Author Event! Elissa Altman & Annabeth Gish
[0:00]Everybody say hello, and they're all like, hello, you know, so.
[0:06]Cheers.
[0:09]Yes, yeah, yeah.
[0:13]Watch for coming tonight.
[0:14]He's regular faces and faces.
[0:16]We're pretty sure you guys coming out for a long day of work
[0:19]and getting to listen to some incredible writers.
[0:23]So today we have Elizabeth Altman, who are celebrating her new book,
[0:26]from Michigan, which congratulations.
[0:28]Thank you very much.
[0:31]Here's a quick follow-up of this is an author and long time award-winning executive editor
[0:35]for major publishing houses, including Clark's and Potter,
[0:38]Rodale Books and HarperCollins, and she's required an admit 16 year time
[0:42]bestsellers before promoting herself for a full time and launching her James
[0:46]Beard award-winning narrative from blog or man's beast in 2008.
[0:51]Her work appears in publications, including a over-vaccine narrative,
[0:54]who has 10 house, or ultra journal, a team of few.
[0:58]And it's been largely, her work has been widely enthalredized.
[1:01]She's been the recipient of a Vermont studio center residency twice,
[1:05]twice attended the 10 house writer's workshop, and was finalist for the Frankly Court,
[1:09]and had more prize awarded by a South Country Review.
[1:13]She's an avid gardener, coke, musician.
[1:15]Happy growing.
[1:17]A book designer, Susan Turner, and they're small hurt animals in Southwestern.
[1:22]She's an advocate of what she's talking about, because she's also from Southwestern.
[1:25]OK, there you go.
[1:26]She is in conversation tonight with the internet.
[1:28]Gatch, Gatch, who is now working in X-Files, first of all to entach fire,
[1:33]the hunting of pill house, and midnight nests.
[1:36]So it would be about 30 minute conversation to enthalve them.
[1:38]Well, they're not going to do that.
[1:39]And then, let me book this to you by the end of the story.
[1:46]Hello.
[1:47]Welcome to Santa Monica.
[1:49]Thank you.
[1:50]It is a wonderful place.
[1:52]It is really lovely.
[1:54]And I'm thrilled to be here and zippies.
[1:57]Yeah, like a power house person, kind of person.
[2:01]Yeah, Zippy is she's created the sanctuary here for readers.
[2:06]And it just always feels like a sacred place to come into this book store,
[2:11]solace, and so many good conversations.
[2:15]And my favorite thing to do is to talk about books, to read books and to talk about books,
[2:20]even though I'm an actress, I think I revere writers more than I do actors,
[2:25]sometimes.
[2:27]And when I first met Alyssa, which was, I think it was 2018.
[2:33]Okay.
[2:34]Yep.
[2:35]We both were guests up in Northern California at an on being retreat with that
[2:41]crystal tip that I don't know who's familiar with that her resource, which is
[2:45]incredible podcast and what a resource.
[2:49]But when I first met Alyssa, I was sort of, I was intimidated because I'm so
[2:57]in awe of your writing and your capacity to be, I mean, yes, memoir, but also
[3:06]your creative nonfiction in a genre, you just always seem to mine deeply,
[3:12]but with integrity.
[3:14]Thank you.
[3:15]You know, and this book for me, I brought my own copy and I, it's as if it's
[3:22]dog ears like a journal because I do think that not only is this book a
[3:29]memoir, it is a masterclass.
[3:32]I think it's a masterclass for people who not just writers, but for artists
[3:38]and all of us who are, I think women in particular, who sometimes need
[3:44]to tell our stories and how we tell our stories, whether it's through writing
[3:48]or our political activism or our parenting or our fashion or whatever it is,
[3:54]how we tell our stories.
[3:55]I think this has so many gems.
[3:58]Um, it's kind of been a Bible on my bedside table the last few months.
[4:03]And, um, and I, I'm sorry, but I would love for you to talk a little bit
[4:13]about what got you here, Lisa.
[4:16]Well, thank you.
[4:17]And it's a thrill and a delight to be here with, with you.
[4:21]When we met in 2018, it was like, oh, like, we, we have so much to talk
[4:27]about and we can talk for a really long time, which we will not do tonight
[4:33]because you probably all have things to do.
[4:35]But we could, yeah, sweet, you know, we, we could.
[4:38]Um, so, um, thank you all, um, and Zibi certainly, my gosh.
[4:46]I just was blown away when she opened up the store.
[4:50]And this is my first time here.
[4:52]My first time in Santa Monica, I haven't been to Ella to the LA area in 25 years,
[4:58]which just seems wrong.
[5:00]long, in so many ways. And thank you all for coming. I see faces here from literally
[5:07]every part of my life. And people, I have not seen since 1976. You know, I can't
[5:14]bunkmate is just wonderful. And that counselor. And this is the same camp that my friend
[5:24]mine from Duke had done, but it's cheating. You were a counselor there. Right. Right.
