Amy Lin, HERE AFTER: A Memoir
[0:04]Welcome to Mom's Don't Have Time to Be Books with Zippy.
[0:07]I'm the host, Zippy Owens.
[0:09]I am an author, my latest is blank, pub date March 1st, a novel.
[0:13]I'm also a podcaster, obviously, a publisher, a bookstore owner, and so much more.
[0:18]If you love books, you're in the right place.
[0:21]In fact, we call it the Zippyverse, or really, the LA Times called it the Zippyverse,
[0:25]and we're going with it.
[0:27]Go to Zippy Owens.com to learn more and follow me on Instagram at Zippy Owens.
[0:33]Amy Lynn is the author of Here After a Memoir.
[0:36]You can hear me smiling because Amy is the Zippyverse author of March.
[0:41]Her debut here after comes out on March 5th, and she is a dynamo.
[0:47]Go to her Instagram, literary Amy.
[0:49]Watch her, watch her videos on our Instagram at ZippyBooks Publishing.
[0:53]Check her out.
[0:54]Her writing is exquisite.
[0:56]She has gotten three starred reviews in trades, which is amazing.
[1:01]Most people don't get one starred review ever, like me.
[1:05]And her book is just absolutely sensational.
[1:09]You should stop what you're doing and go and read it.
[1:11]It's also the book of the month club pick for March.
[1:14]So if that didn't convince you, anyway, it's amazing.
[1:18]And Amy is amazing.
[1:20]Okay.
[1:21]Amy Lynn is a writer and educator who lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada,
[1:25]a recipient of residencies from Yatto and Casa Kamala.
[1:27]Her work has been published in Plowshares here after his her debut memoir.
[1:31]Welcome, Amy.
[1:32]I am so thrilled that you're coming on mom's and have time to read bugs to discuss here
[1:37]after your absolutely beautiful memoir, or as you call it in the trailer,
[1:42]a memoir in vignettes, which we honestly probably should have called it.
[1:45]But anyway, thank you for having me.
[1:48]This is like incredibly exciting.
[1:51]So we had the unique experience of being early, early readers of this beautiful manuscript.
[1:59]So I feel incredibly privileged.
[2:01]Tell listeners what your book is about and how you ended up even coming to our publishing
[2:07]hours.
[2:07]And then I went and dig into, you know, the grief and your own experience and the poetry that makes
[2:13]up this book and everything else.
[2:15]Oh, thank you.
[2:16]So I wrote here after in the years, the very first few years after my husband Curtis died in
[2:22]August of 2020, and it came out of a sub stack that I started a month after Curtis died
[2:29]called at the bottom of everything.
[2:30]And I wrote in that for too years before I started thinking about if it was a book.
[2:37]And it really wasn't a book in the sub stack, which is more of a personal notation or diary
[2:44]of some kind of grief as it happened to me.
[2:47]But I knew when I came to the book that it needed to be the essential parts of grief.
[2:52]And so I started making these very small text boxes in word to help me narrow down
[2:59]what had been the really essential parts of my grief experience in that moment.
[3:04]And as I was doing that, it allowed me to process, okay, what is the narrative that I'm going to
[3:08]offer?
[3:09]And when I first sent it to my agent and said, okay, I think I now do have a book,
[3:14]it was very mean. I only wanted things on the page that I knew we're going to be there.
[3:19]But I think just about everything that I sent her then is in the book as it exists now.
[3:25]But you know, she was my agent, his Katherine Fussett is just amazing. She was like before
[3:31]she'd read it. She said, this is not that long. You know, she's literally on the page. It's not that long.
[3:39]And she said, it could be hard to talk to editors about why this project is so lean and why
[3:45]it's so concise. And I said that that is the project. That's what grief is like. It is the
[3:51]black star presses everything into it. And then the, you know, I came to Zibi books because
[3:57]of all of the editors that we spoke with you, Zibi, because it was you and I who spoke,
[4:02]I heard in you that you understood the project, the heart of the project and what it was trying to do.
