BONUS: Share Your "Between Chapters" Story
[0:00]Hi everyone. Little backstory. Ten years ago, I was a stayed-home mom on the upper
[0:05]east side. I was a frustrated, aspiring author trying to sell a book. And I wasn't
[0:11]even on social media. And then I took a chance because my friend, Sarah, my now-ski, suggested
[0:17]I start a podcast. And I thought, okay, well, why not? So I did it. And the decision
[0:22]changed my life. I didn't see way out of that last chapter necessarily. And yet, one step
[0:28]at a time, I've ended up in a completely different chapter. In the last eleven years
[0:32]of my life, I have gotten divorced and remarried. I've moved. I've changed everything about
[0:39]myself and my professional life. And I, it all started very small with one small step.
[0:45]And so I want to know from all of you, what are the chapters that you have gotten through
[0:51]successfully, that you're worried about, that you're in now, we're all kind of between
[0:56]chapters one way or another. Or we've gotten through painful chapters. And now we're
[1:01]on the other side. Or maybe we're in a really painful chapter and could just use the encouragement
[1:05]reading other people's stories. Maybe we are loving the chapter we're in and want to celebrate
[1:10]it. Or we just can't wait to get to the next chapter. I'm excited to explore all of these
[1:17]themes with you because I have opened up a form for you to share your stories, a platform
[1:22]for you to explain what life has been like, even just one sentence, even a funny sentence,
[1:28]even a heartbreaking sentence, all the way up to a personal essay that I can share. To
[1:33]kick things off, I have shared an essay that just came in from an author named Carson
[1:39]Brown. And I just want to read you her essay because, oh my gosh, it's so good. And I just
[1:43]published it on between chapters, which you can find by going to zibiowans.com. And it's
[1:49]right up there up at the top in the navigation bar. So go to zibiowans.com. And you will find
[1:55]the between chapters column or page website, whatever you want to call it. And here is the essay
[2:02]I want to read you, which I just I dare you not to be inspired by this or moved. And I'd love to
[2:08]hear what you think. You can DM me on Instagram. You can send an email to info at zibi media.com. But
[2:17]anyway, here it is. The chapter I never saw coming, how an empty nest led to a memoir by Carson Brown.
[2:25]Motherhood was my drug of choice. For more than two decades, raising my children was the most
[2:30]intoxicating high I have ever known. We built a beautiful unconventional life together.
[2:34]There were fairy crossings and boat rides, winter spent carving down snowy mountainsides and
[2:39]summers swollen with salt air and sunburns. The house brimmed with life, dogs, parakeets, turtles,
[2:46]chickens. We traveled to Guatemala. So often it became stitched into the fabric of our family story.
[2:51]Life was noisy and full and gloriously demanding. I lived for it. I muddered with my whole being.
[2:58]I shaped my days around my children and gave them the very best of myself. It wasn't simply
[3:03]what I did. It was who I was. Then one day the chapter changed. My son left home first to go to
[3:09]college. Three years later, it was my daughter's turn. I remember standing in her dorm room doorway
[3:14]after the last box had been unpacked. I hugged her goodbye. Then I walked down the hallway trying
[3:19]not to fall apart. Everyone talks about preparing children to leave home. No one talks much about
[3:25]what happens to the person left standing in the parking lot afterward. The truth is I wasn't ready.
[3:31]I didn't want to retire from full-time mothering. I had been given notice anyway.
[3:36]My sister, sensing the depth of my grief, whisked me off to Disneyland with my two beloved
[3:40]nephews. We rode roller coasters and eight churros and laughed beneath artificial castles and fireworks.
[3:47]Then the ride stopped, the lights dimmed, and the ache returned. From Los Angeles, I flew to
[3:51]Bozeman where my son was living. A friend mentioned that a restaurant needed a dishwasher for two
[3:56]shifts. I was thrilled. After decades of washing dishes for free, I was finally going to get paid
[4:02]for one of the core competencies of motherhood. I borrowed a bicycle, pedaled to work, tied on a
[4:07]a rubber apron, and stepped into the steamy chaos of the kitchen. Within minutes, I was drenched.