[5:28]Which is just crazy. Anyway, so permission came about, permission came about in a way that
[5:41]I do not wish on any writer, really. Not to frighten any memoirist in here tonight. But
[5:51]But in 2000, I want to say 13, I wrote my first memoir called Poor Man's Feast. And
[6:02]it was a, you know, I thought it was just a sort of a simple, linear love story about two
[6:09]people from completely different backgrounds. And geographical religious that, you know,
[6:15]everything, meeting, falling in love. And our families completely different. The way
[6:24]we thought about food, because I was a food writer for many, many years. And a narrative
[6:29]food writer, not a, you know, not a copal author. And so one of the questions that came
[6:36]up in the book, which again, I thought was this sort of simple, in a fan relatively
[6:43]inoffensive story, was one of the questions that came up was how did food and nurturing
[6:56]and sustenance become so important in my life? Because I grew up in a home with a mother
[7:05]who was a horrible, horrible cook. And, you know, she's still with us. She has not cooked,
[7:15]I want to say since like Bill Clinton was an office. And my dad was, was a wonderful
[7:21]cook. And he, he not only loved to cook, but he loved to feed people. And he understood
[7:27]the same today, and having people on the way out to the table, whoever they were, people
[7:33]from every background, you know. And, and, and so I was, I was trying to sort of like,
[7:39]as we say, you know, peel the onion and get to the core of the story. How did this happen?
[7:45]How does a person who grows up, you know, with a mom who just doesn't, it doesn't
[7:51]like food, doesn't want to be around food, become so, you know, engaged with it on, on
[8:00]every level. I was writing, you know, from magazines and newspapers and, and cooking
[8:04]yourself. And cooking, you know, all, all, you know, all the time. And, and, and that's really
[8:11]what brought Susan and, you know, what brought us together was that she's also a cook. She's
[8:16]a, she's an amazing baker and, and so how did this happen? And so, you know, going, I'm peeling
[8:23]the onion and going through the family story of, you know, ants in the kitchen and grandmothers
[8:30]in the kitchen. And, and the stories of the great grandmothers in the kitchen. And I come
[8:38]to the story about my father's mother, who was about, I mean, you think I'm short, you know,
[8:46]really tiny. And in 1926, when my father was three years old and my aunt was eight years old,
[8:57]my grandmother walked out on the family. And she came from, she was, I wouldn't say
[9:04]Orthodox, but she was quite, quite religious and kept to close your home. And, and the whole
[9:11]thing about the family and feeding, feeding the children and, and feeding her husband and sustaining
[9:19]everybody. That was a very big part of her life. But she left one day. She did come back three years
[9:27]later. And I grew up with this story as it was, it was like the way my father metabolized it.
[9:37]He told it for whether it was appropriate or not. He told it over and over again. We could be
[9:45]walking the dog. And he would, you know, be talking about their grandma left, but she came back.
[9:51]And we could be driving somewhere. And he would talk about it. And, and it was sort of like he was
[9:59]like the
[10:00]The only word I can think of is metabolizing it that way.
[10:04]What I didn't know when the book came out was that my father's sister had hidden it from
[10:11]her children who were in their 60s when the book came out.
[10:17]And we actually have an old family friend sitting right here in the front row who apparently
[10:23]didn't know this story.
[10:25]So it was a, as you say, in the book, a non-secret secret.
[10:29]It was a non-secret secret.
[10:32]And so one of my cousins might have known a little bit, but the other cousin, 65 years old
[10:38]when the book comes out has no idea that there is this really traumatic story that is sort
[10:47]wrapped around our family, and that her own mother lived through because her mother
[10:54]was eight when this happened.
[10:58]And she took it upon herself to sort of step in and be like my father's mother.
[11:05]They were in and out of orphanages, they lived in, they lived with foster families.
[11:12]And I don't know what happened for her to come back, which she did come back.
[11:18]And I think you were talking about women and art making.
[11:24]And my grandmother was a childhood prodigy.
[11:27]She was a classical pianist who played at town hall in New York City.
[11:32]And it's my belief that when she married my grandfather, she had to give it up.
[11:40]And if you're an art maker of any kind, you know what it's like when you are prevented
[11:48]from making that art in some way.
[11:52]And she was not given the permission to express herself.
[11:55]That's right.
[11:56]And I can only conjecture that that was why she left.
[12:01]So the book comes out and a year later, I am excised from the whole family.
[12:09]She's like, what?
[12:11]Yes, completely excised from the family.
[12:14]And so, you know, family celebrations, holiday or cousin, and I said, is it the cousin?
[12:23]It is the one of the cousins.
[12:27]Family celebrations, we, Susan and I were, we sort of had a God, we were God parents.
[12:34]We had that sort of rescinded.
[12:39]And it really leveled me for, for years.
[12:46]And this was just from the eight lines.