[4:08]And it's really thanks to your vision and the, and the team's vision now who have advocated
[4:12]for the book as it's about to come out that have introduced this book to the world in the way that
[4:17]was in my heart and that it was designed to be. And so I've ended up in the absolute right place
[4:23]for it because you, you were the person who saw it. As I saw my agent did.
[4:29]Makes me want to cry. Well, I'm so honored because what there is to see is just pure beauty.
[4:36]Honestly, it's really, really beautiful. And just to clarify what you said before because
[4:41]the first time you said it, not in this conversation, but in another context to me, I didn't
[4:45]totally understand what you were saying in Microsoft Word in the, in the program, you can make
[4:51]little text boxes where it looks like a square and then you have to like shove all the words
[4:56]inside. And you literally took those boxes and filled them with words and took everything else
[5:03]away except for what fit in the little box in the middle of the page. I mean, that's a wild way
[5:07]to write. Yeah, it's insane. Yeah, don't recommend it. But I know I want to copy an entire page
[5:14]of text into this tiny boxes as big as a, as an Instagram caption, though they're very long now,
[5:20]but like the classic kind of short Instagram caption. And I would just keep deleting sentence by
[5:25]sentence to like got to something that felt like the essential part of my grief experience,
[5:30]and that would keep that. And that would keep going and slowly these very condensed paragraphs
[5:36]began to emerge. And that was when I thought, okay, here's the book. It has announced itself.
[5:41]And tell a little more about how you lost Curtis and what happened and
[5:47]you know, which period of time in particular, you really document in the book.
[5:51]Yeah. So Curtis died very suddenly when he was running a half marathon,
[5:56]his heart stopped for no known reason. And one of those sort of uncomfortable moments that that
[6:04]was not just that 10 days later, I would be hospitalized with life threatening blood clots in my legs.
[6:09]And in my leg and in my upper vena cava was kind of like in my stomach. But it was also the middle
[6:14]or maybe not the middle, but the start of global lockdown. It was August of 2020. And everybody
[6:21]had been locked down for four months essentially. And so we were also navigating my personal health
[6:27]failing. Curtis's death and all of the logistics that go with that as well as on top of that,
[6:33]you know, they can only let one person have a hospital with me or you know, at the funeral home,
[6:38]there was only so many people that could be in a room. These were just like other layers
[6:42]added on to this already really polarizing experience of grief. And that was partially why I needed
[6:49]I think to come to the page and clear white space around it. Because there actually was due to
[6:54]the coronavirus, a lot of space around me, like six feet of space. And it grief was isolating me.
[7:00]And then my personal health was isolating me. And then the pandemic was also creating isolation for
[7:05]all of us. And I was plunged in kind of this macro and micro experience of being alone,
[7:11]which I think that the very small paragraphs in the page the way that they float suspended on the
[7:16]I think allows the reader to feel some of that physical experience for myself. Oh my gosh,
[7:22]can I read just like a couple of the pages from the beginning or something?
[7:26]I would love to hear it. Okay. So this is all that is on the first page. Just as one,
[7:31]the first time I see Curtis, I do not know who he is. I am in my car paused by a pedestrian
[7:36]crosswalk. He passes in front of my vehicle. He is on his way to a blind date. I am on my way to a
[7:41]blind date. He wears a dark blue blazer. His legs are long. His body, life and graceful.
[7:47]Why can't I ever meet a man like that? I think he's gorgeous. Okay. And that's the entire page.
[7:52]And then the next page, and I'm not doing this justice because you can't see it and it looks
[7:55]so beautiful. But online, a post asks followers, what is one thing you wish other people knew about
[8:02]grief? I read the first 12 of over several hundred responses. It doesn't end. It won't stop.
