Reema Zaman, I AM YOURS: A SHARED MEMOIR
[0:00]Hi, I'm Zibi Owens, and you're listening to Momstone Have Time to Read Books.
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[0:22]I'm thrilled to be interviewing Rima Zaman today.
[0:24]Rima is an award-winning author, speaker, and actress.
[0:27]Born in Bangladesh and raised in Hawaii and Thailand, Rima moved to New York to pursue her
[0:32]dream of acting while also working in childcare before writing her debut memoir, I Am
[0:37]Years, a shared memoir.
[0:38]Her work has been published in Vogue, Shape, Huffpost, Salon.com, and Ms. Magazine.
[0:44]Rima is currently partnering with the International Rescue Committee and Girls Inc. to serve
[0:48]crucial causes and empower the next generation of leaders.
[0:51]She currently lives in Oregon, where she is an Oregon literary art writer of color,
[0:55]Fellow, from 2018.
[0:57]I am so thrilled to be here with Rima Zaman.
[0:59]Welcome, Rima.
[1:00]Thank you so much, Zibi.
[1:01]It's an honor to be here.
[1:03]I feel like I'm now living the conclusion of your book.
[1:07]I'm in the sequel now that you're here.
[1:09]I know what happens after.
[1:10]Mm-hmm.
[1:11]Because you caught me in the middle of book tour.
[1:13]Exactly.
[1:14]Welcome.
[1:15]I'm so excited.
[1:16]You've spilled your whole life out on these pages in such a beautiful, profound way.
[1:20]And I really mean that the words that it was so poetic and the stories you told, the
[1:25]pain, the way you turned it all into such a gift.
[1:29]I was like, oh my gosh, she's the nicest person in the middle of the film.
[1:31]Thank you.
[1:32]I have some specific questions, but I just really wanted to get to know you.
[1:35]So there's this powerful scene at the beginning of I Am Your as a shared memoir, when
[1:39]you're four years old and you structured it by age, as you went through, which was great.
[1:43]Your dad is at the dinner table with you and you have a fever and a cold and he doesn't
[1:47]want you to cough or whatever reason and he says, why is the child coughing?
[1:50]Stop it.
[1:51]And you say, Papa, it uses his hard voice.
[1:53]It sounds like the ground.
[1:55]I order my throat to stop.
[1:57]The cough pushes against it, making it burn and my eyes wet.
[2:00]The place where my heart lives starts hurting.
[2:03]The humming words fly faster, but I don't cough.
[2:05]So I wanted to know, start with that about how you felt in that moment and then how you
[2:10]think your dad's relationship with you affected your relationships with men.
[2:14]And I'm starting with this because I feel like that's the basis of most of the stories.
[2:19]Exactly.
[2:20]So, God.
[2:21]Yeah, thank you.
[2:22]That's one of my favorite scenes because when you're a memoirist, you're bound to the truth.
[2:28]Meaning you can't fabricate and you're seen and strangely enough, my life has that
[2:34]experience of being not directly ordered but certainly given the cue that I need to hold
[2:40]my breath.
[2:41]So to say that I spent many years holding my breath around my father wouldn't be hyperbole
[2:47]or metaphor.
[2:49]And my mother and I, we recall that story quite often because really it's one of those
[2:54]scenes that unzipped so much because from the time I was a child, I was always very, very
[3:01]I knew that my father's love was constant.
[3:05]His love was non-negotiable.
[3:07]However, I did feel that his affection, his attention and certainly his approval was based
[3:16]on conditions and I felt that even the slightest imperfection was a failure on my part as
[3:23]his daughter as a person.
[3:26]And that, of course, would then influence the way I related to other men throughout my life
[3:33]until I stopped to assess all of this, examine all of this and put it down into a book.
[3:38]And so, you know, when you're, I was modeled a kind of love that conflates love with pain
[3:43]and perfection, meaning that I then went on to attract characters and situations that
[3:51]showed love conflated with pain and perfection, you know, it isn't a coincidence that
[3:56]I then became an actress and a model and all of the kind of roles and the kind of actress
[4:02]I was supposed to be was based on being a very perfect idealized woman.
