Susan Burton, EMPTY
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[1:23]I interviewed Susan Burton all the way at the beginning of the pandemic, and I think I was her first
[1:28]interview, and I met her a while back at an event I went to. Actually, then I was moderating
[1:32]at the Center for Fiction, and I'm thrilled that now it's finally time that I can release her
[1:38]episode. Susan Burton's memoir, Empty, is really one of my favorite recent books, so I'm really
[1:44]excited to bring it to all of you. She's an editor at this American life where the episodes
[1:49]she's produced include 10 sessions, five women, and tell me I'm fat. Her writing has appeared
[1:54]in The New York Times Magazine's Slate, The New Yorker, and others, and she's a former editor
[1:58]of Harper's, her radio documentaries of one numerous awards, including an overseas press club citation,
[2:03]and she received a grant from the corporation from public broadcasting to do stories about teenagers.
[2:08]The film Unacompanied Miners, which was directed by freaks and geeks creator Paul Feig,
[2:13]is based on one of her personal essays. Susan graduated from Yale in 1995. She lives in Brooklyn
[2:18]with her husband and their two cents. Welcome, Susan. Thanks for coming on mom, so don't have time
[2:23]to read books. Hi, Zippy. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really glad to be here.
[2:28]You too. As you know, I'm like obsessed with your book, and I was so excited to get to meet you
[2:32]at the Center for Fiction a few months ago, which seems like a lifetime ago at this point.
[2:37]I know. I know. We were like shaking hands. I know. That was so that was so nice.
[2:43]The shaking hands. Well, your book is coming out in June, which is when this will air.
[2:48]So I'm hoping that by the time people are listening to this, we are all out and about,
[2:52]but at the time of recording, we are still in quarantine. So we'll see what happens.
[2:58]In the meantime, can you please tell listeners what empty and memoir is about?
[3:03]Sure. So empty tells the story of the eating disorders, both anorexia and binge eating disorder,
[3:10]that defined my adolescence and really my adulthood too, though I wasn't able to admit that
[3:16]until I was in my 40s. So what happened was like almost a decade ago, I signed a contract
[3:22]to write a book that was meant to intertwine the story of my adolescence with a cultural history
[3:28]of teenage adulthood. I'd always been like really drawn to the mythology of the teenage years.
[3:32]Ever since I was like a 17 magazine obsessed middle schooler in 1980s, Michigan. So I started writing
[3:38]that book, you know, marching along through the cultural history and midway through the first draft,
[3:45]my eating disorders just took over the narrative. And I was paralyzed. I never told anybody
[3:52]about the binge eating. It was a secret I've been keeping since my adolescence. I kept it even
[3:56]from my husband and we met when we were 17. So I didn't know what to do. For years, literally for
[4:04]years, I kept trying to write the book I'd committed to the cultural history. I was too scared
[4:10]to write about my eating disorders for a bunch of reasons, but in large part because to do so
[4:16]honestly would force me to admit that they'd never really gone away, that my obsession with
[4:22]foods still defined my life. I was no longer binging, but my life was definitely still organized
[4:27]around food. But the thing was, I really wanted to write about them, like it felt urgent and
[4:32]unresolved. And there was part of me that knew it was the story that I needed to tell. And eventually
[4:40]with the encouragement of my editor who's really wonderful, I was able to just like embrace that
[4:44]desire and stop denying what I wanted and write the book. I wanted to write which in a way is
[4:51]like a metaphor for eating disorder recovery itself. Wow. So essentially your editor was like the
[4:57]first person to hear about all this. Is that right? Yes. So that when I when I turned in the the
[5:02]first half of the manuscripts, my editor and my agent were the ones who were sort of the recipients
[5:08]of the secret that I've been keeping. The editor whom I began with is no longer at the publishing
[5:14]house. So I have a different editor. She's actually the one who who years down the road gave me the
[5:21]push I needed to write this story. I needed to tell. After keeping it a secret for so long,
[5:26]what do you think? Why do you think you trusted them? Why did you feel okay to finally write it
[5:32]and to share it with them first? What do you think it was? I had this urge to confess. I had this
[5:38]urge to tell. And I had so much shame about my own story, but I think it was helpful to have
[5:47]somebody say to me like, look, I see what's happening on the page. And I recognize that that this
[5:52]is your story. This is the one you should tell. This is the one that feels most alive to me too.
