Jacqueline Alnes, THE FRUIT CURE: The Story of Extreme Wellness Turned Sour
[0:02]Hi, I'm Zippy Owens, and you're listening to moms don't have time to read books.
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[1:03]Jacqueline Onus is the author of The Fruit Care, The Story of Extreme Wellness, Turns
[1:08]Sour.
[1:09]Jacqueline is a writer, runner, and professor.
[1:12]Her essays and interviews have been published in The New York Times, Boston Globe, Women's
[1:15]Running, Electric Literature, and more.
[1:18]The Fruit Care is her first book.
[1:20]Welcome Jacqueline.
[1:21]Thank you so much for coming.
[1:22]My mom's don't have time to read books to discuss.
[1:24]The Fruit Care, The Story of Extreme Wellness, Turns Sour.
[1:29]Thank you so much for having me.
[1:30]It's really a pleasure to be here.
[1:32]For listeners, FYI, there are shelves of books The Fruit Care behind Jacqueline in this
[1:37]Zoom.
[1:38]And on one shelf, is a stuffed banana with a sauce.
[1:40]I got really into the fruit themed like accessories for this.
[1:46]It's kind of fun.
[1:47]Well, you start your book off with the 30 banana, one of banana a day, 30 day, whatever situation.
[1:54]So that's some.
[1:55]I think it's a good place to start.
[1:58]Why don't you tell listeners what your book is about?
[2:01]I guess the title might be misleading.
[2:03]It sounds like I'm going to pitch you on like a wellness diet.
[2:05]But I'm not.
[2:06]I'm going to do the opposite.
[2:07]When I was in college, I was a division one runner, and after my first semester, which
[2:12]was successful, I started experiencing mysterious neurological symptoms.
[2:16]I collapsed on the track.
[2:19]I started having blurry vision dizziness.
[2:21]I started repeating words without apparent cause and losing my memory of events, which
[2:26]was obviously any 18 year old would be kind of upset about that.
[2:31]I think especially when you're used to being in total command of your body, it was really
[2:35]unsettling to all of a sudden be in a place where I felt like I didn't even know what
[2:39]it meant to live in my body anymore and how to, you know, regain some sort of controller
[2:44]joy in my own form.
[2:46]And I was sick for a year and then I got a little bit better.
[2:50]And then I hoped it was over.
[2:52]But then I got really sick again.
[2:53]This is where the bananas come in and I was at this stage in my treatment journey where
[2:59]I was waiting for a bed in the epilepsy ward to open.
[3:03]And I did what probably all of us do, which is when you're experiencing symptoms and
[3:07]you're anxious, you turned to Google, which for better or worse, gives us answers.
[3:12]And for me, led me to a website called 30 bananas a day.com.
[3:16]And I got just obsessed with this diet or actually, I got obsessed with the group of
[3:21]fruitarians who just ate fruit, preached that eating raw fruit could cure you from anything.
[3:26]And I didn't ever become a fully blown fruitarian, but I started to believe that if I
[3:31]changed my way of eating, I could heal myself in some way.
[3:34]And now you're 100%, what's the, what's the PS?
[3:40]What's like the, how do you feel now today?
[3:42]Okay.
[3:43]So yeah, I mean, the story is that I mean, the book takes you through the, the diet.
[3:50]I never became fruitarian.
[3:51]I never fell for it fully, but I became sort of obsessive about that.
[3:56]And so my journey after that, where I am now is a totally different place.
[4:00]I am in a place where everything is more balanced running.
[4:03]I, I run competitively still, but I only do it when I'm having fun.
[4:08]And I do it with people that I really love and care about.
[4:10]I eat, I went to see a dietitian finally, like 10 years after this.
[4:15]And we sort of unravel together how I think all of us can be affected by this.
[4:21]The way that food can become, I think especially socially and culturally,
[4:26]a measure of morality, something that's tied to emotions,
[4:30]something that's tied to your sense of wellbeing and your perception of
[4:34]yourself and sort of untangling those with a professional who did have a degree
[4:38]in what she was, you know, talking about and not just a website was really helpful
[4:43]for me and better understanding my relationship to that.
[4:46]So overall, and yeah, my health issues, I found a great doctor.
[4:49]So overall, I'm thriving now.
[4:51]So the book was kind of a look back at, you know, what might have been different.
[4:55]Had I known now, had I known then, but I know now.
