Catherine Cho, INFERNO
[0:08]Hi, I'm Zibi Owens, and you're listening to the award-winning podcast Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[0:13]Please sign up for my newsletter at zibiowans.com for weekly updates about my podcasts, events, and more.
[0:20]Also, follow me on Instagram at zibiowans and also at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[0:26]And finally, join my virtual book club called Zibi's virtual book club, which meets every other Tuesday at 2 p.m.
[0:32]Eastern Time until 3 p.m. and features half an hour of book club discussion, followed by 30 minutes of Q&A, with the author whose book we've just discussed.
[0:41]You can sign up on my website zibiowans.com under the virtual book club section, or even on Instagram, under the link in my bio.
[0:49]I hope you'll find me in all these different channels and enjoy this podcast.
[0:53]The sponsor for this whole Labor Day book last week is firstbook.org.
[0:58]Obviously, the pandemic is crippling education for millions of students, especially those in low-income communities.
[1:04]The widening digital divide and extended quote unquote summer slide due to COVID is devastating.
[1:10]Apparently, 40% lack access to reliable internet and functioning digital devices
[1:15]they can use for online learning, making the need for physical books and resources to prevent
[1:20]further educational backsliding absolutely critical. First book breaks down the barriers to education
[1:25]for children living in low-income communities. By providing its network of more than 475,000 educators,
[1:32]serving children in need with free and affordable new high-quality books, educational resources,
[1:38]and basic needs items through the award-winning first-book marketplace nonprofit e-commerce site.
[1:44]They need your support to ensure these children have what they need to learn during this
[1:48]critical time. Visit firstbook.org to help Catherine Cho is the author of Inferno, a memoir
[1:55]of motherhood and madness. She is an agent at Curtis Brown in the UK. Originally from the US,
[2:01]she's lived in New York and Hong Kong and currently lives in London with her family.
[2:04]And for now is her first book. Welcome, Catherine. Thank you so much for coming on
[2:08]mom's don't have time to read books. Thanks to B. I'm so glad to be here. I really cannot wait
[2:13]to discuss this book with you. I was like ever since the publicist sent me the title of this book.
[2:19]I was like, oh, I'm going to love that. And I really did. I couldn't put it down. It kept me up at night
[2:25]and it was just great. So can you just tell listeners a little bit about Inferno, a memoir of
[2:30]motherhood and madness and how this came to be even be a book? Sure. Yeah, gosh. Well,
[2:37]so Inferno is about my experience with postpartum psychosis. One of my friends was three months old
[2:43]and the title comes from my psychosis, actually, where I thought I would be a trace in Dante's Inferno
[2:49]and that my husband was Dante. I started writing the book very soon after my experience. I think when
[2:56]I was in the process of recovery, I'd never heard of postpartum psychosis until my experience.
[3:01]And so I was initially thinking of writing an article maybe, but then I realized that in order
[3:06]to know kind of the full context of a mental breakdown perhaps then you need to know what was there
[3:12]to be broken. And I thought actually you need like a full book to get that kind of picture.
[3:17]So yeah, I started writing it in the summer after my experience and it all came together very
[3:23]quickly, actually. I think I very focused and I really wanted to share the story.
[3:28]Yeah. Wow. And you had a notebook that you referenced many times throughout the book where you were
[3:32]actually writing in it while you were in the impatient unit. Did that actually get into the book
[3:38]where some of those notes or were they more just notes? No. Yes, some of it. My husband
[3:43]had left me a notebook in the ward, which I was really grateful for. It really helped me kind of
[3:48]come, you know, figure out who I was and ground me and give me something to do while I was there.
[3:53]I think some of the bits that are in the book from the notebook are the passages about who I was,
[4:00]you know, what was real, what was not real, that's for my notebook. And just kind of,
[4:03]I tried to take his main notes as possible just to, I think it was just gave me something to do
[4:08]in my terms there. And yeah, they were mostly notes. So obviously I kind of fragmented and I had to
[4:14]work from them to put them into the book. You said in the beginning of the book that when you were
[4:19]first pregnant, because this all happened obviously postpartum, you were so focused on all the
[4:24]things that were happening to your body. It never occurred to you that anything could happen to your
[4:28]tell me a little bit about that and all the preparation that went into the pregnancy and
[4:34]how this threw you for a loop. Yeah, I mean, I think that's something that I really,
[4:38]yeah, I did want to talk about in the book, especially, you know, you're so focused on such a
[4:43]physical change, what happens, you know, there's pregnancy. And for me, I know my preoccupation was when,
[4:49]you know, how would I recover after birth, you know, like, what could potentially go wrong,
[4:54]pre-clampsia, prolapse or, you know, having, you know, I had an emergency infection, so just
[5:00]recovering from that. But I was so focused on the physical aspects. It really, yeah, I didn't consider
[5:07]that kind of mental or psychological shift of actually becoming a mother and how that would
[5:13]change you and your identity. I was glad when you said in the book when your son, Keda,
[5:17]was born that you didn't feel this like instant connection and instead it felt like someone was
[5:22]handing you a stranger because I have to admit that kind of happened to me as well. I was like,
[5:26]who are these kids and why is everyone calling them by the names that I've picked out for these
[5:31]like fictitious kids here in my head who don't look like these kids who are now in my arms?