[8:09]You think about it all the time. It never ends. It is always with you. It doesn't quit. It
[8:13]never goes away. It is exhausting. It is ever present. It is always there. No amount of time
[8:17]lessons to grief. It is forever. And then I'll just read the third little page chapter, but ever
[8:24]on our first date, June is melting into July. I do not wear a bra. Curtis tells me he is an architect.
[8:30]I tell him I am a substitute teacher. We both have unusually long hair. His grazing his shoulders,
[8:36]mine, grazing my hip bones. His father is Japanese, his mother, Ukrainian. My father is Chinese,
[8:42]my mother, British. We walk through the city. He shows me how the soaring glass panels of the court
[8:47]building make it a gleaming part of the sky. He presses his face to the glass, gazes upward.
[8:53]I have been to court before contesting a speeding ticket, but I thought nothing of the building,
[8:58]seeing him love it is how I start to love it myself. Thank you. What a beautiful reading.
[9:03]Oh my gosh. You are so good. It is immediately intriguing. You want to know your whole story.
[9:09]You want to know what happens. Where is the grief? Just who are these people? How do they get
[9:15]together? I mean, you cannot not want to keep reading and discovering and learning and already
[9:22]you feel like you are setting the rhythm or feeling it. It is very cool.
[9:27]I think in a book like this that moves between past and present is entirely written in the present
[9:32]tense, which was a very specific choice because when you're in grief, everything is present tense.
[9:37]Your past life, which passes in an instant, the minute he died on the bridge, my life
[9:42]ceased to exist as it had, but I had no way of catching up to that. And so in grief,
[9:47]and the reason that because in present tense is because my life is a wife, as Curtis's partner,
[9:53]as living with Curtis, felt as real, if not more real to me than my actual life.
[10:00]that was really my present didn't feel real to me.
[10:03]And so that's why it's in present tense.
[10:05]I've lost track of why I brought us here.
[10:07]What you're saying?
[10:08]That's OK.
[10:08]No, that's that's why the immediacy of it.
[10:11]And it's so short because it's switching back and forth
[10:13]and you were saying, oh, you immediately
[10:15]understand the rhythm.
[10:16]And I think that's such a generous and beautiful thing
[10:18]to say because I think this is a book that does have
[10:20]to teach you how to read it.
[10:22]You have to be taught a little bit.
[10:24]This is how the rhythm is.
[10:25]This is quickly who these people are.
[10:28]And grief is kind of like that.
[10:29]You're immediately in it.
[10:30]And you have to catch up to grief's rhythms.
[10:33]And again, I wanted that present for readers
[10:36]because it was so much a part of my own experience.
[10:39]Well, interestingly, so much of the book
[10:41]that I would not have known had I not been the publisher,
[10:43]but I'll just share it because I do, because I am.
[10:47]You have very clear vision of how things should look,
[10:52]should be presented, the cover, the fonts, like everything.
[10:57]And it's so funny because people would say,
[10:58]you're talking about a social media post.
[11:00]Well, Amy really feels like it should look like this.
[11:02]And I was like, great, go with that then.
[11:04]And I was like, well, Amy would really like this, like this.
[11:07]Great.
[11:08]OK, because you have such an instinct.
[11:11]Nothing, the rest of us don't.
[11:13]But your vision is so specific.
[11:16]And it always ends up working so well.
[11:20]So I don't know where it comes from.
[11:22]I mean, you're an English teacher.
[11:24]You're not a graphic artist.
[11:26]Like, oh, no, no, you could be.
[11:27]But your brain just works in such a visual way
[11:32]in an artistic way that even this book becomes an art project.
[11:36]Oh, thank you.
[11:37]I mean, I think the credit truthfully
[11:38]is to zippy books for allowing me a seat at the table
[11:42]in a way that traditional publishing
[11:43]would never allow me to speak into different aspects
[11:46]of the book.
[11:47]And one of the joys of my life, I think
[11:49]there's this myth that writing and publishing
[11:51]is this very solo journey that really
[11:54]hasn't been my experience.