[4:58]And was it ever diagnosed, this is like spoiling, you know, spoilers here,
[5:03]but it was an ever diagnosed what was causing everything in the neurological symptoms.
[5:09]Yeah, it's like, they call it like migraine seizure variant.
[5:12]So it's, it's just sort of the brain as a mystery in some times.
[5:17]And so I do have these episodes that, you know, different doctors have classified
[5:21]as different things.
[5:22]We have a caught one on a EEG machine.
[5:25]So it's not like definitively something, which is something I write about in the
[5:28]book, just the difficulty of when you don't have an exact name for something,
[5:33]finding peace in understanding that you can still reach a place of wellness and
[5:37]still reach a place in yourself where you feel comfortable in the world,
[5:41]which is what my goal always was.
[5:43]And so I feel happy that I'm there.
[5:45]That's amazing.
[5:46]Well, I have to say you are a spectacular author.
[5:50]Like, I love the video, right?
[5:52]I mean, I know you started the saying, this isn't really like a health
[5:55]and wellness book, but it's written like like a beautiful memoir, you know,
[5:58]it's, it's much more memoir style writing.
[6:01]Can I just read even the beginning?
[6:02]Oh, please.
[6:03]Yeah, thank you.
[6:04]No, I just wanted to read not the Genesis chapter, although that was hilarious.
[6:08]The book starts with like a riff on the Bible, essentially.
[6:12]God of the news and, you know, you know, I'm just going to read the first
[6:15]couple paragraphs to give people a taste of how great you write.
[6:19]Chapter one is called the first fall.
[6:21]A few years before my fling with fruit, I was a freshman in college,
[6:25]a division one athlete in the beginning, coach said run.
[6:27]So I did.
[6:28]I ran eight miles easy, 400 repeats long runs on Sundays, 1200s at a steady
[6:33]clip.
[6:33]I ran anything coach wanted.
[6:35]I ran through rain through cold through illness and through the ache of too
[6:38]many miles.
[6:39]I ran to meet pain and I ran to escape from it.
[6:42]I ran to whittle myself into the number on a clock faster and faster each time
[6:46]until coach said what I had done was good.
[6:48]Even then I wanted more in my wanting.
[6:51]My body betrayed me and then you go into what happened and how you blinked
[6:55]and all of that dizziness and how you even still went back to running the next
[7:00]day and, you know, for you, I mean, you've had more motivation.
[7:03]I can't run and I'm perfectly healthy.
[7:05]It's like, you're like doing it again.
[7:08]It's all odd.
[7:08]So I just love like the cadence of your writing and I don't know.
[7:12]So is writing it another thing that has been something through line in your life
[7:16]or something you've been interested in forever or how, like, how did this become
[7:20]a book or did you know would be a book?
[7:22]Give me the whole story.
[7:22]Yeah.
[7:23]So and thank you, by the way, I really appreciate, you know, the cadence thing is
[7:27]nice to hear.
[7:28]Yeah, I think for me writing has always been something I've loved.
[7:32]I have these journals from when I was a kid and in one of them, I just found
[7:36]the other day, I think I was like 13 and I wrote my dream someday.
[7:40]We had to decide an English class and I want to be a writer, but I don't think
[7:43]I'm good enough to ever get published.
[7:45]And I looked back at it when the book came out in Australia a month ago, I think.
[7:50]And it was just a really like, I think a lot of writers and a lot of people
[7:55]struggle with that kind of confidence because I think writing is something that
[8:00]you can never quite quantify the same way that you can quantify like a run is
[8:03]this time and you ran this many miles and you sort of like have a measure of
[8:07]how you are.
[8:08]And so for me, it's been a journey to find that piece in like, even if I can't
[8:13]quantify it, do I think that I've done what I can with what I have in this time?
[8:17]And that's a nice.
[8:19]But yeah, I think, you know, writing this book, I wrote, I went, I did my MFA in
[8:23]Oregon and I did my PhD in Oklahoma and throughout those years, I was writing
[8:27]about these neurological experiences and just trying to figure out what it meant
[8:32]to me and trying to figure out why, you know, why my life sort of went the way it
[8:38]did in terms of like my relationship with running, my relationship to food, my
[8:42]relationship to other people, all of that was really shaped by the episodes that I
[8:46]had in college.
[8:47]And it was at one point a memoir just about my running and it didn't sell that
[8:53]way and I'm kind of glad that it didn't sell that way.