[5:35]I was like, am I supposed to feel this way? So it was nice to hear that I was not the only one who
[5:40]had a moment to get used to the whole thing. Honestly, I think because like in your head you expect
[5:45]like when the child is placed in your arm, you'll feel this rush of connection. And I think that
[5:50]and I'm guessing it does happen for someone and but it definitely didn't happen for me.
[5:54]It wasn't so much the lack of connection as the sort of surprise that meeting a total stranger.
[5:59]And you know, I didn't expect my babies to feel like I was meeting somebody because they felt
[6:05]such a part of me when they were brewing. I had plans to start and I don't know. It was more like
[6:11]who were where do these guys come from? So I don't know. And by the way, I feel like in this book
[6:17]you have had like every complication of everything. Like from getting sepsis during your pregnancy
[6:23]to mastitis and thrush when you were nursing. I just feel like you were like every sort of
[6:30]bad thing that could happen isn't byproduct. You had. It was terrible. I felt terrible for you
[6:36]as things kept unfolding physically. Yeah. It was unexpected. I think because I had such a
[6:41]uneventful pregnancy, it's like everything kind of just started happening once I was in labor
[6:46]and then I just kind of kept going from there. I guess. You also wrote just so sort of hauntingly
[6:53]and beautifully about your horrific abuse of relationship with Drew. One of the things you said
[6:59]in the book that I found so interesting is at the beginning how everybody kept telling you how
[7:03]he was such a good guy. Like he's such a good guy. He's such a good guy and he's so popular and he
[7:08]said this and he said I wish that I had paid attention to that and heard it as a warning. Like
[7:13]why were people saying that so much? Do you think people were really covering up for what they kind
[7:18]of knew about him? Do you think everybody knew that he was abusive in his relationships?
[7:22]I think they did. It's something I thought about a lot in retrospect after I left the relationship.
[7:29]I did talk to some of his fans and they would all say oh yeah. I mean he's not a good boyfriend
[7:35]but he's like a good friend and they would make that distinction which I always found a bit surprising.
[7:41]I do think they were trying to warn me without, I guess they wanted to give their friend a
[7:46]benefit about the action maybe he could be a good person but actually he wasn't and he was violent
[7:54]and he couldn't help that and I think it's such an interesting thing to me and that I was so
[8:01]puzzled at how someone could be so popular and have so many fans but just be such a violent
[8:06]kind of abusive person to partner. And the way you talked about even his mother's response
[8:14]to his abuse was also interesting. I feel like nobody ever writes about that. Like that you had
[8:19]even the compassion after all the stuff he put you through and like being knocked unconscious
[8:25]essentially and oh my gosh. I mean I literally I was reading this book and I was like my husband's
[8:31]like what what and I was like the girl in my book. Like she's she's being beaten up. It's like
[8:36]awful. But anyway after all that you went through to then like put yourself and his mom's shoes
[8:42]and say like what would it be like to know you've raised a child like this and what do you do
[8:47]in that scenario. Tell me a little more about that and sort of the empathy you're able to have for
[8:51]his mother. Yeah I mean I think that's the thing is awesome when we think about abusers or people
[8:58]violent as you tend to kind of think of them one dimensionally but actually you know Drew is a fan
[9:04]you know he's a brother. He has a family that really loves him and they know about you know his
[9:12]very serious vlog but and I thought that was really fascinating as mother is I could tell how
[9:17]torn she was because it really upset her that he was this way towards women but she also loved
[9:23]him unconditionally and at the end of the day he was always going to be her son and she just
[9:29]wanted him to be happy and that was a very strange thing I think for her to come to terms with and I
[9:35]think you know as I kind of say in the book I put so much I kind of used her as a scapegoat often
[9:42]when I probably should have been blaming him I was explaining her and I think as I was pregnant
[9:47]with my own son and thinking kind of more about that and how I would deal with it if you know
[9:52]God forbid he was that type of person it just made me consider her more and just think about
[9:59]think more of
[10:00]about how she was trying to process it.
