Courtney Sender, IN OTHER LIFETIMES ALL I'VE LOST COMES BACK TO ME: Stories
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[1:03]Courtney Sender is the author of In Other Lifetime's All I've Lost Comes Back to Me, Stories.
[1:08]Guest Hosted by Julie Chavez, podcast host of Ask a Librarian, and author of the upcoming
[1:14]Zippy Books title, Everyone But Myself.
[1:17]Courtney Sender has written for The New York Times's Modern Love and The Atlantic.
[1:21]Her fiction has appeared in plow shares, slice, American short fiction, and many others,
[1:25]and has won prizes through Grey Wolf Press, The Tennessee Williams, New Orleans Literary Festival,
[1:30]Limmer Train, and many others.
[1:31]She is also staff writer for the number one charting I Heart Media Podcast, Noble Blood.
[1:36]A Yatto and McDowell Fellow, Courtney was the George Bennett writer and residence at Phillips
[1:40]Exeter Academy.
[1:42]She holds an MFA from the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, an MTS from the Harvard Divinity
[1:46]School, and a BA in English from Yale.
[1:49]Originally from New Jersey, she now lives in New England.
[1:52]Hello Courtney.
[1:53]Welcome to Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[1:55]I am so honored to be the one to interview you today.
[1:58]I'm so glad you're here.
[1:59]Hi, Julie.
[2:00]Thank you so much.
[2:01]I'm so glad to be interviewed by you.
[2:03]I have to tell you before we begin and I wanted to make sure I got this on the recording.
[2:09]So earlier this week, we were just talking offline, but earlier this week I had to change
[2:13]our recording time and I was moving things around and then I got an email that my son was
[2:17]getting an award, so I had to go to a middle school pep rally and it was just the absurdity
[2:21]of it all.
[2:22]And in one of your emails back to me because you had to send many, one of them back to
[2:28]me though, you said, you know what, I'm pretty free, whatever is least stressful for
[2:33]you.
[2:34]Let's do that.
[2:35]And I have to tell you that was such an exhale for me and I think it was just such a gracious
[2:40]response.
[2:41]So, A, thank you for that.
[2:44]But B, it was funny because as I was reading your book, that sort of, it just, it seemed
[2:50]to line right up.
[2:51]I know this book has so much to do with, you know, waiting and pain and loneliness and
[3:01]some of these things.
[3:02]And just I think it sounds like it has borne fruit for you in your life, not only in
[3:08]the form of the book, but just in who you are.
[3:10]I mean, is that, I guess we can kind of start there.
[3:13]Like, how do you feel like your life has prepared you to write this book now?
[3:21]Yeah.
[3:22]Well, thank you so much.
[3:23]And I'm so glad I could help you exhale a little bit, we were saying the moms don't have
[3:28]time podcasts.
[3:29]You were lined with that perfectly.
[3:31]I lined it right up.
[3:32]Yeah.
[3:33]I mean, I think that something that I wanted to have happened in the book, which maybe
[3:38]mimics the best of me and my life is trying to extend grace and empathy to other people.
[3:44]And I think that a lot of my characters don't necessarily do that, or at least they don't
[3:49]start off doing that.
[3:51]And then over time they grow and change and come to extend empathy, even to those who
[3:56]have really hurt them.
[3:58]And I think that that's really been my own story, I hope, is that I, this book came out
[4:04]of being really single for a really long time, honestly.
[4:08]And having these two great passions and loves in my life, which was writing and romantic
[4:12]love and wanting partnership.
[4:13]And these two great maybe desires more than love is the better way to say that.
[4:17]And they both kind of bore fruit in some ways, but made me wait in a very, in a lot of
[4:22]ways and made me wait for a very long time, I would say.
[4:25]And so I think that in this book, a lot of the characters are really angry about the
[4:30]weight and they're sad in the weight.
[4:32]And they are like howling in the weight and no one seems to care.
[4:36]And you know, people seem to tell them that maybe love will come until it doesn't.
[4:40]And it really didn't come.
[4:41]And then it's kind of in the past and that tragedy is over.
[4:44]So a lot of these characters, I think, start off angry or really sad or not knowing
[4:48]what to do with this great pain in their chest, basically.
