiful.

Stephanie: That made me cry thinking about that moment at his funeral. Readers haven't been able read to about Rick, but Rick was a conman. Rick stole a mail truck and took us to Mexico. It's just stuff movies are made out of. This is the craziest stuff. He was conman. He'd been in prison. He had even taken someone's life in prison. That didn't make the book. I loved him. He was like Santa Claus to me. He'd showed up here and there drugged out. I'd be like, oh, my god, he's back! Yay! I loved Rick. When you read about his turnaround and his recovery from drugs and alcohol, he became one of the most amazing human beings I'd ever met. I loved him. We had a great relationship. He even did things like -- I'm a designer. I own these schools now. He was the first person to take me to beautiful homes in Portland that he was working on as a contractor to show me what interior design really was. He would take me to these beautiful houses. I got to touch the fabrics. There were things about Rick that I think as a child I saw in him that nobody else saw. Even before he died, he asked me, "What did you see in me? Why do you love me? Are you crazy?" He would say, "Are you crazy? What in the world is wrong with you?" [laughs] 

Zibby: I love that relationship and all these signs that you point out over and over in the book. This whole book, there's some sort of spiritual thread to everything that is just so inspiring. I sound like a broken record.

Stephanie: I'm so glad you see that because in so many ways, sharing my story, it has a little bit of a magical way in people's lives. This book affects everybody in a different way. As crazy as this story is, as we've just laid out here, everybody sees themself in American Daughter. It's truly an American story. I didn't set out to do that. It's just it is that.

Zibby: Is this going to be a movie?

Stephanie: I'm sure it is. They're talking about a miniseries, which I think would be far better than one movie. We all want a miniseries, right? [laughs] We like to binge those.

Zibby: I love how now the miniseries is rebranded as a limited series as if it's a completely different animal whereas it's exactly the same, but whatever. I'm just going to let it go. It's great. A limited series is like a ten-hour movie. It's perfect. It's fantastic.

Stephanie: That's what we all really want. There's so much layering to the story, like you said, from my story to my mother's story to our history to all the people in this book. I think it'll be a really good series. We'll see. I know they're talking about it, working on it. I'm excited to hear about it.

Zibby: Me too. Do you have advice to aspiring authors?

Stephanie: Yeah. Have you written a book? I didn't read that about you.

Zibby: I have. I've written unpublished books. I have an anthology coming out very soon.

Stephanie: You do?

Zibby: Yeah, Moms Don't Have Time To: A Quarantine Anthology. It comes out in two weeks.

Stephanie: Really? That's so exciting. Congratulations.

Zibby: Thank you.

Stephanie: That's so exciting. My journey of publishing was really wild, as wild as this book is. I published with Greenleaf which is hybrid publishing. I published American Daughter because I like to learn the hard way on everything. [laughs] I published it. It went straight to number-one best seller in memoir. I was on the Today Show. It just exploded. Then HarperCollins bought the book two weeks later, took it off the market. Then I've had a fabulous experience with HarperCollins. That's the next phase of American Daughter. I've had a chance to do both. I really love both experiences. If you have a chance to work with a publisher, I think it's fabulous. If you also get a chance to self-publish, I think it's a wonderful education for people. I just don't think that people should tell you not to do something like this. If you want to write a book, write a book. Do it. It's the best. It was one of the best experiences of my life. I'm free from it. As hard as it was, it was so fulfilling. I just think writing a book is so fulfilling. It's such a major accomplishment. I recommend if that's something you want to do to go for it. Don't let anybody tell you that book's been done before or any of the negativity. I heard it all. I got the looks. Who cares? What's another story? Even if I just did it for myself, it's fabulous. The book's going to touch people's lives. You need to go for it. You definitely want to know your audience. You want to be clear about what the purpose of your book is for. There's a lot of things. I want to teach a little class on publishing because I've been successful as a self-publisher and I've been successful working with a wonderful publisher like HarperCollins.

Zibby: Great. We'll be signing up for that.

Stephanie: That's next year. [laughter]

Zibby: Stephanie, thank you. This book really touched me profoundly. As you've said, it's touched so many other people and will continue to do so. I am just so in awe of you and feel like I have this place in my heart for you now that I know so much about you and have gone through this book journey here. It's really amazing. I'm thrilled to have you in book club at some point soon. I just congratulate you from the bottom of my heart.

Stephanie: I love being on your show. I love following you. I love your positive energy. Thank you for having me.

Zibby: Thank you. Thanks for coming. Thanks for following me. [laughs] 

Stephanie: Oh, I'm all in. 

Zibby: Have a great day.

Stephanie: Thank you. I'll talk to you soon. I can't wait to be in your book club.

Zibby: Me too. Thank you. Buh-bye.

Stephanie: Bye.

Robert Jones Jr., THE PROPHETS

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Robert. Thanks so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books" to discuss your amazing, hugely successful, powerful book, The Prophets.

Robert Jones Jr.: Thank you so much for having me. This is such a pleasure.

Zibby: How are you doing with the success of this book? What do you think? Did you ever expect? Tell me about it.

Robert: I did not ever expect. I actually expected the opposite, that people would either ignore it, find it far-fetched, be offended by the topics it broaches. I did not expect the success and the acclaim that it has experienced thus far. It is so hard to internalize it because I had been so preparing myself for the bad or the negative that the positive surprised me. I think I'm still in a state of surprise, but ultimately grateful. 

Zibby: I like doing that too, sort of prepare for the worst and then everything is a pleasant surprise. For people who might not be familiar with The Prophets or Son of Baldwin, for that matter, would you mind first just talking a little about what The Prophets is about? Then what inspired you to write it?

Robert: Awesome. The Prophets is about Samuel and Isaiah, two enslaved men on a plantain in Mississippi during the 1800s who are in love. The book examines how that love transforms, inspires, angers everyone around them whether that be fellow enslaved people or the plantain owners and the family that owns these enslaved people. There's a thread in it that goes back to precolonial Africa to give a precursor to Samuel and Isaiah's love and origin point for how long-lasting and historical that sort of love is. It is something that took me fourteen years to write precisely because I could find no template to draw from. In all of my studies -- I was an Africana studies minor in undergrad -- I could find no examples of blackness and queerness prior to the Harlem Renaissance and wondered, where were they? Did they just pop up in 1929? Where were black queer people? Found only references that sort of alluded to sexual assault or some sort of depravity. My question was, what about love? The great Toni Morrison said if you cannot find the book you wish to read, then you must write it. I set about writing what would eventually become The Prophets.

Zibby: Wow, fourteen years. It's finally here. Do you ever get tempted to go back into the file on your computer and just keep tinkering around a little bit more?

Robert: If it was not for my agent, PJ Mark at Janklow & Nesbit, and my editor, Sally Kim at Putnam, I could've tinkered with this for another fourteen years. The writer almost never knows when it's done. You just revise and revise and revise because that's your training. Writing is revision. You will keep revising until you have written fourteen years' worth of books. They stopped me said, "Okay, this is done."

Zibby: It's time.

Robert: We can move forward. [laughs] 

Zibby: I love Sally Kim, by the way. She is one of my all-time favorite editors. She's amazing. So awesome.

Robert: A dream.

Zibby: Also, Son of Baldwin, you've built this enormous online community. Here's just a little thing about it for people who don't know, but I want to hear it from you. "Son of Baldwin is specifically interested in critical analysis and in leading and participating in conversations from the queer perspective, intersections of ability, age, body type, class, gender, gender identity, sex, sexuality, and others." Of course, this is now cut off. "White supremacist, capitalist, patriarchy are considered." Then of course, there's a lot more. This is a big undertaking. Tell me about this.

Robert: Son of Baldwin started when I was first introduced to James Baldwin. I'm late to the game. I did not really know about James Baldwin until my freshman year of college when I was assigned an essay by him called "Here be Dragons" and was so blown away by the clarity and the brilliance and the beauty of that essay that I devoured and sought out all sorts of works by him and discovered that he was also black, queer, raised in New York City, and a writer, all of the things that I am. I adopted him immediately as my spiritual godfather. I was devasted to learn that he was dead because I was hoping to find him and talk to him, but he was dead. I said, shoot. Then I watched a documentary where his brother said some of James Baldwin's last words were, "I hope that someone finds me in the wreckage." It broke my heart because I thought, why isn't he more popular? Why aren't we discussing his works more? This was about 2006. I said, I know what. I'm going to start a blog. It's going to be centered around James Baldwin and all the things he talked about politically. In about 2007, 2008, I created the Son of Baldwin blog. Moved it to Facebook in 2009. The rest is kind of history because just by word of mouth, people started participating. The audience just grew and grew and grew into what it is now. 

Zibby: Wow. I read, though, James Baldwin in college. I graduated college in 1998, not to date myself here. I did a whole class on African American literature. He was prominently featured. He's not lost to history. [laughs] 

Robert: I just was wondering why he wasn't more popular. At the time, we would talk about Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. Those were the big names. I'm like, why isn't he that big? Obviously, part of that reason is because the queerness always makes certain people uncomfortable. Lately in the last maybe five to seven years, his memory, his work has really returned to form. I'm really, really glad about that.

Zibby: Isn't it amazing? I love what you just said about finding a spiritual godfather. There are all these people who have come before us and who are out there now who maybe we just wouldn't have heard about or don't cross paths with. Then it somehow validates our entire lives, whether there's something about them that's similar or a sensibility or something. It's just like, wow, I am not the only one like me in the world. How amazing is that?

Robert: That is what drove me, utterly. He confirmed my right to be. I bow down to James Baldwin. I adore him still. He has a huge influence on my thinking and my writing.

Zibby: When you were writing fiction, how did you even start to attempt this project? This book is amazing in that it has different -- dialectic is the word. You have different speaking styles for different characters. You have first person, third person. There is some that feels biblical. It's a lot of different tones and speakers all interwoven to create this masterpiece, essentially, of different threads. How did you sit down one day and you're like, I'll just start this thing? What proceeded it?

Robert: My first semester of grad school in the MFA program at Brooklyn College, Stacy Derazma [sp] was my fiction tutorial instructor. She gave us a project. She said, "It is your job to go out into the world and find objects a character that you're thinking about would possess."

Zibby: That's so interesting.

Robert: Because serendipity is real, I found a pair of shackles in the garbage on the street in Brooklyn.

Zibby: Stop. Seriously?

Robert: A pair of shackles. When I lifted them up, they were heavy. I said, oh, this person is enslaved. Oh, my goodness, I am going to have to write about a black queer character in antebellum slavery when there is no template for that. This is my sign that I'm supposed to be doing this. I set about sketching who the character who would've been held by these shackles was. That character eventually became Samuel, one of the main characters. I just basically sketched out what he looked like, what he smelled like, what he liked, what he disliked, who he loved, what he thought about, all of those sorts of things to build him into a person. Then I went about writing the book, which was initially going to be told solely from Samuel's point of view. Then I realized that Samuel didn't have enough information to really span the breadth of what I wanted to discuss in this book. I said, maybe Samuel and his love interest, Isaiah, will tell the story together. Then I said, no, that's still not enough. I need something broader. 

Then I realized the center and the heart of the story was actually that Samuel and Isaiah were in love, so that love needed witnesses. From that epiphany, I said, now these other voices are going to need to speak. Whether they affirm this love or they want to destroy it, they need to be able to tell their point of view. Then from a dream that I scribbled down some words in the middle of the night, the ancestors spoke. They said, you do not yet know us. I said, now the ancestors want to be able to talk to me. They want to be able to talk to these characters. They want to talk to the reader too. I have to now incorporate them in. Then they led me across the Atlantic to precolonial Africa to talk about the precursor to Samuel and Isaiah. I thought, how am I going to work to get all of these disparate pieces to work cohesively? Thanks to help of Sally Kim and PJ Mark, we were able to make it congeal. 

Zibby: Wow, that is quite a story. Oh, my gosh, I can't believe you found those on the street. It almost has this Greek chorus to it. Have you heard that a lot? I'm sorry.

Robert: No, it is totally that. It totally has that Greek chorus. In my mind, I'm thinking of how black women in church often sing gospel in harmony. That is kind of how I hear the voices of those ancestral interjections, as a harmonious, gospel sort of tone but with West African tenor, if that makes any sense. [laughs] 

Zibby: Did you do any travel? Did you go back to anywhere to investigate? Africa or anything like that?

Robert: I had the great fortune of having visited Africa before, so I just retrieved those memories of what it was like to be there, what the air smelled like, what the people looked like, what the comradery felt like. It felt like a homecoming, like that was the place that I actually belonged, like I belonged to that landscape. I took that feeling and tried to interpret it in a literary fashion.

Zibby: Very cool. A lot of the scenes in this book, I have to say, were very tough to read in terms of the graphic nature of the torture and depravity and just awful -- I wanted to close my eyes at certain scenes, which is tough when you're reading. What was it like to write scenes like that? Was that hard for you?

Robert: It was physically painful. When I would be describing a scene, my skin would start to burn a little bit. It would hurt almost as though I was becoming the character. I had to often stop and take walks and visit with my nieces, nephews, and nibblings.

Zibby: What's a nibbling?

Robert: Nibbling is a child of my sibling that is non-binary. 

Zibby: No way. I'm so out of it. I've never heard that before.

Robert: I have a nibbling who is non-binary. I took breaks. Partially, that's part of the reason why I took fourteen years to write this book. It became a conscious effort to say to myself, if I'm going to expect the reader to get through this, I'm going to have to give them something beautiful. I'm going to have to give them something deeply loving to balance out the hatred and the torture. I decided early on that the love would be imbued, as much as I possibly could, into the book so that there was some sort of balance.

Zibby: You speak so reverently about love. Tell me about the role that love has played in your life.

Robert: When I think about the fact that I'm here as a black queer person writing and reading and going to school and walking down the street and all of these things, I can't help but feel grateful to all of my ancestors who endured, because I must have been the outcome that they were hoping for, that endured whips and untold brutality and untold degradation to ensure that a me could exist. If that is not love -- they didn't even know me. They dreamed that it might be. That is the ultimate form of love. This was my attempt to testify on behalf of that love and to witness for it and to pay homage to it.

Zibby: That’s beautiful. That's really beautiful. What are some of the loving examples you have in your life now or that you’ve seen actually role modeled to you?

Robert: One of my best friends in the entire world, we've been best friends since third grade, Arlene Solavargas, one day when we were fifteen years old in high school, I picked her up from school. We went to adjacent high schools. I would walk to her school, pick her up, and we'd walk home together. She stops me and she goes, "Bobby." That's what my family calls me. "You see that guy right there?" I'm looking at him. I'm like, "Yeah." She's like, "That's going to be my husband." I said, "[Indiscernible]." That's my nickname for her. "He's just an average-looking guy. You're so beautiful." Low and behold, they started dating shortly after that and have been together ever since.

Zibby: What? That's crazy.

Robert: They have modeled for me what it means to be in love. She knew from the moment she saw him that that was her soulmate, her eternal love, the love of her life. He felt the same way about her. They have been together ever since. A marriage and a three children later, they are still together. We are still friends. Her children consider me their uncle. I have never seen romance like that in my life. It is just absolutely beautiful. Then in my own family, the way my grandmother loved me was unbelievable. She died when I was very young. I was seven. She told my mother, she said, "Bobby's going to miss me." The truth of the matter is, to this day, I still cry when I think about her on her birthday, on the day that she died all through my life. There have, of course, been examples of people who did not love me, who did everything in their power to try to tell me that I was unlovable. Thanks to the glory of the love of people like Arlene and my grandmother and other members of my family, I withstood and I'm here.

Zibby: It's so funny. Talking to you, you're so kindhearted and peaceful-seeming. I'm not explaining this very well. You seem gentle to me despite the brutality in the book. Then I saw the article in The Paris Review, "Let It Burn," where you referenced your past article called -- I'll just say blank -- "I Don't Give a Blank About Justine Damond," which got you in heaps of trouble, apparently, which I'm sort of shocked to even hear because you seem like someone who would care about not crushing a ladybug on the street. I might be wrong. I've only known you for like twenty minutes, but that's the impression I'm getting.

Robert: It is absolutely true that I even have a problem with killing a fly or a cockroach. Something about that bothers me. What also bothers me just as much is injustice. I cannot stand to watch another video of a black person being murdered on camera and the murderer just as though they were swatting a fly, that it utterly doesn't matter. That angers me beyond my capacity to contain anger. I don't want to be an angry person, but I can't help but be angry when I see what happens to black women, what happens to black queer people, what happens to black people in general, what happens to anybody who's marginalized in a society. It angers me deeply, and so I write with the spirit of that when I'm writing pieces like "I Don't Give a Blank about Justine Damond," which is really rhetorical. The truth is, I do give a blank about Justine Damond, but I'm trying to let the society know you only care because it's a white woman. If it was a black woman, you wouldn't care. I'm trying to turn it on you and say, here's your mirror. This is what it's like when you disregard our lives. This is what it feels like. It worked because so many white people got angry but did not see the connection. It's so bizarre. Americans have an inability to self-reflect. We always think of ourselves as innocent. I really wish Americans would wake up from that dreaming. I really do because America has the potential to be a nation that's transformative and that's a model for how the world should work, and it is not. It has not been since the beginning because it's a nation that's origins begin with genocide and enslavement and the degradation of women. This is unseemly. I really want us to grow into what it actually means to be humane. We haven't earned the right to be called human beings yet because we're so cruel to one another. Why?

Zibby: I totally agree about the cruelty. I can't understand it. It baffles me how evil people can be. I feel things very deeply. I'm getting the sense that you feel things very deeply. When someone is hurt, it hurts me whether I know them or not or whatever. I know this just sounds ridiculous, but the ability of somebody to go out and intentionally hurt somebody, especially based on their sexuality or their race or anything, it makes me cry. It makes me sick to my stomach, honestly, is what it does, as it does to so many people. It's hard to process, in a way.

Robert: It is. It is very difficult. Truly, I think of myself as a nonviolent person. I don't like engaging in violence. I was a bullied kid and had to fight. I had no choice because I had to fight back to defend myself, but I didn't like the feeling of hurting somebody else even though I felt justified because I was defending myself. I don't like it. I also don't like to be pushed to the point at which I have to do that. 

Zibby: I get it. I'm sorry you've had those experiences in your life. I'm glad that you've had people to pull you through and to show goodness to you so that you were able to channel all of it into art and now have it be sitting on my desk. It's amazing, really. Truly, congratulations. It's amazing. Do you have any advice for aspiring authors out there?

Robert: Yes, and particularly authors who are writing from sort of a marginalized existence. Everything in the world, everything in this country is probably going to tell you that your endeavors are not necessary or that writing is a frivolous endeavor or that art is secondary to other concerns. You will have to fight past that and all the obstacles that the society is going to put in your way for you to, for example, take care of yourself. I had to work three part-time jobs in undergrad and two part-time jobs in graduate school and then still had to find the time to write as a full-time worker in the workforce.

Zibby: And you graduated Phi Beta Kappa. That's insane. You're a genius. 

Robert: Thank you. You must continue because writing is one of the most valuable professions, one of the most revered and necessary art forms in existence. It is the writer who pushes the society to be better. Other artists do that as well, so I don't want to take that away from them. The writer is, as James Baldwin said, here to disturb the peace, which is to say, disturb the status quo so that people's lives can be easier, so that mechanisms that are here to oppress and to dehumanize are dismantled, and that we could look at each other in the face and say, even if I don't like you as a person, I don't agree with your religion or your whatever, I could still look at you in the face and say, you are a human being, so I respect you because you are here and you exist. Writers help us imagine those sorts of worlds and push us in that direction. I tell the aspiring authors don't give no matter what. Listen, I'm going to be fifty years old in April. This is my first novel. I could've given up because all of the lists are "Twenty Under Twenty" and "Thirty Under Thirty" and "Forty Under Forty" and make me feel as though my contribution as a fifty-year-old doesn't matter. Keep going even if you're eighty-nine when you publish it. Be eighty-nine and publish it. Keep going.

Zibby: Can you please publish a list somewhere of "Fifty Under Fifty"? It has to be a little older, though, so you can be included. You should publish "Amazing Fifty-Year-Old Authors" or "Fifty and Forties." You start that. Make that a thing too. [laughs] 

Robert: Got it.

Zibby: Thank you, speaking as someone in my forties. Robert, thank you so much. Thank you for your literary contribution and for taking the time to speak to me about your life and letting me pry into your past.

Robert: Zibby, this was so fantastic because you asked questions that no one else asked me. It made me think about myself as a person and what I want philosophically to happen in the world. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for those wonderful questions.

Zibby: You're so welcome. Have a great day.

Robert: You too.

Zibby: Buh-bye.

Robert: Bye.

Maggie Downs, BRAVER THAN YOU THINK

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Maggie. Thank you so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books" to discuss Braver Than You Think: Around the World on the Trip of My (Mother's) Lifetime.

Maggie Downs: Thank you so much for having me. This is a pleasure.

Zibby: It's my pleasure. I was starting to tell this before. I had been so excited to read this book that I kept trying to sneak into it when I had lots of other books on the horizon in the shorter term. I'm delighted I finally got a chance to read the whole thing because it was really good. I kind of feel like I know at least a version of you that you put forth in the book now. Thank you for sharing all of that with your readers and with me.

Maggie: Thank you for reading it. I appreciate it. I'm like you. I read multiple books at the same time, and so I'm always cheating on one book or another.

Zibby: Totally. Good. Now I don't feel as bad. Book cheaters anonymous or something. Why don't you tell listeners a little about what your book is about and what inspired you to write it?

Maggie: The elevator pitch is that it's a memoir about a year that I spent backpacking solo around the world to complete my mom's bucket list while she was in the final stage of Alzheimer's. The longer version is so much more difficult. It starts when my mom was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's. I was so young when that happened. It kind of sent me into a tailspin just reckoning with the fact that I would never know my mom as an adult. I was in my early twenties when she was diagnosed. I was just learning how to become a person. I didn't know how to deal with the fact that she was in decline. It happened so rapidly. Within a couple years, she had no idea who I was. All of that, of course, forced me to think about my own mortality and just how I wanted to live my life. I knew that there were a lot of things that my mom wanted to do with her own life and all these dreams and goals she had. When I thought about, what would she do if she could have this time back, if she had the option to do it all over again, what would she do? I pulled on some of my memories of things she had talked about. I compiled a bucket list for her. I did the things that I thought she might want to do. I quit my job. I sold all of my things. I had ten thousand dollars. I didn't know how far that would take me. It took me through South America, Africa, and then Asia before I went home again. It's no spoiler that she dies halfway through my trip. There was a big grieving process in the traveling and then also trying to figure out how to heal from that.

Zibby: Wow. I loved how you interspersed all of the trips and all of the challenges that came from underwear and socks that wouldn't dry in time for a hike and sleeping on the floor of an airport and all these things, and getting attacked by monkeys. You just had all sorts of bizarre things happen. Yet on every page was something about your mom, I felt like. It permeated everything that happened to you that whole year. It was like a love letter, the trip, the book, all of it. Do you feel like once you spent all that time and emotional energy writing, did it give you some sort of relief in a way? How did you feel when you finally had the book done and you went back to life?

Maggie: Grief is such a strange thing. I feel like you never fully heal from it. It did make me feel like there was a way out of it. When I tell my friends in California how grief feels, I describe it like a labyrinth. Since I'm from Ohio, it's more like a corn maze. I think of it personally like this scary place. I don't know how to get out. I'm just trying to navigate through it. I felt like writing the book was one passage out. It was another way to get around my grief a little bit after being steeped in it for so long. Also, in writing the book, I really wanted to help other people who were grappling with the loss of a loved one, and especially people who their loved ones might have an extended illness because that process of grief and mourning them is so extended. It happens for so long before they ever die. That's really, really hard. It was hard when my mom was diagnosed for me to read any book about Alzheimer's because there's no happy ending with that disease. It's an always-fatal disease. I wanted to write a book that tackled these topics but also had some light and some hope in it. 

Zibby: There's another book coming out in January. This might run after that. It's by a rabbi named Steve Leder called The Beauty in What Remains. His father had Alzheimer's. He had to deal with a ten-year journey. It's also about grief. I feel like you two should team up. Those two together would be a perfect, almost like a grief bundle. I know that sounds terrible and commercial, but they're both so helpful in different ways. His was about a man losing his dad. Yours is losing your mom to the same illness. It's just very complementary. Anyway, look into it.

Maggie: I will.

Zibby: Speaking of Ohio and the corn maze, my mom and her whole family are from Dayton, Ohio. My grandma's from Cincinnati.

Maggie: That's where I'm from.

Zibby: I know. I read that in the book. I was like, oh, that's so great. I've been to Dayton a zillion times. Small world.

Maggie: That's great. That's so funny. I always forget that people know these things about my life because it's in the book. Someone will say something now and I'm like, how did you know that about me? Then I remember, oh, yeah, I put it in a book that anyone can read. [laughs] 

Zibby: Pretty much, the secret is out. The midwestern roots cannot be dyed. Take me back a little to growing up, not just that you were in Dayton, but you referenced your sickly childhood a lot and your asthma and pneumonias or bronchitis, that you were sick a lot. Obviously, that has long-term effects when people go through a lot as children, more resilient or this, that, or the other thing. Tell me about that and what was wrong and how you got over it.

Maggie: I just was very sickly. I have an older brother and an older sister. They were natural athletes. They were always playing basketball or that kind of thing. I was the kid who, I would literally make a fort out of books. I would sit inside my fort and just read books because it was a struggle for me to do physical activities. My asthma was so profound. It took a while to diagnosis that. I was always the kid at the tail end of races in PE class and what not. I never thought of myself as a physically strong person. I do think that remains with you. That’s just always in the back of your head. Maybe I can't do this. Maybe I'm not strong enough. Maybe I don't have the physical capacity to do this. When I embarked on this backpacking trip, I was really scared that I wouldn't be able to endure it, that I might have a medical emergency somewhere or just not be able to breathe. That's so scary. I spent a lot of time working with a travel nurse and getting vaccines for every possible place I was traveling to and getting special medical insurance that could airlift me out of a place. I had all my bases covered. I just had to do the thing. You're right. That does have a long-lasting effect on a person.

Zibby: Then it's even more of an accomplishment that you were able to go to high altitudes and hike and crawl up different mountains and stuff. That's amazing. I feel like a lot of people who have really bad asthma would not necessarily even want to do that. Then I found myself worrying about you with COVID. I was like, I wonder how that would affect her lungs. She's already susceptible. I hope you're being really careful. I'm sure you are.

Maggie: I've thought a lot about the trip I took and what it would be like now with COVID. There were so many moments that were really physical between me and strangers. I remember being on these long-haul buses where people would just fall asleep on me. It was these really tender, intimate moments that you have with strangers. I miss that. I'm sad that that's not happening right now.

Zibby: That's true. It's one of many things to be sad about right now. You met your husband skydiving, which is so cool. I don't think I know anybody else who I can say that about. You didn't want to do it. You were kind of annoyed. Then you did it together. Then you kept doing it over and over again. Then you realized he was your person. Next thing you know, you've set off on this adventure. Part of your adventure was spending all this time without him. What made you want to do it alone? I know you were sad in the book when he left and all of that. You reunite and everything, not to give anything away. I can delete that if it's a secret.

Maggie: No, it's fine. I don't think it's a spoiler.

Zibby: I feel like if you go to Instagram or something, you'll see what the culmination of it was. Tell me about getting together with him and then the decision so soon immediately after you get married to separate.

Maggie: I feel like when you meet someone skydiving, that's already an unconventional kind of relationship. This isn't in the book, but he proposed to me six or seven times. I was like, "I don't know. I don't want to be a traditional wife." I kept saying, "I don't want to be Donna Reed," as though there's no other way to be a wife or to be in a marriage. Finally, he said, "Our relationship is something that we create. It doesn't have to look a certain way. It doesn't have to go a certain way. If you're afraid of being stuck at home in a certain place or in a neighborhood you don't like or having a certain role, it doesn't have to be that." Then we ended up getting married before this trip because we did want the security of being able to -- if I needed help in a country, a husband would have access to me that a boyfriend wouldn't. It was very practical when we ended up getting married. Also, I think it's very romantic that someone wants to care for you. I don't know why I thought a year apart would just be easy. I'm very independent. I would go away for the weekend or a couple weeks traveling. I just didn't think anything of it. I thought a year would be the same, but a year was a really long time, especially when you're not traveling the same direction. Different things were happening in his life than with mine. It was a real struggle to find common ground at a certain point. When I returned home, it was a difficult time, but we worked that out. Honestly, I was reluctant to even put my marriage that much in the book because I feel like so many women's stories have a romance facet to them, and I was kind of resentful of that. You can be a whole, interesting, complex person without a partner or without romance in there. I think it actually adds something to the story, so I was finally convinced to put that in.

Zibby: It's just like any other part. Any relationship actually just tells the reader more about you. It's not about the romance. It's who is she in a relationship? Who is she when she goes to visit her mother? Who is she with her siblings? It all just is of a piece. I don't think it's about the man or the partner, even. That's my two cents about it. 

Maggie: I agree. I really like that it's not the main storyline because that's not what the story's about. I appreciate that it's there.

Zibby: Backdrop. Backstory. I was really moved when you were writing about your hesitation to have your own kids because you were so worried that you would be carrying the gene for early Alzheimer's and that you would be condemning your children to that type of illness down the line for them. I'm just going to read this little passage. You said, "What I've never said out loud is that I'm afraid. Every time I misplace my keys or leave my purse in the car, I text my sister in a panic believing I'm in the early stages of Alzheimer's myself. Shortly after my mom's diagnosis, my dad tried to comfort me on the phone. 'By the time you're old enough to worry about it, there will be a cure for this disease,' he said. 'There might not be hope for your mom, but there's hope for you.' Almost a decade later, we are no closer to a cure or a way to prevent this thing, but I am closer to an age where I need to make a decision. I don't want to be a parent if I can't be fully present and mentally aware. I don't want my child to watch me disintegrate the way I witnessed my mom's decay. I don't want to pass the disease on. Parenthood is an enormous risk." Then you say, "However, the choice feels simple in this living room where the wallpaper peels and the roof sags with mold. I wonder what I am waiting for. I wonder if not taking a chance is in fact the bigger risk." I love that passage.

Maggie: Thank you. That was an experience that really taught me something. That passage is from when I'm with some kids in Argentina whose parents have left them with me. I'm watching these kids grow up kind of like Lord of the Flies. They have to fend for themselves. It really brought out a maternal instinct that I didn't know that I had. That was on my mind a lot as I was traveling, just thinking about if I wanted to have my own children and what that would mean.

Zibby: Did you ever want to get tested for the gene? Have you ever thought about that?

Maggie: My siblings and I, we've talked about that. We've all decided that we don't want to know.

Zibby: Wow. Have you seen the movie Ask Alice? Is that what it's called?

Maggie: Go Ask Alice, I think.

Zibby: Go Ask Alice with Julianne Moore.

Maggie: I know what you're talking about. Still Alice.

Zibby: Still Alice, yes.

Maggie: No, I haven't seen it yet because it looks too hard for me. A lot of people have recommended it. 

Zibby: It's so good. It's literally one of my favorite movies, and so I mistakenly think that I know somebody who's been through this because I got to watch Julianne Moore's depiction of a woman going through early-stage Alzheimer's and what that felt like. The kids, like you, have all those same fears. It was a big debate in the movie. Should they get tested or not? That's scary. You never know what you're going to give your kids. It's also, does that make life not worth living? Ultimately, I know what you decided, but that's a tough choice. Aren't you glad your mom lived? It's one of those things. 

Maggie: Ultimately, it's like anything. It's just so much up to chance. Any choice this brave, no matter what a woman decides to do, I think just being a person in the world is brave. That's an act of bravery in itself. Just being out there and being a person every day I think is an act of bravery. If people read this book, I don't want them to think that they have to skydive or they have to travel to remote Ethiopia. They can have meaningful experiences no matter what they choose to do.

Zibby: I know you were an award-winning journalist for years. You were amazing. Tell me about your journalism career and how you got into that and what that was like for you and then how it shifted having to work on one project for a sustained period of time like this.

Maggie: I thought I was going to be a cool writer for Rolling Stone. It turns out I ended up at a newspaper in Appalachian Ohio at a small-town paper. I was like, this is fine. I'll just do this for a few years and then move to New York and be a cool person. That really never happened. I just continued working through newspapers. I worked at some different publications in Ohio. I went on to The Cincinnati Enquirer. To me growing up in Dayton, Ohio, The Cincinnati Enquirer, that was it. This was big city, huge newspaper. It's a great paper. I had my own column there. I felt very much like Cincinnati Carrie Bradshaw. [laughs] I was lucky enough to have some really great editors who helped me develop the craft of writing and really dig into some wonderful stories. They would give me the freedom to follow pieces for a long period of time and do some long form, which was really rare. Then somehow, I ended up working the nighttime cops beat in Cincinnati. It just involved a lot of listening to police scanners. If there was a shooting or a body dredged from the river, I was the person who was there. That's not a really creative or fulfilling life. It's important. Somebody needs to be reporting these things, but it wasn't what I wanted to do. Then I ended up moving to Palm Springs and writing feature stories here and writing about the Coachella Music Festival and the film festival and interviewing Brad Pitt and all sorts of amazing things. Even that after a while starts to feel a little formulaic. I just wanted to expand my aperture. I wanted to get a bigger worldview. That's when I decided to go on this trip.

Zibby: Now that you've written a book, do you like writing at this length, this style versus going back to shorter pieces? What do you have in mind after? What comes after this?

Maggie: It turns out books are really, really long. [laughs] It sounds so obvious, but I was used to writing really short pieces, columns that were seven hundred words. When I embarked on a book, it was just a whole new thing to realize, wow, I really need to sustain this narrative for such a long period of time and keep it compelling. I went back to school. I got my MFA. I learned a lot more about writing. It's hard, but I love it. I love the freedom that books offer. I have an idea for another book. Right now, I'm thinking of it as a collection of essays because I think that seems less daunting, but really, I think it's not really a collection of essays. I need to trick myself into thinking this is something I can tackle in small bits. Otherwise, I'll never do it. 

Zibby: Gosh, now I'm blanking on who this was. I just recently interviewed someone who said don't think of a book as a book, think of it as twelve chapters. Same mental trick. It's really just little pieces strung together becomes something bigger, which sounds so obvious, but it's not when you are at a blank page or what you feel like might be hundreds of pages versus ten pages.

Maggie: I always had to trick myself. I think I said in the book even when I was skydiving, I knew I would enjoy the skydive once I was out of the airplane. It was just a matter of getting out the door. I would tell myself I'm Angelia Jolie's stunt double for Tomb Raider or I'm on the Olympic skydiving team, which doesn't actually exist, but it was enough to get me out the door. Then once I was out, you can't get back in. You just have to enjoy the fall. I feel like that's the same thing with books too. Once I was so far into writing this book, I thought, I can't stop now. I just need to enjoy this writing. Ultimately, I love it because being a reader for so many years, I know how books are a conversation and how every reader brings their own thing to the story. I love that. I love knowing that I'm having this conversation with readers. No matter who gets this book into their hands, we're having a dialogue. I want to have that opportunity again. I think that will get me going on my next project. Then also, just launching a book during a pandemic, I feel like I need a do-over, so I have to have a second book.

Zibby: It's true. I recently reposted all these interviews I did all the way at the beginning of the pandemic back in March and April. Some of those books are now coming out in paperback. I'm like, I cannot believe that now we're still in this world and their paperbacks are coming out. It stretched for so long that I feel like pandemic publishing is like, that's just it. That's just what the world is now. 

Maggie: I know. I think my paperback comes out in May. I'm really hoping that I'll have some kind of tour. Before the pandemic, I had all of these expectations of the book. It's going to be on all these lists. I'm going to be besties with Oprah. I'm going to go on this glitzy book tour. In this scenario, I'm also in a trench coat at a train station with hotboxes like a femme fatale in the 1940s. Now I'm like, I just want to be in a bookstore with people. That's all I want. I just want to see people in real life and feel their energy and maybe sign a book for people.

Zibby: I totally get it. You can probably relate given your mother's fascination with weight. You talked about her dieting and the Tab sodas. My mother was the same way. I have this anthology coming out in February. I've been thinking, before the anthology -- now I'm like, I'm going to be right here. Where am I going? I don't need to get outfits. Nobody sees my body anyway. No one's going to see it two months. It doesn't matter. Here we are. It's sort of funny.

Maggie: I know. I had outfits picked out for my book tour. I had a whole thing. I had a plan for my hair with my stylist. Nothing happened. It's just me on Zoom.

Zibby: Who was it? I think it was this author, Janelle Brown, she posted every day for a week, all her book tour outfits, but just her with a mirror shoot. She just wanted to show everybody what she would've worn had she gone on tour. Craziness. What advice would you have to aspiring authors?

Maggie: I would tell them to do it for the writing, not for the external gratification. That's a conversation that I've been having with my friend Ron Currie, who is a writer, because I had this real letdown after the book came out. He was like, "No, that's real. You have to realize that you are doing this for the writing. You're doing it to find sanctuary on the page. It's about you and the words. It's not about any lists you're on or certain things that come outside of that." That was really important. That's just a brand-new lesson that I've learned. The other big thing that really affected me, the writer Steve Almond, he has this teeny, tiny, little writing book, a craft book. One of his lessons is slow down where it hurts.

Zibby: Ooh, I like that.

Maggie: I love it. For a long time, I had it on a Post-it in the corner of my laptop. I realized not just with this book, but a lot of things, I was just trying to rush past the painful things. That's no way to heal.

Zibby: I'm writing it down as we talk. Slow down where it hurts. I love it.

Maggie: You never really get to the source of your pain if you're just trying to move past it as quickly as possible. Once I knew that, it really helped me dig into my writing and look at the things I was avoiding. It works on the page, but it also works as a really great life lesson too.

Zibby: Very inspiring. Maggie, thank you. I'm sorry you had the feeling of letdown when your book came out. I know I'm just one of many, many readers of yours. Every experience you shared, it finds its way into the readers' consciousness and it lodges itself there. Now it's in there for me. I'll be thinking about it. You're doing that so many times over. It doesn't matter what list [indiscernible/crosstalk].

Maggie: That's what I mean about a conversation. That's where the real value is. It's just in having these moments with readers. I really appreciate it.

Zibby: Thanks. Me too. I appreciate your book. If I ever get to Palm Spring again for this tennis tournament and Indian Wells, I'll look you up.

Maggie: Yes, I will show you around. Thank you so much.

