Emma Grey, PICTURES OF YOU: A Novel
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[0:42]Emma Gray is the author of Pictures of You, a Novel. This is a book that we published at ZibiBooks.
[0:50]We quote unquote discovered Emma Gray when she came to me with her book The Last Love Note as a pitch for the podcast.
[0:59]And when I read the book, I was like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. Are the U.S. rights available? And they were.
[1:05]And so we published The Last Love Note last year. It became a target book club pick and a book of the month club pick.
[1:11]And it sold a bazillion copies and was amazing. And she is amazing.
[1:15]She bases a lot of her writing on the loss of her beloved husband.
[1:20]While she was a mother and anyway, I'm a huge, huge Emma Gray fan.
[1:24]You should be too. If you haven't read The Last Love Note, go back and read that.
[1:27]Now we're publishing her new book, Pictures of You, a Novel. It is an add-on for Book of the Month Club in November.
[1:35]So if you remember there, you can add it on as you check out.
[1:38]And we are also going to be publishing her next book, Start at the End, which will come out, I don't know, 2025, 2026.
[1:46]I think 2026. Anyway, we're working on it.
[1:49]Enjoy this episode. Enjoy Emma. Go follow her on Instagram. She's amazing. And you will fall in love with her too.
[1:54]As for bio, Emma Gray is the author of six books, including two young adult novels, two nonfiction books on parenting,
[2:00]and her adult debut, The Global Breakout Bestseller, The Last Love Note.
[2:04]Gray lives in Ken Barrett, Australia, where her world centers on her three children,
[2:08]loved stepchildren, and step grandchildren, writing, photography, and endlessly chasing the Aurora Australia.
[2:15]Welcome, Emma. Thank you so much for coming back on Momstone.
[2:18]We have time to read books, and for being as if we have other congratulations on Pictures of You.
[2:24]Oh, thank you, Zibi. And thank you for publishing it.
[2:26]Of course. I am obsessed with this book. As you know, I read an early draft and then read the final draft in Arc format,
[2:34]which I don't usually do, and could not put it down. I was reading it as my son did a play audition.
[2:40]And I just was like, I'm sorry, I just have to go back to this and then walking the dog.
[2:44]And it's the best feeling when a book hooks you like that. And it's yours. So it's even better. It's amazing.
[2:52]I love it. When it almost becomes a, you know, your accident prone, you're about to walk into things.
[2:56]And I just love that feeling when you get carried away with a book and you can't put it down and you're carrying it with you everywhere you go.
[3:03]Yes. I'm glad that it had that impact. Yes. And how great that we're publishing it as well.
[3:08]So there we go. You know, for those listening, you're the author, the last love note, which was a target book club pick, a book of the month club pick just, you know, massive global hit.
[3:19]And now you followed it up with pictures of you tell everybody what pictures of you is about, but also any sort of pressure you feel with the imminent release of a book to follow up a big book,
[3:30]which is a wonderful situation to find yourself in.
[3:34]Wonderful and terrifying. And I think you know exactly what I'm talking about because you're in the same situation with your own book.
[3:40]And it is, it is all through publishing and promoting the last love note.
[3:47]I have just been embraced by readers in a way that has just been so incredible and so beautiful.
[3:53]And I've received so many messages and people sharing their own stories because most of you,
[3:58]some of your listeners may know that the last love note was about very personal based story about grief and about the loss of a spouse.
[4:05]And so then I had a lot of people getting in touch with me and sharing their stories, which was just incredible.
[4:11]But of course, there was also a lot of comments along the way along the lines of can't wait for your next book.
[4:17]And as you know, very much, I mean, it's almost chronicled in blank.
[4:22]That pressure of doing a second follow up book when there is expectation like that.
[4:28]That second book syndrome or sophomore books syndrome, it's real.
[4:32]It's this sense of expectation.
[4:35]You just really want to hope that you deliver something for the readers that is at least as good as the one that you've just done,
[4:41]if not better. And it's just, it's quite terrifying.
[4:44]But pictures of you is a very different story from the last love note.
[4:48]But it's still a romantic story, but it's one that I guess where we talked about love and loss in the last love note.
[4:56]This is really about love and control.
[4:59]So it's about relationship gone wrong and toxic relationships.
[5:03]And I think I really have taken on board all of the conversations that I've had over the years since really since the 1980s when I was in high school,
[5:13]which probably dates me, but when I was in high school, and you know, my friends and I would be sort of entering first love and they'd be talk about possessive boyfriends or, you know,
[5:25]that kind of relationships that just didn't feel right where friends started to sort of drift off and become less in your world more in the world of this boy.