[4:51]And then in the book, it's a braided collection.
[4:53]So many of the characters come back and they keep waiting for these men or not always
[4:58]men and women, people that they love to come back into their life.
[5:01]And when they do, inevitably, both the person they loved and them are different people.
[5:06]And they sort of despite themselves have to extend empathy to the people who rejected them.
[5:11]And I think that's been a long journey and process in my own life.
[5:16]But I think I've at least taken steps to come there now.
[5:21]Yeah.
[5:22]Oh, I love how you talk about it.
[5:24]And I have to say this book and specifically your writing is so stunning.
[5:32]And I know I'm not the only person to say that it's written everywhere.
[5:36]And I can see why now that I've read it.
[5:38]It's the sort of writing where I read it and it's like you can settle into it.
[5:44]I mean, you just, there's so much there.
[5:47]It's so deep.
[5:48]And I can't wait to reread some of my favorites, particularly for somebody so scared.
[5:55]That one, I really needed to reread, especially with her dad, just all the characters.
[6:01]And I mean, they're just so, they're so real.
[6:04]And you do such an incredible job of choosing the right details to take you a long time
[6:12]to write because I read this and I, it truly feels borderline miraculous because if I tried
[6:17]to write like this, well, I shouldn't say, I mean, I've tried, but let me put it this
[6:21]way.
[6:22]When I do try to write like this, it comes out like, wow, you wrote this like a sixth
[6:27]grader and nobody's going to understand what you're saying because you have a way of, you
[6:32]know, using the first person or the second person, it never feels forced.
[6:36]I mean, I just, I'm in awe truly.
[6:39]So tell me like, does it take you a long time?
[6:41]And if you're about to say this just flies off your fingertips and I'm hanging up right
[6:44]now and then you're done or dead to me.
[6:47]Of course.
[6:48]Of course.
[6:49]Well, I can't quite say that.
[6:50]I'll say a version.
[6:51]Yes.
[6:52]No, continue.
[6:54]My version of it is that very often I'm really voice driven as a writer.
[6:58]So I just have a voice in my head.
[7:00]So in this case, the first line of the story that you mentioned for somebody is scared.
[7:04]It's say no to me, she said.
[7:06]And so that voice was just in my head very quickly.
[7:09]And it's someone asking for her own rejection from the stars and at first it's in this
[7:14]kind of like sexual context and it's kind of a game in the first opening.
[7:18]But then it really becomes her character say no to me as what she's unintentionally
[7:24]doing to everyone who tries to love her and to the protagonist who is a woman who has loved
[7:28]her and left her in the past.
[7:29]So for me, something like that line comes really quickly.
[7:33]And then I it will attach to a setting or a situation.
[7:36]So in this case, it's a cabin in the woods in Vermont, which was based.
[7:40]I can tell you on a real cabin, but it was a it was a new Hampshire, not Vermont.
[7:43]Oh, I love the description of it too.
[7:46]I could picture instantly with the spiral staircase.
[7:49]I loved it.
[7:50]Yes.
[7:51]Thank you.
[7:52]Yes.
[7:53]So you know, I attach this voice to a setting and then the story, it will kind of run
[7:57]out of me, it's low out of me in the first draft.
[8:00]But then it's the going back in the like meticulousness with the details, that takes
[8:04]a long time.
[8:05]So you don't have to hang at the call.
[8:07]A few.
[8:08]A few.
[8:09]I do.
[8:10]I do.
[8:11]I do.
[8:12]I think about like I as a writer, I think a lot about images that I call vectors.
[8:18]And I can't remember whether I invented this term or not, frankly, but in physics, my
[8:23]understanding is that a vector is something that has weight and direction.
[8:27]And I think of images like this, like images that matter, they have weight and they
[8:30]go somewhere in a story.
[8:32]So in this story, it's like the cabin and the woods, the spiral staircase that becomes kind
[8:36]of like a Romeo and Juliet play place and her father bringing, they mean characters father
[8:42]bringing her records and some art stuff that she's doing in the cabin.