Zibby: Take care. Buh-bye.

Maggie: Bye.

Peter Ho Davies, A LIE SOMEONE TOLD YOU ABOUT YOURSELF

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Zibby Owens: Welcome, Peter. Thank you so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books." 

Peter Ho Davies: It's a pleasure to be here.

Zibby: We are talking about your beautiful book, A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself, which is fiction. Although, when I was reading it, I was positive it was nonfiction. I had to keep flipping back until I saw this tiny little "novel" word on the cover. Would you mind telling listeners what the book is about and what inspired you to write it?

Peter: It is a novel. Although, certainly, parts of it are true. I like to think the whole is fictional even if parts are derived from real experience. It's a novel about parenting with some of the familiar trials and tribulations of that, but one that I hope starts from an unfamiliar place and even defamiliarizes that experience since it starts with an abortion. The couple involved at the center of the book, their first pregnancy is interrupted by some pretty catastrophic prenatal test results. They choose to not have that child. Even though later they go on to have a second successful pregnancy and have a child, I think that experience of parenting for them is sort of shadowed but also maybe in some ways also illuminated by that sense of loss from the first pregnancy as well. That's roughly the tenor of the book.

It's interesting you mentioned that sense of fiction/memoir, the burry line between those two things. There is something of that going on in this space. I feel like I need to take the fifth in terms of explaining what's true and what's not, probably because for most of us in our lived experience, memory itself is a kind of means of fiction. If I look back at some of these experiences, I'm not quite sure where reality gives over to fiction in some ways along the way too. In a way, that uncertainty for the reader is in part intentional on my part. What the characters go through, the book is very much about the uncertainty of diagnosis in many ways, that sense of, this might be ninety-nine percent this way, but there's a small sliver of a chance that it might go in the other direction. For the reader to wonder, is this part true, is this part fiction? is a way of giving them a glimpse into the experience of the characters themselves. That's the notional idea behind that uncertainty that the book breeds in the reader as well.

Zibby: The book, it wasn't only about the uncertainty that comes with whether or not to have a child, and the test results. It's even as a child gets older, what do you do when things don't seem to be going a hundred percent the way they should? I'm sure so many parents can relate to this. You think that your child will pass flying colors with -- I'm trying to think of an example. I don't know. Jumping or climbing or monkey bars or something. Then all of a sudden, they don't. What does that mean? Then there's all that anxiety and so much accompanying worry. Then what do you do? This novel delves right into that from the dad's point of view, which I found so refreshing because I just feel like there aren't that many beautiful literary works about fatherhood, whereas I feel like there are many more about motherhood.

Peter: Thanks for saying that. I really appreciate that. I do think there's a deep anxiety for all of us even in the smoothest parenting experiences. I guess none of them are actually genuinely all that smooth. We're worried about all those benchmarks, all those percentiles. We're anxious about, inevitably, even though we wish we didn't, comparing our children to other children whether statistically or whether in the playground, however it might play out in some ways. I think there's a kind of tyranny of the normal. We want our children, we yearn for our children to sort of fit within recognizable spaces, maybe sometimes a space that looks like our own childhood so we feel reassured that they're having an experience that we recognize in some ways or that they're having an experience that feels as though it's very much typical. I think the great anxiety for all of us, and maybe the great truth because all of our kids are so individual, is that nobody has a normal childhood. Nobody has a typical childhood. They have their own individual childhood as well. 

What's weird about that for a writer when writing about parenthood is that fiction tends to be not made up of normal or typical experiences. That's not where drama often lies. There's an odd disjuncture between that feeling that we want to have something that seems very familiar for our children in their experiences and writing a fiction that feels as though it pushes our children and pushes our own experience of having children into extremis in some ways. There's an odd tension going on in that space. For me, what's going on in this book is that these characters, because of their various anxieties and because of their past experiences, they sort of yearn for that normality. I hope there are aspects of the book, as I say, that do seem very familiar to other parents -- I think there's a great universal quality to many of those things -- but also makes us maybe appreciate those universal qualities because we understand how tenuous they are for some people and some characters.

Zibby: It's so true. One part that I kept inserting myself into and thinking, how would I have handled this, what would I have done? which I feel like most readers do at some point or another while reading, when you and your wife were debating -- sorry, when your character and the character's wife -- sorry.

Peter: [laughs] I appreciate that.

Zibby: Were debating whether or not after the fact to find out if the fetus had, for sure, this abnormality and you couldn't decide whether or not you wanted that information and ultimately -- I hope I'm not giving anything away. I don't have to. Anyway, you made a decision one way or another together and now have had to live with that decision. Tell me about that. What do you do if your spouse wants to know and you don't want to know? What do you do when there's information out there? I felt like I wanted to call the test person and get the results of this even though -- I was like, maybe they don't want to know, but I would like to know the answer. [laughs] 

Peter: That makes perfect sense. In a way, that's also what the book is about. It's about marriage. It's about the way that we know somebody incredibly intimately and have spent a lot of time with that person and yet still when we come to these crucial moments, find ourselves on opposite sides of a feeling, on opposite sides in various ways. We feel as though some part of our essential characters are revealed in those moments. Also, part of a marriage is learning those things about one's spouse and living with them or finding a way collectively to live with those kind of differences that we go through. The book is very much about charting the ups and downs and the stresses placed on a marriage by these kind of circumstances as we progress through those spaces. For these characters in this book, the uncertainty they're grappling with is, as I say, medical uncertainty, diagnostic uncertainty. I think a lot of the times in our lives we grapple with uncertainty. We don't have a sense of the sure thing. We don't have the hundred percent knowledge of a certain thing. We don't have perfect information. 

That's very true for these characters. I think it crops up in a lot of fiction. We often talk as writers about writing what you know. Of course, this book does in some degree derive from lived experience. We often write into what we don't know and, in some ways, also maybe have to write books that live with uncertainty. I think there's a way in which that's the nature of our lives. Of course, I think that's been brought home very powerfully and painfully to many of us and I know yourself. Your family's gone through this too through the process of the pandemic over the last few months as well. We've been grappling with not knowing when this will end, not knowing what it means. Again, uncertainties of diagnosis creep into this space as well. It feels as though, although this is by no means the intention in writing the book, that it also hits that odd timely note where we have a kind of global uncertainty that we're all grappling with now.

Zibby: It's so true. I feel like in the pandemic I've had to rely -- and probably most people. When everyone's doing different things, where should we be? What do you feel is okay? What do I feel is okay? I'm not sure. I feel like this is a time where I'm like, okay, I just have to look inside myself and go with it because that's all I really have at the end of the day. Everyone else could be wrong. Everyone else could be right. I have to do what I feel comfortable doing, although not being led exclusively by anxiety. I feel like lately I haven't even wanted to leave the house. I'm like, this is fine. I'm okay here. [laughs] 

Peter: It reminds me a little bit of -- I studied this years ago -- risk assessment. It's sometimes about the statistics. It's also a little bit about our emotions in response to that risk as well. It's the feeling that if somebody chooses to be a smoker, they're choosing to take that risk on for themselves. If the government puts a nuclear power station nearby, even though the risk statistically might be a lot smaller than the risk from smoking, we feel that risk is being imposed upon us. It's not just about the numbers. It's something about our emotional response to that space. I think we're all grappling with that sense of not only just, how do we deal with the numbers, but also how do we emotionally process the numbers of this particular moment? The characters have to think about that. I think we as a society are thinking about that too.

Zibby: It's so true. Yes, it's very timely an emotion, for sure. Absolutely. By the way, the wife in this book is so funny and likable. I found myself wanting to take whoever this was out to coffee. If she happens to exist, tell this fictious [indiscernible/crosstalk] that I really appreciate her sense of humor.

Peter: I really appreciate you saying that. That's actually very moving to me because the wife in the book, at least in some part, is modeled on a wife that I know very well, that I love very deeply, and who's behind the door behind me back there. I was very conscious writing the book. You mentioned it's a story about fatherhood, which is very much true. The reason that I think there are fewer books that talk about parenting from the father's point of view is because we understand, of course, and I think it's very true, that the motherhood experience, certainly the birth experience, is so much more intense than the father's experience in so many ways. I was cautious and tentative a little bit about trying to take on subjects like parenthood and certainly subjects like abortion from a male point of view. I don't claim this is a complete point of view, obviously. One of the ways that the book is structured is written in these short fragments that also leave a lot of space between those sections. The way the book is composed in fragments allows readers to read between the lines a little bit and to think that this is not the whole story, of course. 

There's a story that the wife would tell in the novel and maybe even the son would tell eventually in the book as well that I can't claim to access but I'm trying to leave some space for so the readers might imagine what's going on with those characters in the background along the way as well and maybe fill in the gaps. I'm a big believer in the way that the reader helps complete a book in some ways as well. I'm hoping to leave some space in that territory. Although, it's funny. I also think that some part of the structure of the book, the fact that it's written in short sections, short vignettes, comes out of the parenting experience. This book, although mostly written over the last three or four years, the first chapter goes back about ten years or so. It comes out of a time when I was trying to write when my son was pretty small, and so everything about the writing experience was sort of stolen in those moments where there was a nap or there was a small gap in that busy schedule you have when you're parenting. Something about the form of the book also comes out of the parenting experience.

Zibby: The way I've digested it also comes out of the parenting experience. I read snippets. I have to look here and there. I love all different types of books. I'm also reading now, a book with multiple viewpoints where each chapter, it shifts. That's much harder. I still really enjoy it, but that's better if I have a longer stretch of time. When I put it down and pick it up, I'm like, wait, wait, who is she? Then I have to flip back. This book, no, you're in it. I get it. Was it easier? You have written all this historical fiction in the past which I'm sure involved a great deal of research and time and digging and all of that. Was it a breeze for you to do this? Was it harder because you were going into more emotional territory, or is that not even true?

Peter: It's difficult to compare. The historical work does require a lot of preparation. There's a lot of anxiety. It's also a space where fact and fiction, and where fact gives over to fiction, feels like it's also an important question. This book has some callbacks to that previous experience. This was probably slightly easier in the actual writing experience. It took less time. It's a shorter book, of course, than my previous historical novels. You're absolutely right to suggest that emotionally it was a tougher book. While I've written about real historical figures in the past and there are questions there ethically about how they're represented -- we think about questions of appropriation that comes up in those spaces -- it felt that those questions were much closer to home, literally speaking, in the context of this book. There was a certain amount of anxiety and a degree of soul searching in those questions in the writing of this book. To some degree, as I often do, some of the things that I worry about when I'm writing a book -- can I write this book? How do I write this book? -- those questions ultimately in some ways become the subject of the book. It feels as though those questions sort of inhabit the book. Rather than having them stop me or censor me, it feels as though the book is an opportunity to explore and engage with those questions in some ways as well.

Zibby: I love how you just put A Lie in the title because I feel like all the best books are all -- in fact, I would say most stories are about some sort of secret. Either you're keeping it from yourself or someone's keeping it from you. There's always a secret, which I think is a flip side of a lie because you have to disguise that. I just feel like it so touches on this basic interest people have in reading about what is not straightforward and what you might not be able to say straight out and all of that.

Peter: It's the great mystery of fiction. It advertises itself as lie, it's a fiction, and invites us to think into, do I believe in this? What don't I believe in? Where might my suspension of disbelief begin or end in some ways as well? We often talk about fiction as a kind of engine of empathy, which I think is true. I buy into those ideas, the importance of that. There's also a way in which I think the reading of fiction sharpens our sense of reality by engaging us with that sense of what might not be real in some ways as well. I thought about this particularly over the last three or four years. The reading of fiction sort of sharpens our bullshit detectors in a strange way. It feels as though it helps us figure out what's true and what's not, what to believe or what not to believe in. Even as it plays with that sense of where the line lies, I think it also sharpens our feelings about reality as well.

Zibby: How did you become a writer to begin with?

Peter: It's weird. I know this comes a little bit out of the book. The main character, he starts off as a physicist. I started off as a physicist. My physics career, such as it was, at least as an undergraduate, was entirely derailed by the first really serious writing I did. When I was younger when I was a teenager, I wanted nothing more than to write science fiction. If I had been any good at it, I might still be doing that. I wrote a story that was closer to home, more about my family. My grandmother was beginning to suffer with dementia. It was a very difficult passage for the family to go through and for me as well. By writing about it in fiction, I found I'd untapped something emotionally that I hadn’t been previously aware was there in the fiction. I wrote a story about that. It went on to be the first story that I published, although not for many years later. Even when I wrote it, I think I sensed something of the power and the allure of fiction in doing that. In a strange way, that story entirely derailed my physics career.

Zibby: Wow, so I guess we should keep all the novels away from essential physicists. That's the lesson here. [laughs] What do you like to read? What types of books do you like to read?

Peter: It's funny. Once I became a parent, I became very drawn to the idea of reading a lot of short books because it was so easy to get through them. I sympathized with what you were suggesting earlier on. We're talking about the interrupted, distractable life of a parent or a young parent and how they find time to read in that space or how they find the bandwidth to engage with a book in those kind of moments. I think, too, that that distractibility is a cultural phenomenon. There's something about the way that we read even when we're reading the news or we're reading online and we're hopping around, it feels like the net and the web have become really interesting metaphors for the way we hop from connection to connection to connection. There's a way in which we, when we engage with the world like that, are making our own novel. I'm going to jump from this link to this link to this link. I do think there's a body of work out there, a body of fiction, that begins to operate in those sort of elusive connective ways. I think back to a book that I teach a great deal to my undergraduates almost every year, Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad, which has that same kind of elusive connective quality. I find that really interesting. I always talk to them about how once they’ve read it, it sort of rewires their brains in interesting ways. Although, I think in some ways it's actually just playing into a rewiring of their brains that the world is engaging it in, in some ways for them as well. I like that. I'm interested in that sense in which we're encouraged as readers to make connections between pieces, that we're asked to fill the gaps in, again, that sense of feeling as though we're collaborators with the author. Those are books that I'm really engaged in.

Zibby: Do you have more books in the works? What's coming next for you?

Peter: It's funny. I was writing this book, or at least finishing, simultaneously with another book that I'm working on. It's a nonfiction book, a teacherly book, a craft book about the writing of fiction, but specifically about revision. It's called The Art of Revision, subtitled The Last Word, which sounds a bit ominous, but it's not quite as grim as that sounds. I've been teaching for the best part of twenty-five years, so it feels like it's a distillation of those kind of things. As you know, in this new novel, the main character is also a writer and a teacher of writing. There's a little bit of osmosis between these two projects in some ways as well. That one will come out in November of this year. My friends are like, oh, you've got two books coming out in the same year. I have to admit, they're both very short books, as you know from this one. It doesn't feel like it's quite as great an achievement of that. Although, it's fun. I enjoyed working on both of them.

Zibby: I have two anthologies coming out this year, actually.

Peter: Excellent. Congratulations.

Zibby: Thank you. I assembled them. November. I'll see you in the November party then.

Peter: That's a lot of work, though, assembling anthologies like that.

Zibby: It is. It is a lot of work. It's great. I'm really proud of them. It'll be great, but it's not like I sat down and wrote them all.

Peter: It's the way I feel about even when I'm putting together a list of readings for a course. You're interested in the way the pieces in anthologies bounce off each other, speak to each other. I do think there's a way in which Visit from the Goon Squad calls back to this space as well. I'm interested in novels that borrow from not the structure of short stories, per se, but from the structure of short story collections which I think do invite us to think about links, think about comparisons. Anthologies do that work in really interesting ways. Again, it's a fun way of the brain moving laterally which is an interesting contrast sometimes to the linearity of some fiction as well.

Zibby: I like that. I might have to steal that quote when describing anthology work. You have already started talking about this. I'm sure you have a lot of views on revision. I read your essay. I think it was called "Done" on [indiscernible/crosstalk] and everything. What advice would you have for aspiring authors, people who are just starting out?

Peter: This probably goes to some of the ways I think about revision. I think there's a way in which it's important for us to outwait the project, outwait the story, outwait the book. As much as we claim to love writing, there is a way in which we're often, all of us, in an unholy hurry to be finished with whatever we're writing. That's understandable in a first draft. We build that first draft. It's like a rickety bridge that we're constructing across the chasm of our doubt. We feel if we don't finish the bridge it'll just fall into the chasm and we won't get to the end of this thing. I think it's really important, often, to move quite quickly in a first draft. I see students doing that. You can also feel them, at the end of that early draft, particularly if it's a story, they're like a sprinter who's dipping for the line. We're trying very hard to get across that line and get it built. Then afterwards in revision, though, I think it's really smart to take some time to explore the work and to let it expand for a little bit. We talked earlier on about that I'd been writing what you know, but often, we don't quite know what we know when write a first draft. We're sort of feeling our way into that space. The more we expand, the more we explore our own work in many ways. 

I'm really interested in that idea, that sense of hanging out with the work long enough to understand what it's doing and maybe ultimately figuring out why we wrote it in the first place. That's how I know that I'm finally done. I feel like I finally understand my own work in certain ways. Nearly always with different books, there's some late moment when I understand why something that seemed out of place or I wasn't quite sure why it was there, what work it was doing, it suddenly speaks back to me and says, I'm here for this reason. This reason is essential. That's why you've hung onto me for as long as you have. The advice that I give to people, there's so much, of course. The line I like to quote is the line of Flaubert. The line goes that talent is long patience. When I first heard that when I was quite a young writer, I didn't get it. I think I even thought it was just a bad translation from the French. Talent is long patience. What does that mean? Of course, the older I get, the more I think I understand that. I try to talk about it often with young writers. I'm lucky I work with very talented young writers. Talent and youth are sort of the enemies of patience. We often embrace talent as a shortcut. We don't need to have as much patience if we're talented. I think that's part of the seduction of our feelings about talent. I do think there's a way in which just being patient with ourselves and with our work, which feels like a value that seems sometimes counterintuitive to the pace of modern life in some ways, it's a chance for the work to speak back to us and for the characters to speak back to us and for us to grow into the work and understand it. 

In a certain fundamental way, it's about reading our work carefully so that we allow it to speak back to us and we become readers of our own work and not just the writers of it. Maybe that's the fundamental essence of revision. It's an aspect of re-seeing. We move from seeing it through the eyes of the writer who thinks they know what they're doing with it and we come back to it and read it through the eyes of a reader. I always suggest -- you must have gone through this too, I'm sure. It's that moment when we share our work for the first time with somebody else, a friend, a loved one, a critic, or we hit submit if we're sending it out to a magazine or we hit submit if we're sending it to the editor or the agent. Even before we hear back from them, there's a moment as soon as we've let go it where we're like, oh, shit, I should've fixed that. There's something that we recognize that we should've changed, that we meant to change, that we suddenly see in a different way. It's because we intuit new eyes looking at it. That's the beginning of revision because we're starting to see it through the eyes of our imagined readers out there.

Zibby: It's true. I feel like revision is, it's the most important thing. I feel like even for an essay, if I write a first draft that's a thousand words and I know I have to get it to 750 or something, or 800, it's going to be much better. It always gets better when I cut it down, inevitably. I don't know what that says. [laughs] I have to keep it really brief. I think the point is when you're more intentional about which words end up making it, you have to have them sort of go up to the battle line and fight to make their way in. If they survive, then they have a place for themselves.

Peter: You also wouldn't find those if you hadn’t written long in the first place. I think it's really important to allow ourselves to have that expansive moment before we contract. Occasionally with young writers that I work with, there's that feeling that they think of revision -- this is another parenting way of thinking about this. I feel when I encourage them to revise that I'm like their mom telling them to tidy their room. It feels like this is the boring work of writing. I've had all the fun creative stuff. Now I have to do the dull thing. I wanted to suggest to them that revision is also part of the creative process. It's an opportunity also for new discoveries to be made, new moments of creation to occur to them. I'm often encouraging them to take that piece and the way I put it is to allow it to breathe out -- sometimes it gets a little bit longer than it needs to -- and then in a subsequent draft, to cut it back so it breathes in. That sense of the draft as this breathing, living thing feels like a healthy way also to think about it.

Zibby: It's sort of like when I make sugar cookies with my kids. You need all that dough. You have to roll it all out. Then you put the cookie cutters in it. Nobody ever says, oh, I shouldn't have made all that dough. You had to make the dough to get the perfect cookie.

Peter: That's a great idea. That's a really good description of that and actually also really helpful to me because I feel as though one of the struggles I have talking about revision sometimes with students is it can feel a little mysterious. Even that sense of, I suddenly understood it was done or the character spoke back to me, these things seem a little mystical in some ways. Anything that makes it seem more down to earth makes it more tangible. That's a great metaphor for that. I really like that idea of that.

Zibby: You can use that metaphor as often as you like if you tell the person you're talking to they have to listen to my podcast. That's my only... [laughs]

Peter: I will do that. That's a deal. I like that. 

Zibby: I'm kidding. No, of course, you can use it if it ever helps you. I think it is kind of like that. Anyway, thank you so much for this chat. That was really fun. I really, truly enjoyed reading your book, not the least because I could pick it up and put it down eight thousand times before even finishing two hundred pages, or one hundred. I don't know. It was great. It was lovely getting to know you. Thank you for coming on my show.

Peter: Thanks so much for having me, Zibby. It was a real pleasure chatting to you.

Zibby: I'll send you some sugar cookies one day. 

Peter: That'd be great. I'd love that. [laughter] Thanks.

Zibby: Buh-bye.

Peter: Bye.

Nancy Johnson, THE KINDEST LIE

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Nancy. Thank you so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

Nancy Johnson: Thank you so much for having me, Zibby. I'm a huge fan of yours. I listen to your show all the time. It's just a delight to be. Thank you.

Zibby: Aw, that's so nice of you to say. Thank you. Your book, I could not put it down. I read it in a day or something. I thought it was so good. I loved the whole thing, but the beginning introduction and first couple chapters on the heels of the Obama election and all of that, I have never seen an election results situation like that in contemporary fiction. It was so strong. It was just so great. The leading down the road with all the people wearing white and that whole event, it was so visual and fantastic. Then of course, as the book went on, you just got more and more immersed. In terms of awards for openings, I felt like --

Nancy: -- Thank you. I think that's one of those times in history, everybody remembers where they were on election night. It was such a monumental time.

Zibby: It's so great to watch it through fictionalized people. It's different to take contemporary fiction versus historical fiction and -- I don't know. It's just really neat. It was great.

Nancy: Thank you for that. I'm glad you enjoyed that.

Zibby: Tell me about the inspiration for writing this novel. I saw in your bio you've won all sorts of prizes for first novels before. Tell me how you got into fiction after your whole career in TV and everything else.

Nancy: I'm from Chicago. I worked in television for eleven years as a reporter. I got tired of it because it turned into that whole if it bleeds, it leads kind of thing. I'd be on a really cool feature story that I loved and was interested in. Then the pager would go off and the scanners would go off and you've got to go to a triple homicide a couple counties over. I got tired of that. I think that was the training ground for moving into writing fiction. I've always been curious about the world and been a storyteller, but now I get to create the world of the stories. That's the best part of it. Also, just training in terms of writing for the ear and being able to hear the cadence of a story, so much of that's important in broadcast journalism. I use a lot of the same techniques when I'm writing my fiction. The inspiration for The Kindest Lie came November of 2008 when Obama was elected president. It was a bittersweet time for me personally. My father was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer during that year. It was so difficult. He was looking forward to Obama being president.

I remember at one point he was in hospital. You know how the doctors ask questions just to see how lucid you are, like, what's the date, what's your date of birth, that kind of thing? The doctor asked him, "Who's the president?" This was in October of '08. My father in this croaky voice said, "Barack Obama." The doctor said, "Well, hold off, not quite. Not yet." I knew that it was important for him that Obama become president, and so I convinced him to vote early. He voted early in October. He was very sick. By the time of election day, he was confined to the bed. Here was a man who survived World War II and the Great Depression and Jim Crow. He cast the last vote of his life for America's first black president. That was just so pivotal. That election was such a point of pride for us as a family. I think for so many in the country no matter what your political persuasion was, it was kind of that moment of saying, America, we did this. We made history. We overcame something by electing a black president.

The thing was, I had a lot of folks say to me, we are now in a post-racial era. I knew right away that was a fallacy, that there was nothing post-racial about it. All I had to do was go on my social media feed. Back then, Facebook was just kicking off and getting started. I remember going on Facebook and just seeing the ugliness and this bitter divide between black and white in America. So much of it was not about policy debates. I could've understood and respected that, but it was deeply personal and it was racially motivated, a lot of what I saw there. Then through the first two terms, those two terms of Obama's presidency, we saw so much racism, a lot of racial violence, so I knew it was not a post-racial period at all. This was something I was very interested in, was just how we were all in these separate entrenched corners, black and white America. Then I tried to think of, who are the characters that I could create in fiction who could inhabit this kind of world? I was interested in the tiny, small lives of people, of characters who could speak to these larger macro issues. That's where the idea for the book came from.

Zibby: Wow. That's great. Really beautiful. Yes, I would say we are definitely not in a post-racial era. I feel like things have become magnified and everything has been spilling out, good, bad, ugly, recently. There's no better time for a book like yours and the empathy that characters bring, just stories to show how all this racial divide I find just -- I don't mean to sound stupid. It's just that we're all people underneath. All this attention to color I feel undermines how similar we all are in so many ways. Anyway, I'll get off my soapbox here. [laughs] Yes, that was a pivotal moment. You captured it beautifully in your story. Your story also contains a lot of secrets and the damage keeping a secret can do in the secret keeper and in the secret keeper's relationships. What happens when the secret comes out? When should it come out? I was actually thinking, I don't know if this was the kindest lie. Was it kind? I don't know. Tell me about choosing this title. Do you even see it as a lie, the secret that was kept?

Nancy: First, maybe I should tell you what the book's about a little bit.

Zibby: Oh, yeah. That would be good. Sorry.

Nancy: Just so people know what the book is about. It's about race, class, family at the dawn of the Obama era. It centers on Ruth Tuttle, a black woman engineer. She's a very successful chemical engineer in Chicago on the come-up. She's got this great husband, great life. He's ready to start a family, but she can't do that until she makes peace with her past. She's been harboring this huge secret that she gave birth to a baby when she was just seventeen years old. She never told anybody about it. Her husband doesn't know it. She decides to go back to her hometown, which is a dying Indiana factory town, of her youth to try to search for her son. When she gets there, she meets and forms this unlikely connection with Midnight. It's a white boy, eleven years old. He's nicknamed Midnight. He's adrift also searching for his own sense of family connection. He's really mired in that very poverty that Ruth managed to escape. When the two of them come together, they're just on this collision course of race and class. It ends up upending both of their lives. That's the background of the story. The title, The Kindest Lie, it's so interesting. I kept thinking, will the publisher change the title? A lot of times, you come up with a working title. Then it changes as you go along in the publishing process, but it stuck. I was excited about that. I chose The Kindest Lie because quite often, we keep secrets, we tell lies for the best of reasons, the best of intentions. That's what I meant by The Kindest Lie.

The grandmother in the story -- I don't want to give too much away. That's Ruth's grandmother, the character Mama. She's keeps a lot of lies. She tells a lot of secrets and tells lies, but she does it not to be malicious. She does it to protect her grandchildren. It's out of that love that she tells lies. Then I also think the other level of lies is that there are lies that we tell ourselves. Ruth, in this story, is lying to herself in many ways because she thinks she can outrun her past. She's got this nice, fancy life, chic in Chicago. She's upwardly mobile, great job, great husband, all that. She thinks that this is it. I can just live this life and not worry about what I've left behind in my hometown, and not just her son who she left behind, but also her family. They're the ones who convinced her to never come back. Still, she's left them behind, this community that she grew up in and the family that she was part of. In that way, she's lying to herself because as we find in the book, she cannot outrun her past. Then the other level on which The Kindest Lie works is America. When you look at it in a larger sense, I think America has lied to itself about how good it is, how decent and honorable it can be. It's not always decent and honorable to everybody in the country. We still have so much work to do as Americans. I think a lot of times we wrap ourselves in the flag. We like to lie to ourselves and pretend that we're better than we really are when there's really so much work to do.

Zibby: That was beautifully said. In the book when you were just talking about how her family wanted her to leave everything behind, it almost became not her choice. They were like, go, go, go, we'll take care of everything. A lot of the text, and maybe this is because I went to Yale, but I feel like there was a lot about Yale in the book and how her going there was a totally life-changing moment and from there on she could study engineering. She could get this amazing job. It was a huge turning point. It was the fork in the road, so to speak. You can go this way or you stay here. You obviously depicted what happened would she have stayed when we see what happened to her brother and the other people who work in a factory town and the effect of that. Tell me about that. Is it really one moment? Is it those one-decision nodes that change everything?

Nancy: I do think so. I think it's all about the choices that you make. Sometimes you have that one moment in time to make a decision. Your life can just go in a certain direction or not. I think that's really what Mama is getting at with saying, you need to leave this behind, and that sometimes leaving is the best way, that you have to make a decision or your life trajectory can change forever and it can go the absolute wrong way. I think that's what the message from Mama was. We have the scene where Ruth gives birth at home in her bed. It's a really difficult scene. I was really dealing with the two difficult things, going into labor, giving birth to a baby, but also at the same time dealing with the emotional labor as well of trying to decide, what do I do? I'm having this baby. In a way, she's like, I want to hold onto this baby. This is my child. Yet she's also dreaming of what's beyond this tiny bedroom in this little shotgun house in this little auto plant town. That's Yale. That's life beyond. I do think that there are times in life where we make a choice. Even if you make a choice, it may not be the wrong choice. Whatever the choice is, I think it just impacts the rest of your life and the way that's going to go. I think you also have to revisit too.

Zibby: It's like a sliding doors moment. Sometimes the decisions are the ones you make. Sometimes they're by chance. The decision of what to do with a child born either too soon or in the wrong circumstances is a very politically fraught one in and of itself. It is part of the book which also touches on politics in its opening scene and as a theme that courses through it. Was there any intention of why she had the baby? Were you trying to make any sort of statement, or was this just the mechanism to tell the story you wanted to tell?

Nancy: I think it was a mechanism to tell the story. You mentioned that opening scene with the election night. It's in that scene that Ruth and her husband, Xavier, at different points are thinking about what it means to have a child at this moment in time, in history. She's brought a child into the world and she's excited about this new era and this new president and all the promise of opportunity for black people in America, but she doesn't really know what situation her son is in. She's assuming the worst, that he's languishing in the poverty that she managed to escape. I thought that was interesting, this whole idea of a child out there. Children, we think of them as the future and think about what the opportunities are for them. We all want the best for our children. We want them to have a better life than you had. That's part of what the character of Mama is wanting. She's got a lot of unfulfilled dreams of her own that we find out about in the book. Yet she wants the best for her children and for her grandchildren. Just that legacy of generations and always wanting the next generation to go beyond and exceed the opportunities that you had, to me, that's really interesting. That's one reason for having childhood and motherhood be a part of this narrative.

Zibby: The scene where -- I don't think I'm giving much away, but when Ruth goes home and Mama has a gentleman suitor trying to fix the toilet and she feels like even though Papa is not here, having another man in the house rubs her the wrong way. You mentioned, sadly -- I'm so sorry about your father and having lung cancer. I'm wondering if that stemmed from some sort of situation with your own mom? Did your mom start dating again? Where did that particular scene come from? Just out of curiosity.

Nancy: No, that did not happen. She did not start dating again or anything like that. I was just really thinking how things change with loss, with the loss of Papa. He was the patriarch of that family, the foundation that they all clung to. Then when he was gone, that really interrupted everything in the lives of the characters. Mama's had a hard time moving on, and then Ruth too. Ruth was very tethered to her grandfather. I think that's one of the reasons that she got involved with Ronald, her high school boyfriend, and got pregnant. It's because she was looking for that love and looking for that male figure in her life. I was just really interested in someone who's not present but still has such a huge presence in the life of the characters in the book. It was very difficult for Mama to move on. It's kind of like she's trying to find herself too just as Ruth is trying to find herself. I thought it was interesting that you've got a black woman, seventy-eight years old. You don't usually see that kind of a character on the page and someone who's not just there to take care of the people in her life. She's doing that, of course, but she also has a love interest. To me, that's interesting for a woman that age to have that on the page. She has, like I said before, unfulfilled dreams of her own too. She's really her own person. I thought that was pretty cool.

Zibby: My grandmother recently passed away at ninety-seven. When she was in her early nineties, someone tried to set her up with a man who was ninety-five. She was like, "Don't be silly. He's way too old for me." [laughter]

Nancy: That is so cute.

Zibby: It just never ends.

Nancy: It's true.

Zibby: It just doesn't end. Tell me a little more about the writing of this book, the actual writing. Did you structure the whole narrative beforehand? Did you outline? Where and when did you write it? Tell me about all that.

Nancy: In the writing circles, people talk about being a plotter where you outline everything or you're a pantser where you write by the seat of your pants. I'm definitely more on the pantser side of things, so I did not outline anything. I never had an outline the entire time. Then sometimes it takes you a little longer. It took me six years. Of course, this was the first book, so it takes a little longer because you don't necessarily know what you're doing. You're kind of fumbling around in the dark as you write the book. As a writer, I'm definitely interested in what keeps me up at night. What are the burning issues that are on my mind? That was the whole thing with the election and the racial divide and the class divide in America. That's where I tend to start, is with what I'm really passionate about at the time. Then from there, it's all about the characters. I'm definitely a character-driven writer. I'm really interested in delving deep into the character motivations. Why do they do the things they do? What is it in their past that informs their present? Those are the things I definitely get excited about as a writer.

Then the ideas come to me at the most inconvenient times. I'd say most of the ideas I get or a lot of the most brilliant ones I get, or exposition or snaps of dialogue, come to me when I'm driving on the interstate. I'm here doing sixty, sixty-five on the interstate, driving along. An idea will hit me. For safety reasons, I can't write it down. I usually pull out my iPhone. I use the voice memo function of the phone and just talk into it. It sounds really weird later when I listen to it, the ramblings when I'm on the interstate. You might hear horns honking or crazy noises. If I don't do that, I lose it if I don't get the idea down right then. Then I'd say in terms of where I write, because we're in the pandemic, I'm usually writing at home. When I was writing this book, I wrote some of it at home but a lot of it at Starbucks. People wonder, how can you write in a coffee shop? For some reason, that whirl of the cappuccino machine is kind of cool. I like the rhythm of that. I can write to that kind of noise, and people sitting right next to me talking. Maybe because of my news days, I'm accustomed to just writing on the side of the road or in the back of the police car going on some kind of drug raid or wherever. It doesn't matter. I can write pretty much anywhere and block out the noise. That's my writing process.

Zibby: Back to you at Starbucks. What is your go-to Starbucks drink when you're working on your writing?

Nancy: Funny thing is I don't drink coffee. [laughs] I don't like the taste of it. I love the smell of it, but I don't like the taste of it. I drink hot chocolate. I'm really into things that are sweet. I like hot chocolate really strong, five pumps of mocha, no whip cream. Sometimes the whip cream cuts down the chocolate-y part of it. I love chocolate.

Zibby: I am totally with you. Whip cream is a distraction.

Nancy: It's a total distraction from the -- nah, that's okay. Sometimes they make a mistake and they put it on there anyway.

Zibby: I am a fan. I just actually tried the Starbucks peppermint hot chocolate for the holiday theme. I would not do that if I were you. I would skip it. You can skip it.

Nancy: Oh, really? That probably also cuts down on --

Zibby: -- On the chocolate.

Nancy: On the chocolate, yeah. It's all about the chocolate.

Zibby: The best thing at Starbucks, and then I'll get back to your writing, is the chocolate-covered almonds. Have you ever had them there?

Nancy: I have not had those.

Zibby: They keep being sold out everywhere. I feel like somebody else knows that they're so good and is snatching them. If you ever see a pack, they're the best chocolate-covered almonds, extra chocolate-y.

Nancy: I will look for those. People probably are hoarding them.

Zibby: Really good.

Nancy: Okay, I'll try that.

Zibby: Are you hard at work on another book now? You must be. I can't imagine that you're letting it go at this.

Nancy: No, I don't want to be just a one-book wonder. That's for sure. I can't say a lot about it yet, but I am working on something new. The thing is, I'm still waiting to finalize these initial three chapters and summary, which is called option material, to send to my editor to see if she wants to acquire it for William Morrow. Fingers crossed about that. I can say that it's again about race, class, and identity, so some of those same themes that I'm always interested in but at some different moments in history. I seem to always be fascinated by certain moments in time like the big national moments and how individuals fit into that, individual lives fit into those big moments. That's what I'm looking to do again. A lot of people have asked me when I've done other interviews or just check Goodreads, people want to know about a sequel to The Kindest Lie. I don't have any plans for that, but if Hollywood is listening and wants to continue the story of Ruth and Midnight on the big or small screen, that would always be fun. I think there's probably more to tell about where those characters go from here. Hopefully, somebody will do that.

Zibby: You could do a whole spinoff about the lesbian couple. I'm forgetting their names. They were really interesting too. You had that one scene where one of them confides to Ruth, "You're so lucky that you can just touch the person you love in public. It's not that easy for us," and the feeling of being emboldened after the Obama win and how much more public they were in their displays of affection.

Nancy: I think that could be another story too.

Zibby: That could be another good book if you're running out of material.

Nancy: Yes, I think that would be fascinating.

Zibby: They also have -- I'm late to this party. Have you heard of Scribd?

Nancy: No. What is it? I'm even later than you to the party.

Zibby: They have audiobooks and books. It's almost like Audible in a way. They summarize. They’ll have articles, excerpts. My point is they have Scribd Originals. They're like ten thousand words. You could do a Scribd Original on just the two characters.

Nancy: I love that idea. I'm writing that down, Scribd Original. It's audio?

Zibby: No, you can read it too.

Nancy: You can read it too, okay.

Zibby: I'm interviewing someone who wrote one shortly.

Nancy: I'm thinking about those -- aren't there Audible Originals too?

Zibby: There are Audible Originals. This, you read. There's probably an audio version as well.

Nancy: That's another format, I love that, to extend the life of the story and of the book. That's actually a good marketing idea too, to do that kind of thing.

Zibby: I know.

Nancy: You're good. I like that.

Zibby: I'm good. [laughter]

Nancy: I need to hire you to feed me all the best ideas. I love that.

Zibby: Part of this podcast is my unsolicited advice.

Nancy: That is the best. I really like that.

Zibby: I'm kidding. Speaking of advice, what advice would you have for aspiring authors?

