Peggy Orenstein, UNRAVELING: What I Learned about Life While Shearing Sheep, Dyeing Wool, and Making the World's Ugliest Sweater
[0:02]Hi, I'm Zivi Owens, the creator and host of the award-winning podcast that you're listening to right now.
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[0:58]Peggy Ornstein is the author of Unraveling What I Learned About Life, while shearing sheep, dying wool, and making the world's ugliest sweater.
[1:07]Peggy is the author of The New York Times bestsellers, boys, and sex, girls and sex, Cinderella ate my daughter, and waiting for Daisy,
[1:16]as well as Don't Call Me Princess, Flux, and the classic school girls.
[1:20]Her latest book is a memoir, a frequent contributor to The New York Times, and a contributing writer for afar,
[1:26]AFAR, all capitals.
[1:29]Peggy has also written for such publications as The Less Angelist Times, The Washington Post, New York, The Atlantic, and The New Yorker,
[1:35]and has contributed commentaries to NPR's All Things Considered, and the PBS NewsHour.
[1:40]She has been featured on, among other programs, Good Morning America, CVS This Morning, The Today Show, Morning Joe, and NPR's Fresh Air.
[1:47]Her TED Talk, What Young Women Believe About Their Own Sexual Pleasure, has been viewed over 5.8 million times.
[1:53]The Columbia Journalism Review named Peggy one of its 40 women who changed the media business in the past 40 years.
[1:59]She has been recognized for her outstanding coverage of Family Diversity by the Council on Contemporary Families, and received a books for a better life award
[2:07]for both girls and sex and waiting for Daisy.
[2:09]Her work has been honored by the Commonwealth Club of California, the National Women's Political Caucus of California, and Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
[2:17]Additionally, she has been awarded fellowships from the United States Japan Foundation, and the Asian Cultural Council.
[2:22]And has been a grateful resident at Messer Mesa Refuge, and the U-Cross Foundation.
[2:28]We were lucky enough to do this episode live in The Less Angelist.
[2:32]Welcome, Peggy. Thank you so much for coming on, Mom.
[2:34]I'm starting to have time to read books.
[2:36]I'm just so excited you're here to talk about Unreal.
[2:39]I'm really happy to be here. This is a bucket list thing. I love your podcast.
[2:43]Now, you just thought that I'm going to get on. I was like, how could that even be?
[2:46]Like, I've been reading your books. It's just so nuts to me sometimes.
[2:50]I think of where exactly where I was when I read Waiting for Daisy.
[2:54]I can like picture the room. I mean, it's crazy.
[2:56]But here we are.
[2:58]I mean, I just think it's really for people to develop themselves to books and the promotion of books and authors right now.
[3:04]It just means so much because I mean, I say and unraveling that, you know, I feel kind of like a blacksmith or something.
[3:12]Yes. You did say that. That was so great. I loved that.
[3:16]You know, the industries that are fading out. You know, I feel like I'm like Kodak over here.
[3:20]Yeah. Right? Exactly.
[3:22]So thank you for being Kodak. Yeah.
[3:24]Being Kodak. Starting a typewriter business is what I'm doing. Exactly.
[3:28]Exactly. Yeah. Okay. So tell listeners about your book. What's it about? Why did you write it?
[3:34]Hmm. So unraveling. I mean, the kind of hook for unraveling is that I decided during lockdown when life came to a screeching halt.
[3:45]And everybody was, you know, stress baking and making their solido and doing this. I thought, I know what I'll do.
[3:53]I still think this is whatever I think that I think why I am going to go from sheep to sweater.
[3:59]And I'm going to learn how to, I'm a lifelong knitter. And I thought, you know, with my, I wanted to know where my fiber came from.
[4:06]And I was curious and I thought, I'll just take everybody one better. And I'm going to go learn how to share sheep and process well and spin it and diet and make it into a sweater.
[4:14]And that was kind of the one one strand of the brain. But what the book is really about underneath that is, you know, confronting midlife as a woman and my daughter leaving home and getting ready for the empty nest and my parents declined.
[4:29]My mom is a lot about mothers and daughters and about fathers and daughters as it turned out, which was kind of a surprise to me, but because my dad was declining.
[4:38]So that's a whole thing. And then the other pieces that it became about, you know, the history of women's work and textiles and all they mean to us and all they mean to our planet and all, you know, color and all this kind of crazy lore and everything.
[4:53]So it was sort of all these things braided together.
[4:56]And that came off great.
[4:58]I mean, you're an expert ninner of all kinds.
[5:01]It's awesome. What your reference to your dad, I mean, the scene where you were talking about FaceTiming him and how he didn't realize that you weren't there.
