Abigail Maslin, LOVE YOU HARD
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[1:17]So I'm really excited to be here today with Abby Maslin, who's the author of The Washington
[1:22]Post Bestseller Love You Hard, a memoir of marriage, brain injury, and reinventing love.
[1:27]She's also a nationally recognized advocate for traumatic brain injury and was named
[1:31]Marie Claire's Model Citizen of 2013. Abby started blogging about caring for her husband's
[1:36]traumatic brain injury weeks after his brutal attack. Graduate of St. Mary's College in Maryland,
[1:41]Abby holds master's degrees from Drexel University and American University in Creative Arts
[1:45]Therapy and Education. She's currently an elementary school teacher in Washington, D.C. where
[1:50]she lives with her husband, T.C. and their two children. So welcome, Abby. Thank you so much for
[1:54]having me. Thanks for coming on. I'm so excited to talk to you as I was just saying I just
[2:00]absolutely adored your book, Love You Hard. It was so, I mean, it's just beautifully written and
[2:06]open and honest and it was just like a service that you wrote this book for everybody else. So thank
[2:12]you. Thank you. That is just the nicest thing to hear. I can't tell you. So can you start out by just
[2:19]telling listeners the story in the beginning of what happened? You describe it beautifully in the
[2:24]beginning of the book about T.C.'s injury and sort of how you found out about it
[2:28]from waiting on the porch that morning, just the whole beginning thing until you realize what
[2:33]it happened. Yeah, I mean, I was living a pretty ordinary life. I was 30 years old and I had just
[2:41]turned 30, woke up on the morning of August 18th, 2012 and my husband, we've been married for
[2:49]three years at that point. My husband, T.C. hadn't come home and that was really unusual. I was
[2:54]married to this incredibly ambitious, focused, very disciplined man and it wasn't like him to
[3:01]just not come home. So I woke up and, you know, it's interesting when our lives are in this moment
[3:10]of absolute transformation and this really was a moment of there was no going back.
[3:15]Our brains do a really good job at just kind of putting us in a state of denial about the reality
[3:20]of what was happening and so for hours that morning I told myself, you know, it's unlike him,
[3:25]but he probably went out drinking and slept at a friend's house or, you know, I made up a lot of
[3:30]excuses and as it got further into the morning and I called my mother and I said, you know,
[3:36]T.C. didn't come home last night and she was the voice I needed to hear in that moment because
[3:40]she said very promptly, you need to call the police. And as soon as she said that, as soon as she
[3:45]uttered those words, my mind went to a completely different place of understanding that something
[3:50]bad had happened and knowing that there were a lot of possibilities for what that could be.
[3:55]So it turned out that my husband who had been at a baseball game the night before with friends
[4:00]had been walking home just seven blocks from our house when he was robbed and hit with a baseball bat.
[4:07]He was on the street for about eight hours before somebody found him and called 911.
[4:14]And so at that moment that I was calling the police, he was being taken to our local hospital
[4:20]where his brain was going to be operated on. So just complete shock and it took, you know,
[4:25]it took quite a long time to put together all the pieces of that puzzle. It took more than just
[4:29]those hours waiting for him because it would actually take weeks longer before we realized,
[4:35]you know, what had happened in the details of the assault itself. But I knew pretty immediately
[4:41]that this was very serious and there was a pretty significant chance that he wasn't going to
[4:46]make it through that day, which was just hard to believe. You know, my husband was 29. He hadn't
[4:51]quite turned 30 yet. He was a couple weeks from his birthday. We were still living in that place of
[4:56]thinking we had our entire lives in front of us. We never imagined something like this could be part
[5:02]of our story. And so, you know, it just kind of put me into this state of absolute shock that
[5:09]took months to try to make sense of our brains or not then to integrate that kind of information
[5:14]all at once. Oh my gosh. I still cannot believe this whole thing happened. I really can't. I mean,
[5:20]I feel like now you put the reader in a state of shock. Yeah. Well, for better or worse. But when I,
[5:26]you know, I decided to write this book, I really wanted it to read like a novel in a way where
[5:32]people would forget this was a life story, you know, a true story. And they would feel physically
[5:38]all of the kind of shock and trauma that I felt on that day to really get in that mindset of what
[5:45]it's like to have your life upended in an instant. And you wrote about shocks so beautifully in the
[5:50]book. Can I, if I could just read this one section, you wrote, there is a shock that is as physical
[5:55]as it is emotional. It's the kind that reaches past your bones, digs into your nerves and
[5:59]claws itself around each of your veins. It's the kind that leaves you panting and incoherent,
[6:04]nauseated and dizzy, begging your brain and your body to find their way back to each other
[6:09]so that your lungs will remember how to breathe again and your legs will remember how to hold you.
[6:13]Shock like that is hard to describe. It is the body's reaction to a declaration of war. I mean,
[6:18]wow, that, oh, literally I'm sitting here with goosebumps just reading the passage again. I mean,
[6:24]if you could like look back now on how you felt in that in those first moments of shock and just
[6:30]on like horrifyingness of the whole situation, like is there anything that you could even tell
[6:36]yourself that would have helped you get through that moment? Just breathe honestly. I mean,
[6:41]it's so interesting to me now because I wrote that passage about a year or two after the assault.
[6:49]And by that time, I had begun studying yoga and specifically trauma sensitive yoga. And I had
[6:55]learned a lot about the ways that trauma manifests in our bodies and not just our brains. And so
[7:00]it was interesting when I sat down to write the book. I realized so much of what I was, you know,
[7:07]the details that I was sharing were physical details, kinesthetic details of what it felt like in my body
[7:13]on this journey. And so that first day in that shock, all I could do was try to breathe and just
[7:21]getting one breath out and exhaling and taking in another breath. That was how I made it through
[7:27]these hours that, you know, I would never wish upon anyone. But you know, it sounds so simple just
[7:33]to breathe, right? And yet it has saved me in every difficult moment that I've ever had. Just that
[7:39]idea of I only have to live through this moment and then I can get through the next. Oh my gosh.