[5:56]So so there was that element of it. But I think also over time, as I started writing,
[6:04]the urge to confess like shifted to an urge to connect. Like at some point, I understood how much
[6:12]secrecy, like habits of secrecy had been holding me back. I was very guarded. I was very distant. And
[6:20]I had some curiosity about what happened if I did tell. What like what possibilities would open up
[6:26]to me if I was no longer hiding? And now you're telling the whole world. And I'm telling the whole
[6:32]world. But I would be totally honest with you. This is the first interview I'm doing. I'm still
[6:37]really learning how to talk about this stuff. It's still very new to me. And it's very different.
[6:44]So we met a couple months ago, but we don't know each other. And it's much easier for me to say
[6:50]these things to you than it is. For instance, to say that these things to my friend with whom I went
[6:57]to the event that night, because it's difficult to have had a secret from all the people around you.
[7:04]And then to figure out how to have that conversation once one is ready to tell.
[7:10]It makes sense. I know shame is part of the motivation. But when you, well, first of all, in the book,
[7:16]your issues surrounding food started basically when you were born. I mean, you had like very strong
[7:21]food preferences and food versions. And I mean, there was always something around food for you.
[7:27]Like I found myself wondering as I was reading like maybe now she would have been diagnosed with
[7:31]some sort of, you know, not an eating disorder like anorexia bulimia as we would just define it now.
[7:36]But some, you know how there are all these new childhood disorders. Do you know what I'm talking about?
[7:41]Like eating a version since like I feel like you had something like that with even your choices
[7:46]of the foods you were eating. Yeah. I mean, there's there is a diagnosis. I'm going to get it wrong.
[7:52]But it's something called like a wooden restrictive food, this after it or or fit or something.
[7:56]And it's it's beyond picky eater. And I sometimes do wonder if yes, if I would have been diagnosed
[8:02]for the version of that. But yeah, I mean, as a kid, I think I never had a healthy relationship with
[8:07]food. I was really scared of food. You know, I was like the weird kid at the birthday party who
[8:12]like wouldn't want pizza or I wanted milk instead of Coke. And you know, at the time,
[8:17]I think I would have told you that I just didn't like a lot of foods. But looking back,
[8:22]I think it was a really early way, controlling what I ate was like a really early way
[8:26]to control like what felt really out of control at home. My parents had a really troubled marriage
[8:33]and they divorced when I was 13. And I moved to Colorado with my mother and my sister. And it was
[8:41]a couple of years after that, that the anorexia kicked in. But I think the the groundwork had been
[8:48]you know, there was something there was something in me that there was a predilection for this.
[8:53]And do you feel I feel like in other sort of eating disorder memoir things, somebody usually
[8:59]sees it and acknowledges and tries to encourage the person to see treatment. And there's an intervention
[9:05]and you know, this whole narrative around it. Why do you think that this persisted for so long,
[9:12]like that it just could that you could even hide it is so impressive for, you know, it's one
[9:18]thing when you're an adult. But when you're still essentially under the roof of your mother and
[9:22]you know, in a school setting, for instance, what do you think did everybody miss it?
[9:27]I don't know. It's a good question. I mean, one, I think I was really good at hiding. I was really
[9:32]invested in hiding on the one hand. My life was organized around the eating behaviors. But on the
[9:37]other hand, it was it was organized around keeping them secret. So it was really good at hiding.
[9:41]Anorexia is is visible. So I was anorexic in my mid teens and then later in my early 20s.
[9:48]And and people did say things then. But for the largest part of those years of my adolescence and
[9:55]very early adulthood, I was binge eating. And like that's not something.
[10:00]that people can necessarily see.
[10:02]Could my mother have noticed missing food?
[10:05]Maybe.
[10:06]You know, I always felt that I would scoop granola
[10:08]from like this jar we had.
[10:09]We were living in Boulder, Colorado,
[10:11]and we would buy this like maple nut granola
[10:13]and bulk from the health food store.
[10:16]Last canister, and I would scoop it out with my hand,
[10:19]and like the oats would like sprinkle out
[10:21]through my fingers onto the floor.
[10:22]And I always think for whatever reason that,
[10:25]I felt was like my tail,
[10:26]that I felt was my giveaway.
[10:27]Like how could my mother not notice when she swept
[10:29]the floor that these oats were there?
[10:33]I think binge eating is invisible,
[10:35]and not only to like loved ones,
[10:38]but even to medical practitioners, you know,
[10:40]like it's often, if a person is overweight,
[10:43]you know, the size isn't necessarily ascribed to the behavior
[10:47]or a person might not even be,
[10:50]their weight might be unremarkable
[10:51]and still have this disorder.