[5:34]And then that followed through right the way through every decade I've lived with women and relationships around me, friends falling into marriages that were, you know, cohesively controlling and all of that sort of culminated with my daughter Hannah who you've met, who's 25 and she's doing a PhD in criminology and studying gender violence against women.
[5:58]And so I've had her in my head and talking a lot around me about these kinds of topics and I think it all just came together in this book and I think it's a really important topic for us to talk about in book clubs and, you know, online and in podcasts.
[6:14]At the same time, like with the last love note, I wanted to package this up in a way that is accessible and in this case to position this relationship that goes wrong beside a relationship that's beautiful and hopeful and hopefully that's what I've achieved.
[6:32]Yes, you take us through one relationship, let's go to the toxic relationship first because many women do find themselves in situations and like Evie or Evie, how do you pronounce it?
[6:46]Evie, Evie, okay, Evie, find themselves in situations like Evie where they believe themselves to be the strong women like Evie does, right? She has her whole life goal set out and she's very focused on what she wants out of life and all this.
[7:00]And somehow it still can derail even the strongest woman, right?
[7:08]Even someone who is resolved to, you know, conquer the world, right?
[7:14]Somehow men can get under, there can be these coercive things and you show us how it can happen slowly.
[7:23]Maybe a little bit more about that and this like, almost like this free fall and how you almost don't realize it until you're out of it.
[7:32]I know, I really wanted to capture the really subtle things that happen that are easy to excuse for one reason or another as you're gradually getting more and more entrenched in that relationship.
[7:47]And it's the stuff that your best friend might pick up and comment on or your parents might comment on and you find yourself, you know, becoming angry or defensive because I think a lot of the time you can feel what's happening, but you don't want to admit it and you don't know how to get yourself out of it.
[8:07]And I think that's the key in it.
[8:09]As you say, it is strong women.
[8:11]It's intelligent women.
[8:12]It's women with PhDs and letters after their name.
[8:15]And, you know, it doesn't matter who you are or what your background is.
[8:19]This is happening and it's widespread.
[8:22]I have messages in my inbox from friends even in our 50s now where they're divorced, they've come through and they're in the dating scene now again.
[8:32]And it's happening again.
[8:34]And so it's something that I think if you haven't been through it, you at least will have supported someone else through a friend or a sister or a family member.
[8:43]I think we're all right, well, first on those kinds of toxic scenarios that develop and that are so insidious.
[8:50]And that is sort of the gas lashing, the sense that it's you that you're making a mountain out of a mall hill or that you're the one that's going crazy, which is all sort of just cleverly developed in you as you go along in that sort of relationship.
[9:04]It is hard to know when and how to escape and when and how to know if your emotions are.
[9:12]Like if people just don't understand because there is still, I was going to say in our culture, it was really every culture, this behind closed doors approach to relationships.
[9:20]And oh yeah, that's what my friend thinks, but they don't really know.
[9:24]Or, and then the men as happens here can be quick to dismiss everybody else, right?
[9:30]So it's like this vicious circle.
[9:32]And I was really interested in pictures of you too with Evie's relationship with Bree, her best friend and how men can somehow get or these horrible relationships can get in the way.
[9:42]And how what is the role?
[9:44]What is your responsibility as a close friend to someone who sees this happening, but it's not being listened to.
[9:49]Is it better to stand by or use your absence as a lever?
[9:54]And then what if that doesn't work?
[9:56]So talk about that a little bit.
[9:57]Like what is our role?
[9:58]And I think a lot of people have seen.
[10:00]in relationships where they want to see something,
[10:02]do you see something or don't say something
[10:04]or what do you do?
[10:05]Sometimes it's hopeless.
[10:08]It is, it's very difficult.
[10:09]And I think part of the problem is that a lot of the time,
[10:13]it's actually dangerous for the woman
[10:15]to leave the relationship.
[10:17]And so there's a genuine fear there
[10:19]that stops them from taking.
[10:21]What might seem from the outside
[10:22]to be the logical step?
[10:23]You know, you're sort of thinking
[10:25]that they must see what's going on here.
[10:26]Why are they staying?
[10:28]And it is because it's too dangerous sometimes to leave
[10:32]and to provoke the abuser.