[12:48]And the end of one of your first, this was your first memoir.
[12:52]My first memoir and in eight lines, I get to the core of the story, where did the need
[12:59]for sustenance and feeding and having people together and having people on the table, where
[13:05]did it come from?
[13:07]And that's where it came from.
[13:08]Oh my goodness.
[13:09]And they didn't know that my father had been talking about it, like all the time from
[13:14]the time that I, you know, could remember.
[13:18]And of course, I didn't know that they didn't know, you know?
[13:20]So then that begs the question, when is the secret not a secret?
[13:24]Is a secret, is a secret a secret if you don't know it's a secret.
[13:30]And is the truth, the truth, is it empirical fact or are there just versions of everyone's
[13:36]truth?
[13:37]Exactly.
[13:38]And so it took me, I would say, over three years to get to a place where I could even
[13:45]talk about it.
[13:46]And, you know, I was doing interviews and book store events and I couldn't talk about it.
[13:56]I was just, there's so much shame that that is sort of wrapped around the person who gets
[14:04]excised, you know.
[14:07]And so it took a while for me to get to a place where I could, I could finally even think
[14:12]about writing about it and think about talking about it.
[14:16]And it was actually Krista Tippett, back to on being, she used to have a sort of an essay
[14:25]section on her website.
[14:28]And I wrote this essay about permission and story ownership and family secrets and I sent
[14:38]it off to her and I thought, well, if she publishes it, no one's going to send it to
[14:44]a place where no one's going to see it.
[14:47]So I sent it off to her and I was in another cousin's wedding and on the other side
[14:51]of the family, my phone goes off.
[14:53]We love it.
[14:54]We're publishing it.
[14:55]You know, well, it really begs the question.
[15:00]as a vet that you started with something, a small truth, a non-secret secret, you shared it,
[15:08]and the worst consequence that any artist or, you know, happened to you. There was a cost.
[15:16]You were excised from the family. But then you doubled down and you went, yeah,
[15:25]holder, you had to pursue this deeper truth. And again, what is so powerful about this book is
[15:34]it's not just about, it's not about just getting to the truth. It's about the responsibility of
[15:41]understanding the truth and carrying it forward with meaning. So I just speak a little bit about
[15:50]the courage, right? Because to me, and I remember reading that article, and to me, it's one of the
[15:58]things I think we've talked about is just like, I know there's a certain element of my life that
[16:03]I'd like to write about, but I just not, no, I'm not going to do it. So speak to me about
[16:08]ever. Well, with your help, we'll dig it out. We'll be here again. Yes, we're going to be here again.
[16:17]But speak about the courage to go beyond your own self interests, right? Because the burden of
[16:26]telling the truth. So I, when I wrote that essay, it went viral. It was like my worst nightmare,
[16:38]you know, so I write it. I'm like, send it to a place. I won't do it. It goes viral. And I start
[16:44]hearing from writers and painters and, you know, actors. And, you know, that, oh my God, this
[16:53]is a situation. This is a thing. And I started to ask how much art is not being made. Most of the
[17:02]people who reached out to me were women. 99.99% Jeffrey Apologies. 99.99% were women.
[17:14]Because I think women artists will fret. And that will hold them back. And a lot of my male
[17:25]writer friends will go ahead and do it. And then apologize later. But whatever, you know, we all do
[17:32]what we can do. However, we can do it. But so it went viral. And it became very clear to me that this
[17:39]was a subject that was really important for the art making community. Yeah, just to even talk about
[17:50]it, you know. And again, because there is so much shame that goes with it. But the thing that I came
[18:00]away with after I wrote this. And this book is really very different from the way it started,
[18:08]the book that I was contracted right. Oh, and yes. Oh, yeah. It was like hello publisher. Sorry.
[18:15]But there is a, I think, a responsibility, a real responsibility that writers and art makers
[18:25]have to have when we endeavor to create something that's going to touch other lives. And everything
[18:33]is always going to touch other lives. You know, so I have a lot of writer friends who have
[18:41]kids on your older kids. And by, you know, kids, I mean, you know, anywhere from their late teens
[18:47]into their 20s and 30s. And the kids are like, girl, don't write her in my, I don't want to be
[18:52]in it. Don't write about me. And that's impossible. You know, that's impossible because
[18:59]there are a part of us, there are part of who we, of who we are. We have the responsibility though
[19:09]to choose, carefully choose the stories that we tell and to make sure that those stories
[19:18]are intrinsically linked to, to the, to the relationships with the, you know, with the people who
[19:29]are going early, you know, and one of the things that I always say is that, you know, if there's
[19:35]just a great story that you want to tell, but it hasn't touched you directly and intimately,
[19:43]then I would be like, maybe not, you have to make that judgment call, right? For a story to be
[19:51]told, I think, and for you to give yourself permission to tell that story, it needs to have
[19:58]somehow changed.
[20:00]your world to you, you know.