[11:55]It's not my experience of grief either
[11:57]that both practices writing and grief
[12:00]are best served when you are connected with community.
[12:02]And that has been my experience at zippy books.
[12:05]And my experience of being allowed to share my vision
[12:08]for how the book would look or how it will move
[12:11]through the world visually or creatively
[12:13]has been that my writing and my publishing experience
[12:17]has only been enriched by working with other people
[12:20]who are just as willing to hear me as I am to hear them.
[12:23]And that's something I think that's really special
[12:25]about zippy books.
[12:26]And it gained just reiterated to me
[12:28]that this book is in the right place.
[12:30]And I feel continually lucky that I'm allowed to even say,
[12:34]this, I think this typeface would be amazing.
[12:37]And you're like, totally right.
[12:39]So maybe we should keep you honest
[12:41]and sort of artistic consultant.
[12:43]You can evaluate.
[12:44]I would love to.
[12:45]Yeah.
[12:47]As you know, like, grossed designs
[12:48]will never recover.
[12:49]So you never know.
[12:50]What, you know, I'm like, you're not exactly.
[12:53]No, I'm kidding.
[12:54]OK.
[12:55]So back to the events in the book,
[12:58]when you lose Curtis, you mentioned already
[13:00]your own crazy, crazily timed health issue,
[13:05]getting stents and dealing with clots
[13:07]and having to go through all that and your mother.
[13:11]And then, oh, by the way, then your mom,
[13:13]like there's one point where you're talking about how
[13:15]you're so good in a crisis because your mom fell
[13:18]or something she was bleeding everywhere.
[13:19]And you're like, OK, I'm good in a crisis.
[13:21]This is good to know.
[13:22]You know, like, tuck that in my back pocket.
[13:24]And then you just present us with like,
[13:26]crisis after crisis and talk a little bit about that
[13:29]and that sort of fight or flight stepping up to the plate,
[13:33]but then having it all kind of fall apart later.
[13:36]Yeah, that's exactly, I think exactly
[13:39]what Reeve taught me is when my mom was struck by a cyclist
[13:44]while we were running and sustained very serious injuries.
[13:49]I was extremely calm and processed it almost too well
[13:53]in the moment because nobody then wondered
[13:56]if I was doing all right.
[13:58]And then I had to like kind of work through that later.
[14:00]But then when my own health failed,
[14:03]and when Curtis died, my instinct was to do the same thing
[14:07]was to process it by myself out of sight
[14:09]without really asking anyone for help.
[14:11]And my therapist who plays a very large role in the book,
[14:14]but an equally larger, if not even role in my own life,
[14:19]just said, you can't, that's not gonna serve you here.
[14:22]And he said, you're not going to make this one alone.
[14:24]You have to connect to community.
[14:26]You have to find a way to ask for help.
[14:28]And I think there's a lot of language around grieving
[14:30]that asks grievers only to perform resilience or strength.
[14:34]You know, people get asked, you're doing well
[14:37]or, you know, was the sunshine in LA beautiful,
[14:41]which was something I was asked a year after Curtis died
[14:44]when I went to LA to cry by the ocean
[14:46]because I couldn't cope with my own emotions,
[14:48]but people kept wanting me to perform this resilience
[14:51]and this kind of strength, which is why I was good
[14:54]in a crisis because that's all I'd ever been asked for
[14:56]was to just show strength.
[14:58]But when Curtis died with the writing
[15:01]and with my therapist encouragement,
[15:03]I began to show people that I wasn't so many ways helpless.
[15:08]And after my clot clearing surgeries,
[15:11]I literally couldn't walk without support.
[15:14]Like I had to have a walker.
[15:15]I had to rent one, I had to rent one from one of those
[15:17]sort of medical supply centers
[15:19]because I couldn't walk and assisted.
[15:21]And that opened up for me just as this book has,
[15:24]and I hope the book will for other people
[15:27]a place where people helped me.