[8:55]A lot of people were like, it was a little too quiet.
[8:58]It didn't really have like the inspirational ending that we might expect in a
[9:02]sports story.
[9:03]Like I wasn't like, you know, I've triumphed, I'm great now, I've, you know, done
[9:07]great things.
[9:07]But so in that, after it didn't sell, I started thinking like, okay, well,
[9:12]what would my next project be?
[9:13]What am I obsessed with?
[9:14]And I've always been weirdly obsessed with this fruit group where I, you know,
[9:19]have lived a normal life.
[9:20]I'm not like part of a cult.
[9:22]I'm not, you know, in this community.
[9:24]I've just always been a lurker.
[9:26]And I've always asked myself, like, why am I obsessed?
[9:30]Why have I followed even if tangentially these people for a decade now of my life?
[9:35]And what about that obsesses me?
[9:37]And so I think getting to the fruit allowed me to understand a lot more about myself and
[9:43]feel a lot less lonely with my own story because I think the interviews I did for the
[9:47]book helped me feel like other people feel exactly the same way I do too.
[9:51]And other people have sought exactly what I have when they've been in places of
[9:56]desperation with their health or with their bodies or just feeling like
[10:00]They want more.
[10:01]So that was great.
[10:02]Well, it's no surprise.
[10:04]There's this raw food, as you point out, raw food,
[10:08]whole food movement.
[10:09]There's this backlash against all the chemicals
[10:11]and processed foods and everything that it's not even food
[10:15]that we eat all the time.
[10:16]And now obviously, as a society,
[10:18]our health is deteriorating at the same time
[10:20]as our food is becoming more processed.
[10:21]You just have to go to other countries to see, like, OK,
[10:24]well, you know, why do we go on vacation in Italy?
[10:29]You know, what the heck?
[10:30]What's going on?
[10:30]And I made the same food, you know.
[10:32]Why is the chocolate chip cookie my grandmother made,
[10:34]like, now, even with the same ingredients?
[10:36]Because the flour is processed,
[10:37]so differently now than it was back then.
[10:39]So all of these things.
[10:40]So it's no, it's not like a huge shock
[10:43]that there would be a group of people
[10:44]who would turn to either fruits or vegetables.
[10:47]But I think the question is, why only fruit versus like,
[10:52]why do they pick only fruit versus fruit and vegetables?
[10:55]Or what characterizes the group of people
[10:57]who follow this movement?
[10:58]Yeah, so I think something that I started to notice,
[11:02]because what I did was I asked myself,
[11:04]like, who is the first person to pitch the idea
[11:07]of eat 30 bananas a day?
[11:09]Just because I think it's absurd on its face value.
[11:11]And you say it out loud, people are like, excuse me, what?
[11:13]And then I actually thought you meant 30 a month.
[11:16]And I was like, no, it's a day, a day.
[11:19]So when you wake up, you put 10 bananas in a blender,
[11:22]you drink it, you do the same thing I've lunch and dinner.
[11:24]And they believe.
[11:25]So for me, I was like, yeah, who pitched this?
[11:29]And other people were like, yes, I'll do that.
[11:32]And what I ended up finding was I did a lot
[11:34]of historical research for this.
[11:35]So I found, for example, a woman in South Africa named
[11:39]Essie Hona Ball, who wrote a memoir called,
[11:42]I Live On Fruit.
[11:44]And her story was weirdly parallel to mine
[11:46]in that she was a former competitive swimmer.
[11:50]She was like, at the peak of health,
[11:52]she was a health and fitness lecturer at a college.
[11:54]So you'd think she has all this scientific knowledge
[11:57]about the body.
[11:58]She has this awareness of her body.
[12:00]But she got sick with tuberculosis.
[12:02]And then after that, trusted a 76-year-old man
[12:06]when she was in her 30s, who told her, eat fruit
[12:09]and only fruit.
[12:10]And she went for it.
[12:12]And so I then looked at him.
[12:14]And so I like, at long story short,
[12:16]you can read in the book, obviously.
[12:17]But long story short, the fruit diet
[12:20]came from this weird blend of Christianity,
[12:23]which is why I start the story of a Genesis,
[12:25]where there was this belief in purity
[12:29]and this want for purity and this idea
[12:31]that if you purified yourself from toxins
[12:33]or the evils of the world or your own wants,
[12:36]your body would be better and you would be healthier.