Nancy: I would say for authors to really be true to yourself, to whatever the intention is for the book that you want to write. Stay true to that, to what's authentic and real for you. I talk to so many writers who say, "You know what? I think I might want to write about vampires because I heard vampires might be coming back in vogue. I'll do domestic suspense because I hear that's kind of hot. If I put 'girl' in the title, it'll definitely sell." I don't think you can write to trends and do your book any justice because then you're just writing to market. You're writing what you think people want to read and what you think is going to sell. I think what's going to sell and what's going to be successful is what comes from your heart, from your soul, from your passion. That would be my main advice. Just write what's true to you.

Also, be gentle with yourself too. Going through the pandemic, everybody is just going through so much emotionally right now. Our lives are crazy even though we are tethered at home and sequestered. Be gentle in terms of how often you write. I don't necessarily believe you have to write every single day to be a successful writer. I think you write when you feel compelled to write. Also at the same time, I think you have to be disciplined too. If you ever want to get anything done, I think you have to keep plugging away at it and not always writing just when you feel like it because you may not always feel like it. Sometimes you do have to push yourself, but don't feel that you have to do it every single day. As long as you're getting words on the page and you are telling the story that only you can tell, that's going to resonate with other people because it's your story.

Zibby: That's great advice. You make me want to stop what I'm doing and start writing.

Nancy: Start writing. There you go. That's my gift to you.

Zibby: Thank you. Thanks, Nancy. Thanks for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books." As you can see, moms also don't have time to do podcasts. Thank you for your great book. Let's stay in touch.

Nancy: Definitely. Thank you so much for having me.

Zibby: My pleasure.

Nancy: Buh-bye.

Zibby: Bye.

Elin Hilderbrand, TROUBLES IN PARADISE

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Elin. Thank you so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

Elin Hilderbrand: Thank you, Zibby. Thank you so much for having me.

Zibby: It's my pleasure. I know that you and I have been conversing on Instagram about various different crazy things that are happening in life. Plus, of course, you have all of your own books to discuss as well. We have so much to talk about. I don't even know where to start. Why don't we talk first about Troubles in Paradise? which is your most recent book and the last of trilogy which starts off with amazing gossip. We can segue into talking about gossip from there.

Elin: Perfect. I can't say too, too much about Troubles in Paradise because it is a book three. Just a little history as to how I came to write the Paradise series is that back in 2013, my publisher, Hachette, called and said, "We've had a book fall off our holiday list. Can you write a Christmas book in four weeks?" I was writing a novel called The Matchmaker which was very emotionally draining. I said, "You know what? I'm not going to stop this and write a Christmas book, but I'll do it when I finish." I came up with an idea for a Christmas trilogy. I know this sounds like I'm talking about something else, but I am getting to Paradise.

Zibby: It's okay.

Elin: I came up with this idea for a Christmas trilogy. It turns out they didn't want a trilogy. They only wanted one book. I wrote this novel, Winter Street, and gave it no ending. Immediately, a contract for the next two books appeared because they loved the premise. Then, ironically, in the summer of 2016, my editor called and said, "What do I have to do to get you to write a fourth book in the Winter Street series?" At that point, Zibby, I was finished. I didn't want to write a fourth book in the Winter Street series, so they really had to be persuasive. I said to them, "I'd really like to write a novel or a series of novels that are set in the Virgin Islands." That was the place where I had styled a writing retreat, time for myself in the Virgin Islands. I'd fallen in love with it. I feel like, again, Hachette was a little bit hesitant. Because I was a Nantucket author, they didn't necessarily want a series set in the Virgin Islands, but they very desperately wanted this fourth Winter Street book, so they said yes. Then again, irony is the Paradise series has far, far, far outsold the Winter Street and has taken me to a new location. It's been successful, so I was right. I felt vindicated I was right. The Paradise series, book one focuses on a woman in her mid-fifties named Irene Steele. On New Year's Day, she gets a call that her husband has been killed in a helicopter crash in the Virgin Islands. Hello. She didn't know he was in the Virgin Islands. She's completely gobsmacked. She and her two adult sons fly down there only to find -- guess what? This dude has a second life including a mistress and a child. Then it's like, what else was going on? That takes us through to book three where I'm trying to tie up all of the mysterious loose ends in a way that is satisfying and surprising. That is where we are.

Zibby: Awesome. It's so funny because in the beginning of book three, you open it up and you talk directly to the reader. You're like, no, no, no, this is book three, so just put this down and go back to the beginning and read the other two books. I was like, okay. [laughs]

Elin: I'm very concerned. I feel like some people maybe are like, I'll just be opportunistic and if they buy it accidentally, oh well. I am not that person. I am the person who is like, I would like them to have pleasant reading experience where they're reading book one, book two, and book three where it's very clear where they are. I know that people have read book three first which just gives me agita, honestly. It makes me upset.

Zibby: That's so funny. And you have another book coming out soon. You've been posting about that one. That's exciting. It's coming out in June.

Elin: Yes, I have a book out in June called Golden Girl, which is my summer novel. I was doing two books a year. It has been extremely stressful the last seven years. I'm going back with Golden Girl just to one book every summer. That is my new jam. I don't know what I'm going to do with all my extra time, but I'll find something.

Zibby: How did you even get into this? How did you become who you are today? When did you start writing so much and at this rapid pace? How did this whole thing happen?

Elin: Let's see. How did this whole thing happen? It's, of course, a longer story. I went to Johns Hopkins undergrad. I was a writing seminars major. A lot of people don't think of Hopkins as a place where writers are born. However, they do have a dedicated creative writing major. Every week, I would go to a workshop. I had Steve Dixson, Madison Smartt Bell, John Barth, really great writers guiding me. When I graduated, I knew I wanted to be a writer. I went and I sat with Madison Bell. I said, "What do I do? Do I go to graduate school? Do I get a job?" He said, "You have to go out in the world and live, Elin. You have to have experiences. You're twenty-two." I moved to New York City. I lived on the Upper East Side. I worked in publishing. I hated it. I thought because I wanted to be a writer, for some reason, that publishing would be my thing. No. I hated it. I needed a job where I would have time, so I started teaching. I taught first in the New York City public schools at IS 227 in Queens. Then I got a better job teaching in Westchester County out of the city. I would commute backwards.

The summer between those two school years I wanted to get out of the city for the summer, and so I decided I would go to Nantucket. I had grown up going to Cape Cod in the summers with my family. I had been to the vineyard in college. I just felt like Nantucket was the natural third point on the triangle. I got a room in a house, fell madly in love with the island. Then after my second year of teaching, I moved back to Nantucket. I'm like, I'm going to live in Nantucket. I traveled in the offseason. I would work during the summer season and then travel. Eventually, after I felt like I had gone out and lived, I applied to the University of Iowa for graduate school and ended up getting in there, miraculously, and went to Iowa and was totally miserable. It's a very intense place. There's a lot of competition. I was just very unhappy. I was away from the ocean. I was out in Iowa City. It was bad. One of the ways that I made myself feel better is I started writing a novel that was set on Nantucket. That was The Beach Club.

Then in my final workshop at Iowa, my professor had his agent come. His agent said, "Which one of you lives on Nantucket?" I said, "Oh, that's me." It was a small-world coincidence. He said, "Stay and see me after class," which I wasn't even going to do because I had my U-Haul packed. I was ready to go, but I decided to. Thank goodness because Michael has been my agent for twenty-one or twenty-two years now. I told him I was working on a book set on Nantucket called The Beach Club. He said, "When you're finished with it, send it to me," which I did. At that point, 1999, I'm printing out the novel, sticking it in a box, and taking it to the post office. He read it. He said, "I'd like to represent you. I'm going to make you lots and lots of money." Who doesn't want to hear that? This is greatest words ever. He sends the book out, and it gets rejected everywhere. Finally, five months later, he calls and says he has an offer of five thousand dollars. I'm like, is five thousand dollars a lot of money? I can't quit my job. Since it was the only offer that we had, we took it. The Beach Club was published in the summer of 2000.

Two weeks after it came out, it was People magazine's book of the week. Immediately, my publisher ran out of copies. This was my first publisher who I think will remain nameless during this interview. I'm not sure. I was frustrated because we were without books for three weeks. This in 2000. You can't download it on your Kindle. You cannot read it on your iPhone. The copies have to be in the stores. It sold pretty well. I ended up with a two-book deal. Those books did less well. Then I got another two-book deal. Those books did even worse. I got my own publicist for book five, a private publicist that I paid for myself. She did an excellent job. Again, I got People magazine with the picture. It was book of the week and four stars. I was so excited. Again, the publisher ran out of books. I was super frustrated at that point. My agent, same agent, said, "I think we need to switch publishers." I had Stockholm syndrome and was in love with my captor. I'm like, "I will not switch publishers," but he persuaded me. I went and had what I call my Cinderella day in New York and met with ten publishers and ended up settling or deciding on Little Brown. Little Brown has turned my last twenty, twenty-one books into New York Times best seller. They did that gradually, Zibby. I didn't write Crawdads. I didn't go right to number one. The first book I had that hit number one was Summer of '69. It was my twenty-third novel. It was an incremental climb and a gathering of readers. It was a very careful, thoughtful process to get to the top.

Zibby: Wow, that is an amazing story. I loved that. That's amazing. Just that you kept persisting through and kept doing what you do, that's the greatest part. You had confidence in what you were producing. You just had to wait until everybody caught up with you.

Elin: Yeah, and I don't think I understood the book business. I didn't the first five books. Also, publishing was changing too. I can remember with my second book with Little Brown -- it was called A Summer Affair. I had a marketing person named Miriam Parker. Now she's at Ecco. She's a brilliant woman. At that time, she was like, "We're going to go to all these blogs. We're going to get all these blogs." I'm thinking to myself, I don't even know what a blog is. Why are we doing this? Why is this where we're putting our resources? She was a visionary. It came out in the summer of 2008. That was the thing to do. They were very systematic and careful, and they still are, about how they do their marketing and how they get more readers. They're so impressive. I'm very lucky.

Zibby: That’s great. That's really awesome. I know that reader response and how people accept and embrace your book is something that's been really important to you. You have all these devoted fans and everything else. Then when we were communicating about the recent situation with Jane Rosen's book on Instagram about how a moms' group turned against her and ended up banning her from the group and canceling her book event, you were up in arms about it. I just wanted to talk to you a little about that.

Elin: I've only gotten to the -- I'm on page forty of Jane's book, which I'm so enjoying. I am so enjoying. I have to say, my appetite was really whetted by the fact that this group canceled her. I can't figure out, because I'm not sure if it comes back up, but I've gotten to the part where the Upper East Side group is mentioned.

Zibby: Yeah, that's it.

Elin: I'm like, was this what [distorted audio]?

Zibby: That was it. The whole thing is on page thirty-nine to forty. The whole rest of Eliza Starts A Rumor has nothing else to do with Upper East Side moms at all.

Elin: That cracks me up. I just feel like, wouldn't you be excited or laugh? It was very tongue-in-cheek, I thought. I'd be interested to know if I actually know anyone. You live in New York, right, Zibby? You may know somebody in that group. I live in Nantucket. I may know somebody in that group. It felt so overt and unnecessary for them to decide to cancel the book based -- especially now that I know what you're talking about. I thought maybe there was more later in the book that was really scandalous. It's tough. Also, it's fiction. Jane very skillfully picks up the essence of things. I'm really, really enjoying her book. I'm also going to post about it. I may, I can't decide, mention this scandal because I think it will encourage other people to want to read it too. People always like things that are attached to real life, which makes no sense because we are in the business of writing fiction. If it has a real-life scandal attached, so much the better. I predict big things for Jane. I'm really, really enjoying the book.

Zibby: Good. Come to our event. We're doing an event. I can talk to you about this later. I'm going to do an event with her coming up too. Anyway, back to your books and all that. You open up Troubles in Paradise with a whole gorgeous description of the juiciness of gossip and how it's like a mango. You debated which fruit to pick and all the rest. There is something just so irresistible about small-town gossip or even big-town gossip. New York City really, in different neighborhoods, is just as much a small town as probably Nantucket wherever you go. How do you use gossip in fiction and in your work in particular to keep the intrigue going?

Elin: Totally. I wrote a novel in -- what year did it come out? -- 2015 called The Rumor. My purpose with The Rumor had been -- there was a lot of gossip going on on Nantucket. There's always gossip, oh, my god. I've lived here twenty-six years. I've heard it all. I decided that I was going to write a novel called The Rumor and I was going to put every single person who gossiped on Nantucket in the book. This was my goal. This is exactly, in fact, what I did. I put everybody that gossiped in the book. However, I disguised them so much because they have to fit the narrative. I disguised everybody so well that I am the only person that knows who's in there. No one has ever come up to me and said, I was the blah, blah, blah in your book. No one has ever said that. Also, if you're a villainess or whatever, you often will not recognize yourself. That was very satisfying to me because I did, in fact, get to put all the gossipy people in the novel, but nobody knew it.

One of the things about being a mother -- you know this. We all know this. Everybody listening to this knows this. It is a very fraught group. The gossip among the moms, it's mind-blowing. It's ruthless. I have graduated out of it, which I'm very, very happy to say. My children are twenty-one, eighteen, and fifteen. One of my sons is at college where gossip is no longer an issue. One of my sons is at boarding school. Because it's sort of remote, I don't have to worry about any of that. My daughter is fifteen. She's my third child. I know everybody. I no longer engage in any of the gossip. I almost feel like that is something you do more with your first child and sometimes your second child. By the time you get to the third child, you're like, you know what, I am so done. Also, with age, I feel like, is this piece of information important to me? The answer is no. I just do not engage in any local Nantucket gossip. I now say that, and I'll probably be embroiled in a scandal next week. Over the last five or six years since the kids have been to high school, it's been very mild. It's something that I think you graduate out of.

Zibby: I think the thing with moms, especially first-time moms or just really -- gossip is the grounds of the insecure. It's the feeding ground. When you're in a new situation trying to figure out what on earth you're supposed to be doing with your kids, especially in the beginning, all you want to do is compare yourself to other people and then somehow get that little glint of, not that I'm speaking for myself, but I've heard, any sort of little win you can have. Oh, I heard her kid did X, Y, Z. There's always something to make you feel better when you feel so bad. It's not any justification for it. It's not just that the kids are older. It's that you're better. You know what you're doing, and that confidence that comes from surviving.

Elin: Right. That's the thing. Ideally, you're the one that has evolved. You are now self-aware. You do not need to be boosted or fed by other people's misfortunes. [laughs] I think if you evolve the right way, it's just live and let live.

Zibby: It's so true. What you said in the beginning was also super interesting to me. A lot of people grow up wanting to be writers. There really is something to waiting. It's not a career you can necessarily dive into out of college and go up the ranks. You can go to adjacent careers like publishing or maybe a magazine in the olden days or something related. To just sit down and become a novelist without that wisdom or experience is really tricky. When you're that age, you don't want to be told that you have to go live. That's very annoying to hear because you know what you want. Let's say your kids now want to go be writers. What do you say to them? What does it mean to go live, really?

Elin: They have to have experiences. They have to travel. We've traveled with the kids. My ex-husband and I traveled extensively, lived in Australia, did a bunch of things. They’ve been all over the place. They need to go out and have experiences. They need to have jobs. They need to fall in love. They need to have their heart broken, all of those things. When I started, Zibby, I was pregnant with Max. It was twenty-one years ago. That's when I started writing The Beach Club. What did I know about life? Not one thing, really. I hadn’t had children. I hadn't been divorced. I hadn’t had cancer. All of the things that have happened to me over the twenty years that I've been doing this, in theory, should have been contributing to the richness and the nuance and emotional integrity of the writing. That’s the best-case scenario. Hopefully, it has. In theory, every book gets better. I've also been reading. One of the great things about you and other book influencers like you is that the way we can make ourselves better, the way every single woman can make themselves better, is to read. I definitely believe that. All of the thousands of books that I've read over the last twenty years have all contributed also to my work.

Zibby: It's so true. I think the value of reading is huge. Thank you for saying that about me in particular. It's so funny. Someone posted today, a little funny thing how she couldn't keep up with all the details of her family group chat, but she could remember all the details in a multigenerational family saga novel that she read six years ago. I feel like I'm the same way. I can look around and be like, oh, yeah, I totally remember the characters in that book and this book. When it comes to my own life, I have these big blanks. Why do I remember all the stuff about books? It's the weirdest thing.

Elin: We attach. We escape and we attach. One of the things that I hear a lot from my readers just because I do write escapist fiction is, I'll hear about the terrible, worst moments of their lives. They're in the chemo chair. Their parents are dying. They're at the hospital. Their children have cancer, whatever. They have my book. My book allows them to escape. That is the most humbling experience. I don't need to write the great American novel. I have no desire to do so. What I'm doing now is so fulfilling just because I'm giving people in a lot of pain, either physical or emotional, a place to go. I find value in that.

Zibby: There's tremendous value in that. Wait, tell me briefly about your whole experience with your cancer. That sounds terrible. I know you are a breast cancer survivor. I would love to know, in terms of feeding the richness of your work, how did going through that -- how did you even manage that when you're churning out so much fiction at such a rapid pace? Did you stop writing for a while? How did you handle all that?

Elin: The writing was really my, it was my gasoline. I'm very disciplined anyway. I got sick and I just said to myself, I'm not going to stop. I'm going to stop only when it's absolutely necessary. I was diagnosed in May of 2014. I had a book coming out, The Matchmaker. I had a book coming out on June 10th. My oncologist called. She said, "You have cancer." You go through a lot of steps. As it turns out, I had to have a double mastectomy. I said to her, "Can we just schedule it for August and preferably after all my social obligations? I have a book coming out. It's summer in Nantucket." She was just like, "Elin, reality check, no. You need to have this as soon as possible." My book came out on a Tuesday, as they do. My book came out on Tuesday, June 10th. Had the double mastectomy on the 13th. I had to cancel all these events. I did a couple events. Then I had to cancel a bunch of events. Then I said to my publicist, "Two weeks after my surgery, I'm going to start back and do a tour." I did. Twelve days after my surgery, I flew to Chicago. I did two events in Chicago.

I tell this story. Sometimes I cry. I will recover if I cry. The first event, I was on drugs. I don't even remember it. It was a straight signing, though. The second event was the brown bag lunch at the Cook County Library. There were a hundred women. There were two women up front that had -- one had no hair. One had very short hair. At that point, I have drains in which were hidden by my dress. You have drains, which are these horrible things that come out your back. Then they collect the lymphatic fluid. It's too awful to talk about. I was on oxy and very emotional. Everybody there knew what I had gone through. I'd been on the news. I went on with Gayle King and Norah and Charlie on CBS This Morning. The women come through my line. They say to me, "Elin, we both had double mastectomies. Together, we've undergone thirty-six rounds of chemo and sixty-four rounds of radiation. We came today to tell you that you're going to be fine." I thought to myself, okay, these women are far sicker than I am. They showed up at my book signing. They are so optimistic and so encouraging.

I really, at that point, felt like they passed me a baton which I held onto for a while. Once I was recovered -- I had some bumps in the road and wasn't really recovered until May of 2015. Then I started speaking at breast cancer events and telling that story. The good thing, I guess, about breast cancer is that the demographic, it's my demographic of my readers as well, so there was a lot of opportunity for me to connect with other people who were just starting out. I do it all the time on my social media. People will say, my sister has breast cancer. She's starting chemo tomorrow. I always reach out, always, if I can, personally. I've met a lot of really wonderful, wonderful women that way. In some sense, it was a gift, not only because of the connection it gave me with my readers, but also the gut check with what's important. You and I talked just a little while ago about the gossip. That ceased to be important. Who cares? Nobody. What became important was what was happening with my kids and the truth in my fiction.

Zibby: Elin, you have gone through so much and are such a powerhouse. You can just tell it in the way you speak. You're just a force. You're so driven. It's amazing. I'm so impressed. Were you just born this way? Do you feel like at some point this shifted, or is this just your personality in everything you do?

Elin: You know, I don't know. I've always been disciplined. I do all this crazy stuff. I exercise for three hours every morning. I do that because it's a discipline that sets up my day. I never ever skip a day. The people in my life like my ex-husband and my boyfriend now, they really hate it because, of course, it takes three hours away from my time. It's a very important discipline for me because doing what I do, which is writing two books, now one book, a year, requires a laser focus. The time in the morning, it's the discipline of doing something that -- nobody wants to exercise for three hours. Nobody wants to exercise for five minutes. Making yourself do it is setting up a discipline. I've always been like that. The connection with the readers is just something that I've learned over twenty years. It's a process. I could be sitting in my basement writing for myself, but it's so gratifying to have a back-and-forth with my readers. I think they feel the love. They know that I love them very deeply.

Zibby: Wow. Amazing. Do you have any parting advice for aspiring authors aside from going out and living?

Elin: I think it's just, you have to stick with it. That's always what I say. If you're writing a novel, you start at the beginning. You move through middle. The middle is always tough. There are lots of times when I do not know what's coming next and it feels scary. That's when you put the novel in a drawer and you think, I guess I'll get to it later because I know how it ends. Everyone always knows how it starts and they know how it ends. The challenge is making yourself get through it and moving scene by scene. In a micro sense, I would say for serious writers, you must dramatize. You must have a scene in a location with dialogue and characters and a conflict. That is a scene. My novels are one scene after another after another, but at least I can pinpoint them saying, this is the scene at the beach restaurant where she drops the tray of glasses. Everybody stops. Then the owner asks if she's on drugs. You need to have dramatization. In a larger sense, you just have to keep going until you get to the end. Then you can always go back and fix it. Wait, Zibby, you have a book coming out. When is your book coming out?

Zibby: I do. February 16th, my anthology.

Elin: Oh, my god. Can we just talk about that briefly before we part?

Zibby: Sure. [laughs] Yes, I'm super excited about it. I have sixty-plus essays that authors wrote mostly during the pandemic, some a little bit before. It was going to be this whole website goop. I had this whole idea, and that did not happen. I ended up just posting them up on my website during the pandemic. Then afterwards, I was like, wait a minute, I have enough for a book. This is a book, what got published. Then I just sold it as a book. Now it's coming out.

Elin: It's called Moms Don't Have Time To. Then is every essay a different ending to that sentence?

Zibby: No. This book is five different sections. Moms don't have time to eat, workout, read, breathe, and have sex. The essays are inspired by those topics, but they're not specifically about them. It's a personal essay about something. Then I have another one coming out in November where I picked five different things that moms don't have time to do.

Elin: What a great idea. I have to say, I'm sort of past it now, but it was definitely challenging where moms don't have to write novels. That would be my essay.

Zibby: If you want to be in the next one... Not that you don't have enough to do.

Elin: I know. That's the thing. Moms don't have time to do anything. I love, love, love. Make sure you send it to me.

Zibby: I will. I will absolutely send it to you. Thank you so much for coming on this show. I loved talking to you and hope to see you in real life.

Elin: I hope so. Bye, Zibby. Thank you.

Zibby: Bye, Elin. Thanks.

Rebecca Sacks, CITY OF A THOUSAND GATES

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Rebecca. Thanks so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books" to discuss City of a Thousand Gates. Congratulations on this novel.

Rebecca Sacks: Thank you.

Zibby: This is a literary achievement. This is a big deal. It's interwoven stories, people's lives intersecting, great prose, different characters. It's an epic journey. Congratulations.

Rebecca: Thank you so much. I actually just got the bound copy.

Zibby: Ooh, let's see.

Rebecca: Here. I don't know if you can see.

Zibby: So good.

Rebecca: I know. I'm someone who's very attached to the book as an object, so just holding it and feeling the texture of the cover. I noticed I've been dressing to match it ever since I got it. [laughs]

Zibby: These are great colors. In fact, this would be a great blanket, perhaps, maybe curtains. I think this could be some sort of textile you could involve in your home.

Rebecca: I really loved the design. Harper did such a great job, my publisher, in really listening not just to me as the author, but reading the book carefully. Everything surrounding the book has reflected that so much. This is my first book, my first novel. I had no idea what to expect. The cover, to me, it has that sense of multiple narratives, doors opening and closing, lives intersecting. I was so taken with it. I'm very grateful to them, actually, for hearing me and reflecting the work so beautifully.

Zibby: Tell me about writing this book and when you started it. I know you've had multiple -- Bread Loaf, you've got all these fellowships and retreats. You've been at this for a while. Everybody obviously keeps identifying your talent. When did this start? How did it change and take shape over the years?

Rebecca: It almost feels like we grew up together or something, this novel and I. I'm thirty-four now. I think in a way, I started writing it even before I knew I was writing fiction. I was about twenty-six. I left New York City. I'd been working in magazines. I really lucked out after college. Right after college, I got a job at Vanity Fair. It was the best education you could ask for.

Zibby: I interned at Vanity Fair.

Rebecca: Stop!

Zibby: I did, yes.

Rebecca: Oh, my gosh.

Zibby: You probably were not even born. No, I'm kidding. I'm forty-four. I interned my freshman year of college. When was that? 1995, that summer.

Rebecca: May I ask, were you working directly with anyone? I have such [indiscernible/crosstalk] feelings for that time.

Zibby: I rotated departments. I started in special events. At that time, I had no idea who anybody was. I had to answer the phone.

Rebecca: Sara Marks?

Zibby: Yes, Sara Marks.

Rebecca: So cool, oh, my god.

Zibby: Aimee Bell would walk in, and [indiscernible/crosstalk]. I actually emailed with Aimee Bell recently. I was like, I was an intern. You were there. Did not remember me, but that's fine. Then I moved to the feature department for a little bit with Jane Sarkin.

Rebecca: Oh, my gosh, I love Jane. Wonderful.

Zibby: I remember so well. I'm sure she doesn't remember me either. I was there for like a week in her department.

Rebecca: I was the same. [laughs]

Zibby: I'll never forget because she was on the phone as I was filing slides. I don't know what I was doing for her. She was trying to schedule her c-section based around the Hollywood issue. She must have a child now that was born in 1995.

Rebecca: Wow, what a power move. That's amazing. I really admired everyone I worked with there. I was probably really foolish to leave, but I did. Not long after, I worked very briefly at a travel magazine. It was very cool, a lot fun, Departures. Then I moved to Israel. I thought I was doing a master's in Jewish studies. I was doing a master's. I thought that's why I went. I think really deeper down, I wanted to get lost. I wanted to get lost. I didn't know any Hebrew. I grew up in a very secular home, generally speaking, sort of reform. My mother wasn't born Jewish and didn't convert. We were just raised in this secular, nebulous zone. I didn't have strong feelings one way or the other on Israel. I didn't speak any Hebrew except I knew the brachot for the Hanukkah candles.

Zibby: Good to know. If you're going to know any of them, that's a good one.

Rebecca: I think I wanted to go to a place where I had to articulate everything anew to myself. I had to learn new languages. I spent years studying Hebrew and Arabic. There's all these boundaries, all these divisions. I had to articulate them to myself and learn how to hear them and see them. At that time, I began writing essays for a couple different outlets. The ones I'm most proud of, for sure, were published in The Paris Review's website, The Daily. In a way, I think I was sort of starting the novel at that point in the sense of I was coming to know and to explain to myself, the landscape I was in. A lot of times when you're drafting a story or a novel, the very, very first draft is you telling the story to yourself. Later drafts become ways in which you are telling the story to an audience. You are making it legible to an audience. I think the first draft is a story you tell yourself. In the first drafts, it was a story I was telling myself about a place that had at least two different names for everything, at least, maybe one in Hebrew, one in Arabic, one the UN uses. That's three, at least, different. Eventually, I lost interest in myself as the center of these stories. I felt that I was so limited in the kinds of stories I could tell if I was the narrator and if my body was at the center. I did what I love most. I got lost in other characters, in other lives. That was the story of the novel and I think why it took a good -- gosh, I don't know; I should have these numbers handy -- let's say, six years to write, maybe, and really a process of learning to hear, learning to see, and then learning to disappear into other lives and to let these characters, and as you know, there are quite a few of them in this novel, but let them tell the story of their lives in this place.

Zibby: Wow, that's amazing. Wait, tell me then after you spent all that time how you ended up selling the book, the publication.

Rebecca: I'm sure many people think that they have the best agent, but I have the best agent.

Zibby: Who's your agent, then?

Rebecca: Her name's Joy Harris. She is wonderful. She read this novel. I made a great decision in about 2016. I was living in Israel. I was living in Tel Aviv. I had begun what I thought maybe could be a novel, but I didn't even really know what shape it would have. I almost just had some scenes that felt important to me, some of them based on things people had told me or incidents friends, siblings had told me about that I fictionalized. By fictionalized, I mean maybe they had a narrow miss. What could’ve happened didn't happen, and so I fictionalized it by pushing it farther. What if the worst thing did happen? What would the consequences have been? That kind of thing. It was all really just very early drafting. I came to understand if I really wanted to do this, the best thing I could do for myself would be to go to an MFA where I had full funding where I could write for two, or if I was really lucky and got into a three-year MFA, for three years with full funding, maybe get a little teaching experience. This would be the way that I would have concentrated time to work on the novel as opposed to doing it in the morning between five AM and seven thirty before I went to work. I would definitely still have been writing it, which is fine. That's a very good way to write a book. I wanted more time to devote to it. I wanted to get lost, again I suppose, in the work.

I applied to and got into the MFA at UC Irvine in Orange County just south of where I am now. There's a lot of debate in the writerly world. Do you go to an MFA or not? What does that mean for how it shapes your writing? Who gets in? What are the problematics of these institutions? All very worthwhile discussions. For me personally, it was the best thing I could've done for my work, mostly because I had all of this beautiful time, the ultimate commodity for a writer. One of my teachers there, Michelle Latiolais, she had told her agent about my work, which was very lucky for me because then when I eventually did send Joy my novel, she was at least expecting to see it. I didn't have to wait a few weeks or even months until she got to it in her stack. That was nice. It was nice to arrive at her door, as it were, with a letter of introduction. She became my agent because she loved the book. She was one of the first people I'd spoken to who read it from start to end. She was actually the first person outside of my MFA program. It was just amazing to be read exactly how I hoped I'd be read, someone who was reading the book with her heart. I could feel it. I didn't think about it long.

She's a pro. She was much more ambitious for the book than I was. I didn't think we would go to a big press. That just seemed outsized. I guess I was limited by my own imagination or ambition. She had her own idea. We were going to go to Harper. When people ask me now, maybe friends who are going through the process themselves of looking for an agent, I always say you want someone who is just in love with your book. That's the most important thing, more important than maybe -- there's a lot of other considerations. They're all important too, about the access that person has. Maybe I don't know how long they plan to be working or how long they have been working. Of course, these are all considerations. More than anything, you want someone who is in love with your book and who can share that with anyone that they bring that work to. For anyone who's thinking about agents or shopping, I would say that's what makes your agent the best agent, loving your work very much.

Zibby: That's true. You have to have some sort of meeting of the souls over a book.

Rebecca: What a beautiful way to put it. Totally. Yes. I love that and will use it and quote you.

Zibby: Thank you. Great. [laughs]

Rebecca: I love that.

Zibby: That's awesome. You are a citizen of Israel and the US and Canada, everywhere. You speak languages. You're all over the planet. Tell me about your identity yourself. You're a world traveler. Where do you find yourself at home the most?

Rebecca: I was talking to a friend about this recently, or what feels like recently, but time has been, for all of us, so slippery. A few years ago, I was talking to a friend about this. I was asking him, I was saying, "It's so hard to know where I belong, in a sense." I was in New York City. I moved to Canada, first to New Jersey and then to Canada, all with my family. Then I went to college in the States. Then I moved to Israel. Then I briefly left Israel. I thought I would go to divinity school, not to become a member of the clergy, but to be an academic in religion. It was so funny. I kept dropping out of my translation classes -- this was at Chicago -- to take fiction classes with the novelist Vu Tran. I was like, I think I need to rethink what I'm doing. That was an important few months for me when I was living in Chicago. It was also when I formerly converted to Judaism even though I was raised in a Jewish home. I think I wanted to feel like I was fully embracing not just my Jewish identity, but my place in a Jewish community. Of course, being formerly a Jew is very important for things like being counted in a minyan. It depends, of course, on your denomination whether a woman would be counted. I'm a conservative Jew, so that's all kosher. [laughter] My converting rabbi, a wonderful man named Rabbi David Minkus, a really generous, thoughtful person who never dangled his own power over me in this situation in which you are vulnerable as someone converting, he said a couple wonderful things to me. One was, "You were always a Jew. I'm just making it official," which I thought was sweet.

Another was, it was very interesting, he's like, "You'll always feel like an outsider because we all do," which I also thought was interesting, that even when you make official steps to be embraced by your community, that everyone always, everywhere, feels a little like an outsider. So do I at times. I've wondered if I feel most at home when I have foot in and one foot out of something where I'm a little on the periphery, a little standing back watching the moment happen rather than inside the moment, for example. I've wondered if that's where I feel at home. The friend I was speaking to about this, I was saying it was kind of funny. I was speaking specifically about my status as a Jewish person in Israel where according to, for example, the state of Israel, I am Jewish -- I was granted Israeli citizenship through the law of return which dictates who is eligible for Israeli citizenship based on Jewishness -- but not Jewish according to the Rabanut, the rabbinical authority of the state, which is orthodox. I'm sort of inside and outside there, which is an odd place to be as a person, but a perfect place to be as a writer, I have to admit. Having at once full access and yet being a little excluded is sort of the ideal position to write a novel from. I was speaking to this friend of mine. His name's Benjamin Balint. He wrote a superb book on the fate of Kafka's letters and papers after Kafka died. He said, "Maybe you're at home in the text." I don't know if it's true, but I love the way it sounded.

Zibby: It does sound good. That sounds great.

Rebecca: I think my identity is, in some ways, a little fractured, perhaps. Yet I think because I grew up very much between things, between countries, religions, at times even languages a little, that I feel very purposeful in the choices I've made about the parts of my identity I've chosen to embrace and the communities I've chosen to make myself part of it. None of it feels particularly incidental. It all feels like I made choices about where I wish to belong.

Zibby: That's interesting. I grew up Jewish. I am Jewish. When I was getting remarried, my husband converted to Judaism because my kids are Jewish and blah, blah, blah. I am familiar with that whole process and what that's like and what you have to learn and go through and the commitment of it. We have not gone to Israel. I have actually never been to Israel in my entire life, which is really embarrassing to say. This is on my wish list.

Rebecca: It's hard. There's so much going on. There's so many strong feelings that people have. I completely understand almost the instinct to put it off a little, like a difficult conversation you keep putting off.

Zibby: I'm just going to blame my parents. They should've taken me.

Rebecca: They should've.

Zibby: We went to Italy instead, I guess. I don't know. [laughs]

Rebecca: Wrong side of the Mediterranean.

Zibby: Although, it was a great trip.

Rebecca: I'm sure. When you go and you want recommendations, please don't hesitant to ask.

Zibby: Thank you. Yes, you'll be my go-to on that. Are you at work on another project, or are you just like, oh, my gosh, I finally finished this and I'm putting it off to the side and taking a deep breath for a while?

Rebecca: No, I need to be at work, always. Maybe that's where I'm at home, working, writing. I love that question. I think I'll think about that for the rest of the day. Where am I at home? I'm working on something new. It's interesting. I'm writing in first person which I haven't done in years and years now. It's a very unused muscle. In fact, sometimes I'm finding I have to write in third person as the novel -- I should say to anyone who hasn’t read it yet, the novel is written in a very close, close third where I'm switching to all these points of view. Writing in first person, all these sentences with I, I haven't done it in a while.

Zibby: Did I even ask you to describe what the book was about to listeners?

Rebecca: Oh, with pleasure. What a fun challenge.

Zibby: I usually start with that. Maybe I missed that question. For the people listening, tell them what the book is actually about now that we've talked about your entire life and everything else.

Rebecca: I've enjoyed the attention. [laughs]

Zibby: Oh, good. I had a pleasant time myself.

Rebecca: The book, which I'm holding again because I'm so excited to finally have it, it is set in the present-day West Bank and Jerusalem, so in a place where Israel and Palestine are always in contact in these places. It is a narrative that is, I suppose, not unlike myself, quite fractured in that it follows, my last count, it was about twenty-nine characters that we're following in the aftermath of two tragedies, two ethically motivated murders, one of a fourteen-year-old Jewish girl, Yael, who lives on an Israeli settlement, and in retaliation, a fourteen-year-old Palestinian boy who has no relation to Yael's murder who is brutally beaten in a mall parking lot. These two horrible events reverberate and echo in the lives of Palestinians and Jewish Israelis and Americans in Israel and a German journalist trying to make her name on some newsworthy tragedy. Trying to show the echoes and the iterations of these events in the lives of different communities and families. I'm especially concerned with family life and the way that the political enters family life and shapes it, and within marriages and between parents and children and lovers. Every family, I think, is its own little country in a way.

Zibby: I love that. That's a quote I will use and credit you.

Rebecca: Good. We can trade.

Zibby: That's great. Perfect. Do you have, just as a last question, any advice for aspiring authors? I know that you've already given a lot, particularly with regard to finding agents and not giving up and all this other stuff. What's your advice?

Rebecca: A few things. One is slow down in your telling. In actually writing, so often, we have a place we want the narrative to get to. I do this as well. I don't know how I'm going to get there, but I know I want these two people to have an encounter in this bus or at this checkpoint. I know that's where I want it to go. I can catch myself rushing in the writing to get there. Life happens in the moments on the way, of course, in the sensual, sensory details. Letting yourself go word by word, sentence by sentence to get where you're going. Let the story surprise you. Let yourself find some pleasure in that. It's not always a rush. I would say that would be advice also to myself as I work on something new. It's such an amazing pleasure and honor to hold your own book, but take your time getting there. It'll be worth it.

Zibby: Lovely. Awesome. It was so nice chatting with you today.

Rebecca: It was such a pleasure.

Zibby: I feel like we were just off on some retreat or something. You've taken me out of the sirens and everything here in the city. I feel like you have this sense of Zen or calm to you in the way you speak. I feel much more relaxed now.

Rebecca: Oh, thank you. I can say for my part, I've loved this feeling of being sort of ensconced in your beautiful wooden library. There's such a warmth coming from you and from this room. Thank you. I really enjoyed my visit.

Zibby: If you were in town, I would've had you over here. I used to do all these in person.

Rebecca: I would love that. When that's possible again, I'll come by and I'll bring a copy of the book.

Zibby: Perfect. I will have one already, but I will take another one. [laughter] Have a great day.