[8:46]So those details, I have to then be very careful with and kind of work through the story,
[8:52]thread through the story so that they all wind up pointing in the same direction, like
[8:55]those arrows.
[8:56]Those vectors, I think that I used both thread and vector here.
[8:59]I mixed my metaphors, but I'll allow it.
[9:02]But basically, I think that it's the detail that you talked about at first, those taking
[9:07]a very long time, but the voice and just kind of the, the rawness of a character who
[9:12]desperately wants love and endlessly accidentally pushes the people who love her away.
[9:19]That comes out very quickly and fast.
[9:22]Well, and it sounds like from what you were describing earlier that your own periods of
[9:28]prolonged waiting really gave you the ability to step right into that, that character when
[9:36]you hear that voice or feel that, you know, it sounds like you can just put yourself there.
[9:40]So that makes sense that that part would be maybe the quicker part, but I love that
[9:46]idea of vectors because I am the queen of unimportant tree branching details.
[9:52]I like just throw it in, it's fine, it doesn't matter.
[9:56]One of the first things, one of my writing coaches said to me was don't put a gun on this.
[10:00]stage of nobody's gonna fire it.
[10:01]And this shows how little I know.
[10:03]I was like, ooh, who said that?
[10:04]I mean, that's me.
[10:06]Oh my God, what?
[10:07]I love that.
[10:08]I mean, that's our checkup gun, but as a writer,
[10:10]I think all about reverse check-offs gun,
[10:13]which is like if a gun fires in the last act,
[10:16]you better make sure it's on the stage in the first,
[10:18]you know?
[10:19]Yes, it's so interesting to think backward.
[10:22]You're right, because I'm just starting
[10:24]to work on things now where I think,
[10:25]okay, I have to go this direction,
[10:27]but I love that idea of direction and trajectory
[10:32]and you're writing, but the details you choose
[10:35]are part of that.
[10:36]I don't think I ever took it down to that level.
[10:38]I only thought of it as kind of a large plot points
[10:41]and things like that.
[10:42]So wow, I really love that.
[10:45]Well, thank you.
[10:46]Yeah, I'm so impressed.
[10:47]And I really like this line from an Angelon Stilts.
[10:52]I am better in the short form.
[10:54]I have been told since you went away.
[10:56]My stories about loss, that start with loss and end
[10:59]with loss are more tolerable when they finish fast.
[11:02]Mm-hmm.
[11:03]Did you, and there are so many I marked in this book
[11:07]that I just was like, this is just the construction
[11:11]I could go on for days.
[11:12]I won't, but I am just so impressed.
[11:15]Tell me why you chose stories.
[11:19]Mm-hmm.
[11:20]Yeah, I mean, it's really,
[11:22]so that line from an Angelon Stilts,
[11:24]my story is about loss that start with loss
[11:26]and end with loss are more tolerable when they finish fast.
[11:29]That was some feedback I'd gotten first of all, honestly.
[11:32]But also because for me, the story form enables me
[11:37]to inhabit more perspectives as the main perspective.
[11:43]In other words, there's no singular protagonist here.
[11:47]And of course, a novel, we can do roving perspectives
[11:49]in a novel.
[11:50]It's not that a novel is limited,
[11:53]but very often we're following one storyline
[11:55]or there's a primacy to the storyline.
[11:57]And in stories, there doesn't have to be,
[11:59]and I didn't want there to be.
[12:01]And so like the first somebody,
[12:02]so the scared story that you mentioned earlier,
[12:04]I just wanted to add that I'm really glad you picked that one out too
[12:07]because that was an example of me
[12:09]having been very kind of lonely and left
[12:12]and rejected at that point in my life.
[12:13]But I was casting into the perspective of a person
[12:16]who left a figure who was more like me.
[12:18]So trying to extend that kind of empathy.
[12:20]And then the Angelon Stilts story
[12:22]is from the perspective of someone
[12:23]who is the left behind and is longing for that second person
[12:27]that you and I wanted both of those kinds of figures
[12:33]to be equally important, to be equally relevant.
[12:36]And I think in the book, there's like two main sets
[12:39]of characters who long for a lover
[12:40]and then a lover comes back in the second half of the book.