[7:44]And can you just share how did you end up piecing together? I know you explained this in the book,
[7:49]but what ended up happening? And I don't want to give much airtime to the horrific people who did
[7:54]this year has been, but just a summary of how you found out and the fact that you even had to
[8:00]go through the trial and all this at the same time, I could not believe you had to endure this stuff.
[8:06]I just couldn't believe it. Yeah. I mean, like talk about subplots, like this way. I can only think of
[8:12]it in that sense because my mind from the moment I found out TC was injured and had a traumatic
[8:19]brain injury. My mind was only on his recovery. And whatever I could do to help him get back,
[8:26]the things that he was likely to have lost, which was everything at that point because doctors
[8:30]had told me that he was unlikely to ever walk or talk again. The side of his brain that was most
[8:36]injured was the left side where his communication centers are. So, you know, all these terrible
[8:42]possibilities on the table. And then on the side of that, there is this kind of crazy criminal
[8:47]component of it that I had no experience with. And so all of a sudden, I have like 30 detectives
[8:54]business cards in my wallet. And I'm, you know, talking to the chief of police and I'm, you know,
[8:59]in front of news cameras asking for help and for witnesses. And I had to make these really
[9:04]difficult calls in the very first days of this. In fact, in the very first hours of this, where
[9:09]I was hardly coherent at all, but I had to make a decision about how public to make our story.
[9:14]And my husband is a very private person. So, you know, I took that into account at the same time
[9:21]that I had to weigh this idea that the only way we could find out who was responsible is if
[9:27]our story became known and people talked about it and people shared information. And that is
[9:32]actually how they found the young men who were responsible. It was, I had done a press conference
[9:38]and somebody had seen it and then had overheard some young boys in her neighborhood talking. And
[9:43]that's how those pieces got put back together. And then very long trials and criminal proceedings
[9:50]and legal proceedings and things I had no clue about. It all just felt like a side show. The only
[9:55]thing I really wanted to focus on was TC. And yet, I was, you know,
[10:00]There were all these voices in my ears telling me that I needed to put my attention
[10:04]over there and think about forgiveness and justice and how I wanted this to turn out
[10:09]on that side.
[10:10]And I just didn't even have the mental bandwidth to really go there for a long time.
[10:15]I feel like that, just what you call the sublot, that could be a whole other book.
[10:21]Just the trial.
[10:22]I feel like I've read books like that just anyway.
[10:24]Yeah.
[10:25]I was really conscientious of that too when I was writing Love You Hard because I wanted
[10:30]this book to be a book about personal transformation and mental transformation and reinventing
[10:38]life.
[10:39]I knew if I went too deeply into that other component of it, it would take away from what
[10:44]I feel are the most important moments of the story and all of the wisdom that I've acquired
[10:52]in kind of just traveling this journey.
[10:55]So many people who followed our story were very interested in the criminal component of
[10:59]it.
[11:00]It's interesting for me, the person living it.
[11:01]It was never the primary thing on my mind.
[11:05]But the end result of the criminal case was that they're all in jail forever or what happened?
[11:11]No.
[11:12]Now, in fact, I believe just one, there were three young men involved.
[11:15]I believe just one is still in prison and people had a lot of opinions about how I should
[11:23]feel about prison and how I should feel about sentences and all of that.
[11:29]I knew that whatever happened, whether they were caught, whether they were convicted,
[11:36]nothing was going to change our story.
[11:39]And I was going to have to find a sense of peace and forgiveness and justice aside from
[11:44]that.
[11:46]And I really had to kind of keep those separate in my brain and just say to myself, I'm
[11:51]not in charge of how these legal proceedings go.
[11:54]The only thing I can control is my processing of this event and my ability to just make
[12:02]the decision to keep moving forward and to keep living.
[12:05]For me, that's the greatest justice there is.
[12:08]And then not only did you have all of that, but you had a toddler, which is another sort
[12:13]of subplot, if you will, that a whole book could be about.
[12:16]So you're taking care of Jack and TC at the same time.
[12:19]And then your mom gets it, I mean, everything, like I said, and you said at one point
[12:23]in the book, you said, trust me, you didn't care of a two year old is the easy part in
[12:27]all of this.
[12:28]So what do you think like what got you through each day?
[12:31]And I know you add a lot of this in the book and everything, but just like on a day-to-day
[12:35]basis, aside from breathing, like how did you just keep getting one foot in front of
[12:39]the other?
[12:40]Or was it just survival and that's like you didn't have a choice, so that's just what
[12:43]you did?
[12:44]I mean, I think it's interesting.
[12:46]I think partly it is survival.
[12:48]I think that there is this will inside each of us to live that is so beautiful and so strong.
[12:54]We rarely give ourselves credit for it.
[12:57]We do know how to put one foot in front of the other and keep going, even when it feels
[13:01]like the path in front of us is going to be, you know, not a promising one, you know, a scary
[13:08]one.
[13:09]But the other part of it was being a mother.
[13:12]And I kept going for Jack and he was 21 months old when this happened and turned to kind
[13:19]of right in the middle of all of the craziness of TC being in the hospital.
[13:24]And those small moments that I spent with him just looking into his eyes or pushing him
[13:29]on a swing, those little moments that I knew were precious, but I maybe didn't know how
[13:34]to pay attention to, you know, real closely before.
[13:38]Those moments became everything.
[13:40]He was the reminder