[10:35]But I think with a best friend or any friend
[10:38]or relative that's close,
[10:40]it can be so frustrating sometimes
[10:42]to watch to watch this happen.
[10:44]And the best friend in this novel,
[10:46]Bri really struggles with this as she goes through,
[10:50]even from, you know, when they were 16
[10:52]all the way through their relationship
[10:55]and does drift away and come back.
[10:58]And I think the other, the other big friend
[11:01]that she's got to is, is Drew and he's the same.
[11:04]And he's there for her the whole way through as much
[11:06]as he can be until they're sort of forced completely away.
[11:10]And I think that's one of the techniques
[11:12]that some men do in this situation is that they,
[11:15]I think they love bomb the woman
[11:17]in the center of the relationship
[11:19]and then they isolate her from everyone around them.
[11:22]And that is, you know,
[11:23]a pattern that a lot of women fall into
[11:26]that makes it just so difficult then for them to fit,
[11:29]feel like they can turn to anybody.
[11:32]So I know what we dove right into some of the darkest
[11:35]through themes and the most difficult,
[11:36]but the book is much more than that, right?
[11:40]And I didn't even ask the general plot line,
[11:42]but basically after an accident,
[11:45]Evie has woken up to be her essentially 16 year old self,
[11:49]right? Or her memory is gone.
[11:51]She 16 or 18, 16 year old self, right?
[11:55]Yeah, 16.
[11:55]And she's waking up, you know,
[11:57]looking for her best friend from high school,
[11:58]looking for her parents and only remembering that,
[12:01]but then realizing that she's really 29 and married
[12:05]and, you know, all of that.
[12:06]And a recent widow has happens on the first page.
[12:09]And how do you align those two versions of yourself
[12:13]when you sometimes can't even recognize yourself,
[12:16]which I would venture to say a lot of people feel sometimes,
[12:18]like what would my 16 year old self feel
[12:21]about my 29 year old or my 49 year old
[12:23]or my 69 year old self?
[12:25]Is this what she would have wanted?
[12:27]And all of that.
[12:28]So I found also so interesting was how do you take
[12:32]that vantage point and that innocence really
[12:36]and keep it going so that you can stay true
[12:39]to who you are or where or when do you become yourself?
[12:42]All these big questions.
[12:44]That's right.
[12:45]That's exactly how, again, you know,
[12:47]I was thinking the other day,
[12:48]I think there's a part of me in that when I was 42,
[12:52]my husband died, my whole world was up turned.
[12:55]I found myself without the future that I'd planned.
[12:59]And I think that I have put part of those feelings
[13:01]into Evee's character for an entirely different reason.
[13:05]And so she's woken up.
[13:06]And I think there are a lot of women in particular
[13:09]who reached any of those ages that you've mentioned
[13:12]and start to wonder, how did I get here?
[13:15]How did my life end up right here?
[13:18]This is not how I imagined it.
[13:20]It's not how I planned.
[13:22]And then are in a position with a sort of wide open future
[13:26]sometimes to have to reconstruct
[13:28]or construct in an entirely different way.
[13:31]And it's an opportunity that sometimes it's forced upon you
[13:35]like in my case where I didn't want that
[13:38]and I wish I didn't have it.
[13:39]And I've been forced to do it anyway.
[13:42]And the same with Evee and then there are other people
[13:44]who just have those feelings, I think.
[13:47]And we do look back at our 16 year old self.
[13:49]I've got a lot of my diaries from when I was a teenager.
[13:52]I won't be reading them live on a podcast,
[13:55]but it does sort of capture a lot of the same feelings.
[13:58]And I did want to capture that innocence
[14:02]and the dreams that you tend to have at 16,
[14:05]the future that you imagined for yourself in your career
[14:07]and relationships.
[14:09]And try to give her this second chance
[14:14]at life, it's a do over in a way,
[14:17]but again, not in a way that she would have wanted.
[14:20]It also, in addition to her friendship with Bri,
[14:22]we have this friendship with Drew,
[14:24]which follows Evee throughout her life
[14:26]and becomes highly relevant as she gets in the car
[14:30]with Drew in the very opening.
[14:32]Or you see, Drew is someone who she has had
[14:36]this lifelong relationship with and has to piece back together.
[14:40]He has another interesting subplot
[14:43]where he is taking care of his mom.
[14:44]And that is sort of taking him out of the childhood innocence
[14:47]and catapulting him into a much more sort of removed,
[14:51]mature, not by his own, you know,
[14:54]you can't go out and have fun at a party
[14:55]when you're, you know, making sure your mom is alive
[14:59]and, you know, primary caretaker for someone.