[4:06]And that's also how I carried myself in relationships with men.
[4:10]The kind of partners I attracted were men who were very narrow-minded in what they perceived
[4:17]as being female beauty.
[4:19]And female beauty based on strict conditions of the way I behaved, that I always had to
[4:25]be pleasing and coy and demure, based on their needs and approval.
[4:30]So one of the ways you found a cope with these narrow-minded men was to tell yourself over
[4:36]and over again that your life, you were the author of your own story and each time you went
[4:40]through another situation you would say, this is just a page, right?
[4:44]This is only one page, only I will offer, author my life.
[4:48]What other types of tools aside from the self-talk do you think really got you through?
[4:52]And maybe I should say to listeners who haven't read the book yet, maybe remiss should
[4:55]just give us like the two-sentence summary of the book in case you're wondering why we're
[4:59]talking about all these relationships before I give you any content.
[5:03]The book is called I Am Yours and it's a shared memoir and we've created this new genre.
[5:09]And I break the fourth wall, the entire book, meaning that from the very beginning I
[5:13]addressed my reader directly and I call you my love.
[5:18]And initially when you're with toddler Rima, she thinks you're her imaginary best friend.
[5:24]And it's the reader as well as my inner voice.
[5:28]That's what I call love and we go through this journey of my life together and we go through
[5:34]painful situation together and we also then navigate the darkness and find our way to healing
[5:39]and resilience together.
[5:41]And that is one of the reasons why the title is called I Am Yours because we go through
[5:46]these different woods around the world and we find our way out by being each other's
[5:52]lighthouse.
[5:53]So back to the coping mechanism to use and you talk a little in the book, not a little
[5:59]lot in the book about making it through and whatever, but I was just wondering on like
[6:03]a day-to-day basis at the time, what are some of the things that we're getting you through
[6:07]is in these difficult relationships?
[6:08]And because there were difficult relationships that did contain psychological and emotional
[6:14]abuse and verbal abuse.
[6:15]And there were also instances of sexual violence where I was stalked by a predator when
[6:20]I was a senior in high school, a cousin tried to molest me when I was 11.
[6:24]And then when I was 23, I was raped and that's when I was living by myself in New York
[6:29]City while my family was still in Asia.
[6:31]So one of the coping mechanisms that got me out of those periods of darkness was to focus
[6:40]on the woman I could be in five years, were I to survive.
[6:45]And I would envision her and I would envision her as being this strong, calm, mature woman
[6:53]who was able to turn her pain into her power and to do so in a way that hadn't made
[6:59]her hardened or cold toward the world.
[7:03]Because I think true power is when we're able to maintain softness of hearts and love
[7:08]for humankind, that's true strain.
[7:11]And I would envision that woman and focusing on her, let me take the daily steps toward
[7:17]becoming her.
[7:19]The other coping mechanism was I would tell myself to focus on the life purpose that
[7:24]I knew has been mine ever since I was a little girl.
[7:27]So I mentioned that cousin and that experience when I was 11 years old.
[7:30]So when I was 11 and we were visiting family in Bangladesh, a cousin 20 years my senior
[7:36]tried to molest me.
[7:38]And I reported him to my father and I was told that boys will be boys and that this happens
[7:44]especially between cousins.
[7:46]And in that moment, two things occurred.
[7:49]One, I started connecting that the reason why abuse culture exists is because there is silence
[7:54]culture.
[7:55]And silence culture is protected and created by complicity and accomplices that protect abusers.
[8:04]And that silence culture is built on the backs of silenced children and silenced women.
[8:11]And the other thing that happened was I made a promise to myself that if the people around
[8:16]me were unable to speak because of their fears and their conditionings.
[8:21]So I had compassion for my father, his knee jerk response saying boys will be boys.
[8:26]I knew it was him merely reciting what he had been taught and perhaps had been told as
[8:31]a child.
[8:34]So I knew that I had a great deal of compassion for his conditioning as well as I gained
[8:39]insight into the culture, the larger culture.