Rebecca: Thank you so much. It was a pleasure.

Zibby: Nice to meet you. Bye.

Rebecca: Bye.

Cherie Jones, HOW THE ONE-ARMED SISTER SWEEPS HER HOUSE

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Cherie, to "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

Cherie Jones: Thank you, Zibby. It's a real pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.

Zibby: It's my pleasure. Cherie, tell listeners, first of all, what your book is about and what inspired you to write it. It's so good. It feels like a book from almost another era, like it should be in the canon that you read in school under literature. It just feels like a classic book in a way. Talk about How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House.

Cherie: Thanks so much, Zibby. How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House is set on a beach in an island a lot like Barbados in the mid-1980s. The protagonist, her name is Lala. She's a hair braider. She essentially braids hair for tourists on the beach. It's about this one summer when her life just changes in unimaginable ways. Without giving out too much of the plot, what actually happens, she has a baby. There's a murder on the beach. It's all about how those two things are connected.

Zibby: By the way, this seems like every potential parent's nightmare situation of having a child. Not to be graphic, but it starts with unexplained bleeding and then waiting in the ER forever and not getting the attention that she needs. Her husband is not there for her at all. She has to make her way home. It's the most unsupported woman going through pregnancy alone that I've ever read about.

Cherie: That is reality for a lot of women. That was the story that came to be about Lala. I hope that people can understand and appreciate that and just go with her on her journey because I think she does grow a lot through the novel. In terms of what inspired me to write it, I tend to be inspired by voices without -- I don't know how that sounds. [laughter] Essentially, I will hear a character's voice in my head. They will start telling me parts of the story. The process of writing is really about getting that down on paper. The initial process is just trying to understand what I'm hearing and somehow translating that into text that I can work with. Then the editing and the story development is really about getting to the story behind the story. In this case, I was on a bus home. I was living in the UK at the time. I was very tired after a long day at work. I just started to hear the voice of this character in my head. There were a lot of things that we had in common. As the bus ride continued, it just became clear to me that this was going to be the project that I would work on next.

Zibby: Wait, Cherie, I thought you actually sat next to this woman on the bus. I thought that she was bothering you. You're saying that was actually just an analogy. I literally thought you were on the bus on your way home and you sat next to a woman who insisted on telling you her story.

Cherie: [laughs] No, this is a woman who sat in my head on that bus ride.

Zibby: Wow. The whole time, I'm thinking, I wonder if she'll ever read this story. Did their paths ever cross again?

Cherie: That happens to me a lot in terms of my short stories and other projects. It tends to come to me as a voice. I just hear parts of the story. Then it goes from there. I was also inspired a lot by things that would've happened during the 1980s. I consider that the decade when I came into myself as I know me. There are lots of things that happened then that I was really inspired by that I wanted to include in the novel. Even the hair braiders on the beach in Barbados, that's something that was very much a feature of beach life in the 1980s. You hardly see those braiders anymore here. That was one of the things that inspired me as well.

Zibby: I have to say, I grew up going to Jamaica all the time in the eighties. That was also part of that life and culture, so I knew exactly what you were talking about. Of course, in the book, I would be in the house that you were supposed to hate the family. [laughter] I would be somebody that Lala would not want to be dealing with at all. Anyway, that was me. I was like the kid in that house. Not really. Nothing terrible happened to me there. Yes, the hair braiding culture and all the amazing things that beach life had to offer back then, it was so perfectly encapsulated.

Cherie: That was very cool. I was really happy to get the opportunity to go back into that time and space.

Zibby: What's the last voice you heard? Are you hearing any voices right now?

Cherie: [laughs] I'm not hearing any voices right now. It started off as a short story. There was the initial process of writing it out. It didn't start to become a novel until about 2013, 2014, somewhere around there. Strangely enough, about three years in, I just stopped hearing Lala anymore. It was as if she basically told me everything that she needed to say. There on in, it really was about crafting the story, trying to get to all the other things that she didn't say. I like to say sometimes that the characters who talk a lot don't always tell the whole truth. Part of my job then is trying to find out what the rest of it is and then just crafting that into what the real story is. That was what that was like.

Zibby: It's almost like you're the therapist of your characters. It's someone coming into therapy and they tell you their story, but you have to figure out what they're not saying to get the whole truth.

Cherie: Yes, exactly. It really is a lot like that.

Zibby: You're the therapist for the invisible characters. It's pretty cool. Who knew?

Cherie: I'm glad you think it's cool. Other people might have other words for it. It's great to know that you understand where I'm coming from.

Zibby: I think it's great. Look, writing fiction is an art. It comes from a place of the mind that nobody can totally explain. The more people I talk to about it to try to unlock the mystery of, how do you write fiction? there's no clear answer. It just comes. It can be in a dream. It can come in a voice. It just somehow gets into your mind and then gets on the paper. It's like magic. I don't think any explanation is weird.

Cherie: That is really what the process is like for me.

Zibby: There was a lot of painful emotions and situations that rose up in this book. Parts of it were tough. It was emotional to read it. Did you have to pull at all from your own life? Did you have any of this trauma in your own experience at all, or was this all from the voice in the bus?

Cherie: One of the things I would've mentioned earlier is that Lala and I did have some things in common. Being a survivor of domestic violence is one of them. I was able to draw certainly on -- some of the information about Lala's psychological state and process was perhaps a little easier for me to write because I would've identified with some of it. The actual experiences of violence were not mine. That aside, there were a lot of similarities, and not just me, but just from observing and listening to other women that I know. Yes, that did inform the narrative. Yes, it did.

Zibby: I'm so sorry. How did you get out of that situation?

Cherie: The thing about that situation, that's one of the things that -- people can try as hard as they can to help you, but something internal has to happen first. For a lot of women, it has to do with the welfare of the children who are involved. For many women, they won't leave or seek to change the circumstance even if they're suffering quite a bit, but they will try to change it because of a child. That's consistent with some of the trauma and the psychological impact that violence has. I think it's something internal that happens. It's helped by external circumstances. It's helped by a desire to do better or give better to your children. Certainly for me, that was a very big part of it. What's also important for people to realize is that it's often not a situation of just getting up and one day and deciding, okay, this is the day to leave or this is going to be end of it, and that's the end of it. It's often a cycle of running and returning, running and returning. That makes it even harder for people who are [indiscernible] to the situation to understand. I'd say it's something internal. In my case, for short, it was a desire to do better for my children and eventually myself. That's what it was.

Zibby: It's also another layer of difficulty. Even if the children are the driving force to getting to a better place, you still share children with the person who's committing the offense. You can never really extricate yourself a hundred percent when you share the most precious thing in both of your lives.

Cherie: Yes, that's a very difficult situation.

Zibby: Have you ever written about your experience in your own voice, not one of the character's voices? No? You're not interested?

Cherie: That's one of the things that made it especially hard to write this book. Mentally, there had to be that separation between whatever I might have gone through or experienced and the story I was trying to tell. Even in terms of being able to try to explore and understand the lives of some of the other characters like Adan, for example, or even Tone, that required a very big step outside of myself. Having had those experiences made it easier to write in one sense and then made it quite a bit harder in another.

Zibby: Wow. I'm glad you could use your experience to inform this particular voice and share. Being able to extricate is, as you mentioned, close to impossible for so many people. Seeing this up close in fiction might be the way to get through to others. That might be the way the story sinks in, which is so important.

Cherie: I really do hope so. Somebody asked me recently, who's your ideal reader? Who's reading the book? Who would you want to read the book? I thought about it for a bit because I couldn't say that I had written this story with a specific person in mind, or a type of person. When I was asked the question, I thought, maybe there's somebody who's going through experiences like Lala's. I really hope that at least one person like that will pick it up and read it, but it's for everybody.

Zibby: That's amazing. I'm divorced. I'm remarried now. I have four kids with my previous husband. I wrote an essay, not a book, recently. In terms of having someone in mind, there was this woman I met shortly after I got divorced. I was on a beach vacation with my new boyfriend who became my husband. We were all in love and happy back then. Not that we're not, but you know, now we're married. It was right in the beginning. She was there with her kids and all bedraggled. Her loser husband was not paying attention to her. She just looked at me and she goes, "Ugh. What I wouldn't give to have that." I was like, "No, no, I just got this. I was you a year ago," not exactly of course. Whenever I write about that or try at all, I think about that one woman and wonder. I'm sure she didn't even remember that moment. Of course, there's no ideal reader for anything. You just hope that somebody's life improves. I sort of feel like all you can do from the pain in the past is help somebody in the present.

Cherie: Exactly. I really do hope that somebody reads it and gets that type of value from it.

Zibby: Are you working on any new projects? Do you have more books coming out soon?

Cherie: I certainly hope so. Currently, I'm working on a collection of flash fiction. It's so interesting. While I was doing my master's in the UK, I had a pretty bad case of writer's block. A classmate suggested that I try flash fiction just as a way to get out of it and to get back into the projects that I was assigned to do. I started writing flash and just fell in love with it. My flash stories tend to be a lot more, I'd say surreal. I'm working on a collection right now. I'm also working on a new novel that's set on a cocoa plantation in Trinidad, mid-nineteenth century. That is requiring a lot of research. I'm really enjoying it. That's in very early stages.

Zibby: I am going to sound really stupid now, but what is flash fiction?

Cherie: [laughs] Flash fiction, people call it by different names. No, you don't sound stupid at all. When my friend first suggested it, I thought, what's that? What are you talking about? I think a lot of people maybe don't know a lot about it. It's also called micro-fiction. It's essentially a much smaller word space in which to write a full story. A full story has to be developed in a small space. It tends to be three hundred words or less for one full story. Other people have different word limits. It's a very short, short story. I think that's the best way to describe it.

Zibby: Wow, that's tough, a whole story in three hundred words. Actually, that's kind of what Instagram is all about. It's like a little post. Turns out I'm a flash story author. I didn't even know it.

Cherie: Who knew?

Zibby: Who knew? This is great. I'm going to put it in my bio. [laughs]

Cherie: That's really what it is. It's really challenging to try to develop and execute a full story within a smaller space. A lot of it is about distillation. It's about not only what you say, but what's not said and so on. I really enjoy it.

Zibby: That's great. Do you have any advice to aspiring authors?

Cherie: My advice to aspiring authors would be, one, read a lot. Read as much as you can. Read as widely as you can. Then I would essentially say just keep working and keep developing your craft. If it's an aspiring author who wants to be published in the traditional way, then I would say everybody's journey is different. Just [indiscernible] to appreciate your journey is yours. Just keep at it. If you're meant to be writing, you're going to write whatever the circumstance is. Whether you're published or not published, whether people understand your voice and your perspective at any particular point in time is not going to stop you from writing. The point is just to keep getting better and developing as you go along. That's what I'd say.

Zibby: Excellent, and to listen for the voices that you might hear.

Cherie: [laughs] Yes, and to listen for the voices if that's your process. I know that's not the same for everybody, but it certainly is for me.

Zibby: There you go. Thank you, Cherie. Thanks for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books." Thanks for your fantastic novel. I can't wait to read your flash fiction. Best of luck with everything. Thanks for dealing with all of my interruptions here.

Cherie: No, that's fine. That's absolutely no problem. I understand totally. I have four kids of my own. I know how hectic it can get. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Zibby: Take care. Buh-bye.

Cherie: Take care. Buh-bye.

Lauren Fox, SEND FOR ME

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Lauren. Thanks so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

Lauren Fox: Thanks so much for having me.

Zibby: I am excited to discuss Send for Me because this book is gorgeous and heartbreaking and just so great. It's so well-written. It was just really, really great. I loved it. I really loved it.

Lauren: Thank you. Thanks.

Zibby: Tell listeners, if you don't mind, a little about Send for Me and what inspired you to write it and what it's about and all the good stuff.

Lauren: All the good stuff. Short answer is that it is about a family, four generations of women, starting in Germany on the cusp of World War II and then jumping ahead in time to Milwaukee in the nineties. It's about family separation and the twin traumas of the Holocaust and that family rupture. I don't know if I think that there's a main character, but I kind of think of Annelise as the main character in the book. As the Nazis are coming to power in the 1930s, she is able to leave Germany with her husband and young daughter, but she has to leave her parents behind. The book is partly about her parents desperately trying to leave Germany and how she, in Milwaukee, is trying to have a life there and trying to bring her parents over. Then the contemporary timeline is about Annelise's granddaughter, Clare, who discovers a stash of letters in her parents' basement that were written by Annelise's mother, Clara, to Annelise as they were trying to leave Germany and how Clare, the granddaughter, is trying to live her life and trying to figure out how to pry herself away from her history and trying to figure out how to be in the world knowing her family's intense and traumatic history.

Zibby: Oh, my gosh. I understand that you actually found the letters. I shouldn't say understand. It's written in the book. You found the letters that your grandmother -- tell the whole story so I don't mess it up.

Lauren: The other half of the question is what inspired me to write the book. That is what inspired me to write the book. It's fiction. It's very much fiction. All the characters are sort of a mishmash of my family. I'm a fiction writer. I made them up, but the story is my family's story. When I was in my twenties, I found letters in my parents' basement. My grandparents had recently died. They had been living with us for years, so all of their belongings were in my parents' basement. I was going through them one day. I found -- I still remember this moment so specifically. It was a little brown box with a pink ribbon around it. In it were about seventy-five letters written on this crumbling onion skin paper. They were in German, but they were also in this German script. I can't describe it. It's like knife scratches on paper. It's just up and down. It's an old-fashioned German script that hardly anyone can still read. I found these letters. This moment stands out for me so vividly in my memory. I just knew that they were going to be important. It was almost magical. I just knew that these letters were going to be a key to unlock questions that I had had growing up.

I knew my family's history because I live in the world and I had learned about the Holocaust, but they really didn't talk about it. Trauma affects people in different ways. Some people process and talk about it. My family was so tight and so loving and so connected, but they just did not like -- my grandparents gave me little snippets of information throughout my life. I can count on one hand the number of times they talked about it. I was able to get these letters translated. It's kind of a process. I was a graduate student at the University of Minnesota. I stumbled on a professor. He was in the German department. He had survived the war. He was half Jewish. He had survived the war in Berlin passing. That was a whole nother story. He took personal interest in my story and helped me translate the letters. It took us about a year. I would go into his office once a week with a couple of letters. He would read them out loud into a little tape recorder. Then I would go home and transcribe them. That is the inspiration for this book. It was really immersive. It was a really immersive project.

Zibby: Then you wrote in the letter in the book to readers that you tried to write it as memoir and then waited almost twenty years. Now you've come out with it as fiction. What was it like writing it as memoir? Now I want to read, by the way, the memoir version.

Lauren: No. [laughs]

Zibby: I don't want to read it?

Lauren: No one would read that.

Zibby: I don't care if it's good or not. I want to know more about your family after reading this. These were the actual letters, though, right, that you interspersed?

Lauren: Yes.

Zibby: How is their story different?

Lauren: It's different in so many ways. The emotional foundation of the story is the same. This is insignificant, but my grandmother's family owned a butcher shop. My grandfather was a cattle dealer. That's how they met. I've been a vegetarian my whole life. I was like, I'm not writing about a butcher shop. I placed it in a bakery instead. It was much more fun to research. That's not the significant way that the story is different. I always say fiction writers are like magpies just grabbing bright, shiny objects wherever they see them. It's such a weird thing to describe the process of taking a true story and fictionalizing it. In a world where there is such a thing as Holocaust denial, I felt a very strong obligation to tell this story, to tell it truthfully. I promised myself I would not change a word of the letters. In the process of reading them, transcribing them, editing them, every word of my great-grandmother's in my novel is true. Those are her words. Other than that, in order to get into my characters' heads I had to give myself full permission to imagine them. Basically, the long and short of it is the outline of my family's story is absolutely true. Then all the details are a combination of true and fiction and research.

Zibby: I'm glad you changed it to the bakery because those were some of my favorite scenes, and all different confections. Maybe you've already done this or whatever, but in conjunction with the launch of your book, you need to make all those things.

Lauren: Oh, no. I do not. [laughs]

Zibby: You don't?

Lauren: Not me. Someone else.

Zibby: Let me rephrase. You need to find all of those things and have them all displayed. The different confections that you referred to throughout the book, I want to know what they all look like.

Lauren: My grandma was a really good baker. My kids are like, "Mom, the reason your stuff doesn't turn out is because you're always like, oh, that won't matter." I did not inherit her talent.

Zibby: I know. I'm like, well, we don't have buttermilk. Let me just google and see what I can throw together.

Lauren: You can make buttermilk. I've done it.

Zibby: Yes, I've done it too. I made brownies the other day. We didn't have any vegetable oil, so I used avocado oil.

Lauren: That's not good. No. I would do the same thing.

Zibby: My kids were like, "Ugh, what's wrong with these brownies?"

Lauren: You're like, nothing, they're great.

Zibby: You got some extra healthy fat in there. Oh, my god, they were terrible. I threw them away. Some substitutions do not work. Like you, the urge to bake does not come with a lot of forethought. It's just like, let's do it right now with whatever we have.

Lauren: That's exacerbated by the pandemic. I'm not going to the grocery store, so let's make do with this rancid butter that I just found. [laughs]

Zibby: Totally. We'll just wait for the next delivery of food from FreshDirect in a few days. Okay, fine, you do not have to bake all these things now. I take it back.

Lauren: Thanks.

Zibby: No problem. What was it like writing this book? First of all, the words -- I dogeared all these different sections to show how great you are at even just describing things. Oh, gosh, when you were talking about the heartbreak with Annelise and Max at the very beginning of the book, this is just a scene where, in a teenage love, a guy decides he doesn't love someone. This is not that big of deal. Yet you write it in such a way. Let me read a couple lines. "Two days ago, she was a perfect composition of face and limbs and breath and heart. Now she's a ragdoll, lumpy, mismatched, stitched together, and stuffed with old cloth." Then she keeps going. Basically, she wanted to touch his hand, and he kind of pulled it away. "This moment is nothing, really. Her heart will mend. Even as she can practically feel it cracking, she has an inkling that it will eventually glue itself back together. Maybe it's even starting right now, the delicate process of repair. This is not a devastation like the ones that will follow, nothing like those great gasping winged monsters of ruin that will come later, the ones that will try to pick her up in their claws and fling her to her death. It's nothing like those, obviously. But still, years from now in another country with her handsome husband, this life irrevocably left behind her, she will remember it, the smell of coffee beans and cigarette smoke, the clink of dishes and the laughter drifting over from other tables, the sudden rearrangement of their relationship reflected in Max's face." So good. Let me find one from later. I probably shouldn’t. I don't know why I turned this down. Oh, that was funny about the polar bears. By the way, my daughter has a fascination with polar bears. I like when you said -- this is much later. You said, "How could you know the heart of your beloved before you married him? Courtship was a confection." I love that line. "Courtship was a confection. Crisis brought out the best in people or the very worst." Then you went on to say more. What a line. All of these lines. It's funny, when I pick up a book from Knopf, I know that it's going to be beautiful. I know the language. It's going to be literary and beautiful. I'm going to cling to every description of a detail. This was just so great. Tell me more about your writing. I keep looking because I kind of want to read another passage, but I can't decide.

Lauren: Now I just want to sit here and have you read to me from my book. This is weird. [laughs] It's very satisfying.

Zibby: I love this too. Let me just read this one passage. So interesting as we talk about men needing to be strong emotionally and this whole "man up" thing that people are finally rising up against, essentially. This was an ode to the tenderhearted man, which is great as I have some of those in my life. You wrote, "Julius knows he is tenderhearted. He comes from a long line of tenderhearted men, fathers who cry when they hold their babies for the first time, who tiptoe into darkened bedrooms just to touch the soft cheeks of their sleeping children, husbands who at times are filled with so much lighthearted gratitude and affection for their tired and faithful wives that they will, without suppression or regret, pull those surprised wives into their arms and hold them for a moment. Sternness is not in his nature. Discipline is not his forte. He has never tried to be something he is not." Beautiful. You know everything about this man now. It's great.

Lauren: That was easy for me. That was easy because I come from a long line of just that kind of man, my grandpa, my dad, really unusual men of that era, just so soft and lovely.

Zibby: That's amazing. Tell me about writing and your learning to write like this and your writing of this particular book and just how you craft your sentences and all of that.

Lauren: It's so funny because I think about this question while I'm writing. Of course, every writer is like, how will I capture this in the interview that is yet to come? I think about this all the time. Then also, I have no idea. There's some weird alchemy that happens. It's not like it isn't a ton of work and laborious crafting, but there's also just this -- it's the only time in my life when time goes by and I don't notice it, is when I'm writing. It's a weird thing to try to describe the process of writing, which I'm sure you know. Also, this story has been living with me for over two decades. I really gave myself permission and also just was so in the moment of this story. This is my fourth novel. More so than any of the previous three, I was so immersed in it. The first version of this novel was, as we said, a memoir. It was composed of lots of really, really short scenes, some of which were half a page long. I really gave myself permission to try to craft the sentences. I spent a long time on the sentence level part of the story. That carried over to the novel. My last three novels were much -- I wouldn't say they're lighter because the last one I wrote is about a woman and the death of her best friend. It's not like the subjects were lighter, but my writing style was a little more contemporary and light. This one, I just really allowed myself to write it the way I wanted to write it and craft the sentences with as much time -- my last book came out six years ago. It took me a long time to write this book. I don't know if I can describe it on a more granular level because in some ways, it's just a distant memory.

Zibby: That's okay. Where did you like to write? Did you outline it? How did you structure the story?

Lauren: I always outline because it gives me this probably false confidence. I feel like if I outline the plot, then at least I know step by step where I'm going. I'm free to change it, but at least I have a map. I forgot the first part of your question. How did I structure it?

Zibby: Also, where did you do it? Were you at where you are right now at this desk, or were you somewhere else?

Lauren: Exactly. Right here at this desk. Also, back in the days when my kids were in school, not upstairs in their bedrooms in school, I had the house to myself from eight AM to three PM. That was my writing time. I could just walk around. My floors were very clean because I would sort of Swiffer and think, just wander around the house, pace and walk and think. A slightly messier version of what you see is where I write.

Zibby: Swiffer as ultimate writing aid. I like that. Ode to the Swiffer, essay coming next. [laughs] How old are your kids?

Lauren: They're eighteen and thirteen, so they're all grown up now, kind of.

Zibby: I have a thirteen-year-old upstairs and two other ones also in school, so I get it.

Lauren: That's really fun.

Zibby: Really fun. [laughs]

Lauren: They're old enough to do it on their own, but it still sucks.

Zibby: Yeah. Are you working on anything else now?

Lauren: Just Swiffering. No. I am not working on anything else right now. I think it was Rick Moody who said writing a novel is like burning down your house. You have to rebuild from the ground up. I have a couple of ideas like tumbleweed floating around in my brain. Right now, not much else. This one was such an exorcism for me. Because it's my family's story and because I sat with it and it lived in my head and my heart for so long, it's really weird right now to feel like, what's after this? I have no idea.

Zibby: That's okay. What did your family think about this book? It's, in part, your whole family's story.

Lauren: My brother's just reading it now. It's been radio silence on the other end, so I'm eager to hear what he has to say about it. My mom has read it three or four times. She'll be like, "Honey, I'm reading it again. I'm crying again." My parents are just like, what a great job you did tying your shoe. They would support me no matter what. My mom and I talk all the time, but not so much about this. I think she feels really pleased that I've taken on this project. I think she feels like our family story has been honored in a way by the writing of this novel. I hope she feels that way.

Zibby: It's true. It has. All these lost stories, time is going by. What's great about this book -- I read a lot of Holocaust-era stuff, as most Jewish people do/are, and also just readers in general. I find this time period very -- I'm drawn to it. I keep trying to understand it. I never will. I'm like, it must be different. They must have felt different. The thing about this book is you're like, no, nobody felt different at all. It was just like as if we were there. You write about it, even little things like the objects. There's one part of this book where Annelise is feeling guilty about it, but even mourning her chandelier or something like that. When so much has been lost, how can she mourn the beautiful things that she used to have in her life, or a special carpet or anything? Her life before was very much like lives today, all the details you had. That's one of the things I found that set this book apart, is the detail, you're crawling on your knees feeling the carpet fibers type of detail versus, life was fine when I walked back and forth to the bakery. That doesn't sound right. I've read a million great other books. I'm not trying to say anything. There was just something about how real it felt and how it could so easily be right here, right now.

Lauren: I'm thinking a couple things as you're saying that. One is I came to this book when it came to light that families were being separated at the border and that children were being put in cages. I was like, oh, this is still so relevant. How is this still so relevant? I think that the fact that it's such recent history and we're still trying to -- it's a futile attempt to try to figure it out, but that's what this book is, an attempt to process it. The past is still with us. It hasn’t gone away. I thought a lot about those physical details because our lives are made up of those domestic moments, the lines of a vacuum cleaner as you vacuum your rugs and the beautiful lamp that you have that has a crack down the middle. Our lives are made up so much of those physical details. Those really weren’t any different. I did so much research on this time period. Really, what it comes down to is it was just our lives without the technology.

Zibby: I think about even the ashtray with the two dogs with their backs together, oh, my gosh. I feel like now I've seen that. If I saw it in a store, I'd be like, oh, that's that one.

Lauren: That's the one. Somebody said fiction writers aren't any more insightful than anyone else, they're just really good at observing. I actually feel that way. I'm just looking at stuff and seeing weird things. That's my writing process. [laughs]

Zibby: There's also this inherited trauma which people talk about and which comes, obviously, from not just Holocaust-era survival stories, but from many ways that people have had family members go through things or pass things down. When there's something around you even if it's not spoken about, what does that do to future generations? Here, even when you talk about -- now I'm forgetting the name of the granddaughter.

Lauren: Clare.

Zibby: Even the fact that Annelise's granddaughter, Clare, goes through this whole moment where she's going to weddings and feeling left out and wishing, how do you find the love of your life? and all of that, maybe there's something to the heaviness that she doesn't even realize she has that she's carrying around with her and that's informing everything. What do you think?

Lauren: Absolutely. I was reluctant to write the present-day character because, weirdly, it almost felt too easy, that part. The inherited trauma, I feel that. It's kind of hard to describe because it's so much in the air you breathe when you inherit this kind of history. I'm just going to pivot and talk about my personal life because so much of me is in Clare. I'm super close to my mom and very strongly feel this obligation to take care of her in a way. I used to joke when I was in my twenties that all I wanted to do was move back to Milwaukee, have a couple babies, and just hand them straight over to her. Of course, I wasn't joking. That is what I did. There's a feeling when you inherit this kind of rupture that you want to write a new story of your own. I tried to piece this together for years. What part of my psychological makeup is whatever? What part is just me? What part is what I was given? In some ways, it's the same for everybody. What's the difference between who you are and who your family is and what they gave you? Maybe that's just intensified for people who inherit a particularly difficult history. I wondered it for years. Was I just depressed, or was I feeling this familial, generational trauma? I guess it can be both. I still don't really know. I just think the question is really interesting.

Zibby: Me too. I feel like it's hard to get around. It's in there. It's just hard to sift out, if we use our baker's analogy, as we turn that little flour thing. That's as close as I'm getting to baking today.

Lauren: Thankfully.

Zibby: Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?

Lauren: Whenever I'm asked that question, I have the same answer. I say it to myself all the time. Look up from your phone. Look around. Pay attention. I'm always head down looking at my phone too like we all are. I often wonder what the next generation of writing is going to look like because I feel like the most important thing to do is to pay attention to the world and be really just wide open to it, eyes and ears and all senses. Look up. Pay attention. This book has been a part of me for over two decades. It's a marathon, not a sprint. Work as much as you can. I don't write every day. I would love to say that I do, but I can't. I don't. As much as possible, put your butt in the chair even if it's terrible. Often it is, but the writing process, it's not supposed to be easy. It's supposed to be work. You have to do it every day. Well, you don't have to do it every day, but you have to do it as much as you can.

Zibby: All good advice.

Lauren: And read. Read so much. I've heard people say, I'm a writer, but I don't like to read. You can't. You have to read. You have to be a part of the conversation with other writers and other readers. That's my favorite. I'll take an hour during the day and just read and be like, nope, it's my job, I have to, as you well know. [laughs]

Zibby: I do that too. I'm the same way. I'm like, yeah, sorry, I'm just going to sit here.

Lauren: It's work.

Zibby: It's work. Do you have a genre you like the most?

Lauren: Right now, I'm reading a lot of historical fiction because those are the conversations I've been having. I was never particularly drawn to it before, but I'm loving it now. I love contemporary fiction. I'm so Catholic in my taste. I have one book in my office, one book in the living room, and one book upstairs. I'll just read wherever I am and whatever is good.

Zibby: I'm the same way.

Lauren: I know you are.

Zibby: I've now made this into my work or whatever, but I've been like this forever. There's always a book [indiscernible]. It's very comforting to know that no matter where you are in your own life, you can escape into someone else's in a moment's notice.

Lauren: Completely. You'll never be bored. You can tune everything else out.

Zibby: Bored, lonely, forget it.

Lauren: I know. It's a secret. You're never bored or lonely. Why doesn't everybody know that?

Zibby: I know.

Lauren: My kids are like, "I don't like to read." Okay. It's their rebellion.

Zibby: I asked my son who's six and is obsessed with the iPad because obviously with COVID, that's what happens, I'm like, "You used to like to read last year." He's like, "Yeah, but it's not as entertaining." It kind of broke my heart. How can a graphic novel even compete with the bells and whistles of his video games?

Lauren: Just pretend you don't care. Just act like that's fine. Then he'll be like, maybe I should read.

Zibby: I do restrict the time somewhat, so I'm hoping that -- I don't know about you, I've never wanted to force reading on my kids because I don't want it to seem like one of those things. I never want to be like, now you have to read, but maybe I'm wrong. I don't know.

Lauren: No, I don't either. How can you? My kids, they don't do anything I say anyway, so that wouldn't go over. [laughter]

Zibby: Good point. Very good point. Lauren, it was great chatting with you. Congratulations on this beautiful novel. I'm really excited for you. I hope it finds a home with lots of people because it is quite different, I feel, than the widely written-about time period. I feel like this book is different. It really stands apart. I hope people delve into it and meet your lovely women.

Lauren: Thank you so much.

Zibby: Have a great day.

Lauren: Thanks. You too.

Zibby: Bye, Lauren.

Lauren: Bye.

Brandon Hobson, THE REMOVED

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Brandon. Thank you so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

Brandon Hobson: Thanks for having me.

Zibby: Your latest novel, The Removed, is a beautiful story, so well-written, about all different characters as they relate to the loss of a fifteen-year-old boy, Ray-Ray. Tell me a little more about what inspired you to write this novel. Where did it come from?

Brandon: It came out of a question. Chekhov says that fiction should begin with questions. The question is always what I begin with in my work. The big question here was, how do we grieve and how do we heal? I'm also really interested in the question of, what is home? I think that applies to this book as well as some of my other work. That's the starting place for me, examining those questions and then taking it from there.

Zibby: I feel like you tapped into so many different things. If somebody had an issue going on, it's probably in this book. Someone with Alzheimer's, someone with an opioid addiction, someone with loss, all of these things are so relevant to everyone. Yet somehow you even weave them in and threw in a foster care child to boot. You packed so much in. Yet it all interwove seamlessly by how you divided the different points of view into the different chapters. How did you decide to take this view by all the different people in the family and shifting the camera lens, if you will, around to different places and perspectives?

Brandon: For one thing, one of the things I like about fiction writing is getting inside characters' heads. Here, it was an opportunity to take the Echota family and get inside their heads. The different points of view are all first person. That means trying to have very distinct voices. I don't know whether I pulled that off as well as I could've. I don't know. That's part of the fun. It's sort of like acting. I heard Ottessa Moshfegh say this a few years ago. I went to read her reading. Then afterwards, we went out to dinner and talked a little bit. One of the things that she said, and I think it's certainly true of me, is that it's sort of like acting in that you're getting inside a character and really seeing how they respond to certain situations. That's a big part of the pleasure of writing, is doing that and playing with voice and circumstance. This family, I had the mother, Maria, she was maybe the most challenging because she's an older woman who's lost a child. I wanted to try to get that voice somewhat distinct and specific. I actually talked to a friend of my mom's, and my mom's in her seventies, a friend of hers who, many years ago, had lost her teenage son. I talked to her a little bit about that experience, which was hard, but it needed to be done.

Zibby: That's true. I should've added this to the many themes that you touched on in the book, which is also police brutality in a way or, really, racism and targeting people on first glance based on how they look, which is what happened with Ray-Ray in the story. So many powerful, powerful issues to be explored. It's really amazing. When you sit down to write this book, okay, fine, we have Chekhov's question. This is the question you're doing. How did you decide how to craft all of these characters and what you were going to tackle in their passages? Obviously, you did research by talking to your mom's friend. Did you research all the characters? Did you outline the whole thing? Did they just appear in your head?

Brandon: That's a very difficult question. Where do characters come from? I don't necessarily outline. I start more with an image. Sometimes images will come that I'll see. I'm not sure what the scene is or when it takes place, but I'll see a character doing something. For Edgar's part, which is probably the strangest of all of them because he does have some addiction problems, I wanted those sections to be the most surreal, the most strange not only because of his drug use, but also because he finds himself in a sort of mythical place called the Darkening Land. The Darkening Land is out of old Cherokee stories. That's a specific place. In this place, I kind of had free reign to create it however I wanted to. I really wanted to hone in on the strangeness of this place and hopefully parallel it to the strangeness of the country we're living in right now in terms of, look at the way that racism is so prevalent today and the way that video games are used, and virtual reality. Edgar becomes a target of a game that he fears for his life, a real shooting game. That was really exciting because that was, again, crafting out of an alternate universe, a very dreamlike, surreal place. His sections were really fun. I knew that I wanted Sonja to be very obsessive and obsessed with romantic -- she's a very strong woman. She's very confident. She finds herself involved with a guy who is not native who becomes very dangerous. I knew that I wanted Sonja's character to be in a situation with someone who was dangerous. She's placed in danger. Edgar's placed in danger in the Darkening Land.

The mother, Maria, is really the one that is trying to pull everything together. She's dealing with her husband's Alzheimer's. Her husband Ernest is just really suffering from his Alzheimer's. Then they take in this wonderful little boy named Wyatt who almost feels like he begins to heal Ernest because of, look at how closely he resembles Ray-Ray from fifteen, twenty years ago. At the beginning, it just was taking off. I was doing each character separately. I was writing. Here's the way I knew that I was writing Sonja's, her thread, and I was writing Edgar's thread. I knew with Maria and Ernest, their threads just started taking off. I think that's often what happens when you start writing and you really get to know your characters very intimately, very well. They sort of start doing things on their own. You just follow along. I don't really outline much. All that sort of stuff comes with editing afterwards to help with the structure and shape after the draft. I think the most fun part is the very first draft because you're just -- Charles Johnson, he wrote this fantastic craft book. He was a student of John Gardner's. Charles Johnson, in his craft book, talked about the pleasure, the fun of writing. Finding that pleasure really is where I feel, for me -- I feel very strongly about that and its importance to my work.

Zibby: How many times do you think you've started novels at this point? Have there been others that you've started that haven't been finished?

Brandon: Oh, yeah. In my twenties, back in the nineties, I had several novels. It took me a really long time. I've been writing since I started college, for thirty years. I wasn't writing as a kid. I started writing fiction in college. It's been a long time. It's taken a long time to develop an understanding of how to do it.

Zibby: Writing novels takes so long relative to a round of tennis. If you only played five rounds of tennis, you wouldn't be that good, especially your first round. Because novels take so long sometimes, then they think because of all the amount of work and time invested, it should speed up or something, but it doesn't. You still need the practice. Another author I was talking to said, "It took me twenty-eight novels to get to number one on the best-seller list." That makes sense to me. If you do something over and over and over and get better and better at it, then it stands to reason you might have your most success at your twenty-eighth book versus your first. Not to say that there aren't -- anyway.

Brandon: There are great, amazing, young writers. It just is amazing to me when you have someone in their twenties, which is really young to be so good. They're out there. I think that's great. It is a lot of work. I don't have a whole lot of other hobbies, really. I have two kids here. My hobbies are usually spending time with them and shooting baskets with my thirteen-year-old or my seven-year-old. There's an obsession about it, I think. That's probably true of anything. Like you say, tennis, I think one has to have an obsession in order to really, it seems like to me -- I don't know. There's probably a lot of natural ability in sports. I don't know if that's true with writing, this natural ability.

Zibby: I think people have natural ability, but I think that some people who don't can get really great at it. I think some people who do can squander it.

Brandon: That’s true.

Zibby: I have two thirteen-year-olds and a seven-year-old. I also have a six-year-old. I find that that makes my ability to ever write or be productive a little bit impaired. How has that been for you, especially with the pandemic? How has that affected your writing to be parenting with everything else?

Brandon: It's really strange. My thirteen, as you know, they're pretty self-sufficient. The math, my wife has to help him. I don't remember seventh grade math being that difficult. I like helping my seven-year-old, especially with the art projects. We went out and found leaves. I live in the desert. There are not a lot of leaves out. We went over to a tree and found some leaves a few months ago and were able to make birds. Those have been fun. My writing, especially during the pandemic, I haven't been able to write during the day. It's been between the hours of ten PM and two or three AM, usually. During those four hours that I sit down to really think, this is my writing time, I'll try to get as much done as I can. I tell myself it's a success even if I just go through and edit or write half a page or a page. That's a success because you can go days and days without writing. During the day, I'm always trying to think about it. I'm kind of a night owl anyway. I will sleep a little bit later and stay up late, but I've always been like that.

Zibby: Interesting. Did you feel like, after your book got nominated for the National Book Award, that you had anxiety about starting another book, or did that fuel your resolve to write something else amazing?

Brandon: I don't know that it really gave me anxiety. There's so much out there. There's so many books. Part of it, for me, I published a couple of books with small presses, and I'm used to people not paying that much attention that I don't think so much about it when I work. I think had that been a debut novel, like the first thing I ever published, it might have created some more anxiety. Most of my anxiety -- I do have anxiety. It comes more along the lines of when I'm having to be in a social situation with people and talk about it. With you, one on one and I'm at my house... But talking about the book in front of large groups of people gives me significant anxiety. Then I find myself having one too many glasses of wine or too many beers to try to overcompensate. Then I may embarrass myself. It's gotten better.

Zibby: I feel bad. I said the thing about anxiety because I was literally just putting myself in your shoes. I worry about everything all the time. Then as I was saying the question, I was like, okay, this is my own issue that I am now asking him. [laughs] It just happened that you also have that same thing.