[12:39]And so it was really fascinating to see that the same thing
[12:42]that was being preached in the early 1900s
[12:45]is now on YouTube just in a different sexier format.
[12:49]It's like we really haven't changed that much.
[12:51]And so there are no new ideas in the world.
[12:53]Right. Like it was really wild.
[12:55]It looked like an Instagram ad,
[12:56]some of the stuff that I would read
[12:58]for like these health cures for 1900s,
[13:01]where you're like, wait a second,
[13:02]I just was pitched that yesterday in like an Instagram ad.
[13:04]Like I think I'm living in the same time period.
[13:07]So it was like, that's why I say it was like comforting
[13:10]to know that like humans were really similar
[13:14]and then also being able to say,
[13:16]well, if this is an idea that people came up with
[13:19]in the early 1900s, based in no science
[13:22]and based in this version of morality
[13:24]that maybe doesn't align with my own beliefs,
[13:27]then why would I want to pursue it?
[13:30]And like how does that sort of shape
[13:32]how you're able to see yourself and your own desires
[13:36]and realize that some of it is so shaped culturally
[13:39]that we don't even notice it anymore.
[13:41]But if you take a second to look,
[13:43]you realize that this is all coming from somewhere.
[13:44]It's not just a fad diet, if that makes sense.
[13:48]Totally. Yeah.
[13:49]Wow.
[13:51]So who is the book for?
[13:54]That's a great question.
[13:55]You know, I think probably in some ways it's for me
[13:58]of a younger version of me.
[13:59]I think when I was younger, especially as an athlete
[14:03]and this is something I think about a lot,
[14:05]even when you talk about like the beginning chapter
[14:07]that you read where I kept trying to run
[14:09]even though I was so sick.
[14:10]I think there's a real, again, cultural push
[14:14]that I experienced where it's like a no pain, no gain experience
[14:18]when you're an athlete, especially when you're trying
[14:20]to compete at a higher level of like,
[14:22]how much pain can you take before you succumb to it?
[14:25]And your week, if you succumb to that pain.
[14:27]And what I wanted to rate it for was partially
[14:30]for that younger athlete who I want to say
[14:33]to my younger self like rest, be a little bit softer.
[14:36]Know that athletics can be a lifelong journey
[14:40]if you give yourself permission to go through the ebbs
[14:43]and flows that will come with puberty,
[14:45]with life changes, with grief, with injury,
[14:48]with the million things that life brings to all of us.
[14:52]And so in part I wrote it to say, you know,
[14:55]like take a step back from the extremes and live
[14:58]in that place of softness a little bit more.
[15:00]And then also wrote it for, I think people who are chronically ill
[15:04]are people who love people who are chronically ill,
[15:07]who are a lot of people in this world.
[15:09]I myself had a really hard time loving myself.
[15:12]When I was sick, I had a hard time accepting
[15:15]my body and who I was.
[15:17]And I didn't want to believe that I would be sick forever.
[15:20]I wanted to believe that like someday it would miraculously
[15:23]just leave me and I would return to this division one
[15:26]athlete itself, which obviously never happened.
[15:28]But I think in experiencing a health crisis
[15:33]at such a young age, it's made me a lot more tender
[15:36]toward other people who are experiencing things
[15:39]with their bodies that are sometimes unnameable
[15:41]or sometimes hard to express or describe.
[15:45]And so I hope that other people take that away as well.
[15:47]That's great, that's beautiful.
[15:49]So after the book was, you know, all done
[15:53]with the publisher, blah, blah, blah, blah,
[15:54]like what did you do then and what are you doing now?
[15:57]Oh man, it's been like a roller coaster.
[16:01]I guess this is my first book.
[16:04]So in IT university, so I tell them all the time,
[16:08]like when they turn in, we just had our nonfiction unit
[16:11]for example, and when they turned in their essays,
[16:13]they all came to class expressing this like deep sense
[16:16]of vulnerability and this fear of their peers
[16:19]reading their work and this fear of not being understood.
[16:23]And I was happy to be able to stand in front of the room
[16:25]and tell them like, you know, a decade after being
[16:28]where you are and me putting a book out.
[16:31]I feel the exact same way, it doesn't go away.
[16:33]I don't think there's a place where you feel
[16:36]as a writer where you're like 100%.
[16:39]I am ready, you know, like you always have this sense,
[16:42]this warring sense within yourself of like,
[16:45]you have done the best you can and then also this want
[16:48]and hope that someone out there gets it.