[20:01]So the issue with the story that I told was,
[20:05]this cousin says, well, it was not your story to tell.
[20:08]And it was like, well, no, actually, it was,
[20:11]because what happened made me who I am.
[20:14]It changed the way I view the world.
[20:19]So responsibility is a big issue, I think.
[20:23]Yeah.
[20:24]And it makes me wonder to proprietary,
[20:31]like, what, who does own a story?
[20:33]If your cousin can say it's not your story to tell.
[20:36]Right.
[20:38]Do you have to, did you, were you aware of,
[20:41]because that's such a fence or a wall?
[20:44]A wall.
[20:45]Your creativity.
[20:46]Right.
[20:47]Yeah.
[20:47]Yeah, you know, I think that,
[20:51]and this is something that I talk about a lot.
[20:54]And stories, all of our stories change from,
[21:01]you know, I had no siblings, right?
[21:03]So I don't have the experience that a lot of my friends
[21:08]have, that you have siblings, you have siblings,
[21:12]where, you know, you have completely different memories
[21:16]of the way things unfolded, right?
[21:19]So I always say that, you know,
[21:22]you can put five adult siblings around a table
[21:25]and say, do you remember what happened in 1975
[21:28]when dad got drunk on a gym beam during Christmas?
[21:30]Yeah.
[21:31]And you will get five different versions of the story,
[21:33]including dad did drink.
[21:36]Yeah.
[21:37]And they will, they will, mud wrestle, they will fight you
[21:41]to the bitter end to prove that they are right.
[21:45]And that their version is the version.
[21:49]And that's not true.
[21:51]You know, their version is their version.
[21:55]There can be only one empirical fact.
[21:58]You know, the sky is blue.
[22:00]But we all see the world through the veil
[22:05]of our own experiences and our own lives.
[22:09]And so for two people to see the exact same thing,
[22:15]the same way, just doesn't happen, you know?
[22:20]As an actor, I get to hide behind, like my characters.
[22:25]As a writer, especially a memoirist,
[22:28]there's no hiding, your vulnerability,
[22:31]especially when you are such a minor of truth, you know?
[22:34]This is not, again, this is not just, you know,
[22:38]your grocery list, deep stuff.
[22:42]And so do you, I mean, are you, I guess one of my questions
[22:46]now is, do you, are you grateful that you wrote it?
[22:50]And would you do it again?
[22:53]Do you regret writing it?
[22:55]We're this or the first, the thing that got me into the,
[22:58]both, the end of the, the end of the quicksand.
[23:03]If you had asked me, you know, a year or two
[23:06]after I wrote that first book, I lived through the grief
[23:12]of such loss.
[23:15]I mean, I never in a million years imagined
[23:18]these people would, oh, sorry.
[23:21]And there's mom now.
[23:22]No, just kidding.
[23:22]Just kidding.
[23:24]There she is now.
[23:26]I lived through just so much grief
[23:31]that I didn't realize how it was going to affect me physically
[23:36]and emotionally and it was really brutal.
[23:42]And so two, you know, two years after I wrote it,
[23:45]if you'd asked me that question, I would have been like,
[23:47]no, you know, I shouldn't have done it.
[23:49]And you know, and interestingly, when the book came out
[23:52]in paperback, I had the opportunity to go back into it
[23:56]and pull that whole section out and I considered it.
[24:00]And I thought, you know, my, my, you know, my,
[24:05]I decided that if the book, if the story could stand
[24:11]without that in it, then I would exercise it.
[24:16]It would have been like a three-legged table.
[24:18]It was the thing that held the story up, right?
[24:22]So it was the thing that explained everything.
[24:26]So it's taken me a long time, you know,
[24:29]to get to this point.
[24:33]I am a much different place now, you know,
[24:36]professionally, personally, my heart still breaks
[24:40]over their loss, but I think that the issue of permission
[24:47]is vitally important, whether or not we are writers
[24:54]or actors or painters, whatever we do or not.
