Deborah Copaken, LADYPARTS: A Memoir

[0:58]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 time to 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. And if all that isn't enough, you can follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens and my website is zibbyowens.com. Okay, now back to this amazing podcast. Deborah Kopakin is the author of A Memoir. She is the New York Times bestselling author of other books as well, including Shutter Babe, which was one of my favorites when it first came out. You should definitely go back and read the Red Book and Between Here in April, among others. A contributing writer at The Atlantic, she was also a TV writer on Emily in Paris, a performer, The Moth, etc, and an Emmy award winning news producer and photojournalist. Her photographs have appeared in Time, Newsweek, The New York Times. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Guardian, The Financial Times, Observer, The Wall Street Journal, The Nation's Slate, Oath, Oprah Magazine, and Paris Match among others. Her column, When Cupid is a Prying Journalist was adapted for the Modern Love streaming series and originally came out in the Modern Love column of The New York Times. Her seventh book is Lady Parts, a memoir of bodily destruction and resurrection during marital rupture. She lives in Brooklyn with her family and I am so I just adore Deb and she's become a friend over time and it was just so great to talk to her about this book, which I actually got to read a couple chapters of when it was still a Microsoft Word document. So it's really exciting for me personally to be introducing this book to you all. Welcome, Deb. Thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss Lady Parts. Thank you, Zibby. You read this early. Know, did. It was so exciting. Was on a plane and I was like opening your Word document and being like, this is the coolest thing ever.

[3:08]Deborah Copaken: That was really fun. Well, because we did Modern Love thing. And then I was trying to remember the course of events. Think we did the Modern Love podcast and then I gave you the Word document. You're like, I need more. It actually was a good incentive to keep writing more. So thank you. Oh no, it was great. It was so good. Because you had only had like two or three chapters, I feel like at that point, like it was right in the beginning, but yeah. I think I just had the uterus chapter. Yeah.

[3:36]Zibby Owens: Thank you putting me in the acknowledgments. That was very sweet of you. I saw that at the end. Thank you. Okay. Well, why don't you tell everybody what Lady Parts is about and how you came up with this, as I know you describe in here, but how you came up with this as a device for how to tell your story. Okay, so this is one of my first interviews. So I'm going to have to like do this on the fly, right? I don't have my elevator pitch down. You don't need a pitch. Just tell it to me like it happened. In 2018,

[4:03]Deborah Copaken: so three years ago, I was standing in the shower and I was looking down at my stomach at all of the various scars on it because I've had a hysterectomy, I had a trachelectomy, I had vaginal cuff dehiscence. You know, my body is covered with scars. They're not big, they're not annoying. They're just, they're there. And every day I soaked them up and I was looking at them and I thought, Oh my God, this is the outline of a book. That they weren't just my scars. They were scars that America had given to me. And that there was a useful way to use each body part that had been either excised or went on the fritz as metaphor and narrative constructs. So just for an example, uterus, my uterus was taken out the same day that my teenage daughter got her period and the same day that my mentor and surrogate mother figure in New York was dying. And what is a uterus other than a symbol of fertility, of motherhood? It was one of the things that I was afraid of, rid of my uterus. Who was I without a uterus? And so I thought, okay, well, that, that's the chapter, right? And then I went further, and I thought, okay, my heart went on the fritz, just as I was starting to date again. So literally, as I was going on my first Tinder dates, I was wearing a Holter monitor, which like, there's little, like, sticky things all over you. And you have a little, like, buzzy thing here that like, bleeps and buzzes when your heart goes too fast. And yeah, so that was interesting. But like, literally every body part that was broken or excised had a perfect narrative structure. It was just one of those kind of, like, lightning bolt moments in the shower. And it came out and I just sort of really, like, pounded it out out the outline. And I called Lisa Lestiny, my agent, I was like, I got a book. I got a book I wanna write. It's amazing. Oh my gosh.

[5:54]Zibby Owens: And all of your stories, you link back to the bigger picture. You know what I mean? Like, I feel like you always have a like, okay, this isn't just like, you're using your story to tell a much bigger story of what it's like in America, what it's like with, like, the shrinking middle class or, like, the pressures on that, the health care system here versus health care systems everywhere else. And you scatter in or maybe that's the wrong word you intersperse all sorts of statistics to kind of make your point and show, like, look, I am a hardworking author,

[6:25]Deborah Copaken: like doing my best, and this is what you're giving me back? Come on. Yeah. No, I'm a hardworking author doing my best and I can't fucking make it. Am I allowed to curse on this podcast? You are now.

[6:37]Zibby Owens: Sorry, folks. You can, it's fine. I'll put a little label on it. I

[6:42]Deborah Copaken: think it what in essence I'm doing, and I'm thinking of this as I'm talking to you is I'm using my body as a megaphone, right? This is not just my body. My body stands for all female American bodies that don't get maternity leave. They don't get health care. They pay $9,000 per baby. I mean, that's a lot of money for someone in my economic situation. That's a lot of money. Babysitters are ridiculously expensive. We don't have a cash system. Our science is behind the times. We don't look at female bodies per se. We don't look at the effects of estrogen. I could go on and on and on. And the book does go on and on for 500 pages. But I hope they go fast because what I'm trying to do is to use my body as an example. And I just had such a cascade of bad luck that I could have either crawled into a ball and cried, or I could say, okay, this is an opportunity to use my own situation, my own body, as a way of talking about issues that get swept under the rug that we're not talking about. And being a female body in America is really, really hard, particularly being a female middle class body. Now you said, you know, you're a hardworking writer, you can't make it you can't make it work. I'm a New York Times best selling author, but I can't do that job, because I need health care. So I'm always having to go get other jobs like corporate jobs with health insurance, to make my life work, right? If I had health insurance, or universal health care, any other country that, you know, France, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, all these countries that have or Israel have socialized medicine. Right? That where health care is a right, not a privilege. I could be a more productive writer. I could be a less stressed out woman. I could be a better mother. You know, there are so many implications to tying health insurance to corporate jobs.

[8:48]Zibby Owens: I couldn't believe when you had found the lump in your breast and you had to wait and that you first of all, that you were at the Harlem Free Clinic. Right? And then finally you got there was a cancellation and you got in. And then they were like, You have to come right back for tests. And you're like, No, no, I can't. I have to wait for my health insurance. And the doctor's like, No, no, no, you have to come. And you're like, No, I'm not going to. Like, I can't. I can't pay for this. I have to wait. And then that they so flippantly at work were like, We're going to push this back a little bit. And so you had to push back the appointment again. Like, the ramifications of this are so vast when you think about it, like multiplied by a zillion with everybody, with healthcare and work and all of this and what is not being diagnosed. And then like the implications of like the, I don't know, it's just like you point out how vast a problem it is for everyone. Well, then also at that same job, which was, by the way, an online health magazine, which shall remain

[9:44]Deborah Copaken: unnamed, an online health magazine, I was fired for spending too much time at Sloan Kettering. Okay. I was fired because I was absent too often. And I showed the HR person on my calendar, each absence mapped out. There were, you know, one absence a week. Was going to Sloan Kenner. Right. But each of those absence was related to my breast was related to my stage zero breast cancer diagnosis. I'm fine. I didn't have to go through chemotherapy. I didn't have to go through radiation. Mine was a really simple

[10:18]Zibby Owens: one and done situation of breast cancer, right? But like, I got fired for getting breast cancer, essentially. It's so crazy. It's so unfair. And even the fact, as you point out, like that you were working at that healthcare place and yet, and you had all these ideas coming in of what you were going to do to mix things up. And you quickly realized that like, wait a minute, this is really just a fodder for advertising, that it was like backwards, like wagging the dog. Right?

[10:44]Deborah Copaken: So it was a health care magazine, and I put it in quotes, but it really was about getting health care pharmaceutical dollars. I mean, they made a lot of money, they went public, you know, they did well, right? The people that were at the top did well in that. But so I was hired to sort of get the stable of bloggers writing better prose to edit because there was often misspellings. So I kept saying to my bosses, when are we going to pay these people? You told them you're going to pay them. They were promised if they start and these were sick people. Like this was somebody with diabetes, with cancer, with breast cancer, with skin cancer, they got all the diseases. By But the way, none of the diseases that didn't have pharmaceutical ads that they could sell. So like type one diabetes, no type two, yes, because there's lots of ads you can sell for that. So I didn't have a type one diabetes blogger, had a type two diabetes blogger. And they told me each of them they've been promised payment. And here I was asking sick people who had bills to pay medical bills to pay to write for me for free, so that we could sell ads to make my bosses rich. I mean, in a nutshell, I hate to say it, that's corporate America. Wow.

[11:54]Zibby Owens: This book, in addition to taking all of that on, which you did really well, right? I felt like I was watching like a, not a political candidate, but somebody who was just like had all their facts together and was up there making a case, right? You have that whole thing. But then you take us deep into your marriage and how lonely you were being married to someone who you didn't even know was on the spectrum and then having to bring that into reshuffling all your thoughts when you learned that and did it really make things better and having to go through the extrication of that. I mean, that was a lot. And you continue to use that as an example of how hard it is for women to get divorced and what happens when you don't have the spouse helping out. Like, your nineeleven story was insane when you couldn't even pick up both your kids. I mean, oh my gosh.

[12:42]Deborah Copaken: Well, I don't even it's not even a question. I'm just like, wow. 09:11 question, you know, I'm not even the 09:11 scene, you know, my ex husband was stuck downtown. Right. But it was a more of a metaphor for like being the mother alone. Like I had to pick up two kids from two different schools and I only had one bike and one of them was a toddler. So just, you know, I don't have a car, whatever. It was it was and even if I had a car, I think that day, I'm not sure you're allowed to use them. I don't remember. But, you know, my ex husband and I are actually good friends now. Like we have gotten we've reached a place where for my son's birthday this year, we, you know, me and my new partner and him and his new partner, we all met at a sushi place with the big kids and my son and everybody's fine. It's really kind of pleasant. But back in those moments of my lonely marriage, and before we got the diagnosis of Asperger's, which is now called being on the spectrum, I just couldn't understand why I wasn't getting empathy for the man who claimed to love me. And I do have no doubt that he loved me. And, you know, no doubt. But empathy, love without empathy was really, really difficult for me to deal with, particularly as when we took the empathy scale test, it goes from zero to 80. And I scored 68, which is really high up on the empathy scale, and my ex scored an eight. And we're just sort of like, at two different ends of the scale, which by the way, is very common as well, right? Usually, somebody on the bottom of the scale tries to find someone at the top of the scale, to mesh their lives together to be that person that can navigate social situations for them. And, you know, all my kids say we're all better off with with us not being married to one another. So yeah, you know, as my body was falling apart, so was my marriage. And so, yeah, that gets thrown in there as well. And you even reached a point where you were looking over your window in your office

[14:37]Zibby Owens: and debating, like, jumping and what that would feel like. And I was like I was like, I cannot believe she got that low. You're just, like, hitting like, tell me about that moment. So I had dropped off my son at college, my first child at college

[14:51]Deborah Copaken: on the same day my marriage ended. But I wasn't allowed to tell him that my marriage had ended because my ex didn't want us to talk about it yet. He was trying to figure out how he wanted to do this, which was fine. But, like, it went it stretched on and on and on. So I'm trying to, like, be peppy and drive my son to college. This is fun. Driving to college, be up and happy and, like, driving him there, dropping him off at his dorm. Then I come back, and I'd left my little one with friends because I don't can't pay a babysitter overnight. I don't have that kind of money. So I left my little one with friends. I had to go pick him up. I brought him back, made dinner for my kids. Then I got my little one to school the next day on the subway. And then, you know, preschool, it wasn't preschool, it was elementary school at that time, came back, walked into my home, and it was the first time in three days since my marriage had ended that I was allowed to cry, right? That I could let myself go. And I didn't even make it up the stairs of my we lived in Harlem at the time. And so there's sort of a staircase between the bottom apartment and our apartment up top. And I fell on the stairs unable to move in just like this gross wailing, like this, like, you know, heaving, wailing and crying. And finally, that after it, this, like the stairs started hurting my ribs. And I was just like, I got to get out of the stairs. And I went into my office. And I was like, I can't afford my apartment. I've lost my marriage. I don't know which way is up. I don't know how I'm going to pay for anything. I have a bro. And by the way, the day that I broke what that I drove my son to college, I found the breast lump. And so what had happened was I was starting to try to figure out how am I going to deal with this breast lump without health insurance, because my ex had lost his job and had no health insurance. And I'd been relying on his health insurance. And I just, I didn't see a point in living. I didn't see it. And then across the way, I lived in Harlem on St. Nicholas Avenue. So my apartment looked over, I think it was Edgecombe Avenue, and a lot of musicians live in Edgecombe Avenue. And so you can hear their music playing and one of them started playing Sounds of Silence, which is the song my dad's favorite song, and the song that he asked my son to play at his funeral. And I know this sounds weird, but I just kind of felt like it was my dad speaking to me from beyond the grave saying, don't do it. You know, don't do it. And I pulled my head in. I mean, I had my head halfway out the window. And yeah, it's hard to relive that period. But now that I've sort of put it down on paper, like, actually, as I'm talking to you right now, my heart's not beating at the same hideous rate that it would have had I told the story fresh.

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[20:02]Deborah Copaken: we sold it, I think it was December 2018. I started writing in January 2019. And obviously we didn't know COVID was on the horizon, who did? So each chapter was the name of a body part that had failed me. And of course, 03/18/2020, I get one of the first cases of COVID. And I get it by the way, because I had to go for a second time to a urgent care to get treated for urinary tract infection, which by the way, I wouldn't have if I'd known that you could by the way, all readers, all listeners right now, if you are a middle aged woman, go talk to your doctor right now. Estrogen will cure your urinary tract infections. It will cure it. And I've talked to two experts right now and I'm about to write a piece about this for the New York Times. Estrogen therapy, which is now called menopausal hormone treatment for UTIs is key. Okay, so I had to go to a urgent care for a second time because the urgent care doctor gave me the wrong prescription for my UTI, which I told him was wrong. But he said, I know better, you don't know better, which is the problem we have in healthcare over and over again, being minimized, our pain, our knowledge being minimized of our own bodies. And I got COVID in that room. I'm sure of it because there were people coming and saying, I can't breathe. They were screaming. There were no masks. Nobody had masks at the time. Everybody was coughing in the waiting room. Like, where else could I have gotten it? Right? It was clear to me that's where I got it. So I had to add in the lung chapter. And also, like, during this whole COVID period, so I got COVID in March, I got long haul COVID, which means that I'm still I just had a POTS episode this last week. I have partial orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, which is initiated by COVID. But in the middle of all this, I get fired from my well paying job, the one with health insurance, because they had COVID layoffs. I mean, I'm not the only one, obviously. Like, there was a statistic, 140,000 jobs were lost. All of them were women. That was a headline in January 2021. 140,000 jobs were lost, all of them were women. Right? So I lose my job, I lose my health insurance, suddenly, I'm on the hook for $2,400 a month for family health insurance again. And, you know, you wanna know the upshot of all this? I'm still on unemployment. Luckily, of Biden, I'm not paying for COBRA. And and he has it so that we're not paying between April and September, which is a godsend. And we just started getting $300 a month for children. Thank God. Like, I am living on public assistance right now. And looking I sold lady parts to TV. So hopefully that will be my new job. But like, because of COVID, we haven't had a chance to actually, like, get together and work on this and pitch. You know, everything has stalled because of this disease. I got super sick, I couldn't breathe. There were three nights that I thought I was going to die. And at the time, they didn't know to turn you on your stomach. I learned that on my own, because it was the only way I could breathe. There were no monoclonal antibodies. But weirdly, I have a medication for it's called a Mobic for migraines, which is a monoclonal antibody. And I take it every month on the twenty eighth. So I got sick on the eighteenth. On the twenty eighth, I took my Aimovig. And I don't know if it was just that I was getting better from COVID or it was the monoclonal antibody somehow hitting my bloodstream, but I was better after that. And I know it's a different monoclonal antibody. I know that this makes no sense at all. But after taking my monthly amovic shot, which is you shoot yourself in the stomach, I got a little better.

[23:41]Zibby Owens: Oh my lord. Deb, I mean, it's just crazy to me. You're such a gifted writer. You've written amazing books. Like, you should not be in this situation. It's just like,

[23:55]Deborah Copaken: anyway. Well, books don't pay that well. We know that. Like books. I know, but Not personal living really, you know, and I wish they were. But like also, by the way, in the middle of all this, you know, I end the book at a scene in July 2020 on the roof with my son watching fireworks, trying to convince this young boy who has no hope for America that he should have hope for America, that there's hope, that we're gonna be okay. And I have one line that I wrote in there saying, like, I looked down at my roof thinking, you know, this is all impermanent. Well, it was really impermanent because a month later two months later, my landlord says he wanted his apartment back. So all of a sudden in the middle of a global pandemic, my new partner, my son and I, and my daughter who was living with us all had to move. My daughter moved to her own place in Williamsburg. We had to move out here to Red Hook. We're like thirty five minutes from the closest subway. It's the only apartment I could find in the middle of pandemic. It's fine. I love it. I love my new neighborhood, but like we had to move in a global pandemic and had to by the way, look for an apartment in a pandemic. And if any of your readers have or listeners have done that, you're wearing a mask. You can only come one at a time. Like, was not easy to find an apartment

[25:01]Zibby Owens: during a time when nobody's really moving around. Right? Oh my gosh. So when did you find time? Like, when did you write this? I think you ref said that you write it at five in the morning before you go to work.

[25:10]Deborah Copaken: So I had at 1.2 full time jobs and a third. So in January 2019, when I started writing this, I was head writer at a company called NeuroTrack. That was my main job. I was a staff writer on Emily and Parents, the TV show. And I was in LA. Luckily my partner really watched my son with my ex husband or else I would not have been able to go. And I also am a contributing writer for The Atlantic. So I had these three main jobs plus the book. And so I really mapped out a very specific schedule, which was normally I get up at five in LA, I got up at four. So I get up at four, have my coffee, start writing by five. I would write from five to eight. Then I would take a shower and then I would walk to work so that I get some exercise. And that was the only way I could fit in exercise. I was the only crazy person in LA walking to work. So it was a half hour walk. So, you know, figured like, whatever walking along Sunset Boulevard, you know? Yeah, so I walked to work. We spent from 10AM until around 4PM in the office, you know, pounding out the show. Then I would walk back on Sunset Boulevard back to my place in the Hollywood Hills, which is a tiny little studio by the way, tiny, teeny tiny, that's all I could board with my Airbnb. And then around 05:00, I would sit down and start doing my other job, which is the head writer at NeuroTrak. So I would, and I would also sometimes take Zoom, like not Zoom breaks, like, little breaks during, we had a, not a Zoom thing, like a, what is it called when you have a FaceTime, FaceTime calls with my team there. So from five until around ten, I would do my neuro track work, would order in dinner and then I'd go to sleep and start all over again. So that too is stressful and that's not good for the heart. And I think we need to start talking more and more about the role of stress in all of our lives and how stress plays out on the body. Wow. What a story.

[27:16]Zibby Owens: Unbelievable. So what advice would you have for aspiring authors, both in terms of, like, how to survive life and in terms of the writing itself?

[27:27]Deborah Copaken: Move to France. I'm sorry. No. Seriously, like, during this whole period, was like, why am I living in The United States where I don't have health insurance? Like, that's the main thing. Like, how are you gonna survive without health insurance? Because writing books, don't get paid health insurance. I would say to an aspiring author that if you think you don't have time to write, you're wrong. There is always time to write. And even if like, I wrote my Modern Love that became an episode of the Modern Love TV series on the A Train to work. I used I was living in Inwood, which is the northern tip of Manhattan, 207th Street, last stop on the A Train. So I always got a seat on the subway, which was key for me for my writing session. It was like my writing retreat on the subway. So I get my seat, I'd open my laptop, I would write. And then I literally wrote the first draft of that Modern Love, from the moment I sat down to the moment I got to my office in Soho, there's always time and space to write. If you're a mom in a car, right? And you're waiting for your kid to get out of baseball, soccer, whatever, get out your laptop. If you're working full time and have no childcare and all that, well, there are a few moments before you fall asleep where you can get in a few hours of work, especially if you have young kids, they have to be in bed by seven or eight, you know, use that time afterwards. But I am a big, big believer when you're looking for time to write in the early morning hours, just because the brain is fresh. You know, you're still in a like, onaric state from your dream, right? You're still you've still got this stuff going on where you've just had these weird dreams. And that fuels writing. So I really am a big proponent of the early early pre dawn, And I also believe that walking is key showers and walking, I get my best ideas in showers. So take a lot of showers. And go on twenty five minute walk, thirty minute walk every day if you can. And don't listen to podcasts. I'm sorry. But don't listen to podcasts. Don't listen to music. Like, clear your head and let your brain do the work of connection. And it will. Like, your brain will work. If you just give it time, your brain will come up with ideas. I love that. Also, like Anne Lamott says, shitty first drafts. Always. Just write your shitty first draft. When you sit down to write the next day, you're allowed to tinker with the previous paragraph, but do not tinker with anything else. Just keep moving forward. And then you have all your pages. I know you're going through this right now. So I'm speaking to you as well. Get your shitty first draft out. And then as we all say, writing is rewriting.

[30:03]Zibby Owens: Thank you. Thanks for my first lies, Deb. Wow, Deb, this is I mean, I feel like this book is like an accomplishment. There's a lot of heart and soul and fact

[30:14]Deborah Copaken: and fury all mixed in. And it was just really powerful. Thank you. I really appreciate it. How are you doing? Are you doing okay? How's your writing going?

[30:23]Zibby Owens: It's good. I did my shitty first draft. Thank you very much. And I'm on my second draft, and now my editor has it. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. You've already finished your shitty first draft.

[30:33]Deborah Copaken: When did you start? You started like a month ago. I started now wait. Now let's get down to the nitty gritty. How did you get that done?

[30:42]Zibby Owens: I started I didn't start a month ago. I started in like March, and there was a chunk of it that I've I lifted like I had already. So that was probably like 30 pages. I don't know. I just did it really fast. Thank you. I'm proud of you. That's a huge accomplishment. You've gotten the first draft done. Well, the whole thing's due finished in September. So I like didn't really have a choice. Yeah, I'm getting my edits back in two weeks and then I have that time and then, you know, I mean,

[31:12]Deborah Copaken: yeah. If you want to send it to another person, I'm offering here in front of your entire audience to do an edit if you'd like. Would like, I think you need to, I mean, when I finish an edit of a book, I send it to Tad Friend always, who's a writer in the New Yorker. Who's been my friend since college. And he's always my first reader, but it's good to have a few other readers with their hands in the book because if three people notice something, then you know that there's a problem. If one person noticed something, but the other two don't, you know, you triangulate, right? So don't be afraid. I can do it. I know other people can do it. You've got a million writers on your podcast like that you've already spoken to who would probably be like, sure Zibby, send it to me. Don't be afraid to ask the writing community for help.

[31:56]Zibby Owens: Oh my goodness. Thank you so much. I might, I might, I don't know. But then if like you think it's really bad, I have to start over and I don't wanna deal with that.

[32:04]Deborah Copaken: I'm sure it's bad because you're brilliant. You. And I had a friend tried to submit a Modern Love, it didn't work. Lisa, my agent asked me to work on her Modern Love. I worked on it. I like showed her what was missing, that there was key elements of transition that were missing, that there was, the ending wasn't satisfying and she submitted it and it got accepted. So don't be afraid. I'm offering this to you, gratis.

[32:32]Zibby Owens: Like help me. Would never accept to help you out. But thank you. Okay. Thank you, Deb.

[32:38]Deborah Copaken: Okay.

[32:39]Zibby Owens: All right. Well, thank you. Thanks for coming on, moms don't have time to read books. I'll be in touch on email. I have an idea for you. So we'll stay in close touch. Thank you. Bye. Bye. Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram Zibby Owens and momsdonthavetimetoreadbooks. 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.