[5:08]And how he would ask for like, can you pass the water and you're like, oh, dad, I can't reach it.
[5:12]I know. I know.
[5:14]You know, and he, and I'll tell you, he died a few months ago.
[5:18]Oh, no.
[5:19]Yeah. I mean, he was 96.
[5:20]I know, but still, it doesn't ever make it better.
[5:23]No.
[5:24]It really doesn't. And I will say, you know, I mean, one of the things about doing these, you know, kind of weird old time arts is they're very slow.
[5:31]And so one of the things that I had to do was, was card fleece, which maybe you did like, you know, when you were a kid at some, like, you know, renaissance festival or something with, with two things that look like dog brushes, you take the,
[5:43]I did not do that.
[5:44]But you take the fleece and you got to get it all organized so that you can spin it.
[5:47]And it's really boring. And you can only do a little other time. So I did like, you know, I did the first one.
[5:52]And you, you make it into this little cigar shaped puff and it should be 10 minutes. And you need 579 of those to make a sweater.
[5:59]So you're like, okay, this one took me 10 minutes and I need 579. And that means it's going to take me the rest of my life.
[6:08]And so while I was doing that, I mean, I knew this book was going to bring me be a lot about mothers and daughters.
[6:14]I knew it was going to bring me close to my mom. I knew it was going to be about my relationship with my daughter.
[6:18]Because we learned these things, we learned to knit, we learned to crochet, we learned all these things from our moms, from our grandmothers.
[6:23]But I didn't know how much it was going to bring me to my dad who was, this was lockdown.
[6:28]He was in Minneapolis. Even if I could go there, his facility was locked down, nobody could go out or in.
[6:35]And so I would, I could slow down enough. It was so hard because he had dementia to gear up to, you know, I would do it, but to gear up to talk to him was hard.
[6:45]Yeah, maybe he would be there, maybe he wouldn't, maybe he'd understand, maybe he wouldn't.
[6:50]And so I was, when I was carding, I was, it was so slow. I could slow down to his level.
[6:56]And I could really, you know, so I would sit there with him on FaceTime and we would watch.
[7:01]He was watching the twins, they were rerunning twins games where the twins always won.
[7:06]And he didn't know they were not live.
[7:09]And he thought they were winning because of something he was doing with his walker.
[7:12]And they're going, dad, what are you doing? He's like, I'm not dead.
[7:15]Yeah, it's a trace.
[7:17]He's very cute.
[7:18]And we would sing, because we would sing, you know, I would sing, you are my song showing to him.
[7:23]Yeah.
[7:24]Because that was a different part of the brain.
[7:27]And it allowed people who have dementia still can do songwriters, which is interesting.
[7:32]And that helps them remember.
[7:34]And so we would sit there for hours.
[7:36]And now that he's gone,
[7:39]I can't tell you how precious that time is to me.
[7:42]How grateful I am that I could do that.
[7:45]I mean, it was just, it was so, so meaningful.
[7:49]And so I write a lot about that, that as well and sort of coming through those last years with the parent,
[7:54]which is, you know, a rite of passage, a lot of us,
[7:57]when we all lose our parents, but that we all go through one way or another.
[8:01]No, it's sad.
[8:02]He said something in that section too about how at first you would like,
[8:07]wait until it was so late in the day.
[8:10]Yeah.
[8:11]So that you're like, oh, well, now it's too late to cost it for you.
[8:13]Yeah.
[8:14]Like you had all these tricks.
[8:15]Yeah.
[8:16]And so you really could get yourself into it.
[8:17]Yeah.
[8:18]Because I live in California.
[8:19]Yeah.
[8:20]It was in Minneapolis.
[8:21]So I'd be like, oh, you know, I'm busy.
[8:22]I'll call him later.
[8:23]Oh, my daughter, you know, I mean, the sandwich generation.
[8:24]Right.
[8:25]So my daughter needs me.
[8:26]My husband needs me.
[8:27]This need this.
[8:28]I can't do it.
[8:29]And I can't.
[8:30]Oh, no, it's too late.
[8:31]I can't call him.
[8:32]You know, and it wasn't that I was trying to be, you know,
[8:35]neglectful.
[8:36]It's so painful.
[8:37]Yeah.
[8:38]It's so hard.
[8:39]If I could see him in person, it wouldn't have been easier.
[8:40]But, but so, yeah, so it gave me a lot.
[8:42]I'm so sorry.
[8:43]I really got something so amazing, such a gift from, from that time together.
[8:50]Oh.