[15:31]And I realized, oh my gosh,
[15:34]there's something really vulnerable
[15:36]and tender about allowing people to help you.
[15:39]And something that really moved me deeply
[15:41]and cracked me open in a lot of ways.
[15:42]And that is a direct legacy of Curtis
[15:46]who helped me day to day.
[15:48]And I sincerely hope the book is a place
[15:51]where people are able to meet with their own pain
[15:54]and actually show people what it is
[15:55]because people will help them.
[15:57]And that has been my experience.
[15:59]And I think it's really humbling
[16:01]a really hard task for help.
[16:03]And this book in a lot of ways is a way
[16:06]hopefully for other people to ask for help
[16:08]and to receive just a fraction maybe even of the help
[16:13]that I received after Curtis died
[16:15]and that Curtis gave me daily.
[16:17]There's also something about getting help.
[16:19]If you deny people the ability to give
[16:22]to help you in some way,
[16:23]you're actually taking away part of their joy as well.
[16:26]Like people really like to feel needed.
[16:29]And when they help you,
[16:30]they feel like they are doing something.
[16:32]And otherwise they feel like they can't do anything
[16:35]and they feel helpless as well.
[16:37]So it's almost like our natural instinct is like,
[16:41]I'm fine.
[16:41]I agree.
[16:42]Like I'm always like, I don't know, I'm fine.
[16:43]I can do this.
[16:44]Oh, I'll just do this.
[16:45]I'll just do this.
[16:46]But as soon as someone does something,
[16:48]they feel so good about it, right?
[16:51]So it doesn't actually help the other person
[16:53]if you say don't help me.
[16:55]It doesn't in so many ways it doesn't.
[16:57]And that was my experience.
[16:59]My friend Katie who's in the book who walked with me
[17:02]every week for a year just by having two small children
[17:05]and being a full-time educator,
[17:06]she said to me on one of our walks after Curtis died,
[17:09]this is the first time in our like 15 year friendship
[17:12]where I've ever felt really close to you.
[17:16]And she's one of my best friends.
[17:17]I said, how can you not feel that way?
[17:18]And she's like, well, I've just,
[17:20]you never needed my help before.
[17:21]And she felt it, a bond that already existed,
[17:25]but she really felt it because she's such a natural caregiver.
[17:28]And I needed her to take care of me.
[17:30]And it was really beautiful.
[17:31]And I think we got even closer because of that.
[17:33]And I'm so aware of how lucky that is
[17:35]because there are lots of people
[17:38]who even in my own life have been unable to help me
[17:41]because of pain in their own lives.
[17:43]And you do have people who say, oh, I can't,
[17:47]I can't show up for you in that way.
[17:49]And that's really scary.
[17:50]But again, the more connected you are,
[17:52]the more you find people who surprise you
[17:55]and who show up in ways that you didn't expect.
[17:58]One of my friends called me every single day for a year.
[18:02]And sometimes I would answer it sometimes I didn't,
[18:03]but I would never have expected that.
[18:06]And it was just something she did, it was beautiful.
[18:08]Gosh, that also makes me want to cry.
[18:11]There are a lot of books about grief and loss out there.
[18:15]Why should someone read your book?
[18:18]I would read my own book if you want to read something
[18:21]that's in pain and not about pain.
[18:24]I read a lot of, or tried to read a lot of books
[18:27]after Curtis died, looking for some kind of mirror
[18:29]for the pain that I was in.
[18:31]And I couldn't find it.
[18:32]I could find a lot of books about grief
[18:34]or about how to process grief
[18:36]or about the biological impact of grief on the brain
[18:39]and all of those are beautiful resources.
[18:41]But I didn't want any of that.
[18:42]I wanted somebody to tell me
[18:44]that they had also been in this much pain.
[18:46]And that was all, I didn't want anything else.