[15:01]I was hoping you could speak to that
[15:03]and sort of the pressures of caretaking at any stage
[15:05]and how it can make you feel so removed
[15:09]from the mainstream in a way.
[15:11]And what that does to his character
[15:14]as he progresses through the book.
[15:17]I think that that character and that maturity
[15:20]that he's forced to have is probably a bit of a tribute
[15:23]to my children who had to grow up very quickly
[15:27]when Jeff died.
[15:28]And they were two of them were teenagers
[15:31]and then a little boy who was five,
[15:32]who is now a teenager and towering over me.
[15:35]But the kids lost a lot of their innocence
[15:37]and they weren't caring for me,
[15:40]but in a way they were at times,
[15:41]there was a lot of grief there.
[15:43]And of course I was being the parent to them,
[15:45]but Drew has to really be the parent
[15:48]and step up and look after his mom.
[15:51]And there are so many young kids and teenagers
[15:55]who are carers of their parents.
[15:58]And I did want to incorporate that storyline
[16:00]to just make it clear that there are a lot of kids
[16:03]who just can't have that party lifestyle
[16:06]and who may not even be interested in some of that
[16:09]because they've just been forced by circumstances
[16:12]to step up in a way that most people can avoid for decades.
[16:17]There's a lot of the stuff I was doing with his mum
[16:20]that I'm doing now at 50 with my dad who's 92.
[16:25]And so that's sort of more natural.
[16:29]And I think it was really important to that
[16:31]because I think that the way that that life experience
[16:36]formed his character is very relevant
[16:38]to how he's able to get his head around,
[16:41]everything that's happening with EV later on.
[16:43]So I know because I've seen all of your amazing photographs
[16:47]about your new found passion for photography,
[16:51]especially in nature and the colors and oh my gosh,
[16:54]you're so good.
[16:56]Drew has this as well and Evee to some extent
[16:59]because she was in the class as well at the beginning.
[17:02]But this is a huge through line
[17:04]and it's how we see things, how we see people.
[17:06]And I feel like photography in a way is a metaphor
[17:09]for what is going on and how the reader is actually viewing
[17:13]the subject of the book and all of that.
[17:15]But take us through a little bit
[17:17]your new found passion for photography,
[17:20]how you put in all of the technical and all things.
[17:24]And now are you gonna move to New York
[17:27]and go work for a magazine and as a...
[17:30]As a photographer, me, Bob Zibi,
[17:33]because yeah, I'll be over there in a second.
[17:35]No, photography is something that I found
[17:38]in the last few years.
[17:39]Really, it was during the pandemic actually.
[17:41]I started off with just an iPhone photography course
[17:45]and we were allowed out of the house for an hour a day
[17:47]on a walk and I found that just becoming absorbed
[17:51]in taking photos of what I was seeing
[17:54]really helped me to forget what was going on in the world.
[17:56]And that then I graduated to a proper camera.
[18:00]And at first I had no idea how to use it.
[18:02]I did a whole lot of online YouTube tutorials
[18:04]and little courses to work out what the exposure triangle was
[18:08]and how to operate the camera and...
[18:10]And then I fell into macro photography,
[18:13]which is taking a really, really close up
[18:16]magnified photos of themes.
[18:17]And there was just something so healing for me in my grief
[18:22]to be able to get so focused on the minute details
[18:26]of a flower or I've got some photos of dew drops
[18:30]on tulips that reflect the tulips around them
[18:34]in the dew drop and that kind of thing.
[18:36]I would forget my surroundings and really,
[18:39]I love writing so much and you do too.
[18:42]But there's something about photography
[18:44]that just, I can get completely lost in.
[18:46]I think with writing you've still got your brain engaged
[18:50]at hopefully most of the time.
[18:52]But with photography, it's just become
[18:54]this almost extension of myself.
[18:56]So I loved the photography line through this novel
[19:00]and the fact that these two EV and Drew
[19:03]are putting on an exhibition.
[19:05]And just it is about perspective.
[19:07]It always is and whether I'm out taking a photo
[19:10]of a tiny little blade of grass with frost on it
[19:13]or if I'm out in the middle of the night,
[19:15]taking photos of the aurora or the milky way and the moon
[19:19]and it gives you a different perspective
[19:21]every single time.
[19:23]And so I just love it.