[10:54]So aside from the scene with the granola,
[10:56]which I could totally picture now,
[10:58]but grabbing a handful of granola is sort of like,
[11:00]for me, a snack, not like,
[11:02]you know, like when are some,
[11:04]what are some of the moments where,
[11:05]and you described in the book, you know,
[11:07]but give one example of a moment
[11:09]where you were just out of control binging
[11:12]and in a way that you were ashamed
[11:14]and then hid afterwards, like, give us one scene.
[11:17]Yeah, no totally.
[11:18]I mean, I think that's a super important distinction
[11:20]because I do think that like,
[11:22]that binge, we have, you know,
[11:24]even the way we like use the word
[11:25]as like binge watching TV
[11:27]or like a binge on a batch of cookies.
[11:29]Like that's kind of like a lighthearted like one off
[11:31]and binge eating disorder when you're inside it.
[11:34]It's a compulsion.
[11:36]So for example, in high school,
[11:38]I would, you know, a typical night.
[11:39]I'd be up in my room, I'd be waiting
[11:42]to hear my mother leave the kitchen.
[11:44]I hear feet on the stairs,
[11:46]I hear the door to her room shut.
[11:48]I hear her sink turn on.
[11:49]I wait for all these steps to happen
[11:51]and then I'd open the door in my bedroom,
[11:53]I'd creep back down the stairs,
[11:54]like flick on the light in the kitchen.
[11:56]I'd open the freezer,
[11:57]but I take out a pint of ice cream,
[12:00]you know, I'd eat the ice cream down to the bottom
[12:02]of the bite, scrape the spoon around the rim,
[12:04]throw the pint away, go back to the freezer,
[12:06]you know, pull out, you know,
[12:08]their music's not bag of frozen muffins,
[12:09]take out a muffin, eat it, you know, still frozen.
[12:13]And, you know, there's some frozen,
[12:14]there's some things you could pull out of your freezer
[12:15]that tastes really good frozen,
[12:17]but these would be like, oh, brand muffins
[12:19]because it was the 80s, like they were not good frozen.
[12:22]You know, it wasn't about seeking pleasure.
[12:26]It would continue.
[12:27]So this, you know,
[12:28]close opening the freezer,
[12:29]closing the freezer,
[12:29]opening the cupboard, closing the cupboard cupboard,
[12:31]you know, blue corn chips.
[12:32]I remember eating blue corn chips
[12:34]and the points of the chips scraping the inside of my mouth.
[12:38]I'd be, there was sort of a ferocity to it.
[12:41]And I'd start to feel sick.
[12:43]I'd start to feel my body standing inside my clothes.
[12:47]I was always going all out
[12:49]because it was always the last time
[12:51]I was going to do it.
[12:53]And, you know, it sounds so unpleasant
[12:56]that you, you know, you wonder why someone would do it.
[12:59]For me, like, you know, in that kitchen
[13:03]on, you know, a weekday night,
[13:05]my junior year of high school,
[13:07]as long as I was eating, I didn't have to think.
[13:10]As long as there was food in my mouth,
[13:11]I didn't have to think about anything.
[13:13]I didn't have to think about any loss or any pain
[13:16]or, you know, the friend who hadn't called
[13:17]or the party, you know,
[13:19]which I'd start on the sidelines,
[13:20]and it was nothing but this.
[13:23]You know, and I'd finish.
[13:24]I'd go upstairs in my room and be hating myself.
[13:27]I'd be swearing.
[13:28]I'd never do it again.
[13:29]I'd get in bed in the morning I would wake up.
[13:32]My body would often feel sore.
[13:35]And, you know, the explanation I had in my head
[13:38]was that it was like the work of the skin,
[13:40]having to expand to accommodate all the food I'd stuffed in.
[13:43]You know, I have no idea if that's true,
[13:45]but that was how it felt.
[13:47]And I'd wake up and I'd swear I wasn't going to do it,
[13:50]but, you know, within hours, I'd be doing it again.
[13:53]And so it organized my life and did for years.
[13:58]I feel like it's also,
[13:59]how can you become really close to someone
[14:02]when you're hiding something so big?
[14:04]It's almost like a self distancing tool
[14:07]that you use to keep people at arm's length, right?
[14:12]It's really true.
[14:13]And I don't think I realized, you know,
[14:15]there was a point when I realized in my early 40s
[14:18]when I realized that the reverberations of the eating disorders,
[14:22]I sort of, I lived on the edge of anorexia
[14:24]for years during my adulthood.