Brandon: You know what? I do. I have severe anxiety. When I was a kid, I had such social anxiety so bad. I just wouldn't talk for long periods of time. It's gotten way better now. I've talked to a therapist my whole life, so that helps.

Zibby: I had a lot of social anxiety as a kid as well. I went this one entire summer on a summer program to France where I just didn't talk. I was supposed to go learn the language and live with the family. I spoke a little in French, which now of course I don't remember a word of. With my peers, I was so shy. I didn't open my mouth the whole summer. What I found during that time, which I think of a lot -- I don't know if you do the same thing. I spent so much time analyzing language because it seemed so natural for other people to just talk. I was so struggling with the ability just to talk and figure out what would come next. I just listened all summer. I think about that sometimes now as I ramble or write my heart out or whatever, how at times it's so hard to even form a sentence and how that ease of conversation, it's sort of stayed with me.

Brandon: I went to Paris for the first time the summer before last. I taught for a week-long writing workshop. That was the best, most amazing trip I've ever been on. It was so great. I love the language. I love the city. I loved everything about it. I'd never been out of the country. I'd been to Mexico once in my entire life. I'd never been anywhere else. I walked around a lot. It was just amazing, an amazing experience.

Zibby: Interesting. Are you working on anything else now? What is it you're doing in the middle of the night?

Brandon: I am. There are a couple of things I'm working on. One, it's too early to really know what it's going to form into yet. I'm going through this first draft. It’s not much yet. It's not much at all. Then I'm working also on a children's book, not as in real young, but as in middle grade. My son's a seventh grader. I've started that and hope that that -- I just like to do different stuff in terms of writing. Stuff is a weird word. I always like a different project. We'll see.

Zibby: Got to keep mixing it up.

Brandon: There's always something I'm working on, always.

Zibby: That's great. What advice would you have to aspiring authors?

Brandon: One of the most important things is just, this is what everybody says, but to read a lot and read widely with a very open mind. Writing, it's almost like, the more you do it, the more fun it becomes. If aspiring writers are not in a program or have taken a workshop or a class, sometimes those get really bad -- I don't have an MFA. I didn't go for an MFA. I have an MA in English. Then I went on and got a PhD. There's something to be said about being around a community of other writers and people who are in the same space with you and you're all looking at each other's work and helping each other. There was a time in my life where I didn't have that at all. When I did, I became very grateful. I think that that was largely what helped me become a better writer on a craft level, is having that community of people. I would just say other than reading widely, get your work among a community of readers that you can share each other's work and talk about what's working and what's not working.

Zibby: That's great advice. I feel like especially now with the whole world on Zoom and your local habitat opening up to everybody else, it's easier to find those like-minded souls than it was before when you were sort of confined by the people around you who may or may not share your interests at all. Now you're in the desert somewhere talking about writing. I'm in New York City. It's so neat.

Brandon: One thing I didn't talk about in terms of the new book was, there's an ancestral voice named Chala. One thing I did want to mention, if it's okay, was that Chala, in the book, is based on a real man named Chali. What happened was he was killed for refusing to leave the land when Andrew Jackson ordered removal. Before the migration, what's known as the Trail of Tears, some people refused to go. There was one man who, with his son, died. This Chala, this ancestral voice, is based on him. He's speaking to the Echota family in the book trying to weave in -- here's, again, that question. How do we grieve? How do we heal? He incorporates the traditional Cherokee stories. It was also fun because I also had a couple of my own that I just write.

Zibby: Was one of yours the -- who had the one about the deer, the doe, talking to the guy in the woods? He had to run. Then he stood where the -- I'm not explaining this well. Then the leeches would get him.

Brandon: The leeches, that's based off a traditional story. Him rescuing the wolf and the wolf speaking through his eyes, that was me. That's not necessarily from a traditional story. To return to the pleasure of writing, to go back for aspiring writers, I really think there should be a lot of enjoyment and a lot of pleasure. I like the strangeness of it. It's Coleridge who said great art should incorporate some type of strangeness. That was Coleridge who said that, so I don't know. Take what you will. I do feel very strongly about the pleasure of writing. If it starts to feel like it's not pleasurable and it's just work, then it's maybe time to just put it aside and start something else.

Zibby: Excellent, excellent advice. This is great. We started with Chekhov. We ended with Coleridge. This is fantastic. I feel like I just had a little English throwback class here today. Thank you for dusting off the volumes in my mind.

Brandon: That's what getting a PhD does to you. It makes you throw these names out there, I guess.

Zibby: Might as well get your money's worth out of that PhD. If not now, when? [laughs]

Brandon: Exactly.

Zibby: Brandon, thank you so much. It was really a pleasure talking to you. I hope this wasn't as anxiety-invoking for either of us as perhaps some other settings.

Brandon: No. Thank you.

Zibby: It's been a pleasure to talk one on one with you here today.

Brandon: Thank you. I really appreciate it. It was fun.

Zibby: Good. Have a great day. Bye-bye.

Brandon: Thanks. Buh-bye.

Rachel Ricketts, DO BETTER

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Rachel. Thank you so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

Rachel Ricketts: Thank you for having me.

Zibby: It's my pleasure. By the way, I know listeners can't see this, but you have the coolest glasses pretty much ever that I've ever seen.

Rachel: Thank you. [laughs]

Zibby: Listeners, head over to YouTube so you can check out Rachel's awesome glasses after this. Your book, Do Better, can you please tell listeners what it's about? Then we're going to discuss some of the ins and outs.

Rachel: It's about spiritual activism and ways in which we can all work towards dismantling white supremacy from the inside out.

Zibby: There we go. Rachel, in your introduction you basically say, white women, this book is for you. I want to change your mind. I don't want you to think of me as angry, but I feel so passionately about this that I am writing a whole book about it. Here you go. Did I summarize, mostly?

Rachel: A little bit.

Zibby: A little bit. [laughs]

Rachel: The discernment is really important. It's written to white women but not for them. It's for black, indigenous, and people of color, specifically, black indigenous women and femmes, but addressed to white women because white women, in my personal and professional experience, have caused the most harm and have the most work to do. I have no problem with people finding me angry. I am angry, justifiably so. We need to tap into our anger and be able to withstand the full spectrum of our human emotions. That resonance, that acknowledgment is really, really crucial for black, indigenous, and people of color who are constantly marginalized others and ostracized. Our anger is used against us. That's really important for white folks, specifically for white women, very specifically for white cis women, who need to learn how to tap into their anger so they stop taking it out on black, indigenous, and people of color.

Zibby: In your own experience, and I know you included a lot in the book, why do you feel that white women in particular are sort of the worst perpetrators of this?

Rachel: Many reasons. The most succinct and potent one is they have a lack of an ability to really acknowledge and be with their identity as oppressed oppressors. I believe all of us are oppressed oppressors in one way, shape, or form, but some are on a spectrum. White women are obviously very much oppressed by patriarchy. If they occupy other marginalized identities, then heteropatriarchy, ablism, etc. They also oppress black, indigenous, and people of color by virtue of being white and perpetuating white supremacy. That inability to acknowledge and be with that identity results in a lot of harm. There's also a really deep need to be good and right or at least perceived as good and right. All of that is very much tied up in patriarchy which, to me, is all under the guise of white supremacy. It's all tied up in oppression. This need to be good and right, which, again, I believe most of us have, but it shows up in a very specific way for white women, specifically cis white women, but this deep need to be good and right automatically prevents you from being able to authentically engage in racial justice because you can't be good and right and be in this work. You're going to get it wrong. You're probably going to feel bad because you're going to have to acknowledge the harm that you've caused to yourself and to others.

Zibby: We are looking at each other. I am obviously a white woman. You are obviously not a white woman. We are having this dialogue together. You have a whole book. For me and other white women who happen to be listening who haven't read your whole book yet, and hopefully they will, what's something that you want all of us to know instantly aside from what you were just describing? If there's something that somebody's only listening to two minutes of this podcast but they need to know and you need to tell them, what would it be?

Rachel: That racial justice is your work. It's not something that's happening out there. You and I are talking the day after white terrorists stormed the Capitol of the United States of America while police watched idly by and/or opened gates or took selfies with them. There's a lot of that othering that continues, like, oh, those people. It's not a those and them. All white people, every single white person on the planet, perpetuates and benefits from white supremacy. That will never change unless you're willing to acknowledge that, address that, and do the inner work that's going to be required for that to actually change, period.

Zibby: Everybody is the same? How can there be any massive generalization about an entire group of people? What if I have done the work? Maybe you wouldn't know just by looking at me.

Rachel: The work never ends. Even that statement I think is indicative of the fact that there's more work to be done. There's a constant need to be able to acknowledge the power and privilege that you have by virtue of the position that you hold racially, gender identity-wise, ability-wise, or otherwise. That really requires being able to understand your position and the ways in which you cause other people harm.

Zibby: In your book and in your bio and everywhere else, you share a lot of personal experiences that have led you here to this book, to some of your beliefs, but also just who you are in the world and what's shaped you in the past. One of the shaping moments in your life was the loss of your mother. I was hoping you could talk a little about that and how her decade-long battle with MS and how you coped with the loss has affected your day-to-day even now. I'm so sorry, by the way, for your loss.

Rachel: Thank you. It's very much informed the work that I do, not only her loss, but all of the experiences that we had leading up to her loss. There was a large spectrum of losses that occurred along the way. She was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. I am an only child. She was a single mother. We are both black women. On top of all of the experiences that we endured that would be hard for anyone across the board dealing with challenges with the healthcare system, with social systems -- we're based in Canada, so also acknowledging the privilege that we hold as a result of having access to healthcare and social welfare systems that we wouldn't have had if we were in the United States and still identifying and acknowledging the additional challenges that we faced, straight-up discrimination, oppression, and harm that we endured as a result of having to do that as black women.

In supporting her and just being someone who lives as a queer, multiracial, black woman-identified person, that deep need for equity, for justice has always been very top of mind for me, which is why I went to law school and then very quickly realized that law has nothing to do with justice, which was an upsetting realization. Then when my mother actually passed, when I supported her in ending her own life -- she and I both felt she had no options left to live in a way that would be fulsomely free from pain. When she was physically gone, I was left with not only the massive grief and loss of her physical absence, but all of the losses that we had endured along the way as a result of the oppression and discrimination that we faced. It was after she died that I really recentered and regrouped and was left with such deep grief. I just think we're very ill-equipped as a culture to deal with grief across the board. I think we really began to realize that more in 2020, the many ways that grief manifests and the ways in which we're ill-equipped as a society and as individuals to cope with that. I dove deep into grief work. Then very, very promptly, that led me back to racial justice work because the most grief I've ever endured in my life is as a result of being a black woman.

Zibby: With the small losses and the affronts that occurred along the way with your mother's illness, would you mind sharing one or two things that keep you up at night or that you have the most feeling about still?

Rachel: The one piece that really hurts the most -- it's hard to pick one. There are so many. We didn't even have support when we needed it in terms of allowing her to transition with dignity. That was a fight. I always say that was the most important and relevant use of my law degree to date, was literally having to fight the medical system to allow her to die with dignity, to allow her to have free rein over her own body. That fight took up all of my time and energy instead of being able to just be with my mother in hospice and support her emotionally, spiritually, physically as she transitioned from this realm to the next. I was there every day, day in, day out, trying my best to do that, but instead, the priority was doing my best to support her in having her needs met and her wishes met and ensuring that she was free from pain in executing that desire. We had to bring in a medical ethicist and the whole thing. When we finally "won" her right to be fully supported and kept pain-free -- she had to starve herself to death. That was the only legal option for her. When we finally won that battle to allow her to be fully supported by the medical system in her decision to do that, it wasn't a win. Then I was left with, right, now I've won this battle where my mom gets to die. The fact that she even got to that place is a result of the oppressions and discrimination that we faced. She may never have needed to get to that place if we didn't live in such an ableist, capitalist, white supremacist society at all. To really be with that is horrifying, truly, and part of why I do the work that I do because I don't want anyone else to have to endure what I did and what we did.

Zibby: I know that part of your mission, you do so much to be giving back to other people now. You have all sorts of certificates and degrees and everything. Part of that is in helping people with grief, not only in all the seminars that you lead on coming to terms with white supremacy and doing the work that is required, but even just the grief work. I shouldn't say even just. Grief work is so important. Like everyone else, I've had my own share of grief. Who hasn’t these days? When you say that people are ill-equipped, which I completely agree with, tell me a little more about that and how you think we can, as a culture or society or just as individuals, become better equipped to deal with something that will affect everybody at some point or another?

Rachel: This is the crux of my book because I believe that the work has to happen on the internal, cellular, individual level before we can actually make societal collective shifts that will reflect the changes that need to occur. This isn't work that happens from the neck up. We live in a society where that's a lot of the work that we're doing. That's the work that seems to be prioritized. Grief, to me, isn't really an emotion. It's an experience. Until we have a more fulsome understanding of our own emotional landscape, which requires us to do inner work, then we don't have the tolerance or even, really, ability to recognize, oh, this is grief. I would say most people on the planet in this moment are grieving. There's so much happening, whether in the United States or not. A global health pandemic, everything is different: the amount of uncertainty; if you have children, the amount of uncertainty for your children and that you're probably witnessing in your children. There is a lot that we are handling, or not, that we're trying to handle. All of that is grief. When we live in systems of oppression, which we all live in, then that word, even, often is seen to be hyperbole. Oh, it's not grief. That's really dramatic.

When we can't even really be with what it is we're experiencing, how can we ever start tending to the healing that needs to happen? We can't even have an understanding like, I'm angry and that's okay that I'm angry. I don't need to be shamed or gaslit for my anger. I'm grieving. No one needs to die for me to be in grief. There didn't need to be a global pandemic for you to be in grief. In fact, things don't even have to be negative for you to be grieving. When you get married, when you become a parent, when you start a business or get a promotion, these are major changes that occur in your life. When major changes occur, grief can also come along for the ride because it's a huge shift. We don't allow space for that reality, to acknowledge that. The work is really an inner one. It's an internal landscape. It's shadow work. It's ego work. It's the hardest work you'll ever do because this is really challenging to really sit with the ways in which we have caused ourselves harm, the ways in which we've caused other people harm. Resting and being with ourselves is incredibly challenging in a culture that is constantly telling us that we need to produce, that we need to do, do, do, and that our worth is completely enshrined in our output, not in just being who we are.

Zibby: It's so true. In terms of doing better, what do you think you're doing better today than you were doing, say, last year at this time?

Rachel: I'm really trying to learn to rest, especially as a black woman who is constantly expected to show up for everyone, to do the work for everybody personally and professionally. Resting is a real act of resistance and real revolutionary act and one that's honestly quite painful because it brings up so much trauma. It brings up so much about the ways in which I've been conditioned and have conditioned myself to do and to prioritize everyone else and everything else in front of and instead of myself, which isn't sustainable. That has been a real challenge. I'm doing my best to do better at that. I'm constantly always doing my best to do better at owning and acknowledging my privilege and the ways that I cause other people harm as a result of the privileges that I possess, for example, being light skinned, living in Canada in this moment, being highly educated, English speaking, cis in a hetero-passing relationship. All of these privileges cause people harm, especially when I'm not acknowledging them and addressing them. That's the work. The book's called Do Better. I'm absolutely included in the need to do better all the time.

Zibby: Do you feel in a way consumed by this mission of yours? Not to say it's only your mission, but do you feel like it is what you eat, drink, live, breathe? Is this something that you wake up in the morning thinking about and go to bed at night thinking about and work on all day? Everybody has their things that they feel incredibly passionate about. Is this something that colors every moment of your day and this is the lens through which you see, how can I improve this? How can I help these people? Do you know what I mean?

Rachel: Yeah, it's more a mission. It's my life's purpose. It's why I'm here. It's not work. It is work because this is hard shit to do, especially when you're doing it from the inside out, but it's also my lived experience. I am a queer, multiracial, black woman. I am up against systems of discrimination day in and day out. I am constantly met with harm. For me, it's imperative that I'm doing the best that I can do to create more liberation for everyone and right now, specifically for black indigenous women and femmes.

Zibby: What's the last thing that has happened either as a result of your involvement and passion, or not, that has made you feel just super happy and grateful for someone?

Rachel: I would say I wouldn't have survived 2020 without the support of other black women. I mean that in every sense of the word. It was a really challenging year and continues to be a really challenging time. I'm so grateful for the black women and femmes that I have my life who really show up and nurture and support me so that I can continue to hold space and support this work.

Zibby: Do you have any close relationships with any white women?

Rachel: Yeah, absolutely. I talk about it at length in the book. It's very important that we are able to have relationships with everybody else. That's the purpose of this. When we are doing the work from the inside out, then we understand the ways in which we have caused harm and the ways in which we can help mitigate that harm and have deeper connections with ourselves and with others, especially people that have been made most marginalized and people that we have oppressed. For me, I have a lot of close white women. Those are all women who are constantly doing their work, checking themselves in their power and privilege, and able to acknowledge the ways in which they have caused harm, continue to cause harm, make repair, and mitigate that harm moving forward and spend their power and privilege, as much as they possibly can, to help create collective liberation for everyone.

Zibby: Tell me a little about the writing of this book. How long did this book take? Where and when were you when you wrote it? Did you have to outline it at first? Just tell me a little more about the process of writing.

Rachel: I always say this book has been written from when I was in my mother's womb, so a lifetime. The actual process of sitting down to write, pen to paper, was about six months, which was a lot in the midst of a pandemic as well. It was really challenging. It was really challenging to write because I pulled out the most traumatic experiences of my life to put onto the paper as a means to illuminate the ways in which we cause each other harm and how we can do better. Obviously, not an easy thing to do for me personally. Also, a lot of familial trauma and stories came to surface in the midst of me writing this. Really, really challenging. Then at the same time, I felt so connected to my ancestors. I'm not saying anything new. No black activist or any anti-oppressive activist really is saying anything new. A lot of this has been said time and time again. Specifically, black folks, we've been saying the same thing for hundreds and hundreds of years. My ancestors had a lot to say. I'm honored that I was a vessel that got to be the conduit for this to come out. I wrote chunks of this actually all over the world. Chunks of it were written in Sweden where I was living for a chunk of time. Parts of it were written in France and Morocco and Indonesia back when we could travel. The bulk of it was actually written in Toronto, Canada, which is not where I'm from, but it is actually where my mother's side of my family moved to from Jamaica in the fifties. I really reconnected with a lot of that energy. I really felt that side, my matrilineal side of my family, as I wrote. It was my first time ever living in Toronto. Being there to write this book wasn't a coincidence. I think it was important to tap into that energy as I wrote.

Zibby: Have you ever thought about a career in politics?

Rachel: When I was in law school, I was like, I'm going to be a politician. This shit needs to change. That's how I'm going to do it. Then I promptly was like, that whole system is not one that I could endure at all. I would rather be on the outside trying to create a more equitable system overarchingly than engage in that one.

Zibby: It's such a shame because I feel like all the brightest people don't want to go into government. The people who should be doing what they can to change the world from the inside are so up against an intractable system that it seems pointless to even try, which is the saddest part of the whole thing.

Rachel: It doesn't feel pointless to try to me. I just think there's many different ways to try. I think we're slowly beginning to see the ways in which we can shift the system and very much seeing the ways in which that system absolutely must change. My deep hope is that the system looks completely different soon.

Zibby: Well said. Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?

Rachel: To the best of your ability, be clear on who you are and what your voice is before you ever try to fall down the path of actually publishing because you're going to be met with a lot of resistance in a lot of ways, especially if you occupy a marginalized identity. If I had tried to write this book ten years ago, I don't know what kind of book it would've been. I am very different. Also, I wasn't as embodied in who I am and what I need to say and how it needs to be said. I've had to fight a lot along the way. I think that's a really common experience for authors, so you need to be very, very sure of who you are and what you need to say.

Zibby: If you could have a sneak peek -- I don't know why I'm asking you all these what-if questions. Thank you for indulging my little interview experience here. If you were going to pick up a book in the library and it turns out it was the book that you wrote ten years from now, what would be in that book? What would be happening?

Rachel: Um...

Zibby: I've stumped you. [laughs]

Rachel: You've stumped me because even now, I'm like, I wonder what my next books are going to be like. Things change so quickly. It was really hard to write this book because I was like, this book could be outdated by the time it -- I am shifting and changing. The collective is shifting and changing very, very quickly, not quick enough unfortunately. Again, when we are dialed into actually doing this work from the inside out, the transformations are huge and they are quick. I'm really curious about what I'll be writing about and talking about and sharing about ten years from now. I think it will look very different because the world will also look so completely different. It's not something I can fathom. I say that in a really positive way because my hope, and I talk about this in this book, my hope is that we all can envision a world that looks completely different from the world that currently exists. That's really, really hard to do. That really does require us doing our own internal work and really trying to step outside of the systems as they currently exist as best as we can because we're all inside of them, myself included. What does it look like to really be rested, be well, be nourished, be taken off, be taking care of each other, be in equitable communion with other people, especially people who have less power and privilege than us? When we can start to really do that on a larger collective space, then I think what we can imagine and envision for the world is boundless and so phenomenal, but I can't begin to fathom what that actually looks like right now.

Zibby: I just want to say one thing to your fear that this book could be outdated at a certain point. Some of the things you share are so timeless that it could never be outdated. The personal emotion and feelings of loss and just the raw feelings are something that connects people and so universal and so timeless, this sense of grief and loss and all of it. This is not a book that will be soon not a timely matter. The stuff you shared is timeless. That's all I'm trying to say.

Rachel: Thank you. That was really important for me, not on the timeless piece, but on -- I didn't want to write a how-to. Some people laugh when I say that now because they're like, Rachel, this could very well be perceived as a how-to. I wanted to share my perspective and experience, one, to white folks because I think it's an honor and a privilege to be able to really read that and have a deeper understanding of the impact of oppression and white supremacy, and two, for black, indigenous, and people of color, specifically black indigenous women and femmes, queer and trans black and indigenous women and femmes, to see themselves and have an understanding of, oh, I'm not alone. There's nothing wrong with me. I'm not broken. Those are the kinds of thoughts we're conditioned to have, and certainly the way in which I was conditioned to think. That lack of connection, that lack of belonging, that constantly being othered and ostracized and made to feel like something was inherently wrong with me, that is why I wrote this book because I don't want anyone else to have to feel that way, truly anyone else, but obviously especially people who have been made most marginalized.

Zibby: I'm sorry that that was your experience. I'm sorry for everything you went through with your mother. I'm sorry for the ways in which you have felt that the world has failed you. My heart kind of breaks for you on that behalf. I'm sorry that that's happened.

Rachel: Thank you. I'm not alone.

Zibby: I'm not trying to say you are alone.

Rachel: No, I know.

Zibby: I know you're not. The world has not been fair to many, many people in many different ways. I was just trying to express that I'm sorry that's happened to you, from me to you. That's all.

Rachel: Thank you.

Zibby: Thank you for coming on this podcast. Sorry for my bizarre line of questioning today.

Rachel: No, not at all.

Zibby: Thanks for encouraging me to do better.

Rachel: Thank you so much for having me, Zibby. It was a pleasure.

Zibby: You too. Buh-bye.

Rachel: Bye.

Anna Malaika Tubbs, THE THREE MOTHERS

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Anna. Thank you so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

Anna Malaika Tubbs: Thank you for having me. It's really an honor.

Zibby: It's an honor to talk to you. You're such a genius. This book was amazing. Your book is called The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation. Can you please tell listeners what this is about? Even though this cover is amazing and the title is amazing, I still think it's about far more than just those women. This is essentially -- you know what? I'll let you do it. [laughter]

Anna: No, you were doing great. I was like, keep going. It's about the mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin. Alberta King, Louise Little, and Berdis Baldwin were their names. It's also about what they symbolize in terms of black American womanhood throughout an entire century of American history and what they lived to witness, but also what they lived to inspire through not only raising their children, but also through their teachings outside of their families and their communities and in the many ways that they still inspire us today even though so many people don't know their names. It's all about telling their story, taking them from the margins, putting them in the center away from the shadows into the spotlight like they deserved to be all along.

Zibby: That's amazing. You also go back and give us so much rich history of so many places, people, generations. Some of the things, even from something like Deal Island and how that started or the immigration from one country to another, you painted such a picture of history in general. When I was reading it, I was thinking, this is like the textbook -- that sounds negative because textbooks are terrible. Now I feel bad. If you're a textbook writer, I don't mean your book is terrible. How about this? This should be required --

Anna: -- They're not usually as readable. It's a little harder to get through them.

Zibby: Yes. Required reading on the history of black America in general, especially from the lens of women. Still, you have so much information in here. Yet you wove it together in a narrative form to make it highly digestible. I thought that was awesome.

Anna: Thank you. That was a big goal of mine. It was an important one. I wanted it to be a text that people could refer to in terms of learning about American history through this perspective of three black mothers and how that changes the way we view events like the Great Depression, thinking about the Great Migration and actually getting to know participants in it, all of these things that we think about, both of the world wars. There's so many different things that they lived to see, multiple different presidents and the way their policies affected them differently in each of the three cases because of their own access to resources and education. I think it allows you to better understand history. I appreciate you taking note of that.

Zibby: It's great. People are always like, we should rewrite history. You did it. There you go. [laughter]

Anna: Thank you.

Zibby: I like how you threw yourself in the mix. Another way that you made this book so relatable, literally starting by talking about whether or not you're getting your period. I'm like, oh, okay, wait a minute, this book is not what I thought it was going to be. She's open. The author is open and talking to me like a friend. Now she's going to tell me a story and teach me. It's like when a great teacher stands up. Of course, that's probably what you're doing. You're getting your PhD and everything, right? Are you trying to be a professor? What's the goal there?

Anna: It's so interesting when you said that comment about textbooks earlier because I agree in many ways that they can be a little boring, is the only thing. I definitely respect them for what they are. They're such important tools for all of my academic colleagues who do want to be professors right away.

Zibby: Yes. I'm sorry.

Anna: No, but for me, I'm actually not. I'm much more interested in public intellectual work. That's why I wanted to produce a book that was very readable, very accessible while also being a tool that could be used for education, but just in a way that's more fun and that you can connect with. It feels personal. I believe that black feminist theory, gender theory, critical race theory all were meant to help us better understand our world and to survive our world and change it. It wasn't meant to be exclusive or kept within the academy. I am grateful for my time in the academy. I am definitely a nerd. I love my degrees. I loved doing all the research to earn them, but it isn't where I necessarily want to stay for now. I'm much more interested in talking to general audiences about what they think and contributing to current conversations because so much is happening so quickly. Sometimes when you're an academic and you're only talking to other academics, you feel like you're kind of missing out because it takes years to develop certain articles and get them published. Then it's only other academics who are reading them. That's just not currently what I'm interested in doing. Maybe down the line I would become a professor. I love just talking to everybody about what they think. That's what I'm most excited about with the book, seeing what all these different people get from it and what they gain from it.

Zibby: Oh, my gosh, you're going to have the most amazing conversations. There's so much in here. I was hoping I could just read this one point that I particularly loved. It's all the way at the end. I'm sorry. It's part of Our Lives Will Not Be Erased. You said, "I cannot fully express just how much hurt and frustration the erasure and misrecognition of women and mothers, especially black women and mothers, causes me. In my own life, I've experienced others demeaning me and questioning my abilities simply because I am a black woman. How many times have men threatened my sense of safety, hollering at me from their cars? How many times have I heard I was only given an opportunity because of the color of my skin? How many times has another person's looks or comments tried to make me question my worth? I cannot say. There have been too many." I'm reading one more paragraph. I can't stop. Sorry. "I also cannot tell you how many times people have been surprised by my intellect and my successes because they assume I am dumb and that my biggest accomplishment was marrying my husband. My own work has often been hidden behind his, not for lack of his appreciation, but because we still live in a world where women of color are not fully seen." Then you say, "Now that I'm a mother, this erasure takes place on new levels. I have stood at events right next to my husband while he was congratulated on the birth of his son." Then you keep going on and on from there. Wow, that's super powerful stuff right there. That's amazing.

Anna: Thank you. I think so many women relate to it and can feel -- I would love to hear your own experiences of that as well. So often, we're taken for granted, especially moms. It's this weird balance of everyone expecting us to do everything and get everything done. If we don't, then we're blamed for it, but we're never thanked for being the ones who are running the operation in so many different ways. Of course, that's different in different families. In general, women are underappreciated. We see this in the way that we're treated and lack of safety and general toxic masculinity. I think part of it was adding my own personal experience to that so that people understand why this book mattered so much to me, but also to be someone who's saying, I see you. I see all of us who are going through this. I hope that this book can be a part of changing that.

Zibby: Even your dedication, I started getting the chills. Wait, hold on, I have to read this too. Then I'll stop reading.

Anna: No, I love it. This is so fun. [laughter]

Zibby: You said, "This is for all the mamas. You deserve respect, dignity, and recognition. I honor you. I celebrate you. I see you." I don't know if you were talking to me, but I took it.

Anna: Yes, please do.

Zibby: I know this is geared -- well, it's not geared towards black mothers, but it's mostly about getting the facts out into the world so that they are seen in a way that they have not been in the past.

Anna: It truly is for all the mamas, though. I actually define motherhood even more broadly than biological motherhood. Patricia Hill Collins calls mother work the kind of work we do that's caring for others, the way we're bringing others up. Teachers are doing mother work, doctors, nurses, so many of our essential workers. It is definitely a celebration specifically of motherhood, very specifically of black motherhood, but also for all of those that are doing work on behalf of many and who feel unappreciated, feel unseen. It's our time. We need people to give us the appreciation that we deserve. There is nothing that they're going to lose by giving credit where it's due.

Zibby: Ooh, maybe there's some tie-in here with my podcast. It's our time. I love how you say that because that's also what I try to say about listening to this podcast. I don't mean just moms. There are caretakers in so many ways, shape, and form. Not that you even have to be a caretaker, but mom itself, the word, is so limiting, whereas it's such a broad spectrum of people caring for others these days. Content is for whoever wants to ingest it. I believe it'll find the right home.

Anna: I'm excited about that part of the conversation too, just thinking of the different ways and the different mothers. This is especially common in black communities, communities of color, the mothers that you have even outside of your own moms because of this it takes a village to raise a child mentality and practice and tradition that is so beautiful and wonderful. It's very western to do this as an individual journey that everything falls on the one person and that they shouldn't ask for help or they shouldn't admit when something is hard for them. Even when we're having conversations about postpartum depression, so much of that can be avoided or helped and supported if we have more people around that central figure, but also if we just see her. In so many cases, it's going to be a woman who is not seen, who is not given the supports and resources that she needs. We can really change that and make it easier. It's better for our kids and better for society. I'm all about the more you support women, the better society and communities do. I also hope that it contributes to that as well. I have a lot of goals for the book. We'll see how many I accomplish.

Zibby: You should. I believe it will accomplish a lot. Let's talk about these three mothers in particular. You probably know more about these women than anyone, as you spell out so clearly. Even things like the date that they were born is two different dates for certain of the women for their birthdate and just so much conflicting research because they weren’t even deemed worthy of recording in a way. You went and must have torn apart every library and every website looking for everything you uncovered. First, I want to know about your research and how you did that. I really want to know -- maybe, let's talk about this first, if you don't mind. These three women who went through so much and overcame so much, it's unbelievable, yet they produced these leaders. Is there anything as a main takeaway for other mothers if you want to raise a leader and someone who can speak their mind and effect change in society? Is there anything you feel like they did that we can all do?

Anna: Wow. There is so much that I could say to answer that question because, of course, the book is filled with those lessons on how did they do it day to day with all of the challenges that they were facing? I like to celebrate their differences even more than what they had in common because of this notion that we try to categorize black women as if we're all the same. A big part of the book is celebrating how different all three of the mother's approaches were to accomplishing something that in the end, we have these three incredible men despite the many differences in their backgrounds. One thing I think that they all had in common was this combination between both vulnerability and bravery and the way they saw themselves and what they were going to teach their children about themselves and how that allowed their kids to understand humanity better. To break that down a little bit, so often, moms feel that we have to put on this brave face all the time. We can't let our kids see us cry. We can't let them see that we're struggling to do something because we feel like we have to be those superhero moms.

In all three of these cases, they were willing to say, hey, this is difficult for me. Alberta King was constantly worried about Martin Luther King, Jr. going out into the world. That was very real for her. That was her son still. No matter what she wanted him to accomplish, no matter how she had faith in what God's plan was for him, she worried about her baby. We see it with Berdis Baldwin when she loses her own father. She cries in front of her son. She is able to show some of the things that are difficult for her. Louise Little, again, filled with examples of her showing that things could sometimes be very scary. What do you do in those moments where you have sadness, where you have some fear, where you have some worry? You continue to push forward. You ask for help from others. You form communities around you. They all were examples of that balance, vulnerability and strength and being this whole human being that I think allowed all three men to have a really deep understanding. One of the reasons they were all three incredible orators and organizers was they had an understanding of humanity that others did not. I think a big part of that was that their moms were very willing to be honest with them about their own human condition.

Zibby: Okay, I can do that. [laughs]

Anna: It's hard, though. It really is. My son's still really young, so I'm not sure he's going to remember all of my own emotions and my journey of being his mother. I think that honesty is crucial, especially with sons. When they see women in their full humanity in true light, it can make them better human beings.

Zibby: That's great. Nothing like getting some parenting advice here in the midst of --

Anna: -- I want all your parenting advice.

Zibby: Oh, my gosh. If your kid has a rash, I will know what it is. I have four kids. I feel like I need to set up shop, a little corner in my pediatrician's office and just be like, why don't you just come through the triage center here? I will let you know what's going on. Then you can leave.

Anna: That is hilarious. That would be actually really effective for hospitals. Just have some moms sitting there ready to talk to new moms.

Zibby: Right? Maybe I should do that. I actually am on the board of something called the Parenting Center at Mount Sinai Medical Center. It's a lot of parent education and all that. I've never thought about just plopping myself down one day and being like, all right, listen. [laughter] Let me tell you how it is.

Anna: He's fine. They're fine. I love that.

Zibby: They're fine. My biggest parenting lesson that I feel like I probably say too much is that you don't have as much influence as you think you have. I think that my kids, each one is born the way that they are. They're all so different. Their genes may be the same, generally, but they're completely different people. I just am here to watch them. With my first kids, I was on top of them. What are you doing? What are you doing? How can I make you better? At this point, I'm just like, look at this. My son's redesigning his room. How about that?

Anna: The creativity, how wonderful. To that point, with these three moms, they had several other kids. We so often only talk about their famous kids, but that's another really cool way to see even how they approached their different kids and their personalities and what they wanted to do with their lives. I think we can gain a little bit from those lessons as well.

Zibby: There was this show that I used to watch. It was only on for one or two seasons. Then it was canceled. Now I'm going to forget the name again. Something like Bob &... It was about when JFK and his brother Bobby were boys. It was trying to show, what did you see in them when they were boys? It was a lot about their mom and how she was raising them. You should try to dig it up.

Anna: I love that. That feels like it's up my alley.

Zibby: It was so good. Oh, it's called Jack & Bobby. I feel like the only person who watched it. I think maybe I was pregnant. There was some reason I was home watching a lot of TV. It's sort of the same theme. What was it in their childhood? That's not exactly what you were doing, but it's always so interesting to look back and see, could this have been the influence? What about this? How did she handle that? Or is it in spite of your parents that you end up becoming a leader?

Anna: That's definitely the case sometimes, for sure.

Zibby: Go back to how you dug up all this information and wrote this book. Your son must be one and half or something at this point?

Anna: Now he's fifteen months.

Zibby: Pretty close.

Anna: Full-on toddler mode. He's just running around and talking and has some declarative statements. We have no idea what he's saying, but he's really emphatic. [laughs] It's a really cute stage.

Zibby: How did you do this whole book at the same time? You must have done a lot of it before. Tell me about that.

Anna: I started the research before we were expecting my son. Started with my PhD program. Definitely, the journey of becoming a mother while moving through the different stages and then having my son while I was editing the book gave me this very rich, deep, personal connection to the three women that I'm really grateful for because motherhood can be an incredibly scary journey as much as it is really exciting. Especially for black women in the United States, seeing what they were able to push through, but also the way they were able to transform their communities to better meet their needs brought me incredible inspiration. In terms of the nitty-gritty of actually finding all of this information around their lives, it was really hard. I say in the book that it was finding a needle in a haystack. Even if you just take one paragraph, you'd have to break it down into almost each sentence that I had to find a different fact in order to complete that one paragraph because information about them was so scattered. Then there were conflicting documents on what one person said versus another scholar versus all of these things. That's what adds to the complexity of their humanity. It's definitely a challenge that I appreciated.

What frustrated me most was how little there was out there because there's so much more about their lives. I hope maybe the families will be more willing to speak about them now. One of the problems -- maybe it's not a problem, but it's a challenge. They wanted to protect their moms. These are three families who had been through so much scrutiny, so much inquisition from different sources, whether that was scholars or journalists, etc. I definitely felt their need to keep this person who was so important in their life guarded from that kind of scrutiny. I am excited, though, now that they're able to see what the product was and what I wanted to do all along that they feel proud of it and they're happy with what I was able to do. Hopefully, that will allow us to hear even more stories about these three women. So much of it was going through all of the men's works first, then anything that people had written about the men. There is so much. It's incredible. Every single year, there's a new book about one of these men, which I find incredibly brave by these writers because what else is there to say? I don't know how brave they are to go in and say, I have a whole new thing about these three men that we've already learned so much about. There's nothing wrong with that. I just hope we can have multiple books about the moms as well and taking them, like I said earlier, from the margins and bring them to the center. If there was just a small mention, I would take that.

I had to really go away from my computer. I had poster boards all over my walls with these really huge timelines. I was filling them in with Post-it Notes. Then I could see where I had really big gaps which actually tended to be towards the beginning of the women's lives before they were married, before a man made their life worth recording, really. Unfortunately, that's kind of how it appeared and what it symbolized when I had this huge gap between maybe they were born this year, but we know for sure they married their husband that year. This is when they had their famous sons. Going back and filling that in with historical context and going really on a deep dive into Grenada's history and Deal Island's history and Atlanta's history, that's how I just filled it all out and took little parts where other people had said -- Maya Angelou had described Berdis Baldwin, so finding her name in one of Maya Angelou's speeches and learning that she was really short and that Maya Angelou had to bend to half her height to kiss her on the forehead. That was how it all came together. Then I called different historians around the country. I was also able to work with some researchers at different sites who helped me find birth certificates and marriage certificates and doctor's notes, even, from some scholars who studied the men and had archives that no one had asked to see before about the moms. They just shared those with me. It was an incredible journey, really difficult, but also a really beautiful one at the same time.