[8:51]And when you wrote about your mom too, and I'm sorry about your less of her than well,
[8:56]but what you said was so interesting is that you really wanted to talk to your mom not
[9:00]as if she had lived and was now 96 or whatever she would have.
[9:03]Yeah.
[9:04]And you could both like talk about what it was like because you're like,
[9:07]how did she deal with the pain of having a daughter leave the house?
[9:10]Yeah.
[9:11]Yeah.
[9:12]I mean, I would think about, I wrote about how our relationship was not always easy.
[9:17]Mm-hmm.
[9:18]There was a lot that I probably sometimes are often unfairly resented over the years.
[9:23]You know.
[9:24]And so I think in that way of daughters were pretty self-absorbed with our mothers, you know.
[9:28]And I never, you know, I used to complain to my friends all the time that she didn't see me.
[9:33]But did I really try to see her, you know, and I did I ever know that she's gone.
[9:39]And we could always bond over knitting.
[9:41]That was the thing.
[9:42]Yeah.
[9:43]We could always bond over knitting.
[9:44]That was always something that we could go to a knit store.
[9:46]We could go to, you know, look at yarn and she was better than I was.
[9:49]So I could always ask her for help.
[9:51]And I loved that it was, you know, it was a bridge across the generation gap.
[9:55]But I never said, you know, mom, you know, were you ever lonely?
[9:59]Yeah.
[10:00]Was it hard?
[10:00]How'd you raise a teenage girl?
[10:02]How did you stand it when she, you know,
[10:04]all these questions that you never asked that died with her?
[10:07]And so, yeah, I said I wanted something that was
[10:10]in defiance of both the laws of, you know,
[10:13]nature and physics that I wanted her to be my age
[10:15]and I wanted me to be my age.
[10:16]Right.
[10:17]And I have a conversation.
[10:18]So I was constantly all through the pandemic
[10:20]having a conversation with her in my head
[10:22]but I was taking both sides.
[10:24]So it was, yeah, it was,
[10:26]I think of her.
[10:27]And meanwhile wrestling slippery sheep.
[10:29]Meanwhile wrestling
[10:46]she raised her hand and she said,
[10:48]you know, you were following me around like,
[10:51]oh, you know, it must have been almost 10 years ago.
[10:54]And you were talking about wanting to shear sheep
[10:56]and I said, I was, I had no memory of that.
[10:59]I said, yeah, you've wanted to do this for a long time.
[11:02]So I don't know, it's a bead my bonnet, you know,
[11:04]like it was some fun of those things that you got in your end.
[11:07]So I had no, I was so, you know, sort of like ignorant
[11:10]about it though at the same time that I was like,
[11:12]yeah, sure.
[11:12]You know, people say it's the hardest thing.
[11:14]It's one of the hardest jobs in the world.
[11:16]It takes, it burns twice as many calories
[11:18]minute to minute as marathon running.
[11:21]You know, it's like all the, the,
[11:22]they're, they're slippery.
[11:23]I'm picturing like an equinox gym.
[11:26]Yeah, sheep.
[11:27]What's your name?
[11:28]And like spandex running around.
[11:29]Right.
[11:30]Like, I mean, it burns a lot of calories.
[11:31]They, you know, they're, they have land,
[11:33]they're, they have land all over them.
[11:35]So they're slippery.
[11:36]Yeah. They way more than you do.
[11:38]And they have hooves.
[11:38]And I mean, it doesn't hurt them.
[11:39]I want to be clear.
[11:40]It doesn't hurt them.
[11:41]It's a haircut.
[11:42]Yeah, it's just a haircut, but, but they don't want, you know,
[11:44]they don't want to be there.
[11:45]And they've got hooves and they kick.
[11:47]And you have this hot, worrying blade with no safety.
[11:53]And I was like, where is this book going?
[11:55]I was like, what is going to happen to her?
[11:56]I don't know.
[11:57]I was like, I'm just going, yeah.
[11:58]Yeah, sure, sign me up.
[11:59]Yeah, I can do this.
[12:00]No problem.
[12:01]No worries.
[12:02]You know, I can, yeah, absolutely.
[12:03]I can, I can do that.
[12:05]And it did.
[12:06]You did.
[12:07]Yes.
[12:08]Then lift it up.
[12:09]And I'm so, I mean, all these things, all the,
[12:13]all the sort of tasks.
[12:15]I mean, I knew this was going to be a book.
[12:17]Like I, I knew from the get go.
[12:18]I thought, oh, I think, you know, as I was sitting there
[12:21]in COVID jail thinking, well, maybe there would be a book
[12:26]in doing these tasks.
[12:27]And I would do a book and it would be about the, the things
[12:30]and it would be about the people.