[18:48]I just wanted someone to say, yes,
[18:50]I also had to hold this much pain.
[18:52]And yes, this also felt like it was going to destroy me.
[18:56]And I could find very little like that.
[18:58]And I also could find very little like that
[19:00]that I could actually read.
[19:02]You hear afters in these very short,
[19:04]fragmented paragraphs for the aforementioned reasons,
[19:07]but also because grieving people's ability to focus
[19:10]is basically zero or at least fine was.
[19:13]And I needed something that I could come in and out of
[19:15]and carry with me.
[19:16]And that I couldn't find,
[19:17]even something as beautiful as Joe Dydian's work on grief.
[19:21]I would just stare at a page and be completely lost
[19:23]in her beautiful prose.
[19:25]I couldn't process it.
[19:26]And so that was why I wrote the book,
[19:28]the way that I did.
[19:30]And also just, it's so frankly about grief
[19:32]because those were the things that helped me
[19:34]was hearing people say, yeah, I'm in that much pain too.
[19:38]And there was something really,
[19:40]I think there is something really healing for grievers
[19:43]who are so often, as I've said before,
[19:45]asked to hide how much pain they're in
[19:48]to just hear somebody say, yeah,
[19:51]part of being human being is having to hold this much pain.
[19:55]And I understand that you're doing that.
[19:57]And that was what I brought to hear after that.
[20:00]I was the guiding principle of it.
[20:02]Oh my gosh.
[20:04]There is a whole sort of industry now around grief,
[20:07]people who help people through grief.
[20:09]And sometimes, you know, my husband,
[20:11]Kyle and I were talking about it one night.
[20:13]Like what would their lives have been?
[20:15]Like they wouldn't be grief counselors.
[20:17]They wouldn't be, you know, dedicating their lives.
[20:20]But they've sort of stayed in these moments.
[20:22]This has become their life's work, right?
[20:24]These moments.
[20:25]Do you feel like this has become your life's work?
[20:28]I know this is a book that we are talking about,
[20:30]but when you fast forward or you think about
[20:33]what you want the rest of your life to become.
[20:35]And I know you're this wonderful educator
[20:37]and you're, you know, obviously not, you know,
[20:39]myopic in your focus.
[20:41]But how much do you want this to define you
[20:46]for the rest of your life?
[20:48]So really, it's a really thoughtful question.
[20:50]I think their writing is my life's work
[20:53]in a lot of ways, but I also feel
[20:56]whether I would like to accept it or not.
[20:58]That's part of my journey with grief.
[21:00]Is that being somebody who is a widow at, you know,
[21:03]then 31 and now 34 is that grief has become my life's work
[21:10]because it's chronic.
[21:11]My grief is not going to magically go away
[21:15]as much as some of the sort of power of positivity movement
[21:18]might like to suggest.
[21:20]I am going to be working through and on grief
[21:24]for the rest of my life.
[21:25]That is, that is what love asks of us in the end.
[21:29]Somebody, if you don't happen to die at the same time
[21:32]as your partner or your beloveds,
[21:33]somebody has to carry the legacy
[21:35]of what it means to love somebody.
[21:36]And that does mean carrying the legacy of grief
[21:40]for the remainder of your life.
[21:41]That's, that's what love costs.
[21:44]And I think it's painful for people to look at that.
[21:46]But that is the reality.
[21:47]And that is my reality.
[21:49]I will carry the beautiful legacy of our love
[21:51]and of my grief for my whole life.
[21:54]And so I sincerely hope that my grief
[21:58]does become bound into my life's work
[22:00]because it means that I'll be able to carry
[22:03]the stories of other people
[22:04]and maybe even allow other people to carry theirs
[22:07]in slightly better ways.
[22:09]And that's maybe where my love of education
[22:11]and writing also finds its nexus
[22:14]is a really deep desire to help other people bear witness
[22:18]to their own pain and to help the people
[22:19]around them bear witness to their pain.