[14:26]And I recognize that those behaviors around food
[14:28]were still really limiting me,
[14:29]but I don't think I recognize how much the secrecy
[14:32]was limiting me until I started to open up
[14:36]a little bit about it, until I started to tell it.
[14:39]And just realize how guarded I become about everything,
[14:43]not just like this one particular thing,
[14:45]but you just develop habits of not saying like
[14:49]the truest thing, there's a distance from you in the world.
[14:53]And that has been really transformative.
[14:56]I mean, you know, I had to tell my husband,
[14:58]I'd never, so we met, like I said, we were 17.
[15:01]We'd been together since we were 20.
[15:03]And I didn't tell him about the binge eating disorder
[15:06]until I had a finished manuscript.
[15:08]And I was really scared because if he'd been keeping
[15:12]a secret from me for 25 years,
[15:15]I would have a lot of complicated feelings about that, you know?
[15:19]What pain he must have been in?
[15:20]Why was he keeping this from me?
[15:22]But it has been really transformative.
[15:24]Like once you say the thing you think can never be said,
[15:27]like it opens up the possibility of saying so many other
[15:31]kinds of things.
[15:33]Did you feel like there was something behind that secret
[15:35]that you really wanted to talk?
[15:37]Like was that a front for something else?
[15:39]You know, like that's such a good question.
[15:43]I didn't feel that then because I was so literal
[15:49]about what I needed to tell, so concrete.
[15:51]And I think that that's the thing about an eating disorder
[15:56]or any kind of addiction or compulsion
[15:59]is you focus on the thing itself
[16:01]rather than the underlying reasons for it.
[16:05]And it's in a way why I never really got better.
[16:08]I stopped binging in sort of midway through college,
[16:13]but not because I got help or got healthy.
[16:16]I just decided to sort of quit food
[16:18]and I became anorexic, which was just the same thing.
[16:21]It was just like another way of using food
[16:23]to manage feeling and then just sort of existed
[16:25]on its edge for many years.
[16:27]And what happened when you told your husband?
[16:30]He was very, first he didn't understand.
[16:32]He's like, I knew that already, I knew that.
[16:34]And I was like, no, you didn't.
[16:36]He literally did not, that's not possible.
[16:39]You didn't know it.
[16:40]Like I think he just, he, so he was,
[16:42]we've been together so he was there for anorexia.
[16:44]So he got sort of eating disorder in like a vague way.
[16:49]And there was like, no honey,
[16:50]this is what binge eating disorder is.
[16:52]And I had to explain it to him.
[16:54]And I think it wasn't, I think I was probably
[16:57]in articulate and the conversation itself felt intense.
[17:01]I think it wasn't until he read the manuscript
[17:03]that he really understood.
[17:05]And then what happened?
[17:06]Well, he actually stopped reading the manuscript midway
[17:08]through, that was hard.
[17:10]He felt like it was really, it was just a lot to take in.
[17:14]And I understood, like I wanted to give him that space.
[17:16]And then he returned to it.
[17:18]And I think what happened next is I just felt like,
[17:20]of all the people I want to know about this,
[17:23]like I want him to know, I want Mike to know.
[17:26]And it just felt so liberating to just come,
[17:30]just not have this thing, like in this little box
[17:33]inside of me, like I unlocked that.
[17:36]And I think it helped him like open up about stuff too.
[17:41]Interesting.
[17:42]Yeah, I feel like as soon as you start sharing,
[17:44]I mean, what you get back is always a big surprise, right?
[17:49]And when you keep things,
[17:50]and probably for you, if you were keeping so much secret,
[17:53]there was probably more stuff that other people
[17:55]were keeping than most.
[17:57]I mean, if with all your defenses up and everything.
[18:00]Yeah, no, and hiding is really isolating.
[18:02]Two is the thing.
[18:04]Yeah, it disconnects you from the world.
[18:06]It's really, it makes me sad.
[18:08]I mean, you're sad.
[18:09]No, it's true.
[18:10]I mean, it's like, you know,
[18:11]you were just so handicapping yourself
[18:13]and you seemed like such a nice person.
[18:15]And, you know, I mean, like,
[18:17]that you were going through all this
[18:18]internal suffering and hiding it for the world.
[18:22]It's just, it's heartbreaking, really.
[18:24]So I'm really happy that you've written your book about it.