[12:31]I mean, what I didn't, but I didn't know all this other,
[12:34]like all the opportunity that doing something completely new
[12:38]that I would never have otherwise done would give me to,
[12:43]you know, to learn about myself, to learn about my relationships
[12:46]with people and to learn all this like stuff about the world
[12:50]and the planet and the history and all.
[12:53]I mean, that was just amazing and creativity.
[12:55]So awesome.
[12:56]Yeah.
[12:57]Oh my gosh.
[12:58]There were a few sections that I excerpted.
[13:01]I just wanted to read if you don't mind.
[13:03]And you're so funny.
[13:03]Your sense of humor is like so great.
[13:05]But anyway, you said that night in bed, I do the New York Times
[13:08]spelling to be on my phone, poking at my keyboard
[13:10]to make as many words as possible from a hive of seven letters.
[13:13]When I hit the number needed to reach the genius designation,
[13:16]I flip the screen around to show Steven.
[13:18]The thing is, I tell him, I'm not really enjoying the game.
[13:21]I feel kind of anxious until and unless I make genius.
[13:24]And then, instead of feeling happy,
[13:26]I'm just relieved not to have failed.
[13:28]So it's never really fun.
[13:30]He glances up from his book.
[13:31]That sounds about right with your personality.
[13:33]Yeah, I agree.
[13:34]It's distractedly, then turn to him.
[13:35]Wait, what do you mean?
[13:37]You're always trying to prove something unnecessary
[13:39]that no one cares about to nobody in particular.
[13:42]And then you say, it's true.
[13:43]I am an incessant seeker of validation
[13:46]perpetually worried despite my age and relative success
[13:49]about missing the mark, about not meeting unspoken expectations,
[13:52]about getting an A in whatever there is to get an A in,
[13:55]about how my work will be judged rather than what
[13:58]engaging in it means to me.
[14:00]Deep down, I know that's a trap
[14:01]on that sabotage is creative thinking.
[14:03]Maybe that is part of what draws me to this eccentric project
[14:06]that relief the excuse, the joy of incompetence.
[14:10]I love that so much.
[14:13]I relate to that.
[14:14]I love that.
[14:15]It's like you have to try something
[14:17]anybody with any sort of perfectionistic tendencies.
[14:20]When you have to fail, it's like completely freeing.
[14:23]Yeah, I'm so glad you pulled that out
[14:25]because I think, especially, you know how sometimes
[14:29]we'll maybe you don't.
[14:29]But I'm sure people say that you don't kind of know
[14:31]what a book's about until after you write it.
[14:33]And one of the things I think that this was really important
[14:37]to me in this book was the joy of being a completely ranked
[14:41]amateur and that kind of beginner's mind.
[14:44]And because I do something that's sort of in the arts field
[14:48]relatively speaking for a living, I mean, that's creative.
[14:52]And you also have to be worried about the marketplace
[14:55]and you have to be worried about making a living
[14:57]and you have to be worried about commerce.
[14:58]And all that stuff kind of erodes the creativity.
[15:01]So you start worrying about like, you know, other things
[15:05]and to be able to have this back again.
[15:07]It's just first of all, like through three quarters of the book,
[15:09]I'm sort of struggling with that.
[15:10]And I'm sort of going like, oh, I can't do this.
[15:13]It's so hard.
[15:14]I'm never going to get a blah, blah, blah.
[15:15]And then there's a point where I go, oh, wait.
[15:18]That's the point, right?
[15:20]The process is the point.
[15:21]And I talk about having this cartoon in my office
[15:24]that I have years, where she talks about,
[15:27]she's like, it shows us like little kid just like drawing
[15:31]kind of crazy, just drawing stuff because for the joy of it.
[15:34]And then she says, and then there's a certain point
[15:36]where the two questions come up.
[15:39]And you start thinking, is this good or does this suck?
[15:43]And as soon as those questions, you hit those questions
[15:45]in life, you lose that creativity.
[15:49]You become sort of stymied and stuck.
[15:51]And I just, I so related to that.
[15:54]And I kept thinking, all I'm doing here is, you know,
[15:57]is this good does this suck all the time?
[15:59]And then there's this other idea that I came across
[16:02]as creative modifications, which is my other,
[16:05]you know, like more like, yeah, mortification is like death,
[16:08]right?
[16:09]And this is great for parents, I think, that.
[16:10]Which I hadn't even realized more, but anyway, right?
[16:13]It's the same route.
[16:14]And so, and I really, I thought about this a lot
[16:18]as a parent that for all of us, you know,
[16:21]there's something, it's the idea that you do this thing
[16:23]that you love whatever it is, whether it's playing basketball
[16:26]or drawing or your music or whatever the thing is,
[16:30]and you're a little kid.