[16:50]And so I think what I've been taking from this process
[16:54]is just like sitting with the beautiful moments
[16:58]that have come out of it.
[16:59]Like conversations like this one where you get to talk
[17:02]to someone who understands, you know,
[17:04]part of your experience and wants to see more of it
[17:07]or gives you this space to be able to see it.
[17:09]I think it's a really amazing thing.
[17:11]And just like the work that publishers do,
[17:13]which I know is working, you know, well of the effort it takes
[17:17]to bring a book from a kernel of an idea
[17:19]to wanting to share it with other people
[17:22]is something that I'll never take for granted.
[17:24]So that's all been good.
[17:25]And then I'll also just wrestling with the anxiety of like,
[17:29]oh my goodness, I wrote this and it's going into the world now.
[17:33]Like it's not mine anymore.
[17:35]I think so many authors have anxiety.
[17:38]I think it's like one of the ways in which the way
[17:43]you see the world is framed and there's so many questions
[17:46]all the time that it helps to write.
[17:47]So anyway, something that they authors share
[17:50]for a good reason.
[17:52]But then there's always the moment where it's like,
[17:55]oh my gosh, and now it's completely out of my control.
[17:58]Like it's being like, it's like on trucks,
[18:02]my story is like on trucks or being like thrown in a box
[18:07]onto like the doorstep of a bookstore
[18:09]and there's nothing I can do about it.
[18:10]Like I can't take it back.
[18:11]Exactly.
[18:12]Out there, I don't even know where.
[18:14]And that's the right, right.
[18:16]Yeah, it's terrible, but it's totally terrible.
[18:19]Yeah, but I will.
[18:22]It's all part of the line.
[18:23]But honestly, I think if you write from the heart,
[18:26]which is what you did, and if you share this parts of yourself
[18:30]that are not the parts that you might see at a cocktail party,
[18:35]but the real parts and the real backstory,
[18:38]people can't help but connect with that.
[18:40]Because they're bringing their whole self to every book
[18:42]that they read, right?
[18:43]We can add it with all of our own experience.
[18:45]So what a relief to have to not to have to sort of
[18:49]come through the mess to find the real story, right?
[18:52]Yeah, and it's so true.
[18:54]And it's those moments where you get to meet another person
[18:57]in their realness too, which I think is the best part of it.
[19:00]Like you said, it's not a cocktail party
[19:01]where you're exchanging pleasantries.
[19:04]You're getting to the heart of other people
[19:06]and letting people do that for you, which I think
[19:08]is the best part of being a human, honestly,
[19:10]is are those real moments?
[19:12]It's true, it's true.
[19:13]Oh, my gosh.
[19:14]Are you working on a new book?
[19:15]I am not yet.
[19:17]I hope too.
[19:18]Or you never want to write another book through this, exactly.
[19:20]You're like, I thought you were in the phase where
[19:24]I have ideas that are pinging around.
[19:26]I think it's been an effort that's
[19:29]taken my whole self to kind of bring this one out.
[19:31]And I also teach four or five classes of semester.
[19:35]So that also takes a lot of my heart and a lot of my energy.
[19:39]And so I'm waiting for that little blip, maybe this summer
[19:43]when I have some time to really just be in my own head again
[19:46]and kind of see what happens.
[19:47]So I'm excited.
[19:49]I'm excited for that time.
[19:50]It'll be good.
[19:51]Well, I'm glad you've put your overachiever self to bed, you know?
[19:53]Yes.
[19:54]I don't know if you're doing this with that anymore.
[19:56]Exactly.
[19:57]Exactly.
[19:58]It's part of the balancing thing I'm learning.
[20:00]where it's like everything has its time and everything will you know it will happen when it happens.
[20:05]What are the classes you're teaching now?
[20:07]I teach a mixture of I teach some like comp classes like writing 120 which is always fun
[20:12]because I get them on their first day of college which I always love because I get to kind of
[20:17]break down the barrier that it's going to be this like scary intimidating writing space and they
[20:21]always say like yeah it wasn't so bad which is my goal at the end of the semester and then I teach
[20:26]nonfiction I teach creative writing classes and that's another joy because you see these students
[20:32]just stepping into themselves in such brave and beautiful ways and just trying things like they
[20:39]remind me to play. I think the more you know about publishing and the more you're kind of aware of
[20:45]what's expected or what does a proposal look like or what does it mean to sell a book? They bring
[20:49]me back to the joy of just like let's create I have this weird idea let me try it out and they it's
[20:55]really amazing to get to be a part of that and witness that and see them change over the four
[21:01]years that I get to work with them sometimes so I really love that. That's wonderful. Is there a
[21:06]part of the book that you're particularly like oh gosh maybe I shouldn't put that in.