[8:43]And it propelled me to make this vow that if people were unable or unwilling to speak,
[8:50]then I had this duty to break our generational silence by becoming the first in my generation
[8:58]to speak out and be a voice for the silenced stories and souls in my family.
[9:04]And that then became this furious conviction that I had.
[9:09]And it became the driving impetus and ambition that was the spine of my life.
[9:14]The spine of every single decision can be traced to that.
[9:19]And so in my 20s, I was in an abusive marriage and I would look at the man who was my
[9:24]husband and I would just say in my brain over and over again, I would tell myself I was
[9:29]born for a story so much bigger than this.
[9:31]I have to get out because I was born for a calling much bigger than this relationship.
[9:37]So things like that, that became, and I think that's what stitching ourselves to any kind
[9:42]of life calling or life purpose.
[9:44]And it really doesn't matter the wording we give it.
[9:46]We can say, oh, I'm going to be a voice for the voiceless or I'm a voice of compassion
[9:50]or I'm a channel of love, whatever the wording is, whatever we choose, it becomes your
[9:56]anchor.
[9:57]It becomes the lighthouse.
[9:58]And it also...
[10:00]gives you the ambition to overcome any adversity that crosses your path.
[10:06]I like it. I'm going to be a channel of love from now on.
[10:08]I like that. That's going to be my new logo, a new tagline.
[10:11]You had this great scene on a subway and you were in New York and going through really hard time,
[10:17]you were just to wrap all this stuff. And you said you would give, you would write little notes
[10:20]to people you noticed on the subway who looked a little down or that you could tell they didn't
[10:25]going through really hard time. And you would take the time and slip them a little piece of
[10:28]paper and sometimes you could see them as the train would pull away. You could look out the
[10:31]window and see them look back and smile or be overcome with emotion. I want to hear more about that.
[10:36]And I want to hear about the reactions. Did nobody, I know I've been my question, like,
[10:41]did nobody think you were nuts? Because I was just like, if somebody tried to even talk to me on
[10:44]the subway, I was like, I'm very much like, wary. Not that I'm not the channel of love, I say I am.
[10:49]But you know, I know. And that's one of the reasons that's one of the precise reasons that I would
[10:55]tell myself to go that extra mile and hand over that love note to a stranger. Because we've
[11:01]all been taught to be wary because of something bad that happened. So by doing little acts of
[11:08]love notes, we dismantled that fear. And that's how I did it for myself. I started handing out
[11:15]love notes while I was in that marriage that had turned emotionally abusive as a way to keep my
[11:23]spirit alive. Because it gave me this moment of connection with a stranger. It reminded me of the
[11:31]beauty of humankind. And it reminded me that I was born for something bigger than the chaos and pain
[11:37]at home. And then by being a channel of love for someone else, not only do you get to shape
[11:45]their day, not only do you get to help shape their day and help nourish their day, that act of
[11:52]giving nourishes yours. And it sustained me. And actually I never got any kind of resistance because
[11:59]I think human beings, we are craving to feel seen and understood and cared for. And any kind of
[12:05]reticence again has been taught to us out of something bad that happened, right? Because when a baby,
[12:12]every baby is born knowing how to ask for love. You don't see a baby denying themselves food because
[12:19]they think they're thighs or chavi. They're not going to deny themselves a hug unless
[12:24]they're repeated requests for food or for a hug or closeness have been denied of them, right?
[12:31]So we're born innocent and we're born knowing that we can draw toward love and ask for love.
[12:36]And then it's through the course of life that we grow reticent about asking for it. That's why
[12:42]I mean, I am yours is structured as this larger love ladder. The first two words of I am yours
[12:48]are dear love. And it's written in this epistolary form to honor that, honor those little love
[12:53]notes on this of why. You write a lot about your experience with anorexia very openly and
[12:59]candidly and beautifully. When you first introduced it in the book, you have just lost 22 pounds,
[13:04]which you said was the fifth of your body weight. So I had to stop and do some math and get on my
[13:08]pencil. No, I say you I shouldn't even joke during this emotional tug, but through you sort of
[13:14]relentless running, laxatives, extreme food restrictions, chewing each bite 30 times,
[13:19]sort of all the textbook things you could see about anorexia, you tried and wrote about.