[16:31]And somebody suddenly gives you a two harsh critique.
[16:34]Mm-hmm.
[16:35]And that's it.
[16:36]Yeah, we've all had that, right?
[16:37]You put it down and that's the end.
[16:39]Yes. And you don't do it again.
[16:41]And so what I learned was instead of asking,
[16:46]is this good does this suck to say things like,
[16:50]wow, what work here?
[16:51]What would I like to do differently next time?
[16:53]What would it mean if I tried this thing?
[16:55]And not that you go, I also talk about how like,
[16:57]you don't want to do something totally inappropriate,
[16:59]like there's creativity means that it's original
[17:02]and appropriate.
[17:03]So like, you wouldn't, if you paved your driveway
[17:07]with salami, that would be original, but inappropriate, you know?
[17:10]So you don't want to be paving your driveway with salami.
[17:13]But asking questions about process,
[17:18]and we'll help you embrace the joy of creativity
[17:22]in a way that so many of us as adults just lose.
[17:26]And doing something that you know,
[17:27]you'll never really be good at.
[17:28]And that's why I said, it's the ugliest sweater,
[17:31]even though it's really not.
[17:31]I brought it, you can see it if you don't.
[17:32]Oh, I want to see it, I'm so excited.
[17:34]But it's not that ugly, but it didn't matter.
[17:38]It was just, it was about learning
[17:39]to let go of that and really love doing again.
[17:43]Well, it's so important.
[17:44]I feel like I relate to this much,
[17:46]because I was trying to like do all these things.
[17:48]And every time my husband was like,
[17:50]are you having fun?
[17:51]Are you having fun?
[17:52]I was like, well, no, like the idea was fun,
[17:55]but now I'm worried about how I'm doing
[17:57]with the execution of it.
[17:58]Right?
[17:59]It's the same thing and it saps you of all the joy.
[18:01]Yeah, so whether like, I mean, I'm sure that's
[18:02]to like a podcast, that seems like the funnest thing
[18:04]in the world.
[18:05]No, actually I really love the podcast, but other things.
[18:09]But I don't know, maybe it's like, is it popular?
[18:11]Are people, I mean, I don't know.
[18:12]No, it's true.
[18:13]I guess, yeah.
[18:14]But yeah, you know, there's so many things that we,
[18:16]and creativity doesn't have to be the arts either.
[18:19]You know, it's whatever the thing is that that feeds
[18:22]your soul and trying to, and people kind of dream
[18:25]of making that thing their profession,
[18:26]or maybe it is their profession.
[18:27]But sometimes that can take something away
[18:31]that you lose and you gain.
[18:32]Yes, so true.
[18:34]Well, anyway, that was really helpful to me.
[18:36]That passage.
[18:37]Well, I'm really glad.
[18:38]Then this other passage was so good.
[18:40]As a young woman, I wanted so desperately
[18:42]to stay unencumbered.
[18:43]Now I know, independence, that's easy.
[18:46]It's connection.
[18:46]You have to protect that ever-shifting balance
[18:49]between continuity and change.
[18:51]Oh, it's so beautiful.
[18:53]Thank you.
[18:53]So pretty.
[18:54]Oh my gosh.
[18:55]All these little nuggets of wisdom,
[18:57]you know, you just scatter them throughout.
[18:59]So it becomes like, as you said,
[19:01]it's not just about the sheep.
[19:03]Oh, no, not the sheep.
[19:04]Although now I feel like self-conscious.
[19:06]I'm like, I don't even have anything appropriate.
[19:08]I could even wear for this podcast.
[19:10]I'm like, I didn't even know.
[19:12]I just had shirt.
[19:14]Yeah, I mean, it's so, I mean, memoir is so interesting.
[19:18]And we were saying right before we started that,
[19:22]I was saying that you said that you had read Waiting for Daisy,
[19:24]which was my earlier memoir trying to have.
[19:26]Yes, her.
[19:28]Who's about an hour away from here now
[19:31]in almost 20 years old.
[19:33]And how these books, to me, feel like,
[19:35]they're sort of speaking to one another
[19:37]and they're kind of a piece.
[19:38]And you know, the younger me, I was just like,
[19:42]so allergic to anything that would feel like it was, you know,
[19:45]so-called tying, I didn't even want to own a couch.
[19:48]Like it was huge.
[19:49]I was in my 30s before I bought a couch
[19:51]because I was so afraid of being,
[19:53]I don't know what I thought was going to happen.
[19:54]You know, I was just very like, what was I thinking?