[25:00]of those things you know gardeners gardeners with whatever I mean I have a long
[25:04]time student who had to make a decision she's also a great writer but she had
[25:11]to make a decision about moving her her late mother's perennial bed from
[25:20]Oregon Eastern Oregon to Malibu you know and and she ultimately ultimately
[25:27]did it and then they were it was lost in the fires you know and then
[25:31]there was that you know so it touches yeah and then there was the guilt of like
[25:38]if she hadn't touched it then you're right so this is something that I think
[25:44]we all every one of us goes through and and and when someone says to you you
[25:53]know you don't have permission to tell that's you know whatever that is
[25:56]you have to really think about where that you know where that's coming from
[26:01]is it you or is it them or is it just something that they're carrying
[26:06]a patriarchy the people there's that you know there's there's that um yeah
[26:12]yeah so should we should we open it up for questions or
[26:18]you and I could talk for a long for a long time yes yeah yeah yeah yeah
[26:23]so I see the same person probably
[26:26]crazy stories and I relate to I had a crazy who would pass today in 2010
[26:34]what was your what was your what was your motive whether it's therapy or meditation or
[26:41]you know what what did you do I'm going through an now doing a daily meditation
[26:45]um since the beginning of the year I'm about 200 and six days a happy
[26:50]every day I do something different from this program it's completely changed my life
[26:54]so what what was your motive being able to get this out um clarity uh-huh you know I
[27:01]I have there's actually a chapter in this book that I actually just wrote about um about
[27:06]revenge writing that it is not a good idea it's never a good idea and if that's the thing
[27:14]I mean it's not a good idea from a craft standpoint because what you wind up with um
[27:20]are flat characters and flat storytelling and you're dragging your reader through the sort
[27:26]of the the the muck of somebody else's poison which is not fair the reader and and um but
[27:34]there there there has to be I think um the goal of um of clarity not necessarily resolution
[27:46]and and maybe not even transcendence but clarity a sense that you can now get your arms or
[27:54]now something that you that you didn't that you couldn't have before unless that makes me think of
[28:02]it's a I think it's a Buddhist quote or Cohen that's that says not knowing is the most intimate
[28:10]yes and and and I think intimate intimacy in terms of awakening right not not intimacy of
[28:20]um sex but I mean not knowing is the most intimate and and I think that you do such a good job
[28:27]and I'll be writing of seeking that clarity without needing to know the resolution yeah and again
[28:35]your dedication to return back to a story that has cost you so much yeah but because of the larger
[28:42]context you know to speak to motive not knowing is because peeling back the onion it just comes
[28:51]back to more not knowing right and that's okay yes and the fact that we are a culture where we
[29:00]have to know everything you know we have to know it we have to know everything we have to know
[29:04]how the story ends we have to have not you know we have to not have any room for ambiguity or you
[29:12]know questions or you know when you know you walk out of a movie and I hear some people say
[29:20]wait a second I there I don't understand I'm not sure that to me is a good thing you know I think
[29:25]that's really really important or two people going to see the same thing coming out with two
[29:32]completely different sense of senses of you know and the same with with books you know what I mean
[29:37]where we are you know and and if we all read one book we could probably sit here and have a very
[29:44]long conversation and argue about what it really meant and so on and so forth but ambiguity
[29:51]not knowing we we don't we don't know and that's not our job I think it's not our job
[30:00]It would be a lot easier, I think, if we could know maybe, but what we can't.
[30:05]Yeah.
[30:05]What was the name of the book that the story was originally talking about?
[30:10]Poor man's feast.
[30:11]Poor man's feast.
[30:13]Yes.
[30:13]You wrote poor man's feast and then it traced and then Motherland, which was just a fantastic as well.
[30:20]Thank you.
[30:21]Did someone, did we talk about it, is it going to be option to be a movie or something?
[30:26]Only if you do it.
[30:28]Sorry.
[30:30]No, it's, um, I have, um, well, I mean, we're in Zibi, so I can say, I have agent's focus.
[30:39]So, right, long time, agent's focus, like, for years at this point.
[30:45]Um, but, um, yeah, I'll stop there.
[30:48]Okay.
[30:49]Okay.
[30:50]But I can see it.
[30:51]Your mother is a vivid character, colorful, and, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[30:56]Yeah.
[30:57]Yeah.
[30:58]And she even called tonight.
[30:59]Exactly.
[31:00]Exactly.
[31:01]Right.
[31:02]Yeah.
[31:03]This isn't too much.
[31:04]Um, mention that you're an officer.
[31:06]Mm-hmm.
[31:07]Is it possible that, because some part of your family was Orthodox, however, in the past
[31:16]it was, or the residue, that they treated you like, you know what, and this is where
[31:21]I might feel.
[31:22]If you marry outside of the yacht that I see, they, they sit sugar for you like you
[31:28]did.
[31:29]Right.
[31:30]That's right.
[31:31]Is it possible that those tentacles have reached down to the generation they got rid of
[31:34]you?
[31:35]I absolutely thank you.
[31:36]You might be right.
[31:37]I, I, I, I have, even if they weren't particularly religious, right?
[31:42]Well, my grand, my grandfather was a, was an Orthodox cancer.
[31:45]My grandmother was just sort of like followed along, you know, but, um, all of the events
[31:53]that I've done and all the conversations that I've had, no one has asked me that question
[31:57]before.
[31:58]Wow.
[31:59]And, and I think you might be right.
[32:00]Wow.
[32:01]I think you might be right.
[32:02]Yeah.
[32:03]I'm ready for a reason not to speak to you.
[32:06]Um, I, I was definitely an outsider.
[32:10]I was definitely an outsider pretty much from the beginning.
[32:14]And it's interesting to hear people who knew me in that circle, um, you know, described
[32:22]me as being moved to the outer rings to the outer circle.