[12:43]And in one of those, it seems like that relationship
[12:45]might actually work, although changed.
[12:47]And in one of those, it seems like that relationship
[12:49]is just doomed because of how long the pain went on first.
[12:52]And in stories, I don't have to give either
[12:55]one of those primacy.
[12:56]I can say that both of those are really possible
[12:59]kinds of outcomes for love.
[13:01]And there's no telling, it's kind of a role of the dice
[13:04]and you just hope.
[13:06]Gosh, it's so true.
[13:08]It's such a brave and terrible act to love someone
[13:13]that can leave you and that may leave you.
[13:18]I mean, it's just, I think about this all the time
[13:21]that it's so precarious.
[13:26]And yet we do it and we long for it.
[13:30]So I think the way that you treat that with your language
[13:33]really honors it because I think we
[13:36]have so many things about romantic love to your point
[13:39]that are, we long for it, but so many of the narratives
[13:44]that are available about it are so much thinner and cheaper
[13:49]than they should be or then are true.
[13:52]And so it just is nice to see and heartening
[13:57]to see something that actually does it justice
[13:59]because it's so deep.
[14:02]So was that, and also I think something
[14:05]so interesting about you is that you
[14:07]went to Harvard Divinity School as well.
[14:09]So tell me a little bit about your path
[14:11]to becoming a writer real quick if you don't mind.
[14:15]Yes.
[14:16]Yeah, I mean, I think I've always wanted to be a writer,
[14:18]but I think a lot of people who want to be writers,
[14:20]I feel like there's two types.
[14:21]Some start with a subject and a story they have to tell,
[14:23]and then they just need to develop the skills as a writer.
[14:26]Some of them start with wanting to hone the craft
[14:28]and just loving writing and loving books
[14:29]and sort of finding their way to the story and the theme.
[14:32]And I think I was the second kind.
[14:33]I always wanted to be a writer.
[14:35]I wasn't totally sure what story I'd tell.
[14:37]And then to the benefit of my writing career,
[14:40]but not my life, this love-lorn kind of situation
[14:44]presented itself to me earlier in my life.
[14:47]Yeah, for me.
[14:48]How long?
[14:50]How often years was that that it felt like you are in a place
[14:53]on and off?
[14:54]Oh, God.
[14:55]Probably between the ages of 18 and 30.
[14:57]OK, so my entire early adult life.
[15:01]OK, perfect.
[15:03]Good.
[15:04]So pretty much 50% up to that point.
[15:07]Yes.
[15:07]Yes, very much.
[15:08]Very stupid.
[15:09]What a delight.
[15:10]OK, go ahead.
[15:11]So that sort of gave me the subject that I wanted to write about.
[15:14]And I wanted to write about it in large part
[15:16]because of what you said, like, it feels the advice
[15:18]that I was getting from the world and from pop culture
[15:21]was thin.
[15:22]And I think that, I mean, literature, the great books
[15:26]are not thin.
[15:27]And like, I mean, I think like Elena Ferrante
[15:29]is my go-to for someone who just
[15:31]writes the pain of a smart woman who just
[15:34]longs for love and puts herself these horrible
[15:36]positions because of it, she writes it so well and many.
[15:39]But I think the kind of pop idea is like, OK, you'll find it.
[15:43]Like, your young, you'll find it.
[15:44]And I think that for me, that never felt true.
[15:48]And in part, this is where it kind of,
[15:50]this my interest in love, Mary's my religious kind
[15:53]of spiritual background, which is that my grandmother was
[15:56]a Holocaust survivor, was very close with her.
[15:59]And I think that the lesson from that
[16:00]was just like, really bad things can happen.
[16:03]Really bad things can happen.
[16:04]And not finding love in some ways, as much, well,
[16:07]I should say, in a lot of ways, is much smaller
[16:09]as a tragedy than the Holocaust.
[16:10]But in other ways, like, is a real personal tragedy as well?
[16:14]And so I just think it was always
[16:16]hard for me to believe that the good thing is inevitable.
[16:19]I think the good thing is possible.
[16:21]And the good thing happens.
[16:22]But it's not inevitable.