[10:03]And of course, she couldn't abandon her son
[10:05]or turn her back on him, but I'm sure the way
[10:09]that she dealt with it isn't, you know,
[10:12]at least I hope I wouldn't deal with it like that.
[10:14]No.
[10:15]Wow.
[10:16]So you rebound, essentially,
[10:18]from this abusive relationship,
[10:20]and probably did not get a lot of therapy, I'm guessing,
[10:25]because you spent a few years,
[10:27]spent your weekends going to the arrivals terminal,
[10:31]just to see the connections other people have
[10:33]and that emotion and then got a job at an Alzheimer's facility.
[10:38]And you said something so beautiful about why,
[10:41]like, and maybe you didn't realize at the time,
[10:43]but when you reflected on it now,
[10:45]you said I was drawn to their stories,
[10:47]but mostly I was drawn to this place
[10:49]where time didn't exist.
[10:51]It was a place of memory, of loss,
[10:53]but each memory lasted only for the moment.
[10:56]So it's like so interesting
[10:58]that when you're trying to forget a traumatic event,
[11:01]you end up surrounding yourself
[11:02]with people with no memories at all.
[11:04]Tell me a little about that.
[11:07]Yeah, I mean, I think, you know,
[11:10]I do think as I was flexing on it,
[11:11]and it's part of the reason why I included that,
[11:13]those experiences in the book,
[11:14]and it was such a strange place.
[11:17]It was, as you say, a home of people
[11:19]who didn't have any memory,
[11:21]who didn't have any story,
[11:24]but kind of were in this place,
[11:25]I think this thing,
[11:26]and they were definitely trying to remember things,
[11:29]but, you know, they couldn't,
[11:30]and, you know, I definitely didn't get any therapy.
[11:33]I have to have the relationship,
[11:35]and I kind of tried to put it behind me,
[11:37]and I just thought, you know,
[11:38]if there's a chapel in my life, it's closed.
[11:40]I didn't really talk about with people,
[11:41]and, you know, at the time,
[11:43]I thought really it didn't affect me that much,
[11:45]which in retrospect was, you know, very naive.
[11:48]So yeah, I do think I was really drawn
[11:51]to this retirement home,
[11:53]so it was a difficult people with dementia and Alzheimer's,
[11:56]where I could really sense that they were untethered
[12:01]from the past.
[12:02]Well, and then you meet the love of your life.
[12:06]Not, I feel like now I'm like giving my book.
[12:07]Maybe this is too much, but, okay,
[12:08]so you and James,
[12:10]meet, fall in love, blah, blah, blah,
[12:13]have Cato, and then next thing you know,
[12:15]your baby has like demon eyes,
[12:17]and the walls are closing in and spinning around,
[12:21]and you're seeing refractions of everything,
[12:24]and everything just breaks in your brain.
[12:28]So I know you wrote about it so vividly,
[12:30]and that's amazing.
[12:32]But to go through this experience,
[12:34]like just tell me a little more about that moment,
[12:38]especially when like you could feel your brain slipping,
[12:41]but you didn't know really what was going on.
[12:43]Yeah, it was completely terrifying.
[12:45]I can't lie in that, you know,
[12:47]I had a sense that something was wrong,
[12:49]and I described it in the book as the trigger.
[12:53]When I look at my son and his face,
[12:55]wasn't his face, it was a devil's face.
[12:57]But it was so strange because I kept trying to write myself.
[13:00]It was like, I knew something was wrong,
[13:02]I didn't know it was wrong.
[13:03]I didn't know what was real.
[13:05]I didn't know if I was imagining something,
[13:06]I didn't know if I was dreaming,
[13:07]but I kept, you know, this all happened within,
[13:10]I think, a period of a couple of a little over a day,
[13:14]but throughout that day,
[13:15]I just kept trying to reposition myself
[13:18]and just be like, this is fine, it's not fine,
[13:21]until so much of what I was seeing,
[13:24]like experiencing condensed to me
[13:26]that actually, you know, I was in hell
[13:29]and then in the simulation.
[13:30]And that thought or belief,
[13:32]where eventually I did lose all sense of time
[13:35]and kind of will be living things again and again and again,
[13:38]or I thought I was stuck in this hotel room.