[32:27]Um, and, and that is, that is what happens now.
[32:29]And even though they were more vilifying your grandmother, right, and if I understand that.
[32:36]Yeah.
[32:37]Well, the, the interesting thing is that nobody ever talked about her and, and no one ever
[32:41]ever talked about her to the degree that, um, you know, when I was writing this, I realized
[32:48]that no one ever asked the question, why?
[32:51]Yeah.
[32:52]Why did she leave?
[32:54]Was it spousal abuse to visit because she fell in love with someone else?
[32:58]Um, was it because of music, which I have sort of like pasted the pieces back together
[33:04]and that, you know, found the corners of the jigsaw puzzle and I, and I have every reason
[33:09]to believe that that is partly it, partly what it is we have in my family a history of
[33:18]um, uncompleted musical, um, professional stuff and, and, um, that goes through every,
[33:28]like five generations of it, um, myself included, um, but, um, yeah, no, but no one ever
[33:35]ever asked why did grandma leave if you think that's your next book?
[33:40]Okay.
[33:41]Um, you know, that I haven't, that's a really, it's a really good question.
[33:49]I have a whole roll of excellence.
[33:51]Open it.
[33:52]Open it.
[33:53]Open it.
[33:54]Open it.
[33:55]Yeah.
[33:56]It sounds like it would be in terms of your next book, um, this, the journal there, it sounds
[34:05]well, yeah.
[34:06]And, and I, you know, there's so much that I don't know.
[34:09]Um, which is the exact way that it does lend itself to fiction.
[34:16]As a boyfriend, he's mother left and then returned at some point and it's such a, it's such
[34:23]a fascinating and taboo thing.
[34:26]Yeah.
[34:27]And, but we don't know it from the woman's beliefs.
[34:30]Yeah.
[34:31]That's right.
[34:32]And when you think about it, I mean, you know, Dara's lesson, um, your left, um,
[34:38]Anne Sexton.
[34:39]Anne Sexton.
[34:40]And, and, um, and these are things that really were just beginning to talk about now,
[34:47]you know, um, as a mother.
[34:49]Yeah.
[34:50]And I, I mean, I laughingly say this, but there have been times for sure that I have wanted
[34:55]to disappear from the, the task of motherhood and you,
[35:00]do realize that the cost, like those who can pursue art
[35:05]versus parenting.
[35:06]Oh, it was Paul Newman, that documentary
[35:08]with Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, who, you know,
[35:11]there's a cost also to sometimes choosing to parent
[35:16]instead of pursuing your art.
[35:18]Right, right, that's right, yeah.
[35:20]And then the question becomes, you know,
[35:24]how much, what do we do with the guilt?
[35:26]I mean, I don't have children.
[35:28]I have animals, but, you know,
[35:30]in my mother and then her children.
[35:32]Yes, but what do we do with that?
[35:36]And no one has ever investigated
[35:40]what my grandmother went through over those three
[35:44]to four years that she was, that she was gone.
[35:47]And, you know, I went so far as, you know,
[35:49]to look on the New York census,
[35:52]you know, because everything's digitized now.
[35:55]Now, where was she in 1928?
[35:58]And it was like, like the bottom dropped down
[36:01]and she just disappeared.
[36:02]But I found my father and my grandmother,
[36:05]and I mean, my father, my grandfather and my aunt
[36:09]living in various places when the census was taken.
[36:14]Your census was done, but she's nowhere
[36:17]until like three and a half or four years later.
[36:20]The mystery of mystery.
[36:21]The mystery.
[36:22]Right, right.
[36:24]Yeah.
[36:24]Yeah.
[36:25]Hi.
[36:26]Hi.
[36:27]How do you recommend cultivating the courage
[36:29]to sort of override those voices in your head
[36:31]that like, oh, you can hear me so much trouble
[36:33]when you share this story.
[36:35]Your husband's going to disown you.
[36:37]Your husband's going to be pissed, like, how do you
[36:41]work it up to a place that you're doing?
[36:43]I think the first thing that I tell my students
[36:48]is write the thing first.
[36:52]Write it, it can be so paralyzing the idea of writing
[37:01]whatever it is that's concerning you,
[37:04]that's holding back.
[37:07]And I mean, the larger you, that a lot of writers
[37:12]won't just won't do it.
[37:14]They just won't do it.
[37:15]They'll walk away from it, and that's that.
[37:19]And all the walk away from the idea
[37:21]that, and I will say to them, well, how much of it
[37:24]do you have written?
[37:25]And they will say nothing, right?
[37:28]But because the idea of putting pen to paper
[37:32]and looking where you shouldn't look or turning over rocks
[37:38]is terrifying.
[37:40]And I think it's really important to acknowledge that
[37:43]and to honor that and then to write the thing.
[37:48]The other side, the B side to that, is that you have
[37:54]to think about craft.
[37:56]You have to think about the craft of it.