Zibby: Wow, and a fabulous final product. I feel like, and maybe this is already in the works, but shouldn't this be a three-part series on HBO or something like that?

Anna: I would love that. I really would. There's definitely some interest in it. I do have a film and TV agent, so we will see how that goes. The way I picture it is Netflix limited series, maybe two episodes for each mom, and just getting to better understand, again, what we were saying at the beginning, the context of US history. That's the thing that really connects them because all three of these moms never met each other. Their sons would meet each other eventually, which I think is really a beautiful part of the book as well. To see how something might happen nationally and then you get the scene through that mother's life I think would be really beautiful. We'll see what happens.

Zibby: Okay, fine, it won't be three parts. I've now expanded my order to perhaps a six, seven, or eight-part miniseries.

Anna: Even a musical. I think a musical would be beautiful.

Zibby: Musical?

Anna: Yes, like a Hamilton but where the characters are actually people of color. That would be cool.

Zibby: I miss the theater so much these days.

Anna: Me too.

Zibby: Oh, my gosh. I didn't think I would miss it so much.

Anna: Then you can't go. You're like, I want to go so badly.

Zibby: Right? Anyway, wow, that would be really interesting too. So much you could do. I feel like I want to pause life right here for a minute, fast-forward twenty years, and see what you're doing. I feel like you're going to do really amazing things in the world for so many reasons. I'm just really excited to watch how you end up harnessing your intellect and hard work and perspective and empathy, all of it combined to effect change.

Anna: That means the world to me, Zibby. I really appreciate that. Hopefully, we'll have more conversations. Twenty years from now, I'll have another [indiscernible/crosstalk].

Zibby: When you are whatever you want to be, whether you're the president or whatever -- do you have giant aspirations, or not really?

Anna: It's so crazy because in many ways, I'm living the dream that I've had for so long. I wanted to write books and travel and speak about them. The travel aspect is definitely being hindered by COVID right now, but that's okay. I'm getting to travel from my living room, which is a lot of fun. I really did just want to produce my writing. I do fiction and nonfiction. My next one is going to be a novel that I'm finishing up and hopefully will be able to pitch this year. Just talking to people about it and getting everybody excited about things that can be complicated and theory that people feel maybe is overwhelming and that pushes them out of the conversation but that actually brings them into a welcoming environment where we can sit and talk about things that are affecting us as a nation. We'll see. Maybe that turns into a TV show at some point. I don't know. I'm excited to see. It's fun. Hopefully, maybe having some more kids. I think that's a huge part of my journey as well. I don't know what the future holds, but I'm really enjoying the moment. This is where I've wanted to be for a long time. I cannot believe the book is now out.

Zibby: So exciting. Enjoy it. I didn't mean to not give this moment its due. I was just curious.

Anna: No, I appreciate that. I'm excited too to see what happens. What about you? Where do you want to be?

Zibby: I just want to keep doing more of what I'm doing. I want to just expand all the things I'm starting. I don't know. I just want to see where it all goes.

Anna: It's such a good position to be in where you're like, I love this. Let's just do more of this on bigger levels, bigger scales.

Zibby: If I could just replicate myself, that would be good. [laughter] Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?

Anna: Wow, yeah. For me, I always talk about the fact that it was not an easy journey, necessarily. I am young, but I also applied to PhD programs four times. Didn't really find where I wanted to be. Didn't get into all the programs I wanted to get into. It was really sad. Every time I got these rejection letters, I was like, but everyone told me that I had done what I needed to do to make it to the next step. I've done all the work. Then it just was perfect where I ended up and being at Cambridge and having the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and being able to compete my PhD within three years. I had become really obsessed with doing an American PhD program that was going to take me seven years and when I wasn’t getting into those programs, felt really dejected and felt like maybe I was not understanding what I was supposed to be doing with my life. Then now fast-forward to finally getting into a perfect program and having my book out. You just have to really push forward past those rejection letters. There's going to be so many of them. Even if you want to not necessarily -- self-publishing is a different route. If you want to work with an agent and you want to get a book deal, some agents aren't going to work with you. They're not even going to reply to your query letter.

You'll find the ones who believe in you. Then from there, the ball just keeps rolling. It's probably very cliché. I think everybody says this. It's so much easier said when you've accomplished the thing than when you're in the middle of the struggle. Definitely, from somebody who received a lot of rejection letters and who, at times, felt like maybe I wasn't doing what I really in my heart felt I was supposed to be doing, just to keep pushing, but also being understanding with yourself. Then with the novel that I'm hoping to pitch this year, I've been writing it for four years. It's a long, long process. I remember other writers telling me that at the beginning. I didn't really believe them. I was like, sure, you maybe had to wait that long, but I'm going to have this book out so much sooner. I'm on my sixth round of edits. It's getting closer and closer each time, but it is a journey. Just stick with it if you really love it. It's definitely worth it once you're able to show the world your work.

Zibby: Perfect. Great. Anna, thank you so much. Thanks for the coming on the show. Thanks for your amazing book and all of what you have to teach in so many different ways.

Anna: Thank you so much, Zibby. I really appreciate the time.

Zibby: Take care.

Anna: Bye.

Zibby: Buh-bye.

Dr. Harold Koplewicz, THE SCAFFOLD EFFECT

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Dr. Koplewicz. Thank you so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

Dr. Harold Koplewicz: It's a pleasure, Zibby. Always a pleasure to be here.

Zibby: This is such a treat because you and I work so closely with the Child Mind Institute which you founded in 2009, and which you run amazingly, which helps everybody in the world with childhood mental illness. Do you mind talking just for two seconds about Child Mind Institute before we talk about your amazing book, The Scaffold Effect?

Harold: Sure. In 2009, we decided, a group of us, that we needed an independent nonprofit that was exclusively dedicated to children's mental health disorders. If you think about it, this country has done this before with other disorders. St. Jude's Children's Hospital, for over fifty years, has focused with laser precision on childhood cancer. While that's a very important thing, there's only 15,000 kids in the United States who have cancer. There are seventeen million who have a mental health disorder which means that everyone listening knows and loves one of these kids. It's one out of five. If it's not your child, then it's your niece and nephew or it's your best friend's child. We thought that we needed that independent nonprofit that would play with everyone and collaborate with everyone but only be focused, no matter what, on the mental health needs of kids first and foremost in the United States and now, frankly, globally.

When COVID hit, we had to close the doors to the Child Mind Institute's physical sites in California and New York. In forty-eight hours, we became a tele-mental-health product. We now seen over three hundred kids every day on screens and a few kids in person in both sites. More importantly, we recognized that parents were desperate for information during COVID on how to deal with distance learning, how to deal with kids' anxiety on their demoralization because they're losing so many things big and small. We produced over 160 Facebook Lives on parenting during COVID. Every day, we had one for a while in Spanish and in English. Now it's once a week. We started to realize that parents want authoritative, scientifically sound information. Because of that, we don't take money from the pharmaceutical industry, from liquor, from tobacco and guns so parents can trust childmind.org. It's turned out to be very rewarding because the need is there. Parents, more so than ever, are reaching for information that can make them better parents and make their kids have an easier time.

Zibby: It's so great because you have this amazing website, childmind.org, which has been such a resource for me. You can google anything. It's always Child Mind that has the right answers. Then of course, you do all of this work to combat the stigma of childhood mental illness, which is so important, and the research to find a biomarker.

Harold: It was really interesting with stigma. For years, we've run a campaign called #MyYoungerSelf. You get important, influential individuals who will discuss in a minute or two, their struggle as a kid with either ADHD, anxiety, depression, dyslexia. This year, we went with #WeThriveInside. We got forty remarkable movie stars, politicians, poets who were talking about, how were they managing their mental health while they had to stay inside? What was going inside their head? Believe it or not, Zibby, we got two hundred and fifty million eyeballs, not only four or five billion media impressions, but two hundred and fifty million people came to watch one of those videos. COVID has been a horrific experience for so many kids and so many parents and so many families. It also forced us to be innovative and recognize that there had to be a new way to get information out there to parents and to give kids hope that this too will pass.

Zibby: Amazing. It's amazing. I'm so honored to be a board member. I know I'm not doing my part enough, but it's not for lack of loyalty. [laughs]

Harold: Zibby, as we are about to talk about The Scaffold Effect, one of the most important things -- we talk about childcare -- is self-care. You amaze me because the word juggling and being a master jugglery -- I know you have four kids. I know you're married. I know you're a dedicated daughter and granddaughter and sister. On top of that, you're an entrepreneur. You're a philanthropist. You really not only talk the talk, you're walking the walk. The fact that you're doing this, I think it's perfect because you're one of the moms who does find time to read so that the other moms, and dads by the way, who can't read can get some wisdom from you. I've always been a big fan.

Zibby: You're so sweet.

Harold: That's why it's an honor for me, A, to have you on the board of the Child Mind Institute, but to spend time with you.

Zibby: That's just so nice. Yes, I have to say, and you will be proud of me, that when I read the whole section on self-care yesterday morning, I was like, I am not doing any of these things. I was imagining myself talking to you and you were saying -- here, I have to find the right section. You would be saying to me, are you doing this? Are you eating greens? Are you exercising? Are you sleeping? Are you eating well? I was thinking, I am not doing any of those things. I finally got myself on the Peloton yesterday because of your column. Here, self-care checklist. This is for parents, by the way. "Exercise, sleep, green food, affection, nature walks, playdates with friends." I'm never too old for a playdate. "Alone time, creative time, romantic time, laughter, music, hobbies, volunteering, meditation." I don't know any mom out there who is finding time for all these things. If you are finding time for every single thing on this list, call me.

Harold: Think of it as a Chinese menu. You can just have a few, or à la carte. You can pick from the top or the bottom. I have to tell you, every time I'm on an airplane and the flight attendant says, please put the mask on yourself before you put it on your kid, it just seems wrong. If, god forbid, I was on an airplane and the oxygen was missing, I would race to give it to one of my sons. It doesn't help. You give it to your son, and then you might not be able to put it on yourself because you'll be dizzy or you'll be unconscious. The idea that we have to take care of ourselves is not in our DNA, but first ourselves so we have the strength to take care of our kids, and more than one kid sometimes.

Zibby: This just goes to the whole theme of your book, which is so brilliant. I can't believe it hasn’t been thought of before as the perfect analogy, this whole notion of scaffolding and that, really, it's your child that's being built, and the blueprint and the foundation and everything. You are just around the outside. You're just trying to help as it grows. Then once it's fully formed, you can start taking down the scaffolding, which I would like to have taken down --

Harold: -- And if you're child's been paying attention, they’ll know when to put the scaffolding back.

Zibby: Yes, when they need it.

Harold: They go off to college and they're struggling with essay writing, they’ll go to the writing center to get some extra help. That's a scaffold. If they need a tutor in math, they will get one. It's not that you're hovering all time. You've built a confident, strong building. I think the one part that we have to always remember, though, is that as you're building that scaffold -- you use pillars, structure, and support and encouragement. Then you have planks. The important part is to recognize that the building sometimes has decided to become a ranch, not a skyscraper. We can't force that. Otherwise, you're all going to be very disappointed. It's not going to be a sturdy structure. I always think about the fact that my oldest son was great at science. I wanted him to be a doctor. Now, I never said it out loud, but it just made sense. You're good at science. You're good at math. I love being a doctor. Why wouldn't I want my kid to be a doctor? At a certain point, it became very clear, he actually said it to me in high school, he said, "I hate blood, Dad. I'll have to become a psychiatrist if I become a doctor. I don't really like kids, so I'll always be the wrong doctor Dr. Koplewicz." He then, at a certain point, decided that he loved being a DJ. So totally out of character because he's a socially reticent guy. Okay, we're building a split-level. That's what we're getting. He was a white Jewish DJ, Mark Ronson, DJ Cassidy, and DJ Josh K. He was really into it. It looked terrific. He was at Brown, which is a perfect match. He was going to go off to LA afterwards.

The summer between his junior and his senior year, he went and worked at Goldman Sachs, which didn't make any sense to me whatsoever. It was kind of a cultural mismatch. He was still DJing. He was producing a documentary called Pigeon Men about Irish convicts who competitively fly pigeons. The whole thing didn't make sense that he was going to Goldman. At six weeks, they gave him a review. They said to him, "By the way, you're a bad communicator. You're not enthusiastic. You're intellectually not curious." To his credit, he stood up and he said, "You know, I could be a better communicator. I'm biochemically not enthusiastic. I don't smile enough, but I'm always intellectually curious." He ripped apart the five deals. They said, "We're surprised." For the next four weeks, he was a maniac. He would go to work in a taxi screaming at himself in the back of the cab. "Smile! Smile!" Why? It didn't make any sense to me. Of course, at the end of the summer, he calls us and he says, "I have good news and bad news." I said, "What's the bad news?" "I have to tell you the good news. The good news is I got a job offer from Goldman Sachs. If I sign right away, I get ten thousand dollars." "What's the bad news?" "I got a job offer at Goldman Sachs." I said, "This seems like a cultural mismatch."

I can't get over the fact that he decided, no, private equity is what he wants to do. He's running a private equity firm today. It's an example, Zibby, of recognizing I'm not getting a skyscraper. I've gotten used to getting this split-level. Then he says, guess what? I'm building a ranch. If you want to be a good parent, if you want your kids to feel confident, you still support, you still structure, and you still give encouragement. I find it fascinating because he speaks a different language. He spoke a different language when he was a DJ. Now he's talks this finance talk where I'm nodding my head pretending I know what he's talking about. That's what a good scaffold does. It moves around. It doesn't say it's set in cement, you have to do this. It happens to all of us, by the way. I think if you remember the pillars, structure, support, encouragement -- then there are planks that really are very important. The one plank that I have so much trouble with is dispassion. There's part of me that feels like, what the hell are you doing? Snap out of it. That just doesn't work, too much crying, too much yelling, too much laughter. It has to be their building, not your building.

Zibby: I feel like you were hard on yourself when you told the whole story of your son going to camp and how you brought your own emotions about your separation and your unfortunate time at camp. Actually, I found you beating yourself up. I was like, I don't think you did anything wrong here, personally, by telling your kid how sad you were about it.

Harold: The only problem was that my wife, their mother, loved camp. From the time she was seven to the time she was fourteen, she couldn't wait. She actually swam in college and played tennis in college. She was a natural athlete. I wasn't. I was also separation anxious. That's what it was. I missed my mom and dad so desperately. It was hard to sleep. It was hard to concentrate. My kids were really good athletes, not because of me, because of the genes they inherited from their mother. When they went to camp and I came up there, Joshua was really struggling. He said, "I want to go home." When we walked into the woods, he said to me, "Dad, there's no one here to love me," I felt like, oh, my god. He knows how to throw a ball. He knows how serve in tennis, but he's got the separation anxiety. I literally got weepy. He then was comforting me. The fact that he then started comforting me was the part that is not dispassionate. It's all right to show your kid that you're upset, that you empathize, you have warmth, but it's not his job to say, "Dad, don't cry." It's my job to say, how are we going to work through this? How are we going to figure out your life at camp so it's easier, that it's more fun? There are times where you say, okay, we declare victory. You're coming home. Parenting, in my opinion, is the best thing you could ever do. I remember distinctly holding my first kid in the delivery room and thinking, this is amazing. All that oxytocin is in the air. Everyone's so euphoric. The baby actually looks like my father-in-law and my mother. It's this weird sensation. Then you realize that there's no book. There's no test. There's no license. Yet it can be the most rewarding experience. It truly changes you. Yes, getting married changes you, but all of a sudden, it's this one-way street where you realize you are the scaffold. They're not scaffolding you. You really have a terrific job in letting them be who they're supposed to be and just help them guide the building along.

Zibby: You also bring up this really important point which I think has not been articulated quite as well before about parent burnout and how to tell if you're -- you have all these great ways for parents to identify what's going on with their kids. You have how you know if it's a normal level of anxiety versus a problematic level of anxiety versus an anxiety disorder. Then you let us do it as parents too, and how to know if you're actually going through burnout. You have normal, problem, disorder. "Several times a day, you think, I'm a bad parent. That means you have parental burnout disorder." Oh, my gosh, I must have it. "You are exhausted." Well, I don't feel any resentment. "When you look at your child, you don't feel the same connection you once did. You feel extreme irritation and frustration as a parent without reason. You react with verbal or physical abuse --" no, of course not -- "to your child." Let's talk about parental burnout for a minute because with everybody at home with their kids for eleven months now...

Harold: Zibby, I didn't write the book thinking about COVID. You better than anyone know how long it takes to come up with an idea for a book, write the outline, get a publisher, write the book. Then it takes almost nine months for the publisher to publish the book. This wasn't what I was thinking about. Now since we're in the middle of COVID, more so than ever, I think everyone has to scaffold their kids, and they have to scaffold themselves. I think that most of us wake up, and it's Groundhog Day. Again? Again with the mask? The news is so disconcerting because we're going in the wrong direction. We're going in the right direction. We're running out of vaccine. It's really important to stay in the moment. If there was ever a time to help you prevent burnout, is to just worry about the moment. Breathe one breath in, one breath out. I think of the fact that I love to hike. I was hiking in Chile. Lots of young people are around me, ten, twenty years younger. Someone said to me, "Oh, my god, it's so much fun hiking with you because you're so determined and so gradual." I'm thinking, I'm trying to get one breath in and one breath out. [laughs] I'm walking slow because I'm barely breathing.

That's how we have to deal sometimes. I'm in the moment. I'm going to appreciate the flowers and the sounds of the birds. I'm going to get one breath in and one breath out. I will get through this. I will take breaks. I will step back and say, I need a second wind. I think that right now, to prevent parent burnout goes back to great childcare is self-care. There's so many easy ways to restart yourself. Can we get back into sleep hygiene? Can we try to get close to eight hours? Can we force ourselves to turn off everything at twelve o'clock and stay asleep until eight o'clock? Okay, seven o'clock? Or can we go to bed at eleven? Can we get on a routine? Routines work for kids, but they also work for us. Even if we just do a minute of mindfulness every day, just sit with our thoughts for sixty seconds and no matter how disturbing the thoughts are, don't judge them, that in itself will help. I think we also have to be kind to ourselves. My intern has just said to me, "Be careful. After COVID, there'll be three types of people, hugs, chunks, and drunks."

Zibby: That is so funny.

Harold: I've never had so much liquor brought to the house.

Zibby: Wait, say it again.

Harold: Hugs, chunks, and drunks. If I'm not careful, I'm going to be a drunken chunk. You can't, tomorrow, lose ten pounds. You can take a walk every day no matter what. If you can't take a walk, you can get on the elliptical. If you can't get on an elliptical, you can at least do some stretching. Simple, bite-size pieces. Just think about it. You're not only doing it for yourself, you're doing it so that you can be a better parent. If you don't want to just do it because you deserve it, you're doing it because without having strength, without having sleep, without eating well, without also having some fun -- this is the hard part of COVID. It's really hard to have fun, especially for extroverts. People like me, it's one thing talking to people on a screen, but it's so nice to have human contact. It's freezing cold here in the Northeast, so you're not going to be able to have a meal with someone. You're going to have to have a brisk walk. There's ways around this if you know what you need. If you take care of your own needs, then I really think, again, you'll have the energy to offer structure, support, and encouragement for your kids. This is hard. I don't want to minimize how challenging it is to be a very good parent.

Zibby: Can we talk for just two seconds about anxiety in the time of COVID? I know this isn't even in your book. I hope that I've made a good case for everybody to read The Scaffold Effect. The subtitle is Raising Resilient, Self-Reliant, and Secure Kids in an Age of Anxiety. I just want to talk a little more about anxiety. Typically, anxiety, and an anxiety disorder in particular, is when you have irrational levels of fear about something. That's part of it. There is actually something to be super afraid of. When my daughter says she's really worried and talks about it a lot, I'm like, I'm also really worried about it, but who knows because I also have so much anxiety I don't even know what to say. [laughs] There is actually a big deal. It's not like we're on a plane worried if it's going to crash and the odds are not really high and it's irrational. It is actually possible. It's happening to everybody. Especially in families like ours where we've lost people in the family like Kyle's mom and grandmother, we've seen it up close. How do you deal with a combination, basically, of anxiety of PTSD when things in the world are literally anxiety-provoking? Does that still mean you have anxiety? Is it abnormal?

Harold: I think it's normal, but how do you manage anxiety? Again, the scaffolding works even if you have an anxiety disorder. More so than ever, I think we need to scaffold ourselves and scaffold others. What do we say? We're wearing a mask. We wash our hands frequently. We do social distancing. We are doing everything possible to avoid getting this virus, but it's a very catchy virus. If that happens, things are better today than they were last March. The doctors are better at treating it. Even if we get it, we will be able to get a different type of treatment than we had before, but we're not going to get it. We're going to try every possible way but still live our lives in a new way. We're clearly not going to go to a big party. We're clearly going to only go to people that we know are following the same rules and regulations. It's normal to be scared. I'm uncomfortable also, but I'm getting used to this new normal. It reminds me, after 9/11, I was doing the Today Show a lot. Katie Couric was the host. We actually were friends. We were neighbors. I was doing a piece with her. I said, "The president's in charge. Nothing bad is going to happen. We learned from our mistakes." Katie actually said on the air, "How do you know?" I said, "Because we learned from our mistakes." I thought, is she going to say, "Chicken Little, the sky is falling"? Once we were off the air, Katie said to me -- her husband had passed away just a year before. She said, "I feel like Jay just died again. The kids are back in my bed. We're so regressed. I'm on TV four hours a day instead of two hours."

It can overwhelm you. It can distort your cognitions because you get so anxious you think to yourself, I'm going to wash my hands one more time. You have to balance it with saying, I'm going to do everything that I'm supposed to do to keep my kids safe and keep my husband safe and keep me safe and, if possible, my parents, but I'm going to live a different kind of life. I'm not going to indoor restaurants. If I do go into an indoor restaurant, I know there's a certain amount of risk and I'm willing to take it. I think that's what we have to do with our kids. Schools are struggling with this. They're in session. They're out of session. They're online. I think I told you that my wife teaches middle school students art. It is so challenging on a screen. I hear her. It sounds like a reality television show. The kid, Jason, has fallen off the screen. "Jason, where are you?" Then she's doing stretching. Why is there stretching in an art class? "Everyone stand up and stretch." She's not accepting, which I keep saying, everyone has to readjust their expectations for this year. It's like talking to a wall. No, she is going to still teach the kids perspective. They're going to make Greek masks. How are you getting the material to all the kids? She's writing progress reports. She actually will tell you, "I'm doing it because I think it's good for the kids to know that there's still a routine. We haven't given up yet." There is limitations. I think that's all right. That’ll make you less anxious if you think to yourself, this is not a year where I'm expecting everyone to get As. Some of us are driven to always do our best. That's part of the anxiety. This is one of those years where best is actually going to be different. Zibby, being a podcaster, this is a year for podcasts. This is a year for reading books. This is not the year to go to the theater or go to movie theaters or go to the ballet.

It's a different year. Managing that for our kids and modeling that for our kids is really very, very important and very hard because you don't want to tell them, don't worry. You have to say to them, what are you worried about? The other thing that I have to tell you that in The Scaffold Effect I would hope people will take away is there's one piece where we're talking about awareness. It's very interesting to tell kids and tell ourselves what is wrong. We're hardwired to fix things, particularly parents. If you could remember, can I catch my kid doing something good? Can I say three specific positive things to my child for every one critical thing? By the way, as a husband of forty years, it's not a bad thing to consider with your spouse. I forget it all the time. It's kind of like, where's the coffee? Where's this? Is no one going to iron my shirts? No, no one's going to iron your shirts. [laughs] It's this kind of rapid complaining, complaining, complaining. After a while, it's very hard to hear the good stuff when you say, god, you smell great or you look so beautiful. I think that if we consciously are aware that we have that negative tracking -- it's part of the things that we do all the time. We are looking to fix things, so we're always watching what the kid's doing wrong. Then the second thing we do is confirmation bias. We're watching only Fox. We're only watching MSNBC. Most importantly, we see certain children as bad and certain children as good. Then they can't get out of the box. We have to pull back. That's the whole concept of making a new blueprint. I think that's so important, Zibby. Otherwise, COVID is just going to make parenting extra hard. Scaffolding is going to make it somewhat easier. It gives you that structure, no pun intended, to try to make things easier for you on a day-to-day basis. It's a do-over. I love the idea that parents are allowed to say, I think that was a mistake, I'm taking a do-over. It's not written in ink. It's written in pencil. We're erase. We'll do it again.

Zibby: I love it. That's one of things that was so effective about this book. Instead of just giving theories or general ideas, you give such specific advice that is really actionable. I think that's something that we're all -- I speak on behalf of parents everywhere -- very grateful to receive in such a non-judgmental way. It's awesome. Thank you. Thank you for coming on this podcast. Thank you for this amazing resource, The Scaffold Effect, for parents everywhere. It is a must have on your bedside table, really awesome, particularly now. Congratulations on the book.

Harold: Thank you, Zibby. Thank you so much for having a conversation with me. It's always a pleasure.

Zibby: Now you see why I am often too busy for board meetings. [laughter] Because I do this all day long. No, I'm kidding. I'll be there next time. Bye.

Harold: Thank you.

Adam Grant, THINK AGAIN

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Adam. Thank you so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books" to discuss Think Again.

Adam Grant: Thank you, Zibby. I'm thrilled to be here, but you should really reserve your enthusiasm for the end because we don't know how this is going to go.

Zibby: You're right. I might change my mind a hundred times. I'm going to rethink the whole thing as we go.

Adam: Maybe you should. In fact, maybe you shouldn't have invited me at all.

Zibby: I have been debating that. [laughter]

Adam: Maybe there are some things you shouldn't rethink.

Zibby: In case anyone is confused, we are joking like this because that is the topic of Adam's book, The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know. I personally have found immense validation at the whole premise of this book being that it's okay to rethink because I literally rethink every decision I ever make to the distress of everyone around me because I am constantly changing plans. Everybody has sort of viewed this as a weakness. Now I'm going to view it as a strength.

Adam: I'm not sure I really meant to come and just validate all of your analysis paralysis and all the ways that you might drive yourself and other people crazy if you rethink everything. [laughter] I do worry, Zibby, that we live in a world where people are expected to stick to their convictions and we think that consistency is a sign of strength. Every time I hear people say that, I think, if you never change your mind, how are you ever learning or growing?

Zibby: It's so true. I was actually talking about the topic of your book with a friend of mine and what it was about. She was like, "I'm so glad someone said that because I always feel bad for politicians when they have a different belief about a certain topic ten years later. Why are they not allowed to change their mind? I change my mind on lots of things," she said.

Adam: I've been thinking a lot about that lately because we see so many headlines about flip-flopping. I do think there are times when we should be critical of that. If you're changing your mind just to please your tribe or if you haven't actually changed your mind but you're towing a party line, then we probably shouldn't give people credit for evolving. If people have reflected deeply on an issue, if they’ve looked at the evidence, if they’ve had conversations that led them to question some of their convictions, I think that's a sign of progress in many cases.

Zibby: Yes. I didn't mean to suggest flip-flopping to cater to the whims of popular vote would be a positive, but just that people are allowed to change their minds, as we do about lots of things in the course of daily life.

Adam: Bring it on.

Zibby: [laughs] Your book talked about so many different amazing things. One thing that I loved was when you talk about kids and when people ask them what they want to be when they grow up. I have been taking issue with this question a lot lately when people ask my kids. I'm thinking, not only did I not know for sure, although I wanted to be a writer, I've changed my career and my job a hundred times. Not a hundred times. A lot. I don't think it's even a fair question anymore. People don't know, necessarily, even when they're our age what they want to be. Things are constantly evolving. Tell me about that and your whole discussion of it in the book.

Adam: I think it's a great way to get kids trapped in plans that don't actually make any sense for them. I remember as a kid being asked, what do you want to be when you grow up? The only acceptable answer was something heroic. I had to say an astronaut or a filmmaker. I had no idea what I wanted to be. It never occurred to me until much later that I didn't have to define myself solely in terms of work. It's not an acceptable answer to say, I want to be a good dad, or for you to say, I want to be a good mom. It's also not acceptable to say, I want to be a person of integrity or generosity. This is such a peculiar American thing. If you go to Europe, people don't ask, what do you want to be? They don't even ask you, what do you do? when they meet you because it's considered rude. They'd rather talk about what you love to do. At some level, Zibby, I think it would be a lot kinder to kids if instead of saying, what do you want to be when you grow up? we asked them, what are all the different things you want to do? and allowed them to recognize that they can have many careers and many identities. What they think is exciting to them might change over time. Maybe even the job that they want doesn't exist yet.

Zibby: Totally. I mean, podcasting, what is that? What are we even doing right now? Zoom, podcasting?

Adam: This was not a job when we were kids.

Zibby: No. Would've saved me a lot of rethinking of what I wanted to do had I known [indiscernible/crosstalk].

Adam: You can talk to people, and that’s work? Really? Sign me up.

Zibby: I know. It's amazing. It's like a total joke. Speaking of kids, by the way, how great that, I think it was your daughter who came up with the cover idea with the match and the water. Awesome.

Adam: Yeah. Joanna's twelve. It was such an exciting moment for me because I knew we needed a cover that would get people to think again, but nothing we tried was working. I just happened to mention offhand one day that we were looking for a cover idea. Joanna says, "What if you had a match with water instead of fire?" It just clicked instantly. It really made me rethink where I get my ideas. My process was way too linear. I was like, we need an optical illusion, but a lot of them have been done before. They're clichéd. Then the new ones we tried just didn't work. They were too confusing. Joanna said, "Rethinking is about doing the opposite many times. Let me think about opposites." She said, "Water and fire." She didn't even know that the opening story was about firefighters. I just thought, this is perfect.

Zibby: I was going to ask if it was based on that and how perceptive she was. That was amazing.

Adam: Complete coincidence.

Zibby: Wow. I've gotten my kids involved in my anthology book covers by having them just pose, but yours are now the idea generators.

Adam: This is the next step for your kids.

Zibby: This is the next step, yes, a hundred percent. In your TED talk, you talked about how you're a pre-crastinator, which I loved. Tell me a little more about that.

Adam: Are you one too?

Zibby: I am one too, yes.

Adam: I had a hunch. I've always taken joy and pride in getting things done early. I was the kid in college who annoyed all my friends because I finished a draft of my thesis a few months in advance. When I have a deadline -- let me say this a little differently. When I'm excited about a project, I want to finish it as soon as possible because I have this image of how great it could be. Every minute I'm not working on it is a source of anxiety. It might not get done. It might be terrible. I know a lot of procrastinators who feel that anxiety at the last minute. I just feel it a few weeks or a few months ahead of schedule. Pre-crastinating is essentially feeling that urge to finish way ahead of schedule. Tell me about your pre-crastination.

Zibby: I make false deadlines to avoid the anxiety of running up against a deadline. Then as you said, all my anxiety spikes around my false deadline. I don't think I'm actually doing any good, so I felt relieved that there was now a term to describe this. Thank you.

Adam: I keep meeting people who say, look, I understand that it's probably worse to be an extreme procrastinator than it is to be pre-crastinator, but this isn't fun either. I'm always tricking myself into thinking that I have all this pressure on me to do something. It's actually taking some of the joy out of my work.

Zibby: Totally. Let's talk a little more about rethinking in general and why you wanted to write a whole book about it. Why is it so important that people know that it's not only okay, but actually beneficial to rethink and dig deep and poke holes in our own beliefs and come up with new theories? Why is this important?

Adam: There's so many reasons. The place I would start is to say that our first thoughts, our intuitions, are often not our best thoughts. There's some research on students taking tests showing that if they have a first instinct and then they change their answer, on average, they actually improve their scores. Yet when you tell students that, they still hesitate to rethink their answers because, I think in part, there's this regret that comes from saying, I had the right answer, and then I undid it and I made a big mistake. Whereas if you stuck to your first answer and you didn't rethink it, there's really nothing to second-guess. For so many of us, it's easy to prefer the comfort of conviction over the discomfort of doubt. Every time you question your own opinions or your own knowledge, you're saying, you know what, I might be living in an unpredictable world. I might lack some control over my life. I might be excluded from the tribe of people who sees the world a certain way. Yet we live in a rapidly changing world. As knowledge evolves, as facts change, if we don't update our thinking, it's pretty easy to get stuck in the past. I think we probably should put an expiration on a lot of the beliefs that we form.

Zibby: Is there a belief you have that you've changed lately?

Adam: I have so many. Where do you want to start?

Zibby: I don't know. Something about parenting.

Adam: I've rethought almost everything I used to believe about parenting. One of the big ones for me actually is a little bit of a twist on growth mindset. I was really heavily influenced, as I'm sure you and many others were too, by Carol Dweck's work and said, okay, we should praise effort, not ability, was the big thing that stuck with me.

Zibby: The power of yet. They can't do it yet.

Adam: Exactly, not yet. I haven't figured this out yet, such a key phrase. Yet then I read some research showing that in the realm of generosity, if you want to raise kids to be giving and caring, it's actually more effective to say you are a helper or you are a giver than to praise them for helping or giving. I've started to wonder if there's something about character that's different from achievement where when you say, you are a kind person, it actually starts to internalize it as part of their identity. Then the next time they have a chance to do something that shows compassion for someone else, they think, that's who I am. My wife Allison rolls her eyes at me every once in a while when she catches me saying, you're a giver, which just sounds really cheesy. I think the data are really interesting. Even as young as three, if you invite kids to be helpers instead of just to help, they're about twenty-five to thirty percent more likely to show up and help. Even that young, they want to earn the identity. That's something I've started to think differently about. What do you make of that?

Zibby: I love that. I think I'm going to use that to coerce them to do more chores by saying, you are the dishes helper tonight, versus, do the dishes. I'm going to try it.

Adam: I think there's potential there.

Zibby: I think there's a lot of room for growth.

Adam: I should say a caveat. Carol has some work showing that you still have to express disappointment when they don't earn that identity, though. When parents show disappointment and say, you know what, I know you're a helper, but you weren’t helpful today, that cultivates guilt. As Erma Bombeck put it best, guilt is the gift that keeps on giving.

Zibby: I love Erma Bombeck. I wish I could interview her.

Adam: Same.

Zibby: If anyone ever asked me that question, which no one has, but for the fictitious interviewer who wants to know who I would like to have dinner with who's not alive anymore, I would pick her.

Adam: That is such a great answer.

Zibby: Yes, to a nonexistent question. Thank you. I'm glad I lined that one up.

Adam: [laughs] People ask it all the time. In theory, you should always have an answer to that.

Zibby: Right. It's at the ready. Tell me a little bit about the power of listening because you write a lot about that in the book. I particularly loved this little illustration you have where it says, "Let me interrupt your expertise with my confidence," which is not only about listening, but also about the unbridled confidence.

Adam: I'm sorry. What were you saying? [laughter] I couldn't resist.

Zibby: I almost --

Adam: -- Close call.

Zibby: Glad I had coffee. I'm with it. I got it. Okay, yes, power of listening.

Adam: The power of listening. I was really profoundly affected by this work in counseling psychology on what's called motivational interviewing. It grew out of counselors who were doing work with people who were trying to overcome addictions. They found that preaching at people and prosecuting them for doing the wrong thing just didn't tend to work. It made people defensive. Suddenly, they realized you often are in a position where you can't motive someone else to change. What you could do, though, is help them find their own motivation to change. One of the best ways to do that is to do what we're doing right now, which is actually to interview them, to ask them questions about what changes they’ve considered and how they went so far and then reflect back to them, hold up a mirror and help them see, you know what, I have some reasons to stay the course, but I also have some reasons to consider changing my beliefs or my behaviors. Then if they express an interest in changing, you help them think through what their plan might be. This has really changed the way I have conversations with a lot of people, whether it's friends who are concerned about vaccines or it's students that I give advice to in office hours.

For so much of my life, I've felt like my job is to try to help people get closer to the truth and when I think I've already found the truth, okay, I need to enlighten you. It does such a disservice to their own freedom of choice and also their own expertise and experience. What I've tried to do now when a student comes into office hours, for example, and they ask me for advice on a tough career decision, I'll start by saying, tell me why you're here. Are you here because you just want validation for a decision that you've already made? Are you looking for someone to help you think through what the thought process should be? Do you want me to challenge some of your assumptions and help you rethink what might be a premature conviction? Once I understand that, I can just ask them a bunch of questions to say, what are your values? What are you trying to achieve in this career decision? Then once I understand that, look, it's your choice, but here's how I might think through the decision if I were you. Based on what I've heard, here are the criteria that seem to matter to you. I end up being much more helpful in those situations. I also learn a lot more because I find out that the reasons I had for preferring a different path are not necessarily their reasons.

Zibby: So interesting. I feel like you can apply that to couples counseling and other areas of times when people end up not listening to each other, especially, perhaps, if everybody's been home for almost a year because of worldwide pandemic and are having trouble getting along with the people they live with. Not that this is happening to me, but I'm just saying.

Adam: Hypothetically. It is interesting. Motivational interviewing's been applied in some of those areas. There's work on divorcing parents, for example, trying to reach a settlement about who takes the kids and what the schedule looks like. When the mediator uses this approach and says, I want to interview each of you about what your goals and your values and your intentions are, they're significantly more likely to actually reach an agreement. The work on listening, to me, is so interesting, that just sitting down with someone that you sometimes don't get along with and saying, hey, I realize I haven't always done a good job hearing you. I'd love to ask you some questions to better understand your viewpoint. I'm just going to listen for three, four, maybe five minutes. That is enough to create significant understanding between both people.

Zibby: It's so interesting. I've thought a lot about listening because I do this all day. I know I talk a lot too, but I really am listening. I listen to people. I hear them. I think about it all the time, and what it does just to have someone know that someone's listening. That alone, no matter what you say after, wow, somebody cares about what I have to say for half an hour. I really do care. I feel like it makes people so grateful for that simple act of just not being distracted and listening.

Adam: It's such a rare commodity, isn't it?

Zibby: I know. It's so simple.