[18:27]I mean, that is so, I mean, I'm sure people will tell you
[18:30]a million times, you're so brave.
[18:32]But it's really amazing.
[18:34]And I get that you are doing this in a place of,
[18:37]it sounds like you have to, right?
[18:39]Like you've gotten to a point where this is the only,
[18:42]so this is the only next step for you.
[18:44]But still, it's like incredibly brave to come out
[18:48]and face all of this now.
[18:50]Well, thank you.
[18:51]No, that's really nice to hear.
[18:53]I mean, you know, writing the book is really,
[18:56]I see it as the first step in my recovery.
[18:57]Like recovery is an ongoing process for me.
[19:01]You know, at one point, when I was still in the stage
[19:03]when I wanted to write about it, but couldn't yet,
[19:05]I went to a therapist.
[19:08]And I, you know, I'd gone to there was over the years
[19:09]and really, like, literally not mentioned eating
[19:13]and always left after the initial consultation
[19:15]because even I understood that if I wasn't gonna talk
[19:18]about eating, it probably wasn't worth it.
[19:19]So I went to a psychiatrist who specialized
[19:21]in eating disorders to force myself to say it.
[19:24]But I could not, I just, I could not get the words out.
[19:28]I, you know, I had habits of isolation
[19:30]that had been built up over so many years.
[19:32]And I felt like to understand my story,
[19:35]I needed to understand it alone first.
[19:37]I needed to write about it.
[19:38]Writing had always been the way I'd made sense of my life.
[19:41]And I felt I needed to do that first.
[19:44]As soon as I finished the manuscript,
[19:46]I went back to therapy.
[19:48]And that has really been the most transformative part
[19:50]of the process for me.
[19:52]And now I see it the most important thing that writing did
[19:55]was to get me to start talking,
[19:57]which is exciting.
[19:59]So tell me.
[20:00]give me a visual on what it was like when you were actually writing the book and you were
[20:03]like, getting tapping into all of these complicated emotional feelings. Like, where were you
[20:08]in Starbucks at this moment? Like, where, where were you and how did it feel to have it all
[20:13]come out onto the page? I was in, I was in various places. The consistent thing is I was usually,
[20:19]I, I write very early. So I was usually in the dark at dawn. Sometimes, so I had, I had this
[20:26]particular like green spiral notebook that had been my high school journal. And often, after a
[20:32]binge, I would write, and I would write, you know, I write, what I eat and I write, how I felt,
[20:36]I write and write and write, which was, which was in a way sort of a purge, I think. There,
[20:41]there was something ritualistic about it. So often, I'd have that journal next to me. I read an
[20:46]entry. It was so evocative. And, and then I'd put it aside, and I would try and re-enhab it, the scene
[20:54]that I just read. So that was part of it. I mean, there was a lot of fear in starting to write
[21:00]about it because it, you know, like, I think anybody, whenever, whenever we're writing, you know,
[21:07]hopefully we're writing about things that mean something to us. And this meant so much to me.
[21:13]I felt, and I felt that writing about it was the only way it could be understood. And I
[21:17]felt if I couldn't set it down the way I wanted to, there was no hope, you know, I had sort of this
[21:21]extreme apocalyptic. It was, it was really, it was really fraught for me. But once I was able to
[21:28]set that aside and just sort of channel it, it was, it was okay. And do you have any,
[21:33]do you have any fears about this coming out at work or in like your professional life?
[21:38]I did for a long time. And there was like a particular scene that was fixed in my mind. So
[21:43]every, so I'm an editor at this American life, every Wednesday we have a story meeting. We all
[21:48]sit around the room. And there's, we all eat together. There's like 25 or 30 of us. And for whatever
[21:54]reason, I fixated on that Wednesday story meeting that as soon as my book came out, everybody would
[22:00]be watching what I ate and how I ate in a way that they hadn't before. You know, I don't think
[22:06]that's crazy. I think people will be more tuned to what they say about food to, to watching me eat.