[37:58]It's not just telling an amazing story.
[38:03]It's the manner in which you tell that story.
[38:06]And one of the things that I do when I get to a place that's
[38:11]really hard in any of my books, including this one,
[38:15]is I try and think of my narrator as a character.
[38:20]We all remember dioramas with dioramas
[38:23]were a shoebox and a whole world in the shoebox.
[38:27]And I think of my narrator as one of those characters
[38:32]in the shoebox, milling around with these other people
[38:36]in these other situations and my being
[38:40]able to take a giant step back and create
[38:43]a sort of narrative demilitarized zone,
[38:46]this kind of padding that protects me.
[38:50]And that also informs my ability to write fairly
[38:56]and with compassion.
[38:59]Compassion, if you're writing compassionately
[39:01]about someone who is a difficult relationship,
[39:07]it doesn't mean you have to love the person.
[39:09]I just heard somebody talk about this on the tricycle.
[39:13]Podcasts, and I can't remember who it was.
[39:16]But you don't have to, empathy, writing with empathy
[39:21]and compassion does not mean that you then
[39:27]have to cultivate a best friendship with them again
[39:30]or patch things.
[39:31]It just means that you're able to look at them
[39:34]in a different way.
[39:37]And that can be nothing, but I think heart saving
[39:44]to that end, do you feel there's been healing for you?
[39:50]I think there's definitely been healing for me.
[39:53]I mean, I went through the, what I call the groveling period.
[40:00]the groveling phase, which was just like, you know, please take me back, please take me back
[40:04]on. You know, I'll be whoever it is you want me to be. And for at least one of the people
[40:12]involved, that was just like pouring gasoline on the fire. You know, that was the sort of
[40:18]the narcissistic impulse, hurtful impulse. And now, a lot of times I'm asked if
[40:27]if you could go back into the fold, would you? And the answer is probably not
[40:36]because I feel so much safer now. And it's okay to be heartbroken about it. Yeah. Yeah.
[40:42]And to really mourn that loss. But it's also a very different part of my life now. So
[40:48]it's beautiful. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. I think I have not so much a question, but just so struck by
[40:57]like, you share this story that you grew up hearing that's essential to your father is
[41:04]and essential to who you are with no ill intent, no idea that, you know, right, these people don't
[41:11]know. Right. And then you're sort of like banished in this really hurtful way. And it's as if you
[41:21]brought shame on the family. That's right. Right. Right. And then you're feeling shame like,
[41:27]you know, and running chasing like for traveling, please. Yeah. But what I'm feeling and also just
[41:37]is that it's like, why is it shameful? You know, society says that shame both
[41:43]mother reads her children. Right. A few years note having zero idea. It was going on. Right.
[41:50]And and now it's like so so for me, it's like, I'm listening to this and I'm thinking
[41:57]the people who are sort of shaming you and pushing you out of the family because they feel like
[42:03]you've brought shame on them are kind of like there's no compassion for your grandmother
[42:11]and there's no compassion for you. It's like, it's sticky. Sticking and sad and like
[42:20]such a loss. Yeah. I know for you, but also for them. Because there's no healing there.
[42:25]Because keep pushing that away. Right. We don't talk about this. The stuff you don't talk about
[42:31]is the stuff that creates all the habits. Yeah. Yeah. It's that is that is um,
[42:41]that is very true. And we all have stuff that we don't talk about and things that we're not supposed
[42:45]to talk about in places we're not supposed to go and you know, with stories that we're not supposed
[42:50]to tell and and um, and what do you do if they those stories make you who you are? You know, um,
[42:58]for my family, you know, my, my, um, my grandparents were both immigrants who came over
[43:05]from Central Europe in the early part of the 20th century. And I think that there was a whole
[43:13]sort of Americanization of and my second book, Trif, was actually about this. The issue of
[43:20]assimilation and having one foot in the old country and one foot in the new country. And then
[43:26]how do you, how do you, how do you juggle that? Um, and when I was on tour for that book,
[43:33]I had people coming up to me from every background, every background, every color of the rainbow
[43:39]from every part of the world saying, this is something that we, we grapple with, you know. And so
[43:47]the message that I think my aunt had fed her children was we have to be perfect.
[43:55]Everything has to be absolutely perfect. And, um, and seamless. Um, and, and, and you know,
[44:04]the spurtions can ever be cast in and, and having a mother leave is a gigantic, a gigantic thing.
[44:14]Yeah. But now you're aligned with the truth tellers as opposed to the secret keepers, right?
[44:19]Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah. Hi. Um, your book is, it just brought me so much comfort. Um,
[44:26]I had my first memoir come out this year. And there was a line that I just was a throwaway,
[44:32]a couple of things where I lived with my grandparents. And I had a, uh, an incident where my uncle,
[44:39]um, and I didn't think about it when I wrote it, but he at the time was 12 and said he was
[44:45]going to throw me off the building. And I didn't think much about it, because I, you know,
[44:50]first of all, I think my memoirs have filled good book. Right. So I've been telling everybody anyway.