[19:58]And I really had to learn the...
[20:00]And I think in a way that thump of stopping during lockdown, you know, for those of us who didn't get sick, for those of us who were financially secure, you know, the worried well, there was some good thinking that went on there.
[20:15]You know, there was some good reckoning.
[20:17]And one of the things for me was thinking a lot about the meaning of connection and the meaning of community and the ways that I had sort of resisted and embraced that over time.
[20:29]And how it's at how the COVID there was you were even more connected to some friends. And yeah, at the same time completely disconnected.
[20:37]Yeah, because you like had all these friend zooms.
[20:40]Yeah.
[20:41]You're like doing all these zooms where you're, you know, because you think, what if you never see some, you know, there was that period.
[20:46]Yeah. In a way already fading.
[20:47]You know, where I know I can't believe it even happened.
[20:49]Right. So I didn't happen.
[20:50]I don't know.
[20:51]Maybe I jumped.
[20:52]And we thought, what if, you know, what if you lose, you know, you know, you know, if you're ever going to see people again.
[20:57]And so we would have all these, you know, you talk, I just like connected with with everybody that I loved and you're having these soulful, you know, zoom sessions where you're saying you love somebody then you realize you've been on mute for the last time.
[21:09]But, you know, but, but at the same time, and so you're feeling like such love and connection. And yet there's the screen and you can't.
[21:17]I mean, it was just, I don't know.
[21:19]Was it, it's a, it's a wild time to look back on them.
[21:22]And actually Kyle, I know you just met him and his mom and grandmother died of COVID.
[21:25]Oh, I'm so sorry.
[21:27]We did lose people.
[21:28]My dad got COVID and it was remarkable.
[21:31]And I talk about that too.
[21:32]I know.
[21:33]He was okay though.
[21:34]Yeah, not fully recovered.
[21:36]No, he did not really recover.
[21:37]Yeah.
[21:38]But he did recover.
[21:39]He went home.
[21:40]I mean, he broke his pelvis.
[21:41]Yeah.
[21:42]I mean, he was like the, you know, one of those weebles, you know, that wobble.
[21:44]But don't prefer for a long time, a long time.
[21:47]Oh my gosh.
[21:48]Crazy times that we lived there.
[21:50]So now that the book is out and you have, essentially, the book ends of your,
[21:54]of your thing, of your, of red.
[21:56]Let's just stay with all this nonfiction.
[21:58]Amazing nonfiction in between.
[22:00]Where do you see your,
[22:03]the rest of like you're writing going?
[22:09]I'm sorry.
[22:11]No, no, no.
[22:13]Well, thanks.
[22:14]It's interesting.
[22:15]You know, people kind of, I've gotten a little bit of, you know, people making fun of me a little bit because
[22:20]I did two books on teenagers and sex and then I did a book on, you know, textiles.
[22:25]But to me, there's so much of a piece because I feel like what my larger topic has been always has been, you know,
[22:34]looking at kind of the political personal and looking at the unexamined bits of our everyday life,
[22:42]starting when I was with my first book, School of Girls, which I feel like when I was writing that,
[22:48]I was still kind of a girl myself.
[22:50]I was 30, you know, I used to go out when I would stop.
[22:53]I would report that book, which was on middle school of girls and sort of what happened to girls when they turned when they went through puberty in terms of body and educational equity and all these things.
[23:04]And I was following these girls in two different communities and I would get yelled at in the hall by teaching, you know, they'd be like, where's your hall pass?
[23:11]That doesn't happen anymore.
[23:13]But, and going through sort of, you know, then I went through a book that was looking at women in life choices because I was trying to figure out my life and then waiting for Daisy and then Cinderella ate my daughter looking at, you know, my little girl and princess culture and what it meant to be a girl and then girls and boys and sex.
[23:30]And so I feel like, and now looking at my life, you know, at midlife and empty nest and all that means I feel like I've really been consistent.
[23:39]And in fact, and I guess if I was going to say continue to be consistent, I'd be looking at what the next phases in our lives as women and what that means and what isn't as an examined around that.
[23:51]Maybe you're going to be like sex and midlife.
[23:54]I've thought about that.
[23:56]Or I thought about just looking at, you know, how can we, how are we going to age, you know, I've thought about that.
[24:03]Or, you know, I might just, I loved doing this kind of experiential thing.
[24:08]I would love to just like be like, you know, like a George Clinton type character and just go like do weird stuff and write about, you know, report back.
[24:18]So I don't know.
[24:19]I don't know.
[24:20]Do you know the author AJ Jacobs?
[24:21]Yes, like AJ.
[24:22]Yeah.
[24:23]He's awesome.