[4:12]I loved it. Then someone whispered that Glen Close was dining in the restaurant. Suddenly,
[4:18]16-year-old me reappeared. The girl was still traumatized by fatal attraction. There she was,
[4:23]cropped silver hair, unmistakable profile. I stood ankle deep in soapy water, preparing to wash,
[4:29]Glen goddamn close as dishes. After years of caring for everyone else, I was beginning again
[4:34]from the bottom. That dish pit became an unlikely threshold, because what I didn't understand at
[4:39]the time was that motherhood wasn't the only thing ending. A version of myself was ending too.
[4:45]The years that followed were harder than I liked to admit. The dream I had carried for more than a
[4:49]decade to move to Guatemala once my children were grown suddenly became impossible. The future I had
[4:55]imagined dissolved. Without fairy scheduled to keep, without fairy schedules to keep, school
[5:01]calendars to manage, or children returning home each afternoon, I found myself face to face
[5:05]with a stranger, who was I, without motherhood at the center. The question terrified me.
[5:10]Depression arrived quietly, and then all at once. Some mornings I could barely lift my head.
[5:16]I ignored phone calls, skipped invitations, numbed myself with tequila and ice cream and endless
[5:21]distraction. I missed the sound of my children's footsteps. I missed hearing their voices drift
[5:25]through the house. I missed being needed. For 22 years, I knew exactly what my purpose was.
[5:31]Now I didn't. Looking back, I realized I was grieving more than my children leaving home.
[5:36]I was grieving an identity, and yet beneath all that grief, something else was waiting.
[5:40]Art! It waited patiently while I mourned. Eventually, it became impossible to ignore.
[5:46]I started small. A hot bath, a bike ride, a plunge into the cold waters of Puget Sound.
[5:52]Then one gray morning, I opened a manuscript I had been ignoring. It was a story about sailing
[5:56]across the Atlantic Ocean, aboard a 34-foot sailboat when I was 28 years old. The crossing had
[6:02]begun in Portugal. 48 days later, I arrived in Barbados. For years, the manuscript sat unfinished
[6:08]in a folder on my computer. I opened my laptop and began writing. I wrote before dawn, and after
[6:13]walks along the water. I wrote on days when the words came easily, and on days when I doubted every
[6:18]sentence. Slowly, the story I had carried for nearly half of my life took shape. Paged by page,
[6:23]chapter by chapter, I finished the book. This fall, at 55 years old, my memoir about that Atlantic
[6:29]Crossing will be published. What astonishes me isn't that I wrote a book. It's that the chapter I
[6:34]feared most, the one that began when my children left home, created the space for me to finish it.
[6:40]The very loss I thought might undo me became the thing that returned me to myself.
[6:45]That is the chapter I am living now, the reclamation chapter, the chapter where my children are
[6:50]thriving exactly as they should be, building lives of their own. The chapter where I finally
[6:55]have the time and courage to pursue the creative work that waited so patiently for me.
[7:00]Ironically, the chapter I feared most became the chapter that gave me back my art, and that
[7:05]may be the greatest surprise of my life. I miss full-time motherhood, I miss family dinners,
[7:11]and road trips, and bedtime stories, I miss the ordinary intimacy of daily life together.
[7:17]I miss being the first person they called. Those years were beautiful, precisely because they were
[7:22]temporary. The chapter I am most excited about is the one unfolding before me, a first book,
[7:29]new stories, and a future I cannot fully see. At 28, sailing west across the Atlantic,
[7:34]I couldn't see Barbados from Portugal. I trusted the horizon anyway. That may be the greatest
[7:39]lesson I have learned about difficult chapters. You do not need to know what comes next.
[7:44]You do not need certainty. You simply need enough faith to keep moving forward.
[7:50]Sometimes the chapter that feels like loss is actually transformation. Sometimes what looks like an
[7:55]ending is an invitation, and sometimes the chapter you would have fought hardest to avoid
[8:01]becomes the one that friendly brings you home to yourself. Oh my god, that was so good.
[8:08]Oh, Karma Brown, sorry. Carson Brown is the author of the upcoming memoir, 48 Days to Barbados,
[8:15]and you can follow her on Substack at Carson Brown and on Instagram at E-Carson Brown.
[8:20]Thank you to all of you. I would love to hear your stories, share stories like this with all of us.
[8:25]Go online to zivioens.com to the Between Chapters section, and share. Let's do this.