[13:24]And the first time when you were writing about your big, your biggest loss you wrote,
[13:28]I feel utterly calm. Anorexia feels heavenly. I have unlocked a mythical gold mine,
[13:33]holding every coveted treasure, inner peace, beauty, and the power to shape actual matter.
[13:37]All around me is chaos, but all within is still. So I wanted to know how you thought this
[13:43]sort of self-destructive method of self-care helped and how it ended up hurting. And then what
[13:49]you would say to people sort of struggling with this right now. Right. So I think self-harm,
[13:56]the inception of self-harm, it doesn't start at age 15 when you start to maniacally work out.
[14:02]It actually, I believe it starts at the first moment of trauma in a person's life,
[14:07]in the same way that addiction doesn't necessarily begin with that first drink. It begins with
[14:12]that first trauma that intercepted that person's life. So could go back to age 7, age 3, age 11.
[14:19]And I attach to anorexia because everything around me, especially at home, felt so painful and
[14:27]chaotic. And I believe any of us who attach to self-harm or eating disorders of any kind,
[14:34]we're doing it to create a semblance of control in a world that feels so unkind and uncontrollable.
[14:41]And I wanted to write about anorexia with this specific kind of language that holds
[14:48]poetry and compassion because there is so much misunderstanding and stigma surrounding it.
[14:55]And I've certainly been told by relatives, by family members, and by many male partners that,
[15:01]oh, you're just so crazy or you're just so vain to be anorexic. And that's like saying alcoholism
[15:08]is vain or a product of vanity or selfishness. And no kind of self-harm or addiction
[15:15]is a product of vanity or recklessness or stupidity or insanity. It is a person trying to create
[15:20]a semblance of control and visibility in a world that makes us feel invisible and attacked.
[15:27]And yeah, it became my protective device. And it became the thing that made me feel like I was
[15:35]powerful that I had control over something in my life being my physical appearance. But any kind
[15:43]of power, if we lean into it too much, it can become our prison. And that's certainly what
[15:50]happened to me. And there's a line later on in my 20s when I'm examining anorexia more deeply.
[15:55]And I say, you know, I'm looking at another woman. And I'm in a playground and I'm watching
[16:04]mothers and nannies with their children. And I see a woman running behind her child. And I can
[16:11]tell from her concave energy that she too suffering from some kind of self-harm or eating disorder
[16:18]because we can recognize it in each other. It's not from thinness, it's more of an energy
[16:23]than in a feeling that this woman is being eaten from the inside by pain. And I write in the book,
[16:30]when did you start shrinking yourself to protect yourself? And I think that's what it comes back
[16:36]to. And so the moment I connected all of this, it became my freedom. Because I think clarity
[16:42]is 97% of healing for anything, whether it's healing from abuse, healing from assault,
[16:50]or healing from self-harm and eating disorders. When you start piecing together,
[16:55]how it is you became the person that you are. It alleviates the shame and shame is such a big
[17:01]part of the illness. And so when the shame is replaced with clarity, clarity then becomes the courage
[17:07]and strength you need to start making healthier choices. And the other thing that I started doing
[17:13]is I started, once I saw how everything connected and that I had started making these decisions
[17:18]to feel powerful, to use beauty, physical beauty as a way of feeling powerful,
[17:24]I realized, well, then I just have to replace my metric of measurement. For the longest time,
[17:30]my metric of measurement was physical beauty. And so I decided, well, I'm going to use something
[17:35]different as my identifying factor in the pack or the tribe. And I decided, well, I'm no longer
[17:42]going to be a creature of the body. I'm going to be a creature of the mind. And my legacy in
[17:47]this world will be from my art, my writing, my advocacy, my activism. And the impact I'm able to
[17:55]have, the positive impact I'm able to have by serving others. And the moment I made that shift,
[18:01]and I started identifying myself through a different metric of measurement, the impulse to
[18:07]starve myself vanished because to truly do my job as a creature of the mind, I had to feed my
[18:15]brain. I had to feed my body to become the best version of this person. And all my decisions in
[18:23]the last six, it'll be six years this June that I kind of went cold turkey on everything, on all
[18:28]of my toxic decisions. And the moment I made that mindset shift, everything just became clear,
[18:34]and I started feeding myself and giving myself not only the food that a body requires, but also
[18:39]sleep and rest. And I started prioritizing my mental health and my physical health more. And I
[18:46]even things like saying no to unkind people and putting up boundaries. Because it was all connected,
[18:52]you know, I think when you attach to any kind of self harm, you also start making harmful
[18:57]decisions in your relationships. And with the people you allow in, because it comes back to self
[19:02]esteem and how we measure our self esteem. And so you decided to turn all of this into a book.