[22:13]But mostly I feel, you know, I'm very close to my coworkers. And I feel about them as I do about
[22:18]others. Like I feel excited to be able to talk about this and like strip away the layers that like
[22:25]maybe have been, you know, impeding relationships. Do you have any aspirations to become the person
[22:31]who goes around to schools and talks about your experience? Like, is that part of your hope to,
[22:38]you know, bring your message to more people to spare them what you've been through? Or is this
[22:43]just like your first step when you're just going to get through this and then reassess? Like what's
[22:46]coming next? What do you, what are your goals after this? I mean, for sure, I would, I mean, even,
[22:52]you know, even when I was a teenager struggling with this stuff, I always imagined, well, when I was
[22:58]a teenager, I imagined helping other teenagers. And now that I'm a woman in middle age, I do think
[23:04]that there are a lot of women in middle age who having disorders, whether there's things that
[23:08]have endured since adolescence or that have developed later. So I do, I would like to become an
[23:16]effective enough spokesperson for my own story that I can't do that. I don't know that I'm ready
[23:22]today. I would love to be ready to do that. So I actually, I did my whole like, I was a psychology
[23:29]major and I did my whole senior thesis on eating disorders and I've always been really interested. I've
[23:33]had very close people in my life with eating disorders and it's been a huge topic. It interests
[23:38]to me, which is probably why I just adored your books so much. But I even recently wrote this
[23:43]article for Redbook. It was probably in the last five years because I noticed that so many of my
[23:48]grandmothers friends and my grandmother is 96. They're still having issues around food and I found
[23:55]myself wondering, wow, this, if you don't resolve it at some point, it does not just go away,
[24:01]right? So there's a woman in her, you know, old folks home who's still, you know, like ways
[24:07]yourself every day and it beats herself up and talking, you know, I did all these like measures of
[24:12]who had eating disorders in the past and how they felt about food. And anyway, all to say,
[24:17]it doesn't go away. So even the fact that you did it in middle age is better than, say,
[24:22]people who are in old age who have not conquered this yet. So anyway, it just doesn't, I just
[24:27]couldn't believe I just had this belief that once you got old enough people would just be like,
[24:31]whatever, but it's not true at all. I know, I mean, I remember being at my grandmother's,
[24:37]you know, assisted living facility in Florida and going to the dining room and seeing women,
[24:44]like women in their 90s with like, normal fingers, like scooping out the insides of vehicles.
[24:49]Like that thing was still happening. My own grandmother, when I visited her, you know,
[24:54]during the last weeks of her life and she was in bed and, you know, at one point she said to me,
[25:00]oh, I wish I could get out of bed and weigh myself because she knew she lost so much weight
[25:05]and she just wish she could get on the scale one last time. So you're right, it doesn't go away.
[25:11]Wow, that's a, that's like a haunting image. I know, I know, I know, she was a wonderful,
[25:18]she was a wonderful, she was actually, and she, she was actually, you know, she was a wonderful
[25:23]baker and cook and, you know, food, food was very important in our family, which, which I also
[25:28]think is not uncommon. When there's attention to food in one way, there becomes, you know,
[25:32]a pathology in another. So just two more last questions. I'm wondering what you would want to tell
[25:38]anybody out there who might be hiding something similar and maybe this is their time where they're
[25:43]finally confronting it and thinking, wow, if she could do this, maybe I could do it. What would you say
[25:48]to somebody in that situation? And then I want to just know if you have any advice to writers
[25:52]in general having just published this beautiful manuscript.
[25:56]Well, I do, I mean, I think that, you know, a message I resisted for a long time was reach out to
[26:02]another person, get help. I do think that that is the most important thing that somebody struggling
[26:08]with, and even disorder or any kind of addiction or compulsion can do. It's not something that
[26:12]you can solve on your own, whether that person you reach out to is a friend or a therapist or,
[26:18]you know, a mentor that is, that's the advice that I would offer. And then as far as
[26:25]advice for writers? Yeah, aspiring authors, somebody who says like, I want to write a memoir,
[26:30]I'm ready. What advice would you have? Yeah, I mean, I think I might crib a piece of advice
[26:37]that a novelist friend gave to me that she and her and cribbed from somebody who was writing
[26:43]mentor to her, which is what do you know that no one else knows, right about that. And I think
[26:50]that the, you know, it's not that you have to have some experience that is so unusual,
[26:56]but just what is deepest in you and right from that place. And just trust that if you embrace
[27:03]your, you know, your deepest self that that that will be interesting to other people too.
[27:08]I love that advice. That is so good. Thank you so much. Thanks for coming on this podcast. I hope
[27:13]as your first interview, it was okay and not too, not too, too many or anything. But I'm so
[27:19]excited for empty to come out in June. And thank you for taking the time to talk to me in quarantine now.
[27:25]Thanks, Libby. I really appreciated it. It was really nice to talk to you too. Okay. Bye. Bye.
[27:31]Thanks again for listening to my podcast. Moms don't have time to read books. If you liked this
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