[16:23]I don't think it is.
[16:24]And for me, I think that tension between being so alone
[16:30]and being told that it would work out in the end
[16:33]and then knowing that horrible things
[16:35]happen in this world, that's kind of where
[16:38]the writing took off for me, I was saying.
[16:41]Yeah.
[16:42]I love hearing that because you're exactly right.
[16:46]And people are well-meaning when they want to encourage you
[16:50]and tell you that it's all going to work out.
[16:52]And I do have that pushback as well where I think,
[16:55]but it might not, which is not.
[16:59]But there is sort of a, it's just tough to,
[17:01]I can't even articulate it a little bit,
[17:03]where it's just an interesting place
[17:05]that you find yourself, right?
[17:06]Where, of course, you want to believe.
[17:08]But I think you've put it perfectly.
[17:09]The good is possible.
[17:11]But then what do you do in the interim?
[17:14]Yeah, exactly.
[17:15]And I think, as a writer, I think we as writers
[17:18]are always interested in the yes, you'll get love,
[17:21]no, you won't get love, or the third option,
[17:23]which is that the answer to longing and loneliness
[17:26]is not what you thought it was, right?
[17:27]And that romantic love is maybe not the answer.
[17:30]And I think that's wonderful as both a writer,
[17:32]because you get to explore the complexity
[17:34]as of something in between.
[17:35]And it's often very true in life as well.
[17:38]And that's frankly the lesson that I had to learn,
[17:40]I think in order to write this book,
[17:42]is that, you know, there's other forms of love,
[17:45]love of self, love of family, history, friends, sisters,
[17:50]women, female friendship.
[17:51]I think really comes out in the book
[17:53]and in my own life as well as a place
[17:56]where you can put the kind of longing for love.
[17:59]You can find another sort of love that isn't romantic.
[18:01]Even if romantic love does come your way,
[18:03]or if it doesn't, you know, there's kind of a turn
[18:05]and engage that you can do in life and in writing.
[18:08]And so that was very, or rather,
[18:11]I think I had to learn that lesson in life
[18:12]before I could write the book to my satisfaction
[18:16]and going to Divinity School along the way,
[18:18]just kind of opened up,
[18:19]I would say opened up more possibility space,
[18:22]Divinity School is a place where people
[18:23]are really asking questions
[18:25]and don't have a lot of answers.
[18:26]But the more questions you ask, you know,
[18:28]and this is very similar to writing as well,
[18:30]the more questions you ask,
[18:31]the more possibilities arise as possible answers.
[18:34]And again, that just kind of pushed past the binary
[18:37]of like, do you get love or you don't?
[18:38]Is your story happy or sad on those metrics,
[18:41]on that metric?
[18:42]I hope that any end in this book,
[18:45]there's hope and belief,
[18:47]even though the characters also rail against hope and belief.
[18:50]I think there's hope and belief,
[18:52]but there's also a love of family and history
[18:54]and legacy that becomes just as important.
[18:56]Yes, you express that so well.
[18:59]And you're right, opening up possibilities
[19:01]and how we measure our lives too,
[19:04]in terms of what constitutes joy and depth
[19:09]and all these things that we want.
[19:11]And I think so, it sounds also like,
[19:14]there's probably, even if you had, you know,
[19:18]let's say you wanted to write it earlier or tried,
[19:20]I think so much of this when I was reading,
[19:22]it was thinking, these are things,
[19:24]if I read this book when I was 22, let's say,
[19:28]I just, I wouldn't, I would have thought this is beautiful
[19:32]and wonderful and I wouldn't have gotten it.
[19:36]I think, I mean, I can say that confidently for myself.
[19:40]But I think there's definitely things to appreciate
[19:43]in it, I just don't think I would have understand
[19:45]the nuance because as you get older,
[19:47]I think you see so much more of what you're talking about,
[19:50]which is the different forms of love
[19:52]and the different ways our lives are full.
[19:57]I really, I like that.
[19:59]No, so what do you wear?
[20:00]Okay, on next. Let me, let me start with that. Are you working on anything right now, and is it in the same themes, or does this feel like you're done with this now?