[44:56]Yeah. And then I realized, um, when I told my aunt,
[45:00]he was just beside himself and I got a very shaming letter like how dare you
[45:06]talk about your grandparents there were European they lived a different way
[45:10]like I guess this whole and I you know I was running around like with my hair
[45:14]on fire going oh my god yeah you know I'm like I've really set the house on fire
[45:19]and I've upset people and that was my whole job growing up I was
[45:24]you don't tell anything and and I don't fuck he's really not going to like the
[45:29]next book because I really that's a serious debt to never tell him but I I did
[45:37]after a few days of sitting with his shaming of me I realized I come from a
[45:43]place of compassion and trying to understand and also to to make others feel
[45:48]less alone and he felt the shame he had shame and I have no idea what
[45:56]his shame was about but I I realized I couldn't take that on that was not my job
[46:02]and you right like I carry it right for however long I did and like I said he's
[46:08]probably gonna be very unhappy with the next one but my grandchild wrote an
[46:12]autobiography and no one ever saw it but the family yeah so I'm so blessed
[46:19]and then I have this rep friends yeah and I just thought you know what these
[46:25]things that I'm telling now I think my grandfather would have loved to have been
[46:29]published he was in magazine yeah he wrote a whole article about flying on the
[46:33]Hindenburg so right so I thought you know I have now this and he I can't imagine
[46:41]he wouldn't have wanted to share what he had right if he could have had the
[46:45]opportunity yeah and you know I think that the burden of being the storyteller
[46:52]and we were talking about this a little while ago that every family has the
[47:02]truth teller capital T every family has the person who sits at the dining room
[47:08]table during the family dinners or or you know or at work or whatever and is
[47:16]absorbing everything and can't not tell that story whatever the story is can't
[47:25]not and if they don't if it doesn't come out this way it's gonna come out this
[47:29]way I did learn that that when shame is involved people don't know what to do
[47:40]with shame you know especially a certain you know certain age groups certain
[47:46]demographic older folks it's really hard they don't and it often comes out in
[47:52]rage it often comes out like you know I don't know where this is gonna go I
[47:58]don't know what to do with it all I know is you you're at the core of this and
[48:03]why did you have to make me feel this way and that's not your responsibility
[48:09]it's not your responsibility
[48:13]yeah and I and I think my father you know it's really interesting that you
[48:32]say that because my father I am certain was
[48:38]sworn to secrecy by his sister and a certain of it and she went through she
[48:44]lived to 102 you know extraordinary woman gave the you know the through the
[48:51]best everything was perfect all the time you know and perfect like perfectly
[48:57]quaffed and I used to think that she went to sleep with her makeup and woke up
[49:01]with her makeup and here let me make up gods in the middle of the night and and I
[49:06]never saw her any other way you know but conversely I mean my father lived with
[49:11]profound clinical depression profound clinical depression that really
[49:17]hobbled him we we were always fond of saying that made of my dad cry we used to
[49:25]cry at supermarket openings he just like if like anything would set would set him
[49:31]him off and they would be like these body racking sobs and everybody would be
[49:37]like oh isn't that sweet isn't that cute and in fact it wasn't sweet and it
[49:41]wasn't cute it was just really old you know it was really really old so
[49:48]did you have a last question yes sorry I love this thank you
[49:53]for giving me permission to write and I have a similar shining story with
[49:58]family secrets but this was
[50:00]just so profound to me. Did anybody ever come around? Anybody ever come up and say, well,
[50:08]I'm really sorry I miss you or anything? I have one cousin. My my my aunt's younger daughter
[50:17]and by younger, she's 12 years older than I am. The older one is 16 years older than I am.
[50:23]So the 12 year old that the one who's 12 years older than I am, she and I had always been really
[50:29]close and you know, a kinder, gentler, a person, doesn't, does not exist. And she is also a
[50:40]storyteller. You know, she's, she's also a storyteller and she's a painter and that's, and she paints
[50:47]the same things over and over again. She paints perfect houses with perfect gardens that
[50:52]depict perfect pies and you know, and it's the same thing again and again. But she, she, we didn't
[51:00]talk for a while and then it was just sort of an outreach as though everything. When she, when she
[51:06]figured out that I was not a monster and that I was the same Alyssa that I had been, you know,
[51:12]before nothing had changed, regardless of what her sister had told her. We started to sort of
[51:20]rebuild our relationship. We're not as close as we once were. But, um, you know, she called this
[51:27]morning. So to ask how, how, you know, how the tour was going. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyone else?
[51:39]It's a good place. Thank you.
[51:41]Thank you. Thank you so much.
[51:51]Happy starting to hear from you all again from me. Thank you. I like having a nice
[51:56]time. I know it's bad. I can't hear you.