[19:24]And my wish for everyone is that we can find something
[19:29]whether it's cooking or gardening or photography
[19:32]or craft or whatever it is that is a creative outlet
[19:35]that really is the only thing that gets me through
[19:37]a lot of the chaos that we're all feeling
[19:40]in the world at the moment.
[19:41]I am with you.
[19:42]I love photography and I used to,
[19:45]I did like summer programs and it is a kid
[19:47]and there is something about that when you zoom in
[19:50]and I used to have one of those lenses that's just,
[19:52]you know, just zooming in on a flower
[19:55]and you're just like, oh my gosh.
[19:57]Right, it makes sense of silly but it's not.
[20:00]And it's so freeing in a way.
[20:01]And I don't know, there's something
[20:02]about looking at the world in a new way,
[20:05]which is what writers do.
[20:06]But photography is yet another lens,
[20:09]another way to see through it.
[20:11]And FYI, and I'm sure we won't be able to do this,
[20:13]but in our marketing meeting yesterday for the book,
[20:16]I was like, what if we have our own exhibit,
[20:19]pictures of you?
[20:20]And we get famous photographers
[20:22]to put portraits of women with the captions and all of that
[20:26]and have it in a gallery.
[20:27]So I don't know.
[20:28]I don't know how we can pull it off.
[20:29]This is my dream.
[20:32]Because here was I thinking, wouldn't it be great
[20:34]if we did a social media campaign of pictures of you
[20:37]where people could, well, could host a photo
[20:41]they've taken with a caption, as a woman.
[20:43]And you, of course, to a completely other level.
[20:46]No, we thought of that too.
[20:48]And I love that.
[20:49]Grass out under teams that we should do,
[20:51]maybe a contest where people submit
[20:54]and we can get photography students and then have a winner.
[20:57]And then I don't know how people submit that way.
[20:59]Anyway, our brains are spinning.
[21:01]So hopefully by the time this episode comes out,
[21:03]we will have launched something fun
[21:05]at the least some sort of party in a gallery or something.
[21:08]I'm not going to do anything.
[21:10]We're working on it.
[21:11]There's another layer.
[21:12]They're like 8,000 layers in this book,
[21:14]but of criminology and also linguistics
[21:18]and how the two sort of interweave
[21:21]and what you can even learn from speech patterns.
[21:27]Do you also know all about,
[21:29]like where did that come from?
[21:30]And the linguistics came from my sister.
[21:33]She did, she sticks at university,
[21:37]she ended up with the university medal in linguistics,
[21:38]actually, and forensic linguistics has always been her hobby.
[21:42]She didn't go down that path professionally,
[21:44]but she's been feeding me information on this for 30 years.
[21:48]She's just fascinated by it.
[21:49]So that really came from her
[21:52]and then the criminology angle from my daughter.
[21:54]So I love to bring in the interests of the people around me,
[21:58]which is why when my other daughter was 14
[22:00]and was obsessed with Harry Styles,
[22:03]I ended up writing a boy band book for her, a teenage novel.
[22:06]I was thinking the other day,
[22:08]gosh, it's my son really that I haven't written on book for.
[22:10]So I don't know if I can write a novel about Minecraft
[22:13]or something next.
[22:15]That's okay. I don't know how to work.
[22:17]It's fine.
[22:18]Which of all the line there probably won't wait?
[22:20]That's maybe, yeah.
[22:21]Well, maybe there'll be a character,
[22:24]like it's Minecraft, that's good enough.
[22:26]Oh, it's nice to just sort of interact with the people around you
[22:30]and you pick up so many interesting little diversions
[22:32]when you're having conversations with your family and friends.
[22:36]And I think as a writer, somebody says one little thing
[22:39]and that just sets off the light bulb
[22:40]and you've taken off with an idea.
[22:43]And what about the baleuminescence and the wider?
[22:45]Have you seen that?
[22:47]No, that is top of my bucket list.
[22:49]So I wrote about the Aurora in the last last note.
[22:52]I've seen that and taken photos.
[22:54]I have searched for baleuminescence
[22:56]and I've been at the beaches where it commonly occurs here.
[23:00]But gosh, you will be the first to know
[23:02]and I'll take photos.
[23:03]Plastering them all over Instagram when the day comes.
[23:07]It's just beautiful.
[23:08]Wow. That would be neat.
[23:10]I mean, it's so magical.
[23:11]The whole thing. Oh my gosh.