[13:40]Yeah, it was completely terrifying.
[13:42]And it just, at some point,
[13:45]you just kind of have to surrender to it
[13:46]because you heard me,
[13:48]I just felt like, okay, this is my reality.
[13:51]And I'm actually dead and I'm in a simulation
[13:53]and there's nothing I can do.
[13:56]Yeah.
[13:57]And then you spent a bunch of time in a facility
[14:01]where gradually we see you sort of coming into your own mind
[14:05]again and writing yourself enough eventually
[14:09]or with the help of medication or whatever
[14:11]and that you could leave and sort of pick up your life again.
[14:15]So here's my question, like I wanna know what happens
[14:18]after the book.
[14:19]So like what happened when you went back,
[14:23]like did you, what's happened since?
[14:25]Like what has happened with your relationship with your son
[14:28]and you obviously became a beautiful memoirist.
[14:32]You know, what else has gone on?
[14:35]And give me the like, you know, the epilogue,
[14:38]the unwritten epilogue.
[14:39]But also, yeah, it wasn't really long recovery.
[14:42]I mean, I think part of the reason I didn't write
[14:44]that much about it is it's so hard to kind of write about.
[14:46]It was so gradual.
[14:47]So I came up to London, I'd gone to the psychosis
[14:50]and then I had fell into a really deep depression
[14:53]where I was essentially bed bound for several months
[14:56]and on medication.
[14:57]And during that time, I really couldn't interact
[15:00]with my son at all or touch him.
[15:02]Which you know, that's something I really kind of
[15:06]sometimes agree over because it's just a sad
[15:08]that, you know, I didn't have that bomb.
[15:10]But I would say it took a good year for me
[15:13]to kind of have that bomb in my son again
[15:15]and to connect with him.
[15:16]I went back to work pretty soon after
[15:18]and classically kind of didn't tell anybody I'd gone through it,
[15:22]you know, what I'd gone through.
[15:23]I just kind of showed up and did my job.
[15:25]And the meantime, I'd already been working on my book
[15:27]and I'd found an agent for it.
[15:29]Yeah, but you know, my son is almost three now.
[15:32]We have a really good bond with a good relationship
[15:34]of I'm expecting another baby.
[15:36]Okay.
[15:38]Yeah, thank you.
[15:39]So yeah, that's kind of been a whole process as well,
[15:42]you know, because talking about how to know whether or not,
[15:44]you know, we should have another child.
[15:46]But I'm expecting a baby in November.
[15:48]And again, that kind of has made me think again
[15:51]about what we went through, what I went through,
[15:53]how to prevent it from happening again.
[15:55]But yeah, I mean, you know, it's been incredibly positive
[15:58]and a whole process of publishing the book,
[16:00]I think has really kind of shown me how much the things
[16:05]that I went through actually for a universal
[16:07]and very commonly experienced by so many women and mothers,
[16:12]obviously not to that extent, but just with a fear
[16:14]and kind of changing your identity and self,
[16:17]I think it's very universal.
[16:19]Well, not to be like totally overstepping my balance here,
[16:22]but I hope you have a really good therapist on your case.
[16:26]This time before you go, okay, okay, good.
[16:28]Phew.
[16:29]All right.
[16:30]If not, it's just people and maybe make sure
[16:35]the psychosis doesn't happen.
[16:36]If you can even, I mean, I don't know.
[16:38]Are you worried about that?
[16:39]I would be so worried.
[16:41]Yeah, so, I mean, I remember they told us
[16:45]that the statistics are 50% if you've experienced
[16:48]psychosis the first time.
[16:49]And when my husband heard that,
[16:50]he was like, yeah, we're not having since that third baby.
[16:53]But, you know, I have a very great psychiatrist
[16:55]who, you know, the NHS, once you've gone through
[16:58]this kind of thing, they assign you to a team
[17:00]and it's incredible what they do.
[17:01]And she was kind of talking with me through it.
[17:03]And actually the fact that my psychosis happened
[17:07]so like three months in, makes it more situational,
[17:10]more stress-induced versus, you know,
[17:13]for many women that happened a few days after birth.
[17:16]So I feel much more kind of prepared at least
[17:19]and aware that I could at least control someone of factors
[17:23]and the surrounding, preventing from happening again.
[17:26]So taking it, you're not taking a big United States trip.
[17:29]Yeah, not jumping around.
[17:31]I was just saying.
[17:32]Although I felt terrible that you kept blaming yourself
[17:36]on that this trip was like the cause of it.
[17:38]I feel like you have so much sort of guilt
[17:41]and self sort of flagellation going on
[17:43]and you're brain about your decision.
[17:45]And, you know, it could have had nothing to do with it,
[17:48]really, right?
[17:49]Yeah, I think the guilt is kind of inevitable.
[17:51]Yeah, I just, I really felt the trip would be such
[17:54]a great thing.
[17:55]And then once we were on the trip, we were like,
[17:57]yeah, five cities for the two months old
[17:59]is a great idea, you know.
[18:01]I still kind of feel a bit like,
[18:02]oh, that was just really silly.
[18:05]Well, I don't know who knows.
[18:07]Who knows what would have happened if you had stayed.
[18:08]You know, you just don't know.
[18:09]Exactly.
[18:10]So now that you've sort of written this up
[18:13]is writing something that you want to,
[18:16]that you like fell in love with doing,
[18:17]that you want to keep doing,
[18:19]or was it more like you had to get this story out?
[18:22]Well, I've always written,
[18:24]and I do work in publishing.
[18:25]So I work with writers a lot on in my day job.
[18:28]You know, I have really enjoyed the process of writing.
[18:31]And I've always been, I've been thinking, you know,
[18:32]I would love to write something else,
[18:34]but to be honest, my mind is just like,
[18:36]so I don't know what else I would write about.
[18:38]So for the moment,
[18:40]I've just haven't been writing anything.
[18:42]And I do think for the book,
[18:44]it was very kind of purpose-driven, you know,
[18:46]it was about kind of sharing that story.
[18:48]So it came much easier, so yeah.
[18:51]Especially given your position in industry
[18:53]and your as an author and like both sides of the fence,
[18:56]essentially, do you have any advice for aspiring authors?
[18:59]Yeah, I mean, I think, you know,
[19:01]because so I'm an agent during the day of my day job.
[19:05]And I think still my very much my primary role
[19:07]is to help authors and writers, you know,
[19:10]showcase their stories.
[19:11]And it's very much a privilege to do so.
[19:14]But I think one thing the whole process has taught me,
[19:16]and it's been a very humbling one,
[19:18]is that it's just so vulnerable to put yourself out there
[19:21]and to share your writing.
[19:22]So I definitely have a greater sense of empathy
[19:25]for any writer who submits, you know, something, someone.
[19:29]But I suppose, you know, I don't know.
[19:30]I guess, just to keep going, I think, you know,
[19:33]for me with, you know, finding an agent,
[19:35]obviously I knew how the process worked and that's definitely,
[19:38]you know, it gave me very much kind of a head start.
[19:41]But I suppose I ended up revising the book half a dozen times,
[19:45]maybe even more than that,
[19:46]even once I had my agent and it was just about pushing it
[19:49]and making it as the best that it could be.
[19:52]And I think that really showed me how collaborative
[19:55]the writing process can be
[19:56]and the whole rewriting and editing process
[19:59]and stuff.
[20:00]important as the initial phase of putting it down on paper.
[20:04]Do you have a type of book that you gravitate towards as an agent?
[20:07]Yes, so most of my books that I work with are fiction.
[20:11]And I think it's funny because I was thinking about books recently.
[20:15]I think almost all of them deal with some question of identity often.
[20:19]So whether the genre doesn't matter as much as it's very character driven, voice driven.
[20:24]Usually at the heart the center of it is a question of identity.
[20:29]Yeah.
[20:30]Well, maybe I'll send you my novel.
[20:31]No, I'm kidding.
[20:32]I haven't yet.
[20:33]No, I'm kidding.
[20:34]Anyways.
[20:35]But maybe people listen to this and you'll be getting floods of submissions.
[20:38]So watch out.
[20:39]Well, thank you so much.
[20:42]Thank you for this book, which I really could not put down.
[20:46]And was so immersive and just emotional and just awesome.
[20:53]And for telling me more about it and coming on the show.
[20:56]Thank you so much.
[20:57]Thanks for having me.
[20:58]Thank you.
[20:59]Take care.
[21:00]Bye.
[21:01]Bye.
[21:02]Thanks so much to firstbook.org for sponsoring this Labor Day book blast.
[21:06]Please consider giving to firstbook.org to help their network of 475,000 educators serving children
[21:13]in need.
[21:14]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[21:17]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram, at ZB-O-N's and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[21:22]Also sign up for my newsletter at ZB-O-N's.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet
[21:27]lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[21:29]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the Sound Editing.
[21:33]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.