[22:21]I really want to do that.
[22:22]I desperately want the book to connect with the people
[22:25]that need a mirror.
[22:26]And if I can be a small piece of that,
[22:28]if my life's work can be a small piece of that,
[22:30]that I think would be a legacy
[22:33]maybe more than I deserve truthfully.
[22:36]Well, that is data false.
[22:38]When you're relaxing, right?
[22:41]You're at such an intentional person.
[22:43]You're so thoughtful and considered
[22:45]even in the way you form sentences in a conversation, right?
[22:48]I'm like, I don't think I've heard anybody say
[22:50]the word nexus in a sentence and that like ever,
[22:53]I don't know.
[22:54]That's so cool.
[22:54]And then in my head, I think he nexus
[22:56]and like slowing it out and the, you know,
[22:58]five letters that had says to mention that he's word.
[23:02]I know.
[23:02]It's a great word.
[23:03]I'm going to try to use it in a sense.
[23:04]You know, that'll be my goal for 2024.
[23:07]Anyway, no, I'll probably do it next week.
[23:08]Anyway, point is you are such a thoughtful,
[23:11]considered person and how everything is.
[23:14]What do you do when you don't want to deal with any of that?
[23:18]And you want to let it all go.
[23:20]Like, are there wild dance parties in your living room?
[23:24]Or like, how do you like just get out of that order in a way?
[23:28]Yeah, thank you.
[23:30]I want to personally, I'd like to say thank you
[23:31]for being so affirming of the person that I am.
[23:35]I think I have a really intense life.
[23:37]And my thoughtfulness is also born of a personal intensity.
[23:42]And I think sometimes it can get misconstrued in some ways.
[23:45]So it's really heal something in me to hear that you see it
[23:49]as thoughtful and as tender and as beautiful.
[23:53]And that's, I think, that thank you for giving that to me.
[23:55]I really, that really moves me to hear that.
[23:59]Yeah, how do I regulate when I've taken on too much,
[24:01]which is me every day?
[24:03]Trisley, I will usually do one of two things.
[24:07]I'll either paint my nails, which is something
[24:10]I've done my whole life and immediately
[24:13]makes me feel just a little bit more relaxed.
[24:16]You can't do anything also if you're painting your nails
[24:19]other than just doing that because your hands
[24:20]are literally engaged.
[24:22]Or the best thing for me is I will go walk beside the water.
[24:27]That's one of the best things if I can run if I have the energy.
[24:31]Running is also really helpful.
[24:32]But that makes me sound far or committed to my mental health
[24:36]that I am truthfully usually I'm staggering alongside the river
[24:40]trying to take a deep breath.
[24:41]But that genuinely is it is going and seeing a body of water
[24:45]and allowing it myself to remember that, you know,
[24:48]the surface of things hides all kinds of life and death
[24:52]and that things continue.
[24:54]The river continues, you know, the water still runs
[24:56]and they're finding something really grounding about that.
[24:59]And I try, I genuinely do try to do that
[25:01]because otherwise I do work a lot and I like to work.
[25:06]And I find that grounding in its own way as well.
[25:09]And what other writing things are you doing now?
[25:12]I do write for yourself at night.
[25:14]Are you writing a novel?
[25:15]I don't know about like tell me what else.
[25:17]I am actually so I'm writing a novel.
[25:19]I finished it last summer.
[25:22]I have one novel that I am so behind on owing my agent edits too.
[25:26]But then I did this novel.
[25:27]So I'm halfway through the second pass
[25:29]of tightening the bolts before my agent sees it.
[25:32]And then I'm also because I'm on leave from teaching right now
[25:36]to support here after coming out.
[25:37]I'm writing in my sub stack again, which I love.
[25:40]I'm a child of the blog era.
[25:42]I had like seven different blogs as a kid.
[25:44]It would literally be like today for breakfast.
[25:46]I had cereal and I was like my mom as a child.