[23:13]Well, thank you for transporting me
[23:16]as I am the reader in this case into this world
[23:19]and rooting for someone so much
[23:22]and just it's such an immersive experience
[23:26]and the water is just one element.
[23:28]That is a perfect representation of how it feels
[23:31]to be in this book is sort of swimming
[23:35]in something magical that lights up in different ways
[23:38]and makes you feel sort of refreshed
[23:41]and connected afterwards.
[23:42]I know you have a new book that you're working on.
[23:44]Can you talk about that?
[23:46]Yes, I've sort of got to think about how to talk about
[23:49]that without giving too much away about the twists
[23:53]and turns in that one, but it's called start at the end
[23:56]and it's a story about love again
[24:01]and also fresh beginnings
[24:03]and a slightly older protagonist this time again
[24:07]like it was in the last love note.
[24:09]And I think I've just been attracted to the idea
[24:13]of having a light touch in the writing
[24:17]on really deep topics.
[24:18]So this one will explore a few other bits and pieces,
[24:22]divorce.
[24:23]I think anything that attracts me now these days
[24:27]is about identity, perspective, memory,
[24:30]false memory, all kinds of really interesting
[24:34]that all diversions down the neurological path
[24:37]and I'm just having so much fun pulling this new story
[24:41]together.
[24:41]Oh my gosh, I can't wait to read it.
[24:43]That is something that you do so well.
[24:45]You'll be reading a scene and totally in it
[24:48]and then I will be stopped in my tracks
[24:50]by a paragraph that just hits so deep
[24:53]and you don't even know it's coming
[24:55]and it weaves in seamlessly.
[24:57]Let me try to find an example.
[24:58]Here's one about grief if you don't mind
[25:00]if I could just read this quickly.
[25:02]I don't even know if I can trust you, she admits
[25:03]and I need to get my head together.
[25:05]After all this time, surely I can summon enough long
[25:07]overdue perspective and keep her safe.
[25:09]That must have been some not to the head.
[25:11]This is Drew talking by the way.
[25:12]She's so vague, she's practically two dimensional.
[25:14]How do you just forget?
[25:16]Maybe it's grief.
[25:17]No, I know grief.
[25:19]You don't forget details.
[25:20]It's the opposite.
[25:21]Details torment you.
[25:22]They swirl through your mind in a relentless agonizing loop
[25:25]until you think of Gomaid.
[25:27]The phone call, you let go through to voicemail
[25:29]because you were too busy reading a book.
[25:31]The off-handedness of that last text message,
[25:33]the endless, haunting, unchangeable dance
[25:36]of all that was said and unsaid as life
[25:38]pushes you further from the opportunity
[25:40]you lost to make things right.
[25:42]Oh, that's so good.
[25:45]I even hear and you read it sort of hits me again
[25:48]because I think any of us have ever lost anyone
[25:52]and I know today is a difficult day for you.
[25:55]We're recording this on September 11th.
[25:57]And so I'm thinking of you and I know anybody
[26:00]who's been through anything involving loss,
[26:03]understands that feeling and that sense of what if I had
[26:07]done something differently, what if I'd said something,
[26:11]what was my last message?
[26:12]I, you know, you go back and through.
[26:13]What was my last email?
[26:15]What was my last text message trying to make sure
[26:17]that what you said was good or right
[26:21]and that you didn't leave someone hanging.
[26:23]And, you know, I've said to so many people,
[26:25]we can't have these high standards for ourselves.
[26:28]We are human beings and we just,
[26:30]we all live in this moment.
[26:32]We do the best we can every day and we make mistakes.
[26:36]And so I think what Drew is sort of capturing there
[26:39]is that sense that, you know,
[26:41]you long for an opportunity to undo things
[26:43]and do things differently and we can't have it.
[26:47]And that's the hard thing.
[26:49]Wow.
[26:50]Well, I'm a congratulations.
[26:52]Thank you for everything.
[26:54]Congratulations on writing another book that is just so great
[26:57]and I am such a huge fan and I feel honored to know you well
[27:03]and get to watch this on all sides as it unfolds
[27:06]but I have so much respect for you
[27:08]and thank you for everything.
[27:11]Well, thank you.
[27:11]The feeling is entirely mutual, of course.
[27:13]And I'm just so grateful to you,
[27:15]for everything as well.
[27:16]Thank you.
[27:19]Thanks for listening to moms.
[27:20]Don't have time to read books.
[27:22]If you love it, please leave a review and follow us
[27:24]on social at Civi Owens and at Civi readers.