[20:08]Yeah, it's such a good, such a good question. I really think that I'm so happy this book is in the world for so many reasons. I think that part of this book.
[20:17]I think like would have spoken to me at 22 in the sense that a lot of the characters do feel how I felt then, which is sad and longing, but I agree with you that like a lot of the insights that they reach by the end could not have I was not ready for at that time.
[20:30]Yes.
[20:31]I do feel like this book being in the world has kind of released me a little bit from writing that kind of 22 year old pain, which I think is so valid as a subject for literature, especially with a frame or a perspective that's a little bit older potentially.
[20:45]Yes.
[20:46]I don't want to have to write that anymore. And yet I also felt for years and years that I had a very specific perspective on it. And I could not let it go in my own writing until some version of it was out in the world. And I'm so glad that this book is.
[20:59]So I'm working on my next project right now. I'm actually at a writers residency called sentosh at the whole home of states in Maine. It's new. It's incredible. It's wonderful. Okay.
[21:08]So I'm working on this new book here. And I have to say that there's just a paragraph in my current book and another lifetimes that sort of pre sages.
[21:16]What I think I'm going to do next or what I'm working on next. So it's from the story to lose everything I've ever loved, which is the story when
[21:23]one of the characters that has been long for returns. It's on page 142 in the finished book. I know you have a galley. So I'm not sure if it's the same, but find it.
[21:32]Yes. So the character, this man that she's long for has finally chosen her and has come back to her years later and there together.
[21:39]And she says, I start to think it has all been a problem of genre during those years. I spent loving a man who wasn't mine. I thought I was living a romance or maybe a tragedy.
[21:49]I was a friend tried to get me to see it as a comedy. In fact, it was a horror story. And that I think is kind of the seed of what will come next.
[21:59]Something that views all of this a little bit less is tragedy and a little bit more as poor.
[22:05]So that's so exciting.
[22:07]Yeah. Thank you.
[22:09]Because I loved that storyline through those essays and this one, especially that one really stood out to me for lots of reasons. So that a horror story. So exciting. Well, I love hearing that.
[22:24]Oh, thank you. Yes, I feel like I can just be a little less soft with with the with the characters now because I was so.
[22:31]I hope that I was gentle and loving with them. I mean, I hope I push them against a wall as a fiction writer needs to do, but I hope to have been very gentle. And I think that my voice now can just be a little sharper and a little meaner a little less dreamy toward my characters.
[22:45]Of course, because I just needed to get out the book and the story collection that I think like really holds the pain of all of this. And I hope the next one can be a little sharper.
[22:55]You talk about it too, because writing is such a spiritual exercise and such a meeting of where we are. And then perhaps with the book or the story or the essays meant to be and then we're ushering it, but it's just it's such an interesting interplay.
[23:12]So you're exactly right to feel like that was something that you had to finish that it was something that belonged in the world and you were almost it's caretaker. And now you are ready for the next thing.
[23:26]Yeah, I do feel that way. And I think that, you know, as writers, it can't be about publishing that publishing can't be the thing that keeps us going. It has to be the work.
[23:34]And yet I also, I see very powerfully how if something is kind of stunted in terms of it never gets off our own laptop into the world, it can stunt us a little bit and it can stunt our growth and movement forward a little bit.
[23:49]What a gift to be able to share stories because it does. I mean, to loop back around it's funny, had I read this at 22, the beautiful thing about it about your writing too is that these are the kind of words you can store up. I got to talk to
[24:05]here forever ago and he talked about writing a book. And he wrote, press water press because he was writing it with a specific person in mind. It was a teenager struggling and he said, what would I have liked to tell her earlier.
[24:21]And so we talked about writing to store up comfort and to store up wisdom. And that is what this book absolutely does because no matter what your life story is.
[24:32]And if you let's say haven't, I mean, I've been married for 20 years. And so I haven't experienced some of this, but yet I will in some form or another because to love people is to lose them.
[24:45]Yeah, yeah, that's so beautiful. Gregory Maguire wrote Wicked, right? Yes. Yes. Oh, yeah, which is I grew up in North Jersey. And I went and did the wicked ticket lottery like every weekend of my life.