[21:12]That's a great question. A lot of it like you said are things that I really don't talk about
[21:18]very often and so that part just thinking about an array of different people who are in my life
[21:24]reading that and knowing that part of me is scary but also I think exciting. I think something
[21:32]that I recognized in my healing journey over the years is that the more you do open up, the more
[21:36]you realize that other people will meet you where you are and they want to love you where you are
[21:41]and so I think that this book has been a step like a huge step toward that and towards saying like
[21:47]this is my story and you know this is who I am even though there are a bunch of other parts of me
[21:52]floating around out there where you know I'm not always thinking about this stuff or thinking
[21:57]about these memories it's just a part of my life but yeah I think like I have a lot of
[22:02]something that was really fun for me is I guess the losing of the team was a really painful part
[22:07]of my life like leaving the team and I write about the book how my teammates were cruel sometimes
[22:13]when I was experiencing my episodes which was really difficult to reconcile and what's been a
[22:18]a really beautiful part of my life has been finding a group of adults who meet at track on Tuesdays
[22:23]and Fridays mornings at 5.15 and it's so fun to be part of that kind of team again and be comfortable
[22:32]running with other people finding joy in the pursuit of these goals we have for ourselves even
[22:37]though no one else is expecting anything of us and just knowing that another person's going to
[22:41]meet you in the dark I think so I think that's that's something I'm excited for us for them to know
[22:47]I think they know how much they mean to me but I don't think they know the parts of my story
[22:50]that are the reason why they mean so much to me so I'm excited for that. I feel like this might be a
[22:55]good holiday gift for the runners. Yeah. I just show up, you know. Yeah, I'm just handing it out.
[23:01]Yeah, I see that changes the dynamic. Yeah, exactly. I love the way you just said though about
[23:09]meeting in the dark it's about the story and it's about when you run and I don't know right
[23:15]like a little essay or something of yeah group and how it you know it's helped you through around
[23:19]it. Yeah. So what do you like to read and why did you pursue an MFA? Yeah MFA PhD this is like nuts
[23:27]you're like it's amazing. Go back there and also yeah the whole literary inspiration and all that.
[23:33]Yeah so when I was in college I took my first creative writing class my second year when I was
[23:39]having a really rough time emotionally I just left the team I was feeling super unmoored and really
[23:44]sad a lot of the time and like I didn't know who I was and I remember taking that class and feeling like
[23:50]oh like I like this and I remember having that same sort of draw to it that I had toward running
[23:56]at first where you're like I don't know why I like this but I'll stay up all night revising
[24:00]a poem to see what it looks like and remembering that sense of joy that comes with like
[24:05]creation even though you don't know what's coming next and so the MFA was basically I wanted to just
[24:10]learn. I felt like I had you know just scratched the surface of what I wanted to write and think about
[24:16]and I couldn't get this story out of my head like I could not write about anything but this
[24:21]neurological stuff which is when you ask about another book I'm very excited to have you know
[24:27]told this story so that I can be sort of like done with it for a while but yeah that was another
[24:32]space of a learning I had a great advisor who would I would just he would have a policy where I
[24:37]could meet him every Friday so long as I sent him pages by Wednesday and I was probably the most
[24:42]annoying advisor except I would send him pages every Wednesday and be like hey I'm here again
[24:46]but he was just such a great mentor and would always just you know take my story and give me feedback
[24:52]which I really appreciated but yeah in terms of reading I mean I love so much I'm in a deep novel
[24:59]obsession right now I think because I'm so inundated by nonfiction that I just read a recent one
[25:07]I read was wellness and I loved that book just because it's obsessed with similar things like
[25:12]the placebo effect and what does it mean that relationships change over time as you change your
[25:17]relationship with yourself I'm totally blanking I just read the school for good mothers by Justin
[25:22]and Chan which I really love that took me out of my grading fugue state and into such a fascinating
[25:29]critique of our current world so yeah that's what I'm into lately. I had Justin and Shannon
[25:33]the podcast about that book I really liked that book it's so good yeah I like him when you say even
[25:40]the name of the book and I immediately have like the whole scene you know like I guess I can explain
[25:45]like it's a scene in a movie and I can just like see the whole thing you know yes the blue liquid
