Amy B. Scher, THIS IS HOW I SAVE MY LIFE: From California to India, a True Story Of Finding Everything When You Are Willing To Try Anything

[1:47]Zibby Owens: Hi. This is Zippy Owens, and you're listening to the award winning podcast, Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. I'm also the host of Moms Don't Have Time to Lose Weight, and I'm the editor of the anthology, which you should run out and buy, called Moms Don't Have A Quarantine Anthology. All proceeds of that book go to COVID nineteen vaccine research. And I'm the editor in chief of Moms Don't Have Time to Write, a new publication on Medium, and we're accepting submissions, so please send your personal essays there. If And all that isn't enough, you can follow me on Instagram ZibbyOwens and my website is zibbyowens.com. Okay, now back to this amazing podcast. Special announcement, I am teaming up with Katie Couric Media's Wake Up Call and Random House to give away 100 copies of the book Stranger Care by Sarah Santillis. I'm really excited about this. Here's a little about Sarah's book, and we collectively are giving away a 100 copies. After their decision not to have a biological child, Sarah Santilles and her husband Eric decide to adopt via the foster care system. Despite knowing that the system's goal is the child's reunification with the birth family, Sarah opens their home to a flurry of social workers who question them, evaluate them, and ultimately prepare them to welcome a child into their lives even if it means most likely having to give the child back. Stranger care is an illuminating read, and Sarah will be on this podcast soon. So if you would like to enter for a chance to win, please go to the link in the episode description from right where you clicked on it and enter your email address first and last name. By doing so you're agreeing to the sweepstakes official rules and agree to receive communications and special offers from Katie Couric's wake up call and moms don't have time to read books. Thank you for doing it and enter to win today. Just go back to the episode description. Thanks again. Amy Scher is the author of This is How I Save My Life. Amy is an award winning and bestselling author of this book, This Is How I Save My Life, How to Heal Yourself from Depression When No One Else Can, and two other books about humaning and healing. She has been featured in the Washington Post, Cosmopolitan, GMA, CNN, CBS, the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Rumpus, more. Her books have been translated into 16 languages and endorsed by notable authors such as Elizabeth Gilbert and Sanjeev Kopra. As an author, Amy teaches classes to help people break through blocks to become their happiest, healthiest, and most expressive selves. As a writing mentor, she works closely with authors to help them get their own stories into books and those books into print. She's proud to serve on the associate board for Literacy Partners in New York City, an organization that chose her memoir as part of New York City's Subway Reads initiatives. Amy lives in New York City with her beautiful wife and bad cat. Most importantly, she lives by her self created motto, when life kicks your ass, kick back. And by the way, after you listen to this episode, you'll hear that we got along so well and we have since gone on walks through the park together and might be collaborating on something really cool. So Amy is one of those authors who is just so neat. Can just connect with right away and become friends. So enjoy our conversation. Welcome, Amy. Thanks for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Thank you so much. I'm thrilled to be here. Okay. Can you please tell everybody about your amazing memoir and why you'd even decided to write the memoir, your whole trip to India. Like, give us the whole rundown of the book. Yeah, thank you. So

[5:05]Amy B. Scher: This Is How I Saved My Life is a book about me trying to save my life as so many of us do in so many different ways. I am in my 20s, had a mysterious chronic illness that turned out to be chronic Lyme disease, which many more people are familiar with now than they were at that time in around 2006 when I was diagnosed, 2007. And I went all over The US trying to save my life. I had brain lesions, neuropathy. I went from a healthy 20 year old to essentially bedridden, and it was me back living in my parents' bedroom, like so many of us end up sometimes, and we were really just trying to figure out what would work to not only eradicate my body from the bacteria that causes Lyme disease, but also all the damage that the disease had done over the years when I was undiagnosed or misdiagnosed. And so eventually, I found out about a treatment in India that was highly experimental, a stem cell treatment that my doctor said, you know, could kill me. But at that point, I was in my 20s. I know I was in my 20s and I had really tried everything. I'd been to the Mayo Clinic. I had been to, you know, New York. I had been all over California. I had been everywhere in between to all the best specialists. For reasons unbeknownst to everybody, my body was still failing in ways it shouldn't have been despite the incredible treatment and the modern technology, you know, the medicine that I got. And so, you know, I decided that I wanted to take this leap of faith, however stupid it might've been, I had no idea. I had a sense it would either kill me or cure me. And at that point, to be honest, after seven years of struggling, I was really, wasn't okay with either one, but I was accepting of either one. And I told my parents I wanted to go and they were like, If you're going, we're going too. And my poor parents, they had never been out of The US, they didn't have passports, and I was very well traveled, I had been everywhere, and so here we went off to India for this experimental treatment, which became the unexpected family trip of a lifetime. And it was there that I really had a turning point in my healing journey. The stem cells, you know, were incredible on their own, but also being pushed out of my comfort zone to get medical treatment in another country was so pivotal for me in so many ways and helped me to look inward to see what else might have been going on that needed to shift in my life. So it was really such a journey that, you know, in hindsight, it's like I can see all the reasons I needed to take it, but during that time, I was just trying to save my life. Really something that came out of it was learning that every day, no matter what we're struggling with, we are trying to save our lives in so many ways. It doesn't have to be a physical illness. It doesn't have to be a mental struggle, but really every day we are getting through. And so I had this bigger picture of how do I actually live through this? Then day to day, how do I actually live through each moment? Wow. And you were so funny too about the person you met who was a quadriplegic who was like, Oh yeah, you should just go get stem cells as if and you were like, said something like as if it were a blowout or I don't know, something funny that said. Yes. So I met somebody actually at a writers conference that I barely got myself to. And then I couldn't go to, I went to one session of the writers conference because I was on antibiotic shots and I had to self administer them. The, you know, the hallway from my room to the conference center was too long and I couldn't do it by myself. It was like this whole thing. But there I met a woman who had been for the stem cell treatment and told me about it. She was like, you should get stem cells, I bet that doctor could help you. And it was like, oh, like, I should just like, go get a coffee or go get a blowout or go get it. It was like, oh, I mean, of course, I had to like fundraise for the money. I mean, there was so much that went into it. But the decision was so, was in part so easy, because when you almost have nothing to lose, because you've already lost everything, decisions for me aren't as big. It's like I have a harder time now figuring out where to go for dinner, you know, like the daily things. But kind of I think that will to survive just propels you into just doing things when that's not my personality necessarily. I related to that so well when you were talking about yourself being a Virgo and how you obsess over menus and all this stuff. I find sometimes the little decisions are the hardest. Well, can go this way or when should we leave for this trip? Should we go for the weekend? Well, if we do this, then I have to change this. But then how should we turn our lives upside down and escape the pandemic? That becomes very easy. Let's just do it. Because in that moment, my mom always jokes because I have that, I can't decide where to go to dinner. She always says, You're not buying the restaurant, you're just eating there. Just pick a place. But it is so true. That's how I am too with these big decisions. I think something comes through us and we just do instead of, and it's life would be easier if we did that with everything. Because honestly, these little decisions and like the time that we spend and I used to think I was like indecisive and I'm like, I'm not indecisive. I'm just trying to make the perfect choice and always optimizing because there's always like a better way. Then I always change the flight or change this or like rethink. But I don't think it's like that we're waffling. It's not like I could do this or that. There's like trying to and each new data point that comes in. Mean, this sounds ridiculous, but yeah, the data point that comes in changes like what you might order. Like, what did you what were you going to do for lunch that day? Right, I totally have learned as I've gotten older, just choose and don't look back like you just pick for the sake of picking and then you just move on because it's so easy when you have that personality totally to waste hours rearranging things that may or may not be any better than the first option, except now you lost three hours of your day. I literally had that this morning. Woke up early so I could write, but I also wanted to go to the gym for the first time in like forever. And I was standing in the kitchen, like by the coffee machine being like, Should I write first? Or should I work out first? Or should I post and ask random strangers what I should Or do should I, like, you know, whatever. And I was like, Well, I'll tell you what I shouldn't do. I shouldn't be standing at the coffee machine debating what I should be doing because I've just wasted seven minutes. Exactly. Or you can have another cup of coffee and then probably speed through both. Yeah, exactly. So even when I was in the elevator going down to the gym, was like, but maybe I should be riding because it's early and sometimes I'm about it. Then I'm like, I'm in the elevator. Yeah, that ship has sailed. Stop it. I know. We totally drive ourselves crazy. We totally drive ourselves crazy. Anyway, you had this great line in the book, by the way, which I mean, many were this is all from the beginning, but inside the places that no one knows but me, my heart is split in a million pieces because I am a human being who is lodged in the in between, in between living and dying. I want to be better than good enough. And then you said, if I don't move the goalpost for my own life, who will? I want not only to stay alive, but to be alive, to lead a life. I am more afraid of living in this condition forever than I am of dying from it, which I guess is sort of reflective of what you were saying earlier that you were sort of in that sort of liminal space and that any effort would be okay. Yeah, it's hard. This is such discussion in the chronic illness community, and I've been well for many years now, but I still have friends and, you know, I'm still in those communities where, you know, there's a part of our lives that is easier when we accept it. But then sometimes we don't want to accept the thing. And I think there's sort of an in between where I was able to, at some point with lots of struggle, accept where I was in each moment or each phase, but also I was unwilling to be stuck in that phase forever. So while I know many people who make peace with where they are as far as struggling with an illness, for me, I was like, no, I don't want to just be good enough to like, I want to be able to like play with my nephew who was young at the time. I want to be able to like support myself one day. I want to be able to do all of these things. And for me, I was glad that I kept pushing because it's so easy to give up. And I totally acknowledge that I have an amazing family that stood by my side, which makes it a million times easier. But it's so different for everybody. For me, was like, I'm going to live and I'm going live big. I'm not just going to kind of slide by because that's a really tough that's an existence. It's not a life. That was really tough for me, especially my 20s to face. So how is it now? I mean, obviously you've had a lot of time to reflect with the book. Looking back and sort of moving forward, like having that kind of trauma in your 20s is insane. I mean, that is a lot to carry around with you. Yeah. And now I'm in my 40s, in my early 40s, and I have worked through all that. And that was actually part of the healing process. Like, I was able to actually see not that illness is ever anybody's fault, but I was actually able to see how some stressful patterns in my life like being a perfectionist, being a people pleaser, really stressed my physical body like I really struggled to take care of myself, to be carefree, to live in the way that I wanted because I was so hypersensitive and aware of what was going on around me and how people around me were reacting. The illness actually gave me a real opportunity to look at how I wanted to live the next part of my life if I made it. And that was part of my healing process, was to learn how to really live for myself. Of course, there are always things we have to do. We have to work, we have to maybe take care of X, Y, and Z. So those things, of course, when we're adults, we have to do things, but it allowed me a space to actually also ask myself what I wanted for my own life besides helping save everybody. I'm such a like, I have helperitis so bad, I can't even tell you. It actually gave the, it gave me the concept of boundaries. Like, I don't think in my 20s and even into my early 30s, I knew how to say no. Like, I didn't have like the language to say it because I was so, I was like the rock for everybody and the helpful person and I knew how to get stuff done and I was so good at being that person, But the illness gave me an opportunity to see how that actually affected me physically. Wow. Well, I feel like you just like waved this big warning flag in front of the camera for me. Probably in front of like every woman who's watching, right? Yes, yes. And we all, I think, grew up like physical body means something's physically wrong. And of course, that is true. But I think there are deeper things. And I know and science has sort of caught up with this idea that like, our emotional health really does impact our physical body and our immune system and our nervous system. And we all know that from this last year and a half, don't we? Oh my gosh. And that was sort of a lesson I learned earlier, which was it's not just the physical body. Like, we look at everything when we're looking at wellness. And that really, really helped me to reach my full well-being. Wow. No, I had dinner with a girlfriend who has a new, very big time stressful job. And suddenly, you know, her back, she's in the emergency room and this and that, but they couldn't figure it out. I'm like, Do you think it might be stress? Like, what do you think? Right. It's like the body we can't fool ourselves completely, No, the body doesn't lie either. Like your body will keep coming up with symptoms. Always think of, you know, I used to be really annoyed at my body because I missed so much of life for an entire decade. Like while all my friends went on, like I never went to college, I never went there were so many things I didn't do, which all turned out okay, but there were so many things that I was ten years behind and I was so mad at my body for failing. And at some point, I had this epiphany like, what if my body's trying to talk to me? Like, what if the symptoms are the only language it has? And the body doesn't lie. Like, as a perfectionist and people pleaser, I was so good at lying to myself about so many things, about relationships that I was in that weren't good about, you know, I was, I used to be a marketing director for Harley Davidson, which was so fun, but it wasn't like the thing I wanted to do, but I was doing it because it was cool and fun. And, you know, I was lying to so many things about, like I was lying to myself about so many things in my life, but the body doesn't lie. It just keeps speaking up and speaking up and speaking up, you know, for better or worse until you listen. And it was something that was really essential for me to learn, especially with my personality.

[20:10]Amy B. Scher: Wow. That is Yes. Your friend's back is probably trying to tell her something. Right? Yes. Yes. That's such good advice. I mean, you just have to like, I love the idea, you know, like when a dog like shakes and like, you know, like their only communication is you can only do so much with what you have, right? It's so true. What are our bodies supposed to do when they're under such an immense amount of pressure? And again, we can't do everything about every adult like thing we have we're responsible for. But there are plenty of things we can do for ourselves that we don't do because it's easier just to ignore it. So like, what are some of your go to things now to like, make sure you keep in the moment and doing this and being aware? Like, do you do yoga? Like, what are your things? I don't. I am so not. I wish I was a yoga person. I'm not a yoga person. I'm not a meditation person. I wish I was all these things. I'm like a long walks person. I read, I mean, we all know reading is the best therapy, right? I do different tapping techniques. I don't know if you've ever heard of emotional freedom technique, but tapping on acupuncture points on the face and body is a really great technique to release stress from the immune system and the nervous system. And I mean, I really, really give myself the permission now to do nothing at all when I can. Like, I'm such a doer and I love to have a million projects at once and writing books and all of that, but I also just take the pressure off myself. Like, I can do that for myself. I can decide that if I have 40 things on my list and, you know, only 10 get done, it's not going to be the end of the world. So a lot of it for me has just been, you know, owning that I have more control over this stress that I think I could be, and many women I think could be martyrs. Like, we take it all on and we can do it better. And I know so many things I can do better than other people in my life, but I just let them do it because then it won't affect me. So it's just about like really letting go and in the ways that you can, I think caring a little bit less? Like who cares if it doesn't get done perfectly, if it's something that doesn't matter? Who cares if like, whatever, I scratch this off my list and I never get to this blog post? Like if it's been on my list for forty years, it's not or whatever. Maybe it's okay that I don't write about that or whatever it is. It's just like taking stuff off my own plate that I can't. Wow. I reference sometimes this time management expert I interviewed at one point because she had this theory of, like, mid max mod max min or something like that. Like, you can choose what what effort level you want for each task, and you should be, like, deliberate. Is this a, like, minimum, moderate, you know, or maximum or whatever? In the book, she talks about it being in terms of a child's birthday party. Right? Do you wanna, like or or maybe I was the one who interpreted for a child's birthday party after the fact. But, basically, you know, you can call and have somebody do the whole thing at, like, you know, one of these kids' places, or you can calligraphy your own invitation. I mean, there's, this whole range. Right. Feel like I use that now a little bit for, like, okay. Well, you know, does this have to be done to the best of my ability or can this be one of those things where I can do it well enough? And I think part of the challenge is knowing which of the tasks it's okay to sort of take the lesser route on. That's so true. That's absolutely true. And it sounds bad to say care a little bit less, but it is so true. Like is there can you care just a little bit less about this thing that nobody will notice? And I do that, like I used to, when I had people for dinner, like cook everything and make sure everything was done. And now I'm like, I'm just going to run to Zabars because they won't care. And I'll earn back like five hours of my day. And you know what I mean? It's just like the things that you can let go of. I think it's so important to remember, like I'm my own boss on so many things and I'm not a very nice one sometimes. And I can be, I can just let it go. I can just take it off my own list. Are you in the city? You said Seybars. I am in the Oh, You should have come over. I have to find a new Oh, I love that. I to find a way where I figure out like, I have to start in my emails when I book everything, finding out who's nearby. I'm Oh, doing them all in person again. Yes, I'm on the Upper West Side. Oh, shoot. Well, I'll be there later today. Wait when you come over here. Going for vaccine number two for my daughter. Anyway, congratulations.

[24:31]Zibby Owens: Oh, thank you. Okay, so tell me more about your writing now and tell me about writing this book and

[24:37]Amy B. Scher: selling it and all of that and what's coming next for you and your whole writing world, all of that good stuff. Okay, so this book has had so many incarnations. This book I originally self published in 2013. It started as a series of blog entries, and I self published it, And it ended up getting picked up by Simon and Schuster in 2018, and came out in hardcover. This is one of those stories that like, as a self published author, original self published author, like, you always hope will happen, but it's like everyone tells you like, my agent was like, it's like a long shot, and you never hear of it. But it actually it actually happened. So it was a series of blog entries. And then when I when it was picked up by Simon and Schuster, I rewrote it in a total memoir, you know, a narrative format. It got picked up by Simon and Schuster. It came out in 2018 in hardcover, and it just came out in paperback. So this book has had, you know, so many incarnations, which I think is sort of like my life weirdly. I'm, you know, in my early 40s, but I feel like I've lived like a million lives because of this story. And I really never had the urge to write about this. I always wanted to be a writer. I mean, this was my first book. Have I'm on my fifth book now. But this was my first book. I never, you know, I always wanted to be a writer, but I never knew what I wanted to write about. And this was just the thing that happened to me that I ended up writing about. And I'm so thankful that this story became my story because so many brilliant, amazing, life changing, wonderful things happened from it. And when I was in it, I couldn't see that coming. And so to work on this book as difficult as it was, was such an honor because it really allowed me to see how what we move through helps us move through life and get to, even though it was like the windiest, most confusing road in the world, get to all the places that we want to be, because now I'm a writer and I write books and it's really my dream job. And I don't know, I'm sure I would have gotten here some other way, but writing this book was like sort of my way in. And this book was really cool to write, but I had a huge challenge in that this book was sort of heavy in topic, right? Chronic illness and sort of the destruction of so much of my life, and anybody who struggles with ongoing illness will understand how it affects relationships, the guilt you feel for screwing up everybody else's life, all of these things. But I had to find a way, like I knew that I never wanted to write a depressing book. Like I knew that nobody going through a chronic illness wanted to read a depressing book and also nobody who was healthy would want to read a depressing book either, and I didn't want to write one. So my challenge with this book was finding ways to make it funny, like finding the levity in it. And I think and hope I did that. My family is very much like, we survive on humor, which, you know, we really needed during this time period. But the writing process for that book was like, how can I make it lighter? How can I give, how can I, you know, give it the weight it deserves because it's a serious topic, but also how can I not make it depressing? Because that's a tough thing to do with memoir that, right? And I love memoir, I read, you know, tons of it. It can be a downer and that's because our lives can be at some points, but I was determined to find the levity in it. So that was a big part of the writing process of this book. Wow. So crazy. The stuff you say, I'm like, I feel like you're like me on the West Side.

[28:15]Zibby Owens: That's so funny. You're reading my mind. It's crazy, you know? We're like East Side West Side twins. Do really have My to get together in my mom is also named Ellen, by the way. That is so funny. Oh, my gosh. And I like, I never meet anyone whose mom is named Ellen. You described her as like, what do you say, like, one part Jewish, two parts badass? I love that. Oh, my God, you're so funny. From Brooklyn.

[28:38]Amy B. Scher: Yeah. And so and so really, that was my writing process, you know, just trying to find levity. And also with all of my books, I have to say for all the writers out there listening, like, my writing process is a disaster. Like, I like I have finally, I think in this last year, I'm writing my first fiction book now, my first novel, You novel. And I finally realized that that's just the process, because this is going to be my fifth book. And from the first book, the one we're talking about all the way through this one, it's a struggle. Like I am not one of those people, like I do have friends who like sit down and they're like, I can't stop writing. And I'm like, that's never me, never. Like I write in snippets, I don't ever write a story in order. I write like five to fifteen minutes at a time. I have like 50,000 to put things to put together at the, you know, at the end of the book because everything's in pieces. But I finally this year realized that's just my writing process. And always, always, always something good comes from the mess, but it never starts as a story. I really have to write my way in. Even for non fiction when I know the story, I have to write my way in to find the story. And when so we're talking about writing process, I have to say, I feel like I have to be that transparent author who's like, it's a mess. It's not easy for me either, because I think that helps to hear. Totally. And I love what you just said, by the way, that's like, you know, always something good comes from the mess. I feel like that is the whole thing, not just for the process, but the story behind the process. Exactly. It comes out of it eventually, you just have to stick with it and move your way through. If I quit all the times, you know, I'm not like an outliner, like I like start an outline, it's like half done, then I go to do the book, and I'm like, it doesn't even match the half outline I've done, like, mine is just a mess. And now I just let it be. I'm like, that's what it's going to be. If I just know it's going to be a mess, and I don't try to fix it, and I don't get super upset that it's a mess, like eventually some book will come out of it, and it always does. It makes it so much easier to know.

[30:41]Zibby Owens: Were the other books about?

[30:44]Amy B. Scher: So my other books, have a series called How to Heal Yourself When No One Else Can, which is a series about all the things you can do to actually work on those patterns we talked about. So I had a book that came out a couple months ago called How to Heal Yourself from Depression When No One Else Can, which is obviously such a relevant topic. I signed the contract long before the pandemic, but all of the ways that we can reconnect to ourselves to come out of that depression energy and move more into feeling who we really are. So yeah, it's been a memoir and three self help books, now I am so ready for fiction. That's exciting. Wow. Amazing. Well, was already a ton of advice for authors, but do you have any parting words of wisdom aside from the fact that we should live in our mess and it's totally okay? Yes, I actually do. So here is my very best trick that will be so life changing if you do it, but you have to do it. So whether you're working on an essay or a book or a speech for your brother's wedding, whatever project you're working on, you have to, have to, have to, I'm giving this homework, connect with it daily. You cannot try to pick it up once every three days, once a week, once a month. You have to work on it at least five minutes a day, seven days a week. I don't care if while you're working on it, you're reading what you did yesterday or you open it up and you're looking at it and thinking about it, but the daily connection to your project is the most magical recipe for making writing easier. Because when we're working on a project and we only pick it up every few days or once a week or once a month, we have to restart our creative flow every time. And when you connect with it daily, it becomes a part of the momentum in the writing process and when you get there, you already know it. You're already familiar. You don't have to recenter yourself. You don't have to think, what was I doing? What did I write? You know, what did I write two weeks ago? You're never catching up. So even if you're not going to produce anything, even if you're not going to do anything productive, working on it, writing for five minutes a day, reading it, thinking, you know, reading it for five minutes, whatever, thinking about it is the key to keeping your creative flow going. And I want to hear from all the people who tried it and were like, five minutes a day, that's not enough. Five minutes a day is so much better than two hours a week or whatever it's going to be. It will change your writing life. Okay, excellent. Can't weekends off. As soon as you start taking days off, like sometimes it's like midnight and I'm like in bed, like doing my five minutes, half asleep with like the printed papers. But that five minutes a day just really makes the hugest difference in the world.

[33:30]Zibby Owens: All right. Okay. I'm wrapping my head around that. You're gonna try it, right?

[33:36]Amy B. Scher: It's how all my books get written. I have never sat down and written for like two or three hours. I don't know who these people are that can do that. I sit down and write for two or three hours. You're amazing. No, I'm not, but I'm not amazing. It's just, I think, like, I have to get in that focus mode or I can't do it. I can't do I don't think I could do five minutes. Like, I could definitely read it for five minutes. You know, I do have what you say when you, like, go back in and I'm like, where was I? What was I even writing about? What is the style of this? What is this? Like, so I do have that problem. But I still So on the days you don't have two or three hours, still look at it for five minutes. And you'll get so much more done in those two to three hours that you do have. That's totally true. That's gonna be amazed. Yeah. Okay. All right. Okay, excellent. All right. Well, Amy, thank you so much. It was so great chatting with you. I feel like now we're friends. So I hope you stay We are friends. In Okay, great. Yes, absolutely. We'll stay in touch and meet in person and all of that. And congrats on the book and its new iteration and good luck on all the other stuff. Thanks so much, Okay, bye. Bye.

[34:39]Zibby Owens: Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens and at moms don't have time to read books. Also, sign up for my newsletter at zibbyowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the sound editing, and thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.