[25:50]A child of the blog year, I love them.
[25:52]I love the sub stack.
[25:53]I love the opportunity to write freely
[25:54]in a personal tone about what I'm thinking about.
[25:57]So I'm working on that as well, which feels really lovely.
[26:02]And then I'm writing some personal essays
[26:04]who are a couple different outlets.
[26:05]But largely, I'm really pushing on this second novel's
[26:09]edits because you feel excited about it.
[26:11]And I have the time to write right now, which is so precious
[26:14]to me.
[26:16]Well, that is exciting.
[26:19]How do people find your sense deck?
[26:21]So it's at the bottom of everything at substack.com.
[26:25]Yeah, thank you.
[26:26]That's really generous with you to ask.
[26:27]Yeah, no problem.
[26:29]Anything that people might be surprised to learn about you.
[26:32]I think people are always surprised that I'm taller
[26:36]than they think I am.
[26:37]That's true.
[26:37]I was very surprised by that.
[26:39]You know, I'm 5'10", I'm quite tall.
[26:42]And if you only ever met me on Zoom,
[26:45]people tend to transpose their own height on me.
[26:47]They kind of assume I'm similar in their own height.
[26:50]And then meet me and think, oh, you're so much taller
[26:52]than I realized.
[26:54]And I think also people would be surprised to learn
[26:57]that I am quite a bit more tender than I can appear at first.
[27:05]You know, I have really big feelings.
[27:08]And feel the world really intensely.
[27:11]But I think sometimes people see me working a lot
[27:15]and think that I'm kind of like a super person
[27:18]or don't have time for feelings of too busy working.
[27:20]And their reality is actually have a real deep tenderness
[27:25]that is something that Curtis saw in me.
[27:27]And I think comes across in the book.
[27:28]I think that's why I show up so fully.
[27:31]In the book is because it's through the lens
[27:33]of how Curtis saw me, which is as I am.
[27:35]And maybe not, as I appear when I'm in work mode.
[27:38]And that's something really beautiful
[27:40]to happen the book, too, is to offer the person that I am.
[27:44]Wow, Amy, you are a special lady.
[27:47]I will say that you really are.
[27:49]And here after is just absolutely gorgeous.
[27:52]And I am honored to play a tiny role in this
[27:57]and can't wait to roll as much yours at night.
[28:00]No, no, no, no, no.
[28:01]No, please, it really isn't.
[28:02]But I mean this sincerely, I'm eager to see the impact
[28:06]that you have.
[28:08]I feel like you're this storm sounds negative,
[28:10]but it's like, there's this weather system
[28:12]that's coming in that I know is coming.
[28:14]Like I'm like the meteorologist in this situation here.
[28:17]And you are the storm.
[28:18]And now I'm like, I can't wait to sit back
[28:20]and watch what happens when this thing hits.
[28:23]So that is how I feel at the moment.
[28:25]So kind, I hope it connects with people.
[28:27]And like I said, one of the greatest gifts
[28:29]was that it connected with you and that you saw it
[28:32]and that what a gift you've given me
[28:34]and all of the team that works on the book.
[28:36]I really feel that every day.
[28:38]It's amazing.
[28:39]You're the best, so sweet.
[28:41]Amy, congratulations.
[28:42]It's just getting started.
[28:45]So much, and thank you for having me.
[28:46]I absolutely treasure this opportunity
[28:48]to talk with you too.
[28:50]This made my day.
[28:51]Thanks for the best.
[28:52]Okay.
[28:53]Bye.
[28:53]Thank you.
[28:54]Bye.
[28:55]Bye.
[28:57]Thanks for listening to this episode
[28:58]of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[29:00]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram,
[29:03]at the Be Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[29:06]I'll also sign up for my newsletter,
[29:07]at zebiowens.com, and sign up for my virtual book club
[29:10]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[29:12]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound
[29:15]for the Sound Editing.
[29:16]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[29:18]for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.