[25:49]the lab coats yeah love it wellness I don't know how people have such mixed feelings and feel very
[25:55]strongly about their feelings about this book I have not read it and clearly I'm gonna have to
[26:00]get on yeah I really it made me think a lot which is which I really love and then I got to talk to
[26:05]him and it was just a real pleasure to get to like dive into all of the like he did a lot of
[26:11]research on the algorithm and so thinking about loneliness and the ways that these social media
[26:16]platforms are pulling us together in theory but in reality it's like this very cold sort of pulling
[26:22]together in some ways and the ways that we can resist that so I really liked thinking about those
[26:27]things with him it was really great have you read Running Home by Katie Arnold? No but it's on
[26:31]my shelf it is okay yeah I want to introduce you too because I feel like you would have a great
[26:37]like that's like a event I would want to go to I would love that so let me introduce you oh I
[26:44]would love that yeah she's awesome anyway okay advice for aspiring authors it's a great question
[26:50]I say show up for yourself show up to the page which I think is advice a lot of people give but
[26:56]I think including myself I can use that encouragement a lot I guess this is the advice I give my
[27:02]students and then I say to myself like are you following it which is I tell them just like show up
[27:07]and see what happens and don't be afraid of a bad draft don't be afraid of just like trying
[27:11]something for the sake of trying it and knowing that it doesn't have to go anywhere you just
[27:15]wrote it down that's okay and so I think that's advice I need to give to myself too especially in
[27:20]this space of now that one book is done what happens next allowing myself the permission to
[27:26]write something terrible and not have it be published but just get into that habit of like what
[27:30]do I love what story is in my mind that I can't stop thinking of what do I want to try that I might
[27:35]fail at but it's okay if I do like how can I pursue that I think it's something I would encourage
[27:41]people and not to be afraid to reach out to others a lot of people a lot of other writers a lot of
[27:48]editors have been super super helpful in my writing journey and I only got there because I
[27:54]reached out to them on a whim and they responded back with such kindness and so I try to pay that
[27:59]forward and I try to tell people like you know people want to be in community and so reaching out
[28:04]is never a bad thing I love it do you still eat fruit and if so do you have a little fruit
[28:10]I do I I do eat a banana today but just one so you know we're up we're good there and my favorite
[28:17]fruit would probably be jackfruit and if it's good you know it's got to be I feel like I grew up
[28:24]part of my life in Indonesia and I I got like the best jackfruit so now when I see it in the store
[28:29]I'm tempted and usually sometimes I'll buy it but it's sometimes like the US supermarket
[28:34]version of jackfruit so it's not quite the same but I do love that it's my favorite
[28:39]where do you live by the way where do you live now I live in Pennsylvania I live like 45 minutes outside
[28:44]Philadelphia oh my gosh all right awesome hopefully we'll meet in person at some point I would love
[28:50]that yeah I'm super excited I think here after it's coming out from zippy books I'm so excited
[28:56]I love Amy's newsletter so much it's like one of the most beautiful things I've ever read so
[29:00]I'm like counting down like you get a copy oh my gosh that's amazing yeah it's beautiful
[29:07]it's I can imagine and it's also I wonder if I have it right here I should have it right here
[29:13]because I had everything organized this weekend it's okay wait I haven't I'm gonna show you
[29:16]really good hold on so this is it but she did the inside so every page is like it's almost like
[29:22]poetry oh I love it yeah so I love it oh I'm so excited yeah you should interview her somewhere
[29:29]we should anyway we'll make sure yeah okay yeah that'd be great all right well Jacqueline thank
[29:33]you so much and thanks for coming on I'm totally impressed by you you're like so
[29:38]poised and it's like I don't know I'm like that was really like refreshing I feel like I just
[29:43]look for like a walk in the park I really can't thank you enough I've been so excited for this
[29:49]and yeah I'm just like thrilled to be here so thank you sure okay all right all right so
[29:55]we have a great day okay you too bye bye thanks for listening to this
[30:00]Episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[30:02]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram,
[30:04]at Zebioans, and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[30:07]Also sign up for my newsletter at zebioans.com
[30:10]and sign up for my virtual book club
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[30:14]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound
[30:17]for the Sound Editing.
[30:18]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[30:20]for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.