[24:56]Oh my gosh. I waited outside the stage door for a dean of my son, Kristin Chen with every weekend. Oh, how could you not. I mean, that wicked is one of my favorites. And the book is so different than the play and I got to talk to him a little bit about that.
[25:10]I mean, yeah, interviewing him was just like, but that idea of you you're storing it up. That's totally what I do with reading right where you take those favorite sentences and these ideas and then maybe later is when you really think now now I know what that was for what I needed that for.
[25:28]Yeah, absolutely. And I do think like part of why I wanted to write this was to like represent what it feels like to be lonely and really sad and feeling like people around you can move forward and build lives.
[25:40]And you're just trapped and you're dependent on finding someone else who loves you and wants you before you get to move forward that feeling. I wanted to represent it. But like you say, I also wanted to offer some solace or some wisdom to it.
[25:53]You know, there's in the end of this book and the very last story, there's like one moment where a story that's in that second person you breaks and there's just a first person I and it's the only time in the whole book that I view with the eye as being me, the open.
[26:09]Just for one moment and it doesn't matter if the readers view it that way, but I do and it's in the very last story which is called a new story. So I wanted to end with a kind of beginning and there's a part that says this is the story I want to tell the one where he doesn't leave because of no because because he doesn't.
[26:24]There's no metaphor is true than the fact of his body in your bed day after day. And I just wanted to say in that like there is no because there is no reason for your loneliness.
[26:34]There's no real reason either for why love came to you. It's like a blessing and a sacrament and you know there's really no deserving in my mind. There's no one who deserves loneliness.
[26:44]There's no one who deserves love more than anyone else. Maybe we could say we all deserve but there's no more or less.
[26:49]just the notion that I wanted to to put out as a solace to that 22 year old or 32 year old or 50 year old or 60 year old anyone who's lonely, you know, because I think that's a perennial condition.
[27:03]you are exactly right. And I think that is a lovely word to share with anyone because we live in a culture that tells us you must be jamming something up.
[27:21]Like there's there's something not faulty but maybe you know you need to wait a little longer or whatever. There's just so many reasons that people have for why someone's maybe lonely or single or whatever it is and it's just.
[27:35]No one's deserving. I mean it just is I'd like the way you said that that's perfect. It's a blessing and a sacrament and you, but to not have it to to turn the gaze and look elsewhere is something that's.
[27:49]Healthy to my gosh. It's so hard to be a human. Oh my god. It's so hard. This is why we're writers right because we're looking at all these facets of how hard it is.
[28:00]It is it's just it's a heartbreaking it's a heartbreaking enterprise but worth it nonetheless. I mean a lot like writing really right.
[28:09]Oh god. Yes. I mean writing and love to me. I have both like absolutely broken my heart and given me like some of the greatest joys in my life and you know have inspired each other very much.
[28:21]It's so true. The highs of insight and conversation and the lows of good reads reviews.
[28:29]Yes. You don't look at those. I've heard that that is I'm going to have to just like put a password on it or something and my kids can unlock it for me.
[28:39]I'll let them read.
[28:41]This is like I have when I forward my friends emails that I know will be bad and I just tell them to report back to me what it says.
[28:48]So smart. Everyone needs those people in their life right to just like look you know me and this is not healthy for my mental health.
[28:57]Well Courtney thank you so much for this time and this conversation and for a beautiful book that I can't wait for other people to get their hands on and just as a quick plug.
[29:09]This would be an amazing book club book and I don't know that it's necessarily probably in that marketing area but it should be because women like me like you whether you're in a relationship not like this.
[29:26]These are the conversations we should be having because there's so much elevation and honesty there so I hope that everyone picks it up and talks about it non stop.
[29:37]Thank you. Well I have to agree. Thank you.
[29:41]Thanks for the time. Thanks for the conversation and I'm so happy we're connected.
[29:47]Wonderful. I am too. Thanks so much Julie. You're welcome.
[29:51]Thanks for listening to this episode of moms don't have time to read books.
[29:55]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zibi Owens and at moms don't have time to read books.
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[30:04]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[30:07]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texturesound for the Sound Editing.
[30:10]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.