[19:09]Yes. You reached a point and you describe it. That was the other thing that I thought was really
[19:13]neat about this book and a little bit different is you describe like now I decide to write a book,
[19:18]and then you take us through the writing of the book as you're writing the book. Right.
[19:22]And how the act of writing is healing you as you're doing it and before it's even finished.
[19:28]Right. Which was great. It was like, oh, I'm reading what she's and it was just very neat to say
[19:33]it's like a real time almost. So it kept me as a reader like right there with you. Thank you. And
[19:37]I because I wanted the experience of reading the book to feel transformative for the reader. And
[19:42]that's been one of my greatest joys is hearing from readers that by going along with my
[19:48]journey of healing and resilience, they have now felt the healing and resilience in their lives
[19:54]too through the things that they have struggled with. And that's why I made it that way to do it
[19:58]in real time so that we could.
[20:00]Go through the memories and the strength we needed to go through the memories together, solve those memories, heal those memories, and then arrive at strength together.
[20:10]So you go through this intense period of time, you write the book at your sister, in your childhood, your parents' home, your sisters, at your sister's desk, wearing your father's sweatshirt, and not your father's stepfather.
[20:21]And then the book, you know, ends at a much, I mean, not to give away the ending. Am I giving it away?
[20:25]I just want to say you're in a better place in the start. Yes, that is fair. I think that's fair. You were a four-year-old child at the beginning.
[20:30]So I feel like I can safely say you're in a better place. And now, so how did you get from...
[20:36]So you wrote this whole book in Oregon? Yes, I did. And then you end it.
[20:41]Take what happened after you said, okay, I'm done. Right. So we leave the book on this kind of...
[20:47]Honestly, the cliffhanger, because we're on the plane, and I'm about to go to New York, and that's all we know.
[20:53]We know that the book has achieved the thing that we wanted it to achieve, that it allowed me to reclaim my voice.
[21:00]And with that, my power, it helped me heal and release anorexia. It also helped me heal.
[21:06]And we define many of the critical relationships in my life with my father, with myself, with my family.
[21:13]And then I started looking for an agent, and I was able to sign with my number one choice of literature agent.
[21:21]And then we developed the manuscript. I sent it to her on her name's Lisa Damona. I love her so much.
[21:29]And I sent draft number four to Lisa, and then we developed it to draft number seven, then we sent it out to publishers.
[21:37]And that process began in... So I started writing, I am yours on November 28, 2013.
[21:44]And I gave myself a calendar year for that first draft. And toward the tail end of that calendar year, I started...
[21:51]First, I was just living with my parents, and they said you don't need to pay rent or groceries. You just focus on this.
[21:58]And then toward the tail end of that first year, I started working at Kindercare as a daycare provider for 11 dollars an hour.
[22:06]And then I was looking for agents, and I got my number one agent. And then we developed the book to...
[22:13]I moved out of my parents' place. We developed the book to draft number seven. We sent that around to publishers, starting in June, 2016.
[22:22]And then it was on submission for a while because it's such an unusual book. It's a very ambitious book because I break a lot of traditional rules of how a memoir should be written.
[22:34]I certainly take enormous creative risks by talking to the reader directly. It's a book that is radically empathic and radically intimate.
[22:44]And so I think for many publishers, they just didn't... They were telling us that we don't know how to sell this. We don't know how to market it. It doesn't really fit into any niche category we have.