[24:24]Yeah.
[24:25]I mean, he gets to do what he did.
[24:26]Did you use the big article about giving up plastic?
[24:29]No.
[24:30]So he wrote this whole thing.
[24:32]It was like a three-page thread in the New York Times, but how we tried to go a whole day without touching anything that had to do with plastic.
[24:37]Oh.
[24:38]Which included his found.
[24:39]It included a lot of clothes.
[24:42]And he had to wear just like his underwear.
[24:44]I don't know.
[24:45]It was great.
[24:46]He was most of our clothes.
[24:47]Yeah.
[24:48]And he couldn't eat a lot of things.
[24:49]Yeah.
[24:50]What about his body?
[24:51]His body has plastic in it.
[24:52]He wouldn't be able to talk to himself.
[24:53]I mean, we all have swallowed so much.
[24:54]But he plastered.
[24:55]He was so joke about his wife had to hold up his cup.
[24:59]I don't know.
[25:00]I don't know something.
[25:01]Anyway, it was very funny.
[25:02]But in terms of experientiality.
[25:04]Yeah.
[25:05]But I mean, the plastic thing was one of the big things in unraveling that.
[25:07]Yeah.
[25:08]I mean, I go to the sharing and I'm wearing one of those fleece.
[25:12]Yeah.
[25:13]He had to go any a fleece or something.
[25:14]Not to be me and a Patagonia.
[25:16]But because they really try.
[25:18]But it was made out of recycled water bottles.
[25:21]And I was like, this is great.
[25:22]And I realized that was like, you know,
[25:23]brandishing a ham and cheese sandwich on white bread.
[25:25]I love that.
[25:26]And it's not great.
[25:27]Yeah.
[25:28]Because it's plastic.
[25:29]And no matter what you do with it, it's still going to end up
[25:31]being plastic and landfill.
[25:32]And so much.
[25:33]And just learning about how the.
[25:36]I mean, this gets to be like kind of the bummer part of the book
[25:38]in a way.
[25:39]But the, you know, the impact of our clothing on the planet is so
[25:43]huge.
[25:44]And I really started wondering like, why?
[25:46]Why don't we think about our.
[25:48]Close the way we think about our food.
[25:50]You know, like so many of us are so interested in sustainable food.
[25:54]And I mean, even if it's just kind of casual, like,
[25:56]I don't know how it works, but I want to eat sustainably.
[25:58]You know, I want to eat organic.
[25:59]I don't want my stuff covered in plastic.
[26:01]We all want that.
[26:02]We want better planet for our kids.
[26:03]And yet we're buying, you know, synthetic fiber and buying new
[26:09]garments once a week.
[26:10]And then tossing the old ones out after we wear them twice.
[26:12]And not thinking twice about it.
[26:14]So I mean, when I really looked into it, it kind of made me want to take
[26:17]to my eco-certified bed.
[26:19]But, but you also kind of have to know.
[26:21]And then, and the good news is, and I wrote about this actually,
[26:23]I just wrote a New York Times piece.
[26:24]I saw it.
[26:25]Yeah.
[26:26]About sort of the how women have always used needlework as a
[26:30]vehicle for political voice, which is really important.
[26:32]I mean, there's a reason why when Trump was elected,
[26:35]one of the first acts of collective process was to knit hats.
[26:38]That's like a really tried and true historical way for women to express
[26:42]dissent.
[26:43]But I talk about how maybe we could turn those, that, you know,
[26:48]those needles to the fashion industry now.
[26:51]And that, in fact, there is work being done, particularly in the
[26:54]European Union, to call them into account and to regulate and to create
[26:59]responsibility.
[27:00]And that's really exciting.
[27:01]So there is a place where we can put our effort in this now.
[27:04]We don't have to just feel helpless about it.
[27:06]Yeah.
[27:07]Another thing that we're doing to destroy the planet.
[27:09]Yeah.
[27:10]It's like, now I have another thing.
[27:12]I know.
[27:13]But I'll get a worry about it.
[27:14]It's OK.
[27:15]But it's OK.
[27:16]Because you've got to know.
[27:17]And you can actually, there's things we can do.
[27:19]There's things that we cannot do.
[27:20]You know, you don't have to shop in Zara.
[27:22]You know, you can, there's other things that we can do.
[27:25]And it really changed me.
[27:26]I mean, I have to say, I had no interest or clue, frankly,
[27:30]about any of that.
[27:31]And it changed how I buy clothes.
[27:33]It changed how I wear clothes in ways that I, I mean, I really
[27:36]kind of, I buy less.
[27:38]I value it more.
[27:39]I keep it longer.