Adam: It is. It's the most basic skill that we're supposed to have. You're a professional listener. It's surprising how rare it is for us to sit down with someone else and have a conversation where they're not just waiting for their turn to talk, but they're genuinely curious about who we are and how we got there. I'm reminded of some work I did studying astronauts. Their big challenge was to build trust. This is going to sound like a bad joke. It's not. There was an American, an Italian, and a Russian that were supposed to go to the International Space Station together. They didn't see eye to eye on a lot of things. There was some gender biases and some culture clashes. One of the things they did around a campfire one night during their training was they told their origin stories. They listened to each other talk about the defining moment when they realized that they wanted to go to outer space. All of a sudden, they realized, you know what, we have all these differences, but we also share a really uncommon commonality, something that only hundreds of people in human history can relate to. It was sort of a turning point for me because I realized everyone has an origin story. We've all had those defining moments that have shifted our ideas of who we want to be or how we want to lead our lives. How often have we actually shared those moments with the people that we interact with every day? I would say probably not often enough.

Zibby: Totally. Also, I find if you ask people even something simple about themselves when they're not expecting it, like how you met your spouse because I'm always totally curious about those relationship origin stories, you end up learning so much about the person in another context too. People just want to tell you. I really want to hear. It works out perfectly. Speaking of wanting to hear, tell me a little more about how you got to where you are and how, also, your professional diving experience somehow made its way into your story.

Adam: I'll start with diving. I fell in love with diving right before I started high school. It was probably a bad idea because I was afraid of heights. I was completely inflexible. I walked like Frankenstein. I had an incredible coach, Eric Best, who said, "I will not cut an athlete who wants to be here. I will invest as much time in coaching you as you put into the sport." He saw more potential in me than I saw in myself. My biggest hurdle in diving, aside from all the physical limitations, was I was just terrified of trying new dives. I would sit at the end of the board shaking waiting to -- I look back now and think, what was I doing? Why? I remember one practice in particular where I was supposed to do two and a half summersaults and a twist and dive in headfirst without getting lost. I just stood there shaking, frozen, for twenty, twenty-five minutes. Finally, Eric said, "Adam, are you going to do this dive one day? Are you ever going to do this dive?" I said, "Of course. I know this is a major goal of mine. It will help me reach some of the heights that I've really dreamed of for the last few years." He said, "Then what are you waiting for?" There were so many moments like that in my diving career that really helped me appreciate the importance of psychology. As I started coaching, and especially after I retired from diving, I found myself applying a lot of what I had learned from Eric with other divers and wanting to pay that forward. At some point, it clicked that if I became a psychologist, there was so much knowledge collecting dust in a bunch of boring academic journal articles that could actually help people live more meaningful lives and maybe have fewer regrets too. I think diving probably planted a lot of those early seeds.

Zibby: Wow. You did all the diving. You started coaching. You stumbled on psychology. You decided that was for you. Then what happened?

Adam: Then I was lucky to have a few professors who just transformed the way I saw the world. I took a social psychology class with Ellen Langer where every day I would come into class and I'd have an assumption shattered. Then I took an organizational psychology class with Richard Hackman who really turned upside my view of what it meant to have a motivating job. He got me to rethink what my career path might be. One of the things I hated most about the "What do you want to be when you grow up?" question was there were a lot of different things I wanted to do. I didn't see how they could fit into one career. As I listened to Richard talking about how he didn't know what he wanted to do, so he just got a job where he got to study all the jobs he found interesting -- he studied orchestra conductors when he wanted to be a musician. He studied airline cockpit crews when he wanted to be a pilot. He studied intelligence agencies and how to make their teams great when he wanted to be a spy. I thought, this is the perfect job. I'm going to try to study and improve other people's jobs. It really crystalized then.

Zibby: When did writing make its way into your life?

Adam: I've always loved writing. The first time I thought seriously about being a writer was the summer after freshman year of college when I started writing a novel. I was reading a lot of thrillers and mysteries and sci-fi books. I thought it would be fun to try to write one. Then I got busy and forgot about it. Then the next year, I read a bunch of books that really took psychology and made it mainstream. I started reading Malcom Gladwell. I read Csikszentmihalyi on flow. I read Cialdini on influence. I was mesmerized by the way that psychology came to life. I thought at some point in my career, maybe I want to do that. Then I forgot about it again and got very focused on doing research and teaching my classes. Then after I got tenure, I felt like I no longer had an excuse to only communicate to other professors and decided it was time to try reaching a broader audience.

Zibby: Then what was it like when Originals became such a hit?

Adam: It was sort of a shock. I had really taken the experience a little bit for granted. The short version of the story is, my first book, Give and Take, came out in 2013. I didn't expect anyone to read it. I promised my students that I was going to try to build a bridge from the ivory tower to main street. It got a lot more interest and attention than I expected. At some point during that process, I just started to take for granted that I was an author. Originals comes out. A friend calls me and says, "What are you doing to celebrate and mark the moment?" I said, "Nothing. I'm a writer. That's what we do. We write. I write books. This isn't a milestone." She said, "Really? Seriously? You poured more than a year of your life into this project. Shouldn't you do something to appreciate it?" After thinking about it for a little while, I realized I need to get better at getting in touch with my past self. What I ended up doing is thinking about, how excited would the me of five years ago have been if I had not only published a second book, but people actually read it? I would've been ecstatic. I've tried to keep that in mind every time I accomplish something that seems worthwhile or took a lot of effort, to say, I might not appreciate this now, but there's an old version of me that would've been overjoyed. I need to keep that in mind.

Zibby: The old version who was playing Nintendo so much that you got written up in a local paper. That version, perhaps? [laughs]

Adam: That version, yes, the dark side of Nintendo kid. Who would've thought, I guess I'm probably going to be a professional video gamer?

Zibby: Do you have any advice to aspiring authors?

Adam: Advice to aspiring authors, I think it's dangerous to take advice from people who don't know you at all, but I would say that the advice you give to other people is often the advice you need to take for yourself. If you're an aspiring writer, you probably know some other people who like to write, maybe even some people who write for a living. I'm sure they’ve come to you at some point asking for advice on what to write or how to overcome procrastination or how to improve their work. I would just say pay attention to the guidance that you give them and then apply it to your own writing.

Zibby: Love it. Adam, thank you. This was so much fun. Thank you for not making me rethink my decision to have you on my show and for spending the time with me today.

Adam: It was such a treat to be here, Zibby. Thank you for having me. I have to ask you, is there something you think I should rethink?

Zibby: Maybe how often you post about amazing podcasters. Maybe you should do that more often. [laughs]

Adam: Oh, I like it. I have not done that enough. That's a very good point.

Zibby: There you go.

Adam: I've been doing a whole bunch of fascinating interviews over the past week or two getting ready for book launch. I'm thinking about maybe doing a round-up post so that they're all in one place as opposed to saying, I'm going to do a one-off share of each episode. Then it's only going to reach a subset of an audience. Maybe I can amplify it by putting them all together. What do you think?

Zibby: I like that. I think that's great.

Adam: I'll run the experiment. We'll see how it goes.

Zibby: I'll be watching.

Adam: I really appreciate you having me. Thank you for also just doing so much homework. I can't believe you read the book and also watched the TED Talk. I hope it didn't ruin your day.

Zibby: It didn't at all. I found all of it super fascinating, truly.

Adam: Thank you. This was a pleasure.

Zibby: Take care. Bye.

Adam: You too. Buh-bye.

Laura Tremaine, SHARE YOUR STUFF. I'LL GO FIRST.

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Laura. I'm so excited to welcome you to "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

Laura Tremaine: I am so excited to be here, Zibby. Thank you for having me.

Zibby: As I was just saying before the podcast, I feel like I know you because of your amazing podcast and your new book, Share Your Stuff. I'll Go First.: 10 Questions to Take Your Friendships to the Next Level. The best part about this book was all the stuff that you shared, I think. I just wanted to know more and more about you. I was like, forget the questions. Tell me more about Laura. [laughs] Congratulations on the book.

Laura: Thank you very much. I'm super excited, my first book even though I've been writing for all this time. I feel like, finally, I get to have something I hold in my hands that's not just on the internet.

Zibby: That must feel amazing, right?

Laura: It feels amazing. It really does.

Zibby: Tell me about the inspiration for this book. What made you write it? Why did you package it up this way with questions for other people to ask? It has a little self-help component to it in the midst of the memoir, I would say. It's an assortment of bullets at the end and ten funny things or things you wouldn't know about you and then questions you can ask your friends. Tell me about the format choice.

Laura: It's funny because I always pictured and always wanted to write more traditional memoir or at least personal essay. I thought that was the more literary, sophisticated thing that a person should write. I did try to do that. It just felt forced. It felt like I was trying to be a sophisticated writer when actually, everything flowed a whole lot easier when I just did what I really do, which is just share my story and talk the same way that I would if I was talking to an audience on my podcast or on Instagram or something like that. When I changed up my mindset around it and stopped trying to be an essayist and decided to share the way that I am comfortable sharing, it just came out in this format. On my podcast, which is called "10 Things to Tell You," I ask a question every week. Then you're supposed to answer the question. They're often either introspective or you're supposed to take it to a friend and do it as a get-to-know-you conversation starter.

It made sense to structure the book that way. I came up with ten questions that, first of all, I actually wanted to answer, but also ten questions that I felt like come up a lot on my podcast or from my audience that they want to hear more about from me or from their friends or that they want to share about themselves. I came up with these ten questions -- some of them are deep; some of them are not so deep -- and just structured the stories that I wanted to tell within the format of those questions. Instead of trying to make this meaningful, thoughtful, essay, I really just wanted to tell you about this story that happened in my life. It just came out that way. It felt very natural. It felt much more natural. As I've gotten older, I've realized that what seems to flow is what you need to go with instead of trying to be this other thing. That's how I got here.

Zibby: That's amazing. The story that I've actually already retold now twice is when the scary van pulled up at the house when you were inside. You were so scared. The neighbor comes walking down the street. You throw yourself into his arms. Maybe you should tell the story, a synopsis better that I just did, and how that played into your anxiety, which you also talk about in a really impactful way throughout this book starting in the very beginning and coursing through from your hair-pulling to all these things that were manifestations of your anxiety. Then this one moment, I felt like, was the pinnacle of everything you've ever worried about, and the break-in, but we can talk about that after.

Laura: It was a huge moment in my life. I was a super anxious child. I write about that a lot, my childhood anxiety. I talk about that online. I pulled my hair out. I had bald spots. I had a lot of coping mechanisms. Growing up in the eighties in a tiny town in Oklahoma, there was no help to be had. I didn't see a therapist. I was just a little quirky kid. What it really was is I had a lot of anxiety and a lot of ways that that manifested. I was also a latchkey kid. Both of my parents worked. I was at home alone for hours every day after school starting in the second or third grade. We lived out in the country in the middle of nowhere. I would ride the bus home and then be home in the woods for hours. I was a little bit older when this story happened. I put it in the framework of the question. The chapter that this story falls in is, what are you afraid of? I feel like when you ask someone what they're afraid of, what their deepest fear is, who wants to talk about that? Why are we sharing about this? It seems like such a scary thing to talk about. For me, when I talk about things that I'm afraid of, it makes them less scary. The more that I can drag this dark thing into the light, it makes it less scary to me. It takes the power away from it. When I was a little kid and I was at home alone, the creepiest, most after-school special thing happened where a rusty white van pulled into the driveway where I was playing outside. We were out in the country. I just knew it deep inside my soul that there was something not right about it. Spoiler alert, nothing happened. I was not kidnapped, by the way.

Zibby: You're still here. You're here, so it all worked out okay.

Laura: It all worked out. It really did kick off, for an anxious child, the scary thing that happened that I just intuitively felt like was an evil thing. I guess we'll never know because, again, I wasn't kidnapped. It really did kick off a lot of things in me. I became really obsessed with true crime after that. I was young. I was pre-teen, probably, when that happened. Into my teenage years and into my college years, I got really into true crime before that was as popular as it is now. I really got very fearful. It was where my anxiety took a turn. Also, a deeper layer to that story that nothing ever actually happened in, but a deeper layer to that story was I told everyone around me that there was something evil about that van. Again, I was eleven, twelve. I'd been staying home for years. Things had happened. People had rang the doorbell. People had stopped by the house, strangers. I had never felt this kind of deep inner fear. It really bothered me when my parents or my siblings, no one believed me that there was something different about this situation. I felt like in that moment not only did I have a real twist and turn towards -- my fear took a real turn. Also, maybe that's the moment when I kind of became a self-advocate or something. I realized no one is going to believe me just on my word of it, just on my own intuition.

It really changed my life. After that, I stopped staying home alone. I would go to the library after school or other things. I had to make all those adjustments and all those changes myself. I had to be like, okay, if no one's going to believe me that I'm in danger out there in the woods, I'm going to have to take it on. I talked about that story in my family. It's sort of a family lore story. We still joke about it. No one in my family, still to this moment, believes that there was anything wrong with that van. For me, when I sat down to write my book, it was one of these primary stories of my life that I wanted to share. When I'm thinking of the ten stories I want to share in my first book, it was one of the major ones. I think that this happens to a lot of us in our childhood. We have this pivotal moment. Maybe it is a truly tragic moment or something really huge that you can point to. Maybe it's a nothing story like mine. A scary van pulled in. A scary van pulled out. That's the story, but it was a big thing for me. I wanted to share it also as a way to give the reader permission to take those kind of "nothing" stories and say, yeah, this has some weight for me. It doesn't matter if no one ever understands why, but this was a real moment for me.

Zibby: I think that's something just so relatable, when you have any sort of fear or doubt and you can't get people on your side about it or people minimizing the worry, which never helps. I'm so worried about -- oh, you'll be fine. You'll be fine. That makes it worse. That always makes it worse.

Laura: It was a really big deal to me that I wasn't believed. It also sort of set me on this path of listening to my intuition or not. No one used that kind of language with me back then. Really, it is a thing of, you have to trust yourself. If you sense that something is not right here, you have to believe that. You have to go with that.

Zibby: And PS, that's how you got all that time in the library. Perhaps that's why you even wrote this book and why we're on the Zoom together.

Laura: Thank you for connecting all the dots. Thank you. Thank you.

Zibby: Anytime. My pleasure. I also loved all your delving into your past relationships and how each chapter, not every chapter, but many chapters had little scattered Hansel and Gretel-type crumbs of your past relationships from the pastor to coercing your husband to marry you to your first boyfriend, all these broken hearts, everything. I felt like the way you unveiled your relationship history was very -- I almost felt voyeuristic, like, ooh. [laughs] I'm snooping here into her private life. I found it just so entertaining and awesome.

Laura: Thank you for saying that. I will say, that is something I'm, I don't want to say embarrassed about, but I have some vague vulnerabilities that I'm a forty-one-year-old woman, married happily, mom of two, and I am still writing about ex-boyfriends and things like that. I got to the end of the first draft and I was like, did I write too much about my exes? My publisher was like, "Maybe."

Zibby: Did you take some out? Is this the edited-down version?

Laura: Yes. [laughter]

Zibby: I don't know. I really like those parts. I feel like once we're all married and boring and all the rest, it's nice to hear about what the before was. It's similar to how I feel about meeting brothers and sisters of friends I made as grown-ups. Whereas when we're kids, you know everybody's family. It just gives a context to everything else. It gives more context to a person to hear about how they got where they are.

Laura: It does. The same as the white van story being a childhood story, in some ways, those early relationships, your first love or your first heartbreak or the person you almost married but didn't, all of those people, if you're lucky enough to have had such a trail, then they do matter to your life. One really bad heartbreak will probably affect how you interact in your next relationship or whatever. There is a connection to all of these things. After a certain age or after you've been married a certain length of time, you're not supposed to talk about that anymore. You're supposed to think that that is all dumb and young, immature stuff and doesn't really matter. That's just not true. Those relationships meant a lot to my life. They definitely affected the relationships after them, which then of course became a marriage. I don't think you should dwell on them. There's obviously an unhealthy, toxic place you can get to with fixating on past relationships. I have tons of girlfriends, and like you said, I could hear about their exes all day.

Zibby: Right? It's so juicy.

Laura: It's funny. It's interesting. Tell me all the ex stories.

Zibby: Totally. Plus, you include so much about what it feels like to be a transplant in LA and making that into your home and your whole blog, which of course is how you have turned this whole thing into the thing that it is. In fact, I want to hear more about that. You started the blog, Hollywood Housewife. Did I get that right, Hollywood Housewife?

Laura: That is right.

Zibby: By the way, do you know the author Helen Ellis? Do you know who she is? Have you read her work?

Laura: Is she the American Housewife?

Zibby: Yes. She wrote American Housewife and Southern Lady Code and has a new book coming out. I think she's from Kentucky but lives in New York City. I feel like you jumped off from different places and landed on different coasts, but you're both very funny and witty. If I were still doing all my events, I would do one with the two of you because I feel like you'd have such an interesting conversation. Maybe I could just introduce you. I feel like you would be friends.

Laura: I would love that. She has been in my to-read stack for ages because I also sort of felt like maybe we would have something in common. I haven't gotten to her yet, but I will. I think I will.

Zibby: I don't know why I'm plugging another author in the middle of our interview. I'm sorry. I'm just trying to connect you, and not in a negative way.

Laura: No, I love it. I love it.

Zibby: So Hollywood Housewife, you start the blog. How does the blog become the podcast, becomes the book? Tell me that whole story.

Laura: There are a lot of steps in between. I started the blog when my daughter was just a few months old. It was 2010. I'd been reading mommy blogs in the years that I was trying to get pregnant and then while I was pregnant. The internet, not the internet as a whole, but blogs and personal sharing and all of this kind of thing was still a real novelty. I loved it. I've always felt like I was a writer in my soul. This removed all the gatekeepers. There was no publishers. You could just share your stuff online. I was obsessed. I actually started the mommy blog because that's what people were doing. I didn't have a whole lot of interest in actually writing about motherhood. I still don't have a lot of interest in writing about motherhood in general, but that was sort of the avenue for me to be able to write immediately. I started that in 2010. I was able to build a little bit of an audience. A lot of the feedback that I got from people was that they loved reading blogs like I did. They loved reading my blog, but they would never share themselves. They just wanted to read other people's stuff. They wanted me to keep doing it, but they would never.

That's a very strange, backhanded compliment. I think they actually did mean it as a compliment. Actually, what they were saying was they would never be so tacky as to put themselves on the internet. I just kept receiving that message, some version of that message, over and over. Then when social media started, there was all this shame around people posting selfies. I just kept seeing this message of women who liked other people to share, but they could never share themselves. It wasn't because they were deeply insecure or anything. There was all these reasons, these cultural reasons. Maybe there was some insecurity. It felt passive-aggressive. It felt like people needed permission to share. They didn't necessarily want to be on a stage, but they did want to share themselves. They did want to have connection with other people. My time at Hollywood Housewife, writing that particular blog which was very family focused, as my kids got older and I also started to tire of the name and the branding, it didn't really fit. It sort of was meant to be tongue and cheek during the Real Housewives franchise, that boom. Then it started to be like, I'm sort of embarrassed to say this, that this is the name of my blog.

I started to phase that out and decided to close that actual blog. By that time, I was a cohost on a podcast called "Sorta Awesome" which I had kind of done as a favor to a friend, to be honest. I didn't know anything about podcasting, but I was like, fine, whatever. I just loved it. As you might have experienced, I ended up loving using my actual voice. I loved having the good conversations. I had been trying to make this writing go in a more serious way. I'd been trying to use the blog to do that. When I closed the blog and started talking is when I felt like I really found my voice. It then became so much easier for me to write because I didn't have all these hangs-ups about the perfect sentence structure or anything. I felt like when I was actually talking and I was getting a response, I found a groove. I took what I had learned during that mommy blogging time of just seeing how lonely women were on the internet -- they were turning to the internet. They were turning to blogs and then eventually social media to watch women share themselves, but they weren’t actually sharing their own selves. They didn't know how.

I hosted a few of these challenges to get people to share. What I learned -- this is still true to this very moment. If you give people an assignment, if you're like, we're all going to share this thing, we're going to share our favorite reading chair, we're going to share a selfie, we're going to share what we learned this month, whatever, give them any kind of assignment, people will share. They feel a permission when they say, well, I'm participating in this online challenge, so I can share this. Whereas they would never in a million, gillion years just say, hey everybody, this is my favorite reading chair. They just wouldn't do that. If they have this thing that they're participating in, they will do it. They want to do it. I loved that. I'm like, great, I will give you all the prompts. We will do all the prompts if you will share, if it will get you sharing, if it will get all of us sharing. I had done this challenge called 10 Things to Tell You. That's what I called the challenge. It was so successful and made me so happy that then I decided to make that a weekly thing and make that be a podcast because by then I had discovered that I loved podcasting. The podcast was called "10 Things to Tell You." The challenge online that I still do is 10 Things to Tell You. Then when I pitched the book, I pitched it as 10 Things to Tell You, but it became Share Your Stuff. I'll Go First. I like that title better.

Zibby: There you go, or so we're going to tell the publisher. [laughs]

Laura: That's right.

Zibby: I love the title. I would've loved the other title too. It's great. It just totally tells you what type of person the author is and the willingness to be open. Then that's when people want to be open back right away. You go first, we're in.

Laura: Exactly. I hope that it gives people permission. There is a tiny bit of a self-help element to it. I'm not an expert in that. I don't have any degree. I hold all that stuff lightly. I enjoy self-help books and stuff myself. I love them. I love to talk through what I'm learning and how I'm growing. That comes out in the book a lot when I'm trying to encourage people how they can think about this question or this prompt. I also just want to be really clear with everyone that this is no expertise. I'm a self-help hobbyist.

Zibby: When I mentioned self-help in the beginning, I didn't mean to scare anybody that this is a true expert. I hope that you didn't take it -- the stuff with genre these days, there's so much overlap. I feel like anything that can help somebody else I consider sort of self-help.

Laura: Totally. I'm all about self-help. I love all of that stuff. I think this is categorized as self-help or motivation or some kind of thing like that, but a lot of it's my personal story in the book.

Zibby: Personally, I find that a lot more compelling than more research. Research is really interesting as well, but not if you're trying to spark a conversation, perhaps. Do you have more writing aspirations? What's coming next? What's your game plan here? Do you have one?

Laura: I do. This is a two-book deal. I am starting a new book in 2021, sometime. I don't totally know the angle, but it will be in the same genre, I guess we'll say. I do love mixing this personal essay with other nonfiction elements. It's a funny hybrid that seems to have sprung up out of internet culture, speaking directly to the reader but then also sharing personal things. Then like I said, it feels comfortable for me. As I try to hone my writing skills on and on, I do hope that I'm maybe writing something different in ten years. It has been a process to not be embarrassed to be a blogger, to not be embarrassed to be a self-help hobbyist, to get where I am and own it and be like, this is actually my sweet spot this year and where I am right now. Maybe I'll be a serious writer in the future, or maybe this is what my talent is. That's been a process. I think that was a process all through my thirties and as we slide into my forties, to be like, actually, what is prestigious anymore? It's kind of just what connects with people.

Zibby: Only one book a year can win the National Book Award. Let someone else win that book award. In other words, there are authors who, that's their go-to, is that style of writing and the obsession with form and intricacy and sentence and all of that. Let them have that if that's their thing. That might come as easily to them as you speaking from the heart comes to you. Everyone can tell when someone's trying to be something that they're not. This is how I felt in business school. There are people there who are dying to get jobs in marketing. I was like, oh, marketing is a fallback for me. This is how I knew I didn't really want to do that. It's the same kind of thing. The people who really want to write literary fiction can write literary fiction. It doesn't have to be you. That's totally cool. That's my philosophy.

Laura: I'll love to read it.

Zibby: I get it.

Laura: I love to read some really highbrow things. I love it. I feel smart. I'm amazed that people can do it. It's taken me a long time to be like, but I'm not going to do it.

Zibby: That's okay. You wrote a whole book. It's a great book. It makes everybody who reads it want to be your friend. How cool is that?

Laura: I hope so, Zibby. Thank you for saying that. Let's hope so.

Zibby: I think so. Now that I've pinned you as some sort of an expert in some way, what advice do you have to aspiring authors, perhaps aside from don't try to -- well, that was my advice. Don't try to win the National Book Award on the first try. Anyway, go ahead. [laughs]

Laura: I think you should try different avenues to find your voice. I knew I was a writer, but when I was writing -- they say you're supposed to write every day to become a better writer and everything. I did that. I wrote every day on my blog for years and years. Of course, it was an amazing discipline. I did learn a lot in writing for an audience by doing that. I had to take a few years and do something else, which was podcasting, which was using my physical voice. Then when I came back to the actual page, I was a much stronger writer. I don't think that, for aspiring authors, you have to be scared of taking some time to do something else, to try painting, to try singing. You're not losing your writing muscles when you go to try to find yourself or try to find a way to express yourself with a different medium. If writing is really what you want to do, it will come back to you tenfold.

I really worried when I gave up my daily writing habit that I was sort of giving up that dream. It was the complete opposite. I don't want to go on a tangent here, but I tried to get a book deal with my blog and all of that kind of stuff. It didn't go anywhere. I didn't get it. When I closed all of that up and I thought that was the end of a chapter, it was like the opposite was true. I needed to go do this other thing for a couple of years. Then when I came back and I was like, I really want to be a writer, I was shocked at how much more easily it flowed then from just taking the years of the disciple, but then taking the time to do something else. I hope that that makes sense to an aspiring writer because I know that it's scary. I definitely did not know that in the moment. This is me in hindsight, but it's really true.

Zibby: I love that. I totally relate. That's awesome. And relate to how much fun podcasting is and all the benefits. It's a writing-adjacent activity in a way.

Laura: It is. You're still having to express yourself articulately. It is. It's a thing.

Zibby: I'm hoping being articulate is not a prerequisite every day because I'm struggling to string sentences together today, but in general, self-expression and all that. [laughs] Laura, thank you so much. Thanks again for this awesome book, Share Your Stuff. I'll Go First.: 10 Questions to Take Your Friendships to the Next Level. I'm just wishing you all the best. I'm so excited you came on my podcast.

Laura: Thank you. I loved it so much. I love that you're holding it. It makes me so happy. Actually, can I take a picture? Is this too weird?

Zibby: No, I love that.

Laura: I'm just going to look so meta. I'm doing it anyway. Ah, you're so cute! Thank you for having me. This was super fun.

Zibby: This was super fun.

Charlotte Laguardia on access to individualized nutrition

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Charlotte. Thanks so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Lose Weight."

Charlotte LaGuardia: Thank you so much, Zibby. I'm so happy to be here.

Zibby: It's so nice to see you. Charlotte, first, give listeners a little bit of a bio and your background, how you got into this industry. Then after that, we'll talk about your whole journey to getting here. Give us the rundown of a bio and background for now.

Charlotte: Absolutely, yes. I grew up in Southampton, New York, so out in the Hamptons. I went to college in Worcester, Massachusetts. I went to Holy Cross. I was studying psychology. I wanted to be in marketing. I wanted to do advertising. I was really excited to do that. I started to notice that I wasn't feeling well. By the time I graduated college, I was like, there's no way I can do a nine-to-five job. I don't have the energy. I don't feel well. I dove into a degree in nutrition trying to find some answers. That's what led me into the nutrition field. I got my master's from the Maryland University of Integrative Health. Then I did an internship. I did an exam. I took an exam to qualify for the boards, and so now I'm a certified nutrition specialist. I'm also a yoga instructor. I like to combine the two worlds of nutrition and yoga. Now I'm back in Water Mill in the Hamptons. I have my own private practice that was in person. Now I have moved to completely virtual. I do virtual yoga. I do virtual nutritional consultations as well as workshops. I do a lot of ladies' nights on Zoom. We do some breathing exercises. We talk about things you can eat and all of that good stuff.

Zibby: If people want to find you, where should they look you up?

Charlotte: My website is thriveeast.com. My Instagram is @ThriveEastNutrition.

Zibby: Awesome. Charlotte, you and I met when I had one of my many hit-bottom moments. [laughs] I was like, I need to see someone immediately. I can't do this by myself. I've had kind of a love-hate relationship with getting experts involved in what I know is something I should master myself. You were so kind and came over a few times. Then again, I sabotaged myself. Now I can't even face it again, but not because of you. You were amazing. Tell me about your own -- go back to when you weren’t feeling well. What even led you to nutrition versus med school or something like that?

Charlotte: It is a little bit of a long story. What didn't lead me to med school was a --

Zibby: -- Wait, I want the long story. That's the interesting part.

Charlotte: I know we are on a podcast for why moms don't have time to lose weight. Personally, I don't have a weight loss journey. I had always been on the thin side. I grew up thin. Nothing ever changed. I could never gain weight, actually. I always thought I was really safe. I remember in the seventh grade, learning about diabetes and heart disease. I was like, I'm not going to have that. I have no problems. I'm thin. I had this false sense of safety. I went through life never being affected by the food that I ate, that I knew. I would eat pints of ice cream. I would come from home, and my after-school snack was literally a whole container of whip cream. I was really addicted to those sugary carbohydrate foods. I remember I didn't eat a vegetable for probably years. My mom would try, but I wasn't interested. All I wanted was the white rice and some ice cream after that. I was really hooked on those highly processed, highly refined foods. It never showed physically, so I was like, I'm totally fine. Then by the time I got to college and had to go through stress -- I had all this new stress that I didn't experience in high school, the late nights. I wasn't sleeping. I wasn't exercising. I was eating a hundred percent processed diet out of the dining hall or fast food or whatever I could heat up in my microwave.

That's really when it hit. I honestly remember -- this is crazy. I would walk through halls. It would be one o'clock in the morning. I'd just finished a paper. I'd be walking through the halls of the library. I'd see, there's nothing in front of me, there's no one around me, I'm just going to close my eyes while I walk because I'm so tired and I'm so just shut. That was when I realized that something had to have been up. When I graduated school, I ended up going to a few doctors. Throughout all of that, I always had some GI things. I was never regular. I was always bloated and cramping. If I didn't eat, I'd be doubled over in pain, things that just weren’t normal. In my head, I was like, I'm thin, I'm fine. Everyone experiences this. It's okay. The GI doctors could only say IBS, which is, we all know, this blanket diagnosis. Something's not right. We're not positive, but we're going to put you in this category. Then I started getting neurological symptoms, so things like tingling, buzzing feelings in my body, the extreme fatigue, couldn't remember a thing to save my life. All of these different things started popping up. Neurologists couldn't really figure out what was going on. They were like, "You might be depressed. You might have B12 deficiencies," which wasn't the case. After a full year of not getting a straight answer and not being able to work or do anything, I was like, I have to go back to school. I need to know why this is happening, why this is happening to my body, what I can do to help fix it. Modern medicine is amazing. You get into an accident, they will bring you back. It's the preventative, getting down to the root cause where there's a little bit of lacking. It's a little lacking there.

I decided I had to be my own advocate. I had to figure out, when I eat food, what happens to it? Why do people eat vegetables and not tubs of ice cream? That was really what motivated me to go to school. I knew I could buy a textbook, but I'm the type of learner where I need someone to explain things to me. I found this great program. It was online. It was somewhat self-paced, so I could still do a part-time job while I was learning. It just changed my life. What I started learning about how our food is digested, why we choose certain foods, what all of my symptoms actually meant, and figuring out the whole reason why everything was happening -- a lifetime of antibiotic use, but we'll come to back that. [laughs] When I started learning all these things, I was like, oh, my gosh, I have to tell the world. Why did no one teach me this? Why was it in the seventh grade that I learned diabetes and heart disease existed but not how to prevent them or why they start in the first place? It was really, really eye-opening. I went from that mindset of, I want to work that nine-to-five office job -- I was so excited for pumps and pencil skirts. Now I'm like, oh, my gosh, I just need to be with people every day and share this information, especially kids. I'm finding that I'm heading more towards the adolescent world because that was the time where if I had learned all of this, I think things would have been incredibly different.

Zibby: Now I want you just to talk to my thirteen-year-old daughter. You're such a likeable person. You should have your own YouTube show or something. Do you have that?

Charlotte: You know, people [indiscernible/crosstalk] all the time. I am so camera shy.

Zibby: But you're doing great right now. I know this isn't a camera. It's just Zoom. I feel like my daughter's all into YouTube. To have somebody up there actually giving healthy, health-centered information as opposed to just how to put on her eye shadow would be really awesome.

Charlotte: I could do a little eye shadow too.

Zibby: That would be great. [laughter] So what was the answer? What was wrong with you?

Charlotte: Really, what it was, was a full-blown gut issue. I had chronic ear infections as a kid. From ages one to about three, I was on antibiotics a few times a year. For that age span, what's happening is your microbiome is really setting up. The microbiome is this about four-to-seven-pound collection of bacteria and yeasts and some viruses that should live in harmony. They are there to produce your immune cells, neurotransmitters. They even play a huge role in turning genes on and off. I don't know if you've heard the saying, genetics is the gun and your lifestyle pulls the trigger. That lifestyle influences the microbiome. Really, it's the microbiome pulling the trigger on risk factors. During that age, kids are sticking stuff in their mouths. They're eating dirt and stuff and trying to put things in their mouths. What that is, is they're trying to get bacteria into the microbiome based on their environment. It's a really special time. I was taking antibiotics which meant every time I took a course, I was killing off a big portion of that community.

Fortunately, our microbiome is really resilient. However, we didn't know this at the time. My mom did everything she could. She kept me really healthy. I didn't have chronic ear issues because we took of it then. We didn't know, take a probiotic or eat your fermented foods. As I grew up, I had this really imbalanced microbiome. There were probably strains in there that shouldn't have been. There were strains in numbers that shouldn't have been. I wasn't doing anything to help it. I was only feeding the things that fed the negative bacteria and negative yeasts. What that led to was what we're calling in the industry now, leaky gut. Leaky gut is when the cells that line your intestines start to separate. There's little perforations. Through those perforations, your undigested food particles, any bacteria or viruses that come into the body can seep into the bloodstream which then in turn can set off the immune system. This situation can lead to pretty much all of the symptoms that I had. What I learned was to go back and heal the gut and the heal the system. I can tell you, it's been years, and still always going to be a work in progress. The one thing that I'm learning is that the body is so resilient. The body wants to be healthy. That is where it's trying to get every single day, but we just have to give it the tools to get there. That's what this journey has been.

Zibby: Wow. One thing I heard you say is processed food is not going to help be one of those good tools. Is that right? [laughs]

Charlotte: It is. It's hard. We live in a food industry. Food is a business now. I tell clients every day, companies, they just want to sell you a product. They want to sell you on their brand. They don't necessarily care if it's not the best thing for you. They don't care if you have gut issues or a hormonal imbalance. They just want you to eat their product. That's just the nature of business. I can't really blame them for it. We just need to be more educated about the products that are out there. With processed foods, there's normally sugar added in everything. Ketchup, salad dressings, everything has some sort of sugar even if it says zero grams on the nutrition facts. You're like, there's no sugar in there. I'm totally fine. You look at the ingredients, and see you cane sugar or molasses or date syrup. You're like, okay, there's a little sweet in there, but it's not showing up on the nutrition facts, so it should be fine for me.

The point of that is when you ingest the food, you don't taste sweet, but our digestive system actually has sweet receptors. What those sweet receptors do is they actually talk to the brain. Our gut is connected to the brain through this vagus nerve, this big, huge nerve that goes throughout the body, but its main connection is gut to brain. Those sweet receptors take in the little sugar that you don't taste in your mouth. They recognize it. They release dopamine, which is our reward signal. It makes you want to eat more. It could be a potato chip with a little added sugar. It could be ketchup on a chicken finger, which is just a protein, but it's making you go for more because those sweet receptors keep releasing the dopamine. Your body's like, oh, this feels good. I'm going to keep going. I'm not going to stop. It's a little secret of processed foods. That's why it's really hard to only have one chip or one fry in the ketchup.

Zibby: What about if you're actually eating lots of sugar, sugar that you know you are eating because the second you put the cookie in your mouth you feel like it coursed through your body and you get this hit of amazingness? [laughs]

Charlotte: That's exactly what's happening. It literally is a hit of amazingness. Now you're getting twofold. You're getting dopamine release because the receptors in your mouth are tasting sweet. Then the receptors in your gut are tasting sweet. It's a full-body experience. At the end of the day, it is very neurological. It's not necessarily willpower either. I think that that's something that a lot of us get wrapped up in. I'm weak. If there's a cookie in front of me, I'm going to eat it. It's my fault. I'm weak. I'm not good at this. There's so much more at work here than just willpower. It also depends on the balance of microbes in your digestive system, in your microbiome. If you have higher numbers of certain yeasts like candida, that candida feeds off of sugar. It has this huge nerve, the vague nerve, that talks to the brain and can ask for more sugar. Those cravings, again, aren't that willpower or seeing the cookie. It's actually these old bacteria and yeasts in there using their power to harness the brain and harness our activities.

Zibby: How do you know if you have those in you?

Charlotte: Normally, if you have a very high-sugar diet, I tend to assume that that's where we're headed because whatever we feed will most likely be there. There are stool sample tests you can do. There are also some symptoms like sugar cravings, a lot of dandruff, and yeast infections on the skin or in the body. Thrush is another symptom of candida. It's sneaky. A lot of these bacteria, they're just around for survival. They don't care if the cookie's going to make you crave more. They just want to survive.

Zibby: What is your advice then if somebody, regardless if they have candida or whatever bacteria are feeding the cravings and maybe it's not willpower, but what do you do if now you're in this spin cycle of sugar addiction?

Charlotte: First, I like to recommend different ways to get dopamine. It sounds a little crazy, but if we do something like fifty jumping jacks before we eat the cookie, we're releasing dopamine on our own through physical activity. Then we're less likely to go for the second cookie. Then sometimes, over time, you might not even want the whole thing or even the cookie at all. It also depends on the day. I'm also not about deprivation. We're going to eat cookies. It happens. It's life. There are cookies in our world. We want to do it in the best way possible. If we can do those jumping jacks beforehand, get an initial dopamine surge, then we can have and enjoy that bit of cookie and move on. Other things we can do to release dopamine are talk to a friend or a loved one. Right now too, social isolation is a big thing. Call a friend. Call a family member. Talk to them. Skype with them. Zoom with them. Do whatever feels right or appropriate at the time. That connection releases dopamine. Then the final and favorite one of mine is a hug. A twenty-second, chest-to-chest, equal-partnership hug will help to release those feel-good neurotransmitters as well and, in a lot of cases, start to kick those sugar cravings.

Zibby: If I hug my husband for twenty seconds in front of a plate of cookies, I might not want as many cookies?

Charlotte: Correct.

Zibby: Seriously?

Charlotte: Seriously, yes. For Christmas, we got a basket of gluten-free goods because everyone knows that I don't eat a lot of gluten. You know those stroopwafles that you sit on top of your cup of coffee and they get all gooey? Those were in there. They're really good. I would have one, but then I would do some jumping jacks and I would remove myself from the situation. Yes, a few times I went back for a second one, but not as often as I would've if I didn't do those dopamine-enhancing activities.

Zibby: What's interesting about this to me is that, of course, I've heard the advice. Instead of eating, you should go do something else that's fun. I always interrupted that as a means of distraction. Yes, eating makes you feel good, but other things make you feel good, so just do them instead. I've never heard that the dopamine released from those activities counteracts the cravings for the actual treats because your body is getting the surge that it needs already, so it doesn't look to something external on a plate. Did I get that right?

Charlotte: Yes, you did. Something to remember, too, the fifty jumping jacks will not give you the same awesome explosion response that a cookie in your mouth will. It's not as intense.

Zibby: You didn't need to tell me that. That, I know.

Charlotte: It's very subtle. I don't want you to do the jumping jacks and be like, wait, I don't feel that. That feeling is going to be completely different. If we take the time, it is also a little bit of a distraction, but it's helping because you're getting that reward the body's looking for.

Zibby: Okay, I could try it. I could test this out. I could test it out.

Charlotte: It's always worth a shot to test out. Then remembering too, when we do go to eat that cookie after we do the jumping jacks, eating it slowly and enjoying it fully. I know a lot of times with junk food and cookies and baked goods and things like that, we feel some guilt. We're like, I know I shouldn't be eating this. I'm going to eat it, but I'm going to eat it fast. If I eat it fast, then maybe it doesn't count. This is a train of thought I've had many times. If you sit down and mindfully, slowly eat it, notice the texture, the smell, the mouthfeel, you're going to be so much more satisfied from the one cookie and not need to go for the second. A lot of times, you have a sandwich with two halves. You eat one half. You eat the other. You look down and think that the other's still there. That's what's happening in this guilt-driven cookie eating. We rush it because we hope nobody sees or it just doesn't count if we get it in. By eating it really slowly and enjoying it and honoring it and experiencing it, that awesome feeling lasts a lot longer too.

Zibby: I was eating a cookie the other night. It was gooey and warm and perfect. I was sitting and I ate it in front of my husband. Sometimes I do try to eat things quickly out of sight of everyone for my own guilt reasons. Anyway, I ate it. Literally, he was laughing. He was like, "I don't think I've ever seen anyone enjoy a cookie as much as you are enjoying this right now." I was like, "This is so amazing. It's the best thing ever." [laughs] Not to say it didn't make me want more. I don't think I had more at the time, or I probably would've had more. I see what you're saying. Take the time. Enjoy it. Don't beat yourself up about it. Sometimes I think that's another thing in the cycle that people do. I've already ruined it with the one cookie. I might as well eat six.

Charlotte: Absolutely. I see that all the time. It's important to remember, too, when we're stressed and eating, the stress actually turns our body's ability to digest foods down. We don't extract as much as we could. I know a cookie has sugar. It's definitely something that is somewhat processed depending on where you get it or if you made it. You could have it with dark chocolate and whole wheat flour and get some B vitamins and antioxidants. If we're feeling guilt eating that cookie, those few benefits that are in there, we won't be able to absorb as many. All the more argument to have it, but enjoy and relax and breathe. Look at it. Smell it. Just be in that moment with the cookie. Then go have a fully balanced, healthy meal before or after.

Zibby: Basically, if I or my listeners can eat a mostly balanced diet, I could basically have one amazing chocolate chip cookie every day and still not succumb to what I feel like is addiction, essentially, of the feeling of the cookie in my body. Correct?

Charlotte: Absolutely. Everyone is completely different. It is really understanding yourself. Some people might have a harder time. Some are all or nothing too. I know I have a lot of clients who, even just looking at a cookie will send them into a spiral. The whole mindful eating, have just one slowly, is just not for them. That's okay. We recognize that. We put other things in place. For a lot of people, if you can harness the power of mindful eating and you can slow yourself down, that one cookie is definitely doable, and making sure it's the highest quality cookie. You can make it yourself. You can source great ingredients, organic whole wheat flour. Like I said, dark chocolate's a health food. Add some dark chocolate in there, and nuts and seeds. Make into something that's really healthful.

Zibby: Do you have a go-to healthy chocolate chip cookie option or recipe or something?

Charlotte: You know, I don't, but I can definitely make one if I put a little time into that. After talking about cookies all this time, I'm thinking, definitely.

Zibby: If you want to drop them off here... [laughs]

Charlotte: Want to be my tester?

Zibby: I will test them out.

Charlotte: You can be my recipe tester. We'll get something good going. It would be great.

Zibby: Charlotte, this has been great for so many reasons. One, thank you for sharing your story with me. It's such a good reminder that you can't cheat on your body for too long without it catching up with you. If you're doing things that are not good for you, even if you can't see it, your body sees it. It's just a good reminder that even if you feel good with your weight or your clothing size, that is not the full story at all. That's another good reminder. Two, just the processed food, as we all know, that processed foods are like the devil. Eat in moderation. Look at the ingredients. Be careful. Eat with caution. Then also, remembering the things to counteract the hit you get from sugar and adding things like hugs and jumping jack as a means to fill that dopamine receptor up so it doesn't have as much left to fill with the cookie, which I like. I also like that if you give yourself permission to enjoy something regularly without guilt, then maybe the whole thing ratchets back down in terms of this whole viscous cycle of punishment and willpower and all the things you were talking about. Awesome.

Charlotte: Absolutely. There's so much more to it. I think we like to simplify things and say if you are eating a ton of sugar, you're just weak. You have bad willpower. That's not it. There's so much more. There's so much more we can do also.

Zibby: Awesome. I am going to get back in touch with you just to chitchat to teach my kids. Even though I teach them all the time, I think it helps so much to have someone else come in just give a little tutorial. I'm going to do that. I'm going to go bake some really good cookies.

Charlotte: Eat them slowly. Enjoy. Be in the moment.

Zibby: Yes, perfect. Charlotte, tell everybody again where they can find you if they want to book a session or learn more about you.

Charlotte: My website is thriveeast.com. My Instagram is @ThriveEastNutrition. You can message me on either platform.

Zibby: Perfect. Thank you so much.

Charlotte: Thank you so much. This was wonderful.

Zibby: Great. Bye, Charlotte.

Charlotte: Bye.

Melissa Gould, WIDOWISH

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Melissa. Thank you so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books." I am so excited to be talking to you.

Melissa Gould: I am so excited to be talking to you.

Zibby: As I think you know because I kept posting about it on social media and we were emailing and all the rest, I read your book at the most emotional moment, probably, in my adult life when I was literally flying down to Duke to say goodbye to my mother-in-law. I read it that whole two days down there which will be forever etched in my mind as just traumatic and awful. Except, I got escape into your book. I feel this special bond with you which you're not even a part of. It's me and your book, or your book and me, I should say. Thank you for providing me the solace that I needed during that time. I'm really grateful.

Melissa: I am so flattered that my story resonated for you. That it helped you at all just means so much to me. I am so sorry for your losses.

Zibby: I'm so sorry for your loss. Thank you for writing so beautifully about all of it. Why don't you tell listeners what your memoir is about? It's called Widowish. Give us more context and tell us how this became a book.

Melissa: I'll tell you, I really believe that Widowish is a love story. It's a modern love story that's wrapped up in a grief story and a little bit more of a love story. It's also about expectations. Let me just start by saying, my husband, Joel, died unexpectedly and suddenly of West Nile virus. It was something none of us saw coming. Joel was my person. He was my everything. We had been together, married for sixteen years, probably together for twenty. We had a thirteen-year-old daughter. She was thirteen at the time, Sophie. When he died, obviously my world was completely upended. Widowish, in some ways, it's about the title. I was young. I was in my forties. I didn't look like a widow. I didn't act like a widow. Plot twist, I found love again, also completely unexpectedly and suddenly. I felt like a widow. I still feel like a widow. It's been several years now. So much of my story is about how all of these feelings of feeling so bereft and so grief-stricken and so sad and so in love with my husband and yet the tingling sensations of a new love and the excitement that that brought into my life, all of these feelings were coexisting. People didn't know that about me. I became the town widow. I live in Los Angeles. In our community, everybody knows each other. Our kids all go to the same school. They all go to the same doctors. They all have the same guitar teacher. We all knew each other. I felt very self-conscious. People would see me picking up Sophie from school or going to yoga or going to Trader Joe's because life moved forward whether I wanted it to or not. Having a young daughter, she became my focus. Widowish is really about all of these things, these coexisting feelings, the sudden loss, only parenting. Our small little family trio became this dynamic duo of Sophie and I. Widowish really explores all of those things.

Zibby: Can you share the story of how Joel got West Nile or how you believe he got it? Just an abridged version if it's not too painful to summarize that period of time, what exactly happened.

Melissa: It was so crazy. Joel had multiple sclerosis. He had MS. He was diagnosed when Sophie was around eight years old. Prior to that, Joel really was a mix of athleticism and music. He worked in the music business. Music was so important to us as a family. We went to concerts all the time. He would go out several nights a week to see bands and live music. He also was on a softball team. He was on a basketball team. He would go to the gym every day. He was an extremely athletic person, loved the Dodgers, I have to say. He came home from a basketball game one night like ten minutes after he had left. He just said, "Something is really wrong. I see the ball going down the court. I tell my body, go, but I can't." It was devastating. After a series of tests, he got the MS diagnosis. We thought, okay, we're going to manage this. We knew about MS. Some family members, ironically, had it. It was something we knew about. Joel got on the right medication. It really worked for a number of years. He was living his life with MS. Certain things started to affect him years into the diagnosis because what we realized was a lot of these medications have a lifespan, and they stop working.

It was around the time of Sophie's bat mitzvah. 2013 was really a seminal year for us in our family. Sophie was turning thirteen and having her bat mitzvah. Joel was turning fifty. Later that year, he died unexpectedly. We had these milestones. It's so funny how life works. Because of the bat mitzvah, because of his fiftieth birthday, we saw everybody in our lives who was important to us and who mattered that year. I don't know if that makes sense. There were people who were coming in and out of our lives throughout the year that wouldn't necessarily have been there if not for the bat mitzvah, if not for his fiftieth birthday. Anyway, that year of all of these things, Joel really was suffering with the MS. We went from living with it and having a full life with a few modifications -- he eventually had to stop playing basketball, but then he found yoga. Yoga was everything. He started riding his bike more. Again, he was a very athletic guy who liked to move. The new meds that he had started were just not kicking in. He really was starting to suffer. Protocol with MS is you would take steroids. The doctor would prescribe steroids that would sort of bridge the gap between the old medication and the new medication just to keep Joel moving forward every day. The steroids which he was getting -- a nurse was coming to our house every day for week administering these steroids through an IV.

We were told, similar to, in a way, what we're dealing with now with COVID, is that because of his suppressed immune system, the steroids might make him susceptible to a cold or something that he wouldn't be able to fight off so easily. We were on lockdown for a week. Sophie was still going to school. We weren’t having friends over. We weren’t going out to dinner. Joel was taking these steroids. He would hang out in our backyard, which was his happy place. He loved to garden. He loved to cut some flowers, pick the lemons from our lemon tree. He was an outdoor guy. We never thought that that would be dangerous. What I mean by that is -- about two months after the steroid treatment, the MS was not getting any better. Actually, I'm a little off on the timeline, Zibby, but you got the idea. He was having these different treatments. Then at some point, he got very sick with symptoms that did not seem like MS. He had an extremely high fever. He would take Tylenol, and the fever would go down. He became very fatigued. We thought he had the flu. We were sort of on high alert with his MS doctors because new medication can go either way. We weren’t sure, is this a reaction to the new meds? Is this the flu? After a few days, we were like, this is crazy.

Joel and I made the decision together to take him to the hospital, to go to the hospital. He walked himself in. Yes, we were dealing with MS, but we were not hospital people. I didn't know protocol. We went to the emergency room. They eventually moved him into a room. Me, thinking he had the flu, couldn't wait to get home and wash everything and disinfect everything. I didn't want to catch it. I didn't want Sophie to. I never thought that this was dire. He very quickly, in the hospital, fell into a coma. I had to move him from one hospital which, to me, was the go-to hospital. People go there for cancer treatments and to have their babies and whatever. We moved him from that hospital to the hospital where his MS doctors were, another fantastic facility. At that point, we were like, this could be a deathly reaction to the MS meds, but it never really presented like a reaction to the meds. There was medical confusion for two and a half, three weeks. Joel was in a coma this whole time. The doctors were telling me, "Your husband is critically ill." In my mind, I kept thinking, well, make him better. That's what you did. None of this occurred to me, that he would die.

That's when I really learned about viruses. A series of tests were done from the very first hospital to the second hospital. Results kept coming back negative, but they kept circling the idea that this was a virus. One of the very first infectious disease doctors was examining Joel from head to toe when we first admitted him and kept asking me, "Are you sure he wasn't bit by something? Was he bit by a mosquito? Did he have a --" I was like, "I have no idea." Turns out, he was bitten by a mosquito. That's how he contracted West Nile virus. Really, that is the cause of his death. There are a few things listed on his death certificate, but West Nile virus is number one. Complications from MS is another one. It was horrifying and completely unexpected. The doctors, every day, were coming to me with something new. "We think he has brain damage. He seems to be paralyzed from the waist down." Even though they were telling me these things, again, I kept thinking, okay, once we know what it is, you'll give him the meds and he'll be better. Viruses don't work that way. West Nile virus did its job. Meaning, all of the things that a virus can do to a person, cause brain damage, cause paralysis, that's what happened to Joel. These viruses just have to run their course. Because of the MS, he was susceptible to a lethal mosquito bite.

Zibby: I am so sorry. I can't believe that happened. I can't believe that a mosquito, in today's day and age, can actually be the cause of this. I'm just so sorry. It's awful.

Melissa: Thank you. It's shocking even when I tell the story, Zibby. That's what I mean. Really, a lot of that is in the book. My life became so surreal and continues to be in so many ways.

Zibby: It's the shock of it. When you kept saying, "I just kept thinking, okay, fine, he's critically ill. Make it better. That's good. Onto the next. Let's keep going," it's the shock. It's the shock that doctors don't have the answers to all these things. You can be in the best hospital. It shouldn't be this way, but it is. Then you can't go back. You can't be like, oh, we should've done this. Let's do this next time. You can't. That's it. It's the last straw.

Melissa: I'm sure this is similar to what you guys were going through also. It is shocking because of what you just said also. You think these doctors, they're miracle workers. Okay, do something. That's what you're here for. This is your language, not mine. You must know what's going on.

Zibby: First of all, when did you decide to make your experience into a book? How did that end up happening?

Melissa: That's kind of crazy also. I've been a writer my whole life. I was a screenwriter and made my living as a TV writer. I was very content working in television. When Joel died, of course, as I've said, my life was turned upside down. I really was living a life of grief but acting as if everything was okay because I wanted to keep Sophie on track. I was really suffering in my grief. A very close friend of mine invited me to join her writing group. It was really just a baby step of me getting back to a part of myself that I had sort of let go, which was writing. I joined this group. I was the only professional writer in there. All my worst qualities came out. I just was going with it. It's almost like somebody pointed me in the direction and said, go, and I went. The direction this time was, join a writing group. I joined this writing group. After five minutes, I loved it. I just thought, oh, my god, this is it. This is going to save me. I started writing a novel. I loved it. I loved the characters and the world I was creating. It was such an escape for me. For those few hours once a week, I'd go to my writing group. I was so happy. My friend who had invited me into the group -- we were leaving one night. I think I said, "I just signed up for the next six-week session." I had started seeing this guy who became my boyfriend. I was telling her about him. She looked at me.

She's like, "You know, I love the novel. I love it. I love what you're writing. But Joel just died. You're raising Sophie on your own. You're now seeing Marcos. You're not writing about any of it. I really think you should." I was stunned. I was actually very angry. How dare she? How dare anybody tell me what to write? It felt so personal. Because I was a screenwriter and had done that my whole life, the thought of writing about myself or writing anything that personal, I could not wrap my head around. I was like, why in the world would I write something so personal? I was so angry at my friend. I was so incensed, but I couldn't stop thinking about it. I kept thinking, what would I write about? What would I say? I had so much to say. I had so much to say about being widowed in my forties, about becoming an only parent, about falling in love again while I was deeply grieving my husband. The whole week leading up to the next class I just kept having these thoughts. When I got to class the following week, I decided, I'm just going to do it. I wrote, and I wrote, and I wrote. I have not stopped writing about myself since. [laughs] How Widowish came about was -- first of all, that was most healing thing for myself. I don't know that I would've come to that. Maybe eventually I would’ve realized, oh, maybe I should write about this. It was a close friend who knew me so well putting that suggestion in my mind. Changed my life, really.

I started writing these essays. Then I started publishing the essays. I couldn't believe that people were interested in my story. I kept hearing from people. A lot of them were widows. A lot of them weren’t. What I was writing really resonated for them. Then I got my essays in the -- I got one in the LA Times and The Washington Post and then The New York Times. I had a column on the Huffington Post. I just kept going. It's funny. When I got my first TV writing job, I was so thrilled to be at the table. I was so excited. I couldn't believe it. I really felt the same. I feel the same way now. I know as a young kid, I always wanted to be an author, and I ended up being a screenwriter. That's just also so surreal. I now have this book out. I am now a bona fide author, but it's because my husband died. That's the other thing, Zibby. That is the greatest gift in all of this. You and I are sitting here now. We're having a conversation about Joel. That keeps him alive. That is everything. I didn't see that coming. I think that's the point with my essays, to keep going and writing Widowish, and finding an agent and then having a publisher. A friend and I, another writer, we call it the divine download. Writing this book, yes, it was difficult, of course. I'm writing about some difficult things. The process was very easy for me because it was right there. It was just under the surface. I feel like it all just needed to come out. It did. That's Widowish.

Zibby: That's such an amazing story. It's amazing, also, just the power of connection and how -- I was thinking as you were talking earlier. You were like, I'm in this neighborhood in LA. I was thinking to myself, I wonder where she is. Maybe we can meet up sometime in LA. Then I was just thinking, this is so crazy. If I met you on the street, we wouldn't be able to have this in-depth conversation immediately. I know this is a podcast about your book and everything. You put yourself out there so much. Then you open yourself up to other people being like, let's continue this conversation. I want to hear more. It's just amazing. It's so nice that you keep him alive that way.

Melissa: Thank you so much.

Zibby: I think one of the big misconceptions about loss is that people will be sad if you bring up the person who has died. Oh, I shouldn't bring up the fact that her dad died, so I'm not going to say, how are you? I wouldn't want to set her off. As if the person is not always thinking about that person who was lost.

Melissa: Yeah. I have to say, I feel like there is a healthy amount of self-consciousness about being, like I said, the town widow even now. It's been several years since Joel died. I know that is the first thing people think of when they see me. I could be out with my boyfriend. If I'm out with Sophie, I feel it even more. I feel them thinking, oh, poor Melissa, poor Sophie. I can't stand it. I wish I could tell you, here's what you say to somebody who just lost -- I don't know. I think grief is so personal. There's no right or wrong way to do it. I know so many people talk about the things you should say, things you shouldn't say. I feel like I should know what you should and shouldn't say, and I really don't. [laughs]

Zibby: That's okay.

Melissa: I'm thinking of you, typically, for me, that's enough, to have somebody say, I'm thinking of you. I'm so sorry. I don't need to get into the whole, how are you?

Zibby: I get it. Wait, can we go to the falling in love with the guitar teacher part of the story? [laughs]

Melissa: What do you want to know?

Zibby: I know you wrote about it and everything. Is that ongoing? Are you guys still together?

Melissa: Yes, we're still together.

Zibby: Amazing.

Melissa: Again, Zibby, that's also about when I talk about these expectations of -- there was an expectation people had of me as the young widow. I had my own expectations about what grief should look like. My daughter has -- all of her grandparents are still alive, which is such a gift, but her dad isn't here. It's crazy. This is a roundabout way of saying what happened with Marcos, who was Sophie's guitar teacher, is that he really was one of the very few people who did not make me feel self-conscious about having lost my husband. If I just back up from that, I always thought he was attractive. Guitar lessons fell under Joel's jurisdiction because he was the musician and the music guy, so he would take Sophie to her guitar lessons. I would hear about Marcos. Everybody in the neighborhood knew him. Everybody whose kids took guitar took it from him. I knew who he was, but I had never met him. There was a time when Joel couldn't take Sophie to guitar, so I ended up taking her. I remember the first time I saw him. I was like, nobody told me the guitar teacher was so hot. I said it to Joel. I was like, "Honey, come on." I even called the friend who recommended him to us. She was like, "Oh, get in line. We all have a crush on Marcos," which is the matter of fact. It was nothing. Then I ran into him shortly after Joel died. Like everybody at the time, he offered to help in any way he could. Like so many people, "Can I bring you some food? Do you need me to pick Sophie up?" whatever it is. I always appreciated it.

Joel had a ton of music equipment. He had guitars and amplifiers and all this stuff. Joel had been gone maybe six months. I started cleaning out the garage. I was kind of tiptoeing around the idea of getting rid of some things. The stuff that was in the garage, I was like, how important could it be? I forgot we even had it. When I ran into Marcos and he said to me, "If you need help with anything..." I was like, oh, my god, the stuff in the -- he can help me. Slowly but surely, he came over. He helped me one day. He was very matter of fact. He talked about Joel very easily. I felt very much myself when I was with him even though our interactions were brief. He would come. He would look through the stuff. He would call me and say, "I gave so-and-so this guitar. I'm going to use this for my lessons." Then one day, I had to go with him -- there was one guitar that was actually worth something. I had to go with him to a consignment shop. I was so deep in my grief that I just -- again, pointed me in the direction I would go. He was like, "You need to go with me to the guitar thing." I was like, okay.

It was so different than I how I felt in my real life. I felt like I was on vacation when I was with him. I wasn't thinking. I just was with him. Again, he talked easily about Joel. He didn't look at me the way I felt every else was looking at me. I knew he wasn't pitying me, poor Melissa. Then just one thing led to another. I thought, I'm going to continue to not think about this. I'm just going to go with it. I'm feeling attracted to him, which was also shocking. I also wanted to tell Joel. It's such a bizarre -- I told Joel everything. Why wouldn’t I tell him? Oh, my god, honey, I'm hooking up with the guitar teacher. Again, it was all of these feelings coexisting at the same time. I was trying to manage it. Then when it came to Marcos, I just thought, it'll be a fling. It'll be good for me. I'm just going to go with it. Here we are so many years later still very much together. We're an odd pairing. We don't make sense to everybody. I don't mind. [laughs]

Zibby: Did I tell you in our emails that my husband now used to be my tennis teacher? Did I mention that?

Melissa: I did know that, yeah.

Zibby: I'm very familiar with the -- I had moms coming up to me and being like, "Oh, Zibby, I get it." [laughs] It was so cute. It was so funny. Anyway, we're super happy. It's been five years or something crazy. It can happen.

Melissa: It is funny, though.

Zibby: It's the people who cut through all the stuff. They don't need the pretense, not to generalize. I don't know if these guys are even remotely similar. I found myself relating when you said how he saw you and you could just be you. That's the greatest thing in any relationship, is taking all the stuff down, taking down all the scaffolding and just getting underneath and seeing what's under there.

Melissa: I have to tell you a few things. I feel so lucky in love. I had Joel who completely got me. We met when I was a teenager, I think. We didn't get together until years after that. I knew Joel my whole adult life. I felt so loved and adored. I have to say, I feel the same but different with Marcos. He totally gets me. I'm a hundred percent myself. I feel those are gifts of love. I'm so happy to be the recipient of that. It sounds a little obnoxious, but it is meaningful to me. I also feel like Marcos continues to accept that Joel is my husband. I'm still to married to Joel. That's how I feel. I am still married to Joel. He's still my person, and now there's Marcos as well. It is weird. [laughs]

Zibby: No one said that grief makes sense.

Melissa: No, it doesn't.

Zibby: No one said that life makes any sense. I think your attitude, though, is -- not that I'm in any position to judge. No one should judge. It seems very empowering and inspiring. You're just like, you know what, whatever. If it doesn't make sense, this is what I'm doing. This makes me happy. If there's anything that you are owed, it's some happiness after having your husband just cruelly snatched away from you. Anyone who begrudges you happiness in any way, shape, or form, just forget it.

Melissa: I agree. I'll tell you something else that really helped me. This is in the book. All of this is in the book. A friend of mine said to me early on, "Everything you do should be easy." It's such simple advice. I don't even think she realized she was giving me advice. When she said that, it really was transformative because I thought, everything is so hard. She said something like this. She's like, "Your husband just died, and you're surviving. There is nothing harder than that. Everything you do, choose easy." I kind of did that with Marcos. I wasn't in this headspace of, oh, my god, we live on different sides of the boulevard. He's the guitar teacher. All of those things, I did not have the capacity to analyze it the way I would have if things were not so surreal. That advice of, just make things easy, I decided with him, whatever happens, happens. He was not saving me from my grief. He coexisted with my grief. That's the point I wanted to make too. I think I spell this out pretty clearly in the book. It's not like because I have a boyfriend and a man in my life, I'm better. Oh, Melissa's fine, she's got a boyfriend. No, it's what I just said a minute ago. The grief coexists with the love which coexists with this new life. It's complicated. I think happy is my baseline. I'm happy to be back at happy, but still grieving. That's why I say the book is really a love story. Again, it's not like Marcos came in and saved me. I didn't need saving. I'm not better because I have love in my life again, but it is a nice -- life just moves forward whether I wanted it to or not. Here we are.

Zibby: Amazing. I love that. Having written the book, do you have advice to aspiring authors?

Melissa: My advice is to keep writing. I really believe that everybody has a story to tell. I don't necessarily mean memoir. We all have life experiences. We've all been witness to things. Things have happened to us. If somebody is inspired to write, just write. Really believe in yourself. Believe in what you're saying. There are so many voices that, oh, that's terrible. That's such a bad idea. Don't do that. There's a lot of no starting with ourselves. Just be kind to yourself. Keep writing. You could be writing a journal. That's plenty. I just encourage people to tell whatever story they feel compelled to tell.

Zibby: Love it. Melissa, thank you. I hope we can continue offline in some form because I'd love to stay in touch. I'm so rooting for you and so invested in your story and all the rest. That sounds creepy or something. Thank you so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books" and sharing your grief and your happiness and the tangled mess that it really all is all together.

Melissa: I know. [laughs] Thank you so much, Zibby. This was really fantastic to talk with you.

Zibby: You too. I'll talk to you soon. Buh-bye.

Melissa: Bye.

Jordan Thierry and Ben Sand, A KIDS BOOK ABOUT

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Jordan and Ben, to "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books." Thanks for doing this interview together.

Ben Sand: Absolutely. Thanks for having us.

Jordan Thierry: Thank you for having us on, Zibby.

Zibby: It's my pleasure. Ben, you're the author of A Kids Book About White Privilege, and Jordan, A Kids Book About Systemic Racism, in the new series of kids' books which are fantastic, educational, inspiring, all the rest. First, how did you two end up contributing to this series? Jordan, take it away.

Jordan: I can go first. I know the founder of A Kids Book About, Jelani Memory, from youth. We played basketball together growing up. We had done some work together as adults. He reached out. He wrote A Kids Book About Racism. We had touched base and were thinking about a topic for me to write. Then after the murder of George Floyd, we reconnected and decided that A Kids Book About Systemic Racism would be a really great topic to help people understand why these racial injustices continue to thrive in our society that explain that phenomenon beyond the individual one-on-one racism, as I think a lot of people like to think of racism, but looking at the systems that allow these things to continue.

Zibby: How about you, Ben?

Ben: In a way, similar. Jelani Memory, the CEO of A Kids Book About, is a friend of mine. He and I have been in a conversation now together over a decade really about what we're experiencing and are going to continue to experience in our country and in our culture as white people continue to resist their own exploration on the topic of their ethnicity. What does it mean to be white? While we've been talking about it for quite some time, I think in this particular moment in 2020 and as we look ahead, Jelani feels that this is an incredible pivot that's taking place. Now's the time to make sure that we're having this conversation. He asked, and I said yes.

Zibby: Amazing. Have you guys met before?

Jordan: We haven't.

Zibby: No? Oh, my gosh. Ben, this is Jordan. Jordan, this is Ben.

Jordan: Thank you, Zibby, for bringing us together.

Zibby: [laughs] No problem. I'm surprised that Jelani hasn’t organized some sort of meetup with everybody.

Jordan: It's been crazy. It's been very busy over the last few months. With the pandemic, obviously, we haven't had a chance to do an in-person mixer or anything like that, but hopefully soon.

Zibby: I get it. When you were both writing your books, what were some of the things that you wanted to make sure to include? How did you figure out how to get them into bite-size information for kids? Obviously, writing for adults is way different. What's your experience been like talking to kids? I know, Jordan, you did a whole deep dive on fatherhood, so I know you're familiar with that. Ben, you're part of this contingent, so you're actively organizing people, but what about kids?

Jordan: For me at least, it was really, really challenging and really uncomfortable, somewhat, of a process because this is such a deep issue. There's also just a lot of nuances. Writing a children's book forces you to make a lot of generalizations. That's the one part that I really struggled with, was making the generalizations. Of course, there's exceptions of all of these things. I have to have confidence in the parent or the adult that will be reading with these children and helping contextualize what's in the book and offer some of that nuance themselves based on their own lives and their own family experiences. I just have to trust that process. I haven't gotten too much critique or pushback yet, but I'm steady waiting for it. That was definitely the hard part, was making those generalizations and knowing obviously there's exceptions to all these things. The Kids Book About team, they have this process down pat. They really supported me in being comfortable with that and trying to tell the story and also not shy away from some of the harsh realities. I wasn't sure how to phrase some of those things about genocide, about slavery. I was very grateful that they were not shying away from those things.

Zibby: It is hard to package up genocide in a very -- when other books are about sleeping sheep. Those are the choices at the end of the day. How about you, Ben?

Ben: I have three children, two biological white girls and my son is half Vietnamese, half Mexican. We've been having a conversation about their whiteness for as long as they really can remember. That really was, for me, where this started to percolate as someone that lives in a very multicultural community. The work that I do intentionally engages communities of color. Part of what I was longing for was a method to try to translate our internal family conversation to a conversation that could spread with the world. I live in Portland, Oregon. When George Floyd was murdered and the protests began, of which those protests continue, I think the white kids in my city were seeing these protests and were asking questions about they meant for them. It struck me that there are not a ton of resources out there to talk to white kids about their white privilege in a manner that actually asks them to acknowledge it, to give it up, and to use it for the benefit of others. So much of the narrative around white privilege has been co-opted by a cultural war that's questioning whether or not white privilege even exists. When you ask the question, what does it mean to be white in a moment when we're asking big questions about race? it felt like now was the time to do that. For me, it was a bit of a translation of taking evening pajama conversations and putting them in a book that could be brought to homes across the country.

Zibby: You did it.

Ben: I hope so.

Zibby: Congratulations. Even the format, I feel like this is totally digestible for kids. I have a six and seven-year-old and then two thirteen-year-olds. Although, forget about getting them to do anything. The little guys, I can still read to. The colors, the message, the questioning, it's an engaging versus didactic type of read for kids, which I think is so important. What is really exciting you guys? Is it that this content is getting out there? Is it that you're a part of it? There must be something that made you stop and feel passionate enough about this that you were like, yes, I'm dedicating all this time to writing it and marketing it and getting it out there. What is it for you personally that made you the ones to do this?

Jordan: For me personally, I'm just really excited to be in company with folks like Ben and the other authors. We're all really focused on this really positive message for our young people about love and hope and resistance and change and acceptance. At the end of the day, that's probably what the Kids Book About legacy is going to stand for because all the books to date have been in that vein. I think it's going to have a really positive impact over the long term. I'm also just really excited to be equipping parents and teachers with something to help get these conversations started with their kids and their students.

Ben: Zibby, what's exciting to me about the book and a kids' book about any of these topics that are being discussed, but particularly the topics around race, is it feels that we are pushing conversations with a generation of kids that are going to be in leadership in a really critical moment in our country's history. I imagine that we're looking at a twenty-year arc in this conversation. Some of the elders, some of those generations that have gone before us, are not prepared to have this conversation at scale. We're seeing a polarization as a result of that. There are many leaders that have huge concerns about our inability to have a conversation about race and the wealth gap in our country. As a result of that, the inability to have that conversation, what it's led to is those that are in previous generations rejecting the idea of critical race theory or systemic racism altogether. To be able to make a deposit into a generation of young, white kids to ask these questions in critical moments of their formation, for me, feels like it's a very strategic move for a twenty-year conversation that has to take place with a quickening pace for the days ahead.

Zibby: In twenty, thirty years, we'll be watching the election. They’ll say, it all started when I read this children's book.

Ben: Yeah, that's right. I'm sure that's what it will be.

Zibby: It's going to be that. I had it on my shelf. I kept looking at it. There you go. You never know. I think about different children's books all the time. It's a good time to really get in there. If you can learn a whole new language without even trying that hard, it's a good time to learn a lot of concepts that when you're older, maybe they're too challenging, or not too. I'm not saying anyone should give up. I'm just saying the impressionable brain at the young age is a good time to get positive messages around. Do you think that getting to a place where kids don't see race is where you want things to go? Would your goal be having kids today grow up acknowledging -- when I was growing up, I feel like everybody was like, we don't see race. In all my education and all that, I didn't even realize it was a thing until I was older and people were polarized around it. I grew up in a really diverse education environment and all this stuff. I didn't think twice about it. There's so much focus now on race that I feel like, especially for little kids, they might not have even really noticed it before. Is it better to notice and probe the differences, or it is better to just be like, her skin's a little darker than mine, but I don't know, whatever? Do you understand my question? [laughs]

Ben: Yeah. I'll take a crack at that. Jordan's book really addresses this even uniquely beyond mine. I think it's absolutely essential that we have conversations about the black experience in America and the experience of what it means to be a part of the Latinx community. What we have not done historically is taught white kids about their whiteness and helped them to understand that their whiteness has been rooted in a systemic unearned advantage that they benefit from and have been benefitting from for some time. When we think about race and whiteness in particular, which is what this book is certainly focused on, we won't be able to have a conversation about race that builds bridges until white people learn about their whiteness. I do this a lot. When I talk to white people, I ask them, when was the last time you ever thought about what it means to be white? The vast majority of white people can't answer that question. They're not thinking about their whiteness. They don't understand where the terms came from. They don't understand how deeply rooted the systemic unearned advantage has been. They certainly are uncomfortable with exploring the topics in Jordan's book around slavery and genocide and the laws that were created. From my perspective, we won't be able to move forward until white people understand their whiteness and then begin to wrestle with it in a way that's critical. That means that to understand your whiteness, you have to understand how whiteness has created an adverse effect at a systemic level for people of color in our country. That needs to be named and parsed out carefully in my view. Jordan, what do you think?

Jordan: I agree with everything you said there, Ben. Thank you. For me, this is not about trying to work towards a colorblind society. It's about trying to work towards an inclusive, vibrant society where these inequities and injustices don't exist. The book, for me, is helping encourage young people to take into consideration the history behind the inequities that we see today. That goes not just for race, but I want them to understand that too for gender, for sexuality so we can contextualize these inequities and then work our way backwards to try and address those root causes. If the book helps train that mental framework for young people, then I'll be very, very pleased.

Zibby: As authors in addition to, I would say, advocates and almost history teachers and documentarians and all the other amazing things you guys do, as authors when you sat down to write this book, what did you learn about yourselves in terms of any sort of advice on writing children's books, on getting your messages out? What would you tell someone else who was like, you know what, I want to, A, help this problem, and B, do so through reaching kids? What would you tell them? How can they do a good job?

Ben: I would say the key here is let your life speak. Look back on your life and try to identify that thread that brings you to this point where you have a longing to write, you have a longing to communicate. So much of an author's experience is really about exploring their own identity. For me as a white person and my own white experience being able to write about whiteness and then to want to talk to other white people about this is really a culmination of a journey that I've been on that pivots me to this moment to enter into a new chapter of that journey. It was just as important for me to come to the text looking for my own growth in light of my own journey. Any aspiring authors or anyone that wants to communicate to kids I think needs to also imagine how that topic impacts them and to write from that intimate personal space.

Zibby: I'm feeling like, is there a memoir coming on the heels of this, Ben?

Ben: A Kids Book About...

Zibby: A Kids Book About Ben's Life. Is that in the works as well? [laughs]

Jordan: I agree with everything Ben said there. Picking up on those notes as well, I think people should value their own lived experience. A lot of people just don't. They don't think of their own experiences. Their own stories have value for other people to know and learn from. That's one of the biggest things I'm always pushing for as someone who does documentary work. Share this story because someone is going to benefit from it. That's one thing. Like Ben said, write from that place. Explore your own identity, your own experiences. The other is a more practical, tangible thing. There's a lot of fantastic children's books out there that deal with issues of race, gender, sexuality, culture, but they don't get out there because the children's publishing industry is so rigid. There's just only a few big players. There's a lot of these really fantastic books that just don't have this type of reach. What I'm learning from A Kids Book About, because they’ve created a really valuable pipeline for new kind of content to go directly to consumers instead of having to go through the big players in the children's book publishing industry, the marketing that they're doing is just incredible. With some of our books being included on Oprah's wish list, the kind of reach that that's getting is just -- I never would've imagined for this children's book. Trying to pull from some of the lessons from what A Kids Book About is doing in terms of the marketing and the outreach and not having to go through the big players in the industry, I think people can learn from as well.

Ben: Well said.

Zibby: Yes, great point. Definitely, the advice is get on Oprah's list. I'm going to put that at the top of my list.

Jordan: Easier said than done.

Zibby: That helps. That definitely helps. First, you have to have great content. That's the first stop. Thank you both. I'm glad I could be here to introduce you to each other. Maybe now you guys can go have a nice, interesting, dynamic, thoughtful conversation of your own without me bothering you with my questions. Thank you for contributing to society and trying to help the next generation. That's really admirable of you. Big thumps up as a parent and whatever I am these days, as a person. [laughs] Thanks. It's awesome.

Ben: Thanks for having us on your show.

Jordan: Thank you so much, Zibby.

Zibby: Buh-bye.

Jordan: Take care.