[22:55]And we kept on saying, well, because it's not meant to. It's not meant to be a bond that she will in story. It's a human story.
[23:02]And it's going to be a big bulk and it's going to have all that larger of appeal because it doesn't categorize or tokenize itself.
[23:10]And lo and behold, we then matched up with the perfect publisher, Dana Anderson of Inbert Act Publishing, who shared our enormous vision and faith in this book where she said immediately she was, this is going to be a book for a generation and generations to come because it's not a niche book.
[23:30]It can't be easily categorized. It's meant to be a book that goes into the human canon.
[23:35]It's been wonderful to see the book now. It was published on February 5, 2019. And it's been so incredibly gratifying to see how it's really profoundly impacted so many people and, you know, a population that cannot be identified by a single gender or age or race.
[23:56]It's just human beings who are craving this radical empathy, radical connection. And that's what the book is a vehicle for.
[24:06]And now somehow you've gotten into activism and tell me about that work that you're doing now.
[24:12]So from kinder care, then I started cashiering at Whole Foods. And during that time, and I chose those jobs because, yes, I could have started sending out my resume to say creative agencies and become, you know, an in-house copywriter for an ad agency or something like that.
[24:28]Instinctively, I knew that where I to do that, all of my creative energy and intellectual power would be invested in someone else's baby, someone else's business.
[24:39]And so I took on these jobs that would allow me to be in contact with human beings. I could serve human beings directly every day in some active service.
[24:48]I would make just enough to cover rent and groceries, but at the end of the day still have my full creative bandwidth on my disposal.
[24:57]So while I was working at Whole Foods, and this was, you know, in 2016 and 2017, I started training myself to become, to launch a speaking career.
[25:07]And I would say that I mean, I started watching at least two TED Talks a day, and every single interview ever conducted with Oprah, Michelle Obama, Glennon Doyle, Brenne Brown, all of the women who my C.S. role models, all of the great poets and writers, Tony Morrison, my Angelo.
[25:30]I would watch them speak in their most authentic powerful voice, and then I would respond to the same interview questions in my developing authentic powerful voice.
[25:43]And I would put myself through these trainings, these rehearsals, in every spare moment.
[25:49]And when I knew that I had developed the muscle of my voice to a place where I would hire myself, I started pitching myself to various colleges and conferences.
[26:00]And I knew that my job was to become a voice who was going to articulate certain nuances and the journey of healing and resilience about sexual assault, abuse, and self harm.
[26:14]And I knew that there was a pocket that needed to be filled, there was a need.
[26:18]And this was before me too, the Me Too movement.
[26:22]And I started training myself for that moment without knowing that I was.
[26:26]All I knew is that in a few years there will be a deep need for a woman to be speaking about these topics.
[26:34]And my job was to do my all to become prepared for that moment.
[26:39]And I think success is exactly that success is the intersection of preparation and opportunity.
[26:45]So lo and behold, I've been putting myself through these rehearsals while cashiering at Whole Foods.
[26:49]And that's throughout 2016, Trump gets elected in November 2016.
[26:53]And I started booking jobs as a speaker all throughout the nation, Northwestern University of Oregon, all over.
[27:01]because suddenly having a young woman from Bangladesh speak about how she found her voice and her strength after sexual assault and abuse became precisely the kind of story that society needed to feel hopeful and to feel optimistic and to feel emboldened.
[27:22]And lo and behold, our right publisher came into my life when I was a fully formed creature versus, you know, a young author who would be like, oh yeah, do whatever you want with me promote me and market me however you want.
[27:36]Dana and I, we signed a contract through that mutual respect where she came to me, she said, you are already a fully formed voice.
[27:45]and I want to do a support to you and help you get to the next level.
[27:48]So that I think has also contributed to the book sales and the success of the book because I have come in knowing exactly what this book is about because I took the time to understand what my voice was about.
[28:01]So it's all connected, you know, everything always is.
[28:04]You know, you have speaking, you have activism, I feel like your trajectory is just going to soar like what is your, do you have like an out there goal like do you want to run a country, do you want to like like mother to recess?
[28:18]No, I just feel like I love that.
[28:20]I feel like you have a presence and you have a drive and a message and I feel like you're going to just keep at it and, you know, it was interesting because, you know, the more people, so the same time as booking all of these speaking engagements,
[28:35]my essays start getting published a lot and then people started asking me after any speaking gig is when are you going to run for office and I don't want to run for office because I, or I mean not yet.
[28:48]I think I do most service when I'm able to speak without anything over my head saying that I have to make sure that I speak within these parameters.
[28:57]And you know, so in January or was it December, December 2018 just before the book was launched.
[29:05]The International Rescue Committee approached me and said, we would love to engage your time and your voice in helping us to serve the Rohingya people in Bangladesh, your homeland.
[29:17]It's been the perfect, in the perfect marriage and so the next book will be written while I'm living and working in Cox's Bazaar with the Rohingya people and the book will be created in order to give their voices a global platform and amplification because I think to me that's what's been the most exciting part.
[29:38]So this book is the first book to have been written and published by a banner that she woman that speaks out on assault, abuse, anorexia and the path to healing and resilience.
[29:49]And the best thing about being the first is it makes it possible for there to be a second and a third and a fourth until we lose count because there's no more need to keep count.
[29:57]And the same way, the best thing about having...
[30:00]critical or commercial success with this first book
[30:02]is that I can then use this platform
[30:06]and the proverbial mic and the actual mic
[30:08]to shine light and give voice to those
[30:11]who are being underserved,
[30:13]who have gone silence for so long.
[30:15]That's what I'm so passionate about
[30:17]is any little bit of resources and or privilege
[30:20]and power I'm able to gain.
[30:23]How do I then use it to bring up the largest amount
[30:27]of people in one go?
[30:29]Dan, what advice do you have to aspiring authors out there?
[30:33]Maybe who have a story to tell that hasn't been told?
[30:36]I believe that your story is vital
[30:39]because the story you have lived is unique and sacred
[30:45]to you and by virtue of being human
[30:47]it also is so relatable to other human beings.
[30:51]And that's the beauty of memoir where it really proves
[30:54]that within the personal lives the universal
[30:58]I've had the honor of being on this.
[31:00]We're now on our 12th state book tour
[31:02]for the last couple of months.
[31:04]And I keep on hearing a pattern in sentences.
[31:07]I keep on hearing.
[31:08]Thank you for telling your story
[31:10]because your story is my story.
[31:11]I feel more visible, understood and loved
[31:16]because you have taken the time to write down your story.
[31:20]So that's what I say to aspiring writers is keep at it
[31:22]because you're helping to heal not only yourself
[31:26]but you're going to give voice for so many people
[31:29]and that you can't even fathom the numbers
[31:32]because I've now met thousands of people
[31:33]who keep on reiterating the same thing.
[31:35]And from there you're also going to learn
[31:37]because I have learned is by gluing into what your audience says
[31:42]you then get to understand your next steps
[31:45]to be of service to the conversation you've sparked.
[31:47]For instance, I'm going to launch my own podcast in June actually
[31:51]and it's called Dear Rima and it's based on letters
[31:53]where readers or listeners write in letters
[31:56]about things that they are grappling with,
[31:58]that they're struggling with, you know,
[32:00]anorexia or how do I forgive someone who has wounded me
[32:04]or raped me, all of those things.
[32:05]And so each week is going to be a different theme.
[32:08]And to any artist, I think that's our duty
[32:12]is to continually clue into the larger conversation
[32:15]and be of service to that conversation.
[32:17]That's great.
[32:18]Well, thank you so much for taking the time to come in today
[32:20]and for sharing your story.
[32:22]Thank you so much, Sivis.
[32:24]This episode has been brought to you by Boombox Gifts.
[32:26]Memory boxes filled with personal messages and photos
[32:29]from friends and family for your next special occasion.
[32:31]Boomboxgifts.com
[32:33]Thanks to Ryan and Steve at Texture Sound
[32:35]for the audio editing and mixing.
[32:37]Thanks for listening to momstone have time to read books.