[27:40]The way people used to.
[27:41]And that's OK.
[27:42]Yeah.
[27:43]Amazing.
[27:44]Yeah.
[27:45]Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?
[27:47]Hmm.
[27:48]You know, I think that people tend to think that people who do this
[27:53]for a living or people who've done it for a long time or people
[27:55]who've written a bunch of books do it easily.
[27:57]Like that, you know, it's no big deal.
[27:59]I just sit down and write a book.
[28:01]Whereas it's, I feel the same kind of terror dread anxiety and
[28:06]certainty that I can't do it every day.
[28:08]It's just the way, you know, the way that new author,
[28:11]the only difference is that I recognize it as part of the
[28:14]process more because I've done it.
[28:16]And I have a little more faith that although I always have
[28:20]with you every book think, I can't do this book.
[28:22]This book isn't going to happen.
[28:23]I know.
[28:24]I'll do a different book.
[28:25]You know, I think of like a whole different idea.
[28:27]But then I never, you know, and, but I think, you know,
[28:30]I always think about, did you ever read Bird by Bird?
[28:33]Yeah.
[28:34]So that's one of my favorite books I'm writing.
[28:36]She talks.
[28:37]I don't know if you remember about the mythical radio station,
[28:39]KFKD.
[28:40]And I remember that.
[28:41]I'm sorry.
[28:42]I read it or really long time.
[28:43]K fucked.
[28:44]Basically.
[28:45]That plays in your head when you're writing.
[28:46]And one speaker is saying like, you are the best.
[28:49]You deserve to be in the New York Times.
[28:51]You're so great.
[28:52]And the other one is like a hit parade of self doubt.
[28:55]And what your task is as a writer is to or anything creative
[28:59]person is to shut both of those speakers down long enough to just
[29:03]eat out incoherent paragraph.
[29:05]And I think the only difference between me and somebody else is that
[29:10]I do it anyway.
[29:11]Like I do it, even though those voices are in my head,
[29:14]even though the thing tells me I can't do it,
[29:16]even though I have fear and doubt and all of that stuff,
[29:20]I do it anyway.
[29:22]And just do it anyway.
[29:24]Well, that's really helpful.
[29:26]Really amazing.
[29:27]Also depressing.
[29:29]But that's okay.
[29:30]No, I'm kidding.
[29:31]No, I'm kidding.
[29:32]I mean, I think it's really important.
[29:34]It's like no.
[29:35]You can't really ever achieve mastery at creative writing.
[29:38]Well, I do feel no.
[29:40]I mean, yes and no.
[29:41]I do feel like when I look, I love having written.
[29:43]Mm-hmm.
[29:44]I feel really good.
[29:45]Or I love that moment.
[29:46]Like there's certain points.
[29:47]Like there's a, there's a, the chapter that's on blue
[29:49]in this book.
[29:50]Yes.
[29:51]With my favorite color.
[29:52]So I appreciate it.
[29:53]Yeah.
[29:54]I know.
[29:55]You know this.
[29:56]And I mind too.
[29:57]And many people.
[29:58]Yeah.
[29:59]Yeah.
[30:00]You know, thinking about when I was 16 and I would sit in my room and listen to
[30:03]Johnny Mitchell's blue on repeat. That's what was on record my brothers had and I just like
[30:08]picked it up one day and I would sit and cry because it was so, you know, because I was 16.
[30:14]Yeah. And that's what you did. You'd sit in the twilight and cry and it felt so good and like
[30:20]what it means not to be able to do that now and what you don't know. You know, all this,
[30:23]all the kind of meaning and concept of blue. And when I was writing that I thought
[30:28]this feels so good. This is exactly what I want to be doing like right now. And that like that
[30:34]flow state is such a wonderful feeling. So I do, you know, I do feel like that. But I also, I just,
[30:40]I like to do mythologize it because I think it's really important for new authors or aspiring
[30:46]writers to know that it's okay to feel doubt and it's okay to feel fear and all of that and that
[30:53]everybody does and, you know, do it anyway. And you'll get there. You really will. I love it.
[31:00]Peggy, thank you. This has been so nice. I feel like I just had like, it was like a
[31:04]bath, like a warm bath of like soulful rejuvenation or something. I don't know. That was like a good
[31:10]such a reset. This conversation for me emotionally. So anyway, thank you. Thank you so much for
[31:15]having me. Thank you. Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[31:21]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zibi Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read
[31:26]Books. Also sign up for my newsletter at zibiowans.com and sign up for my virtual book club and
[31:31]meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan back,
[31:35]texture sound for the sound editing. And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing
[31:40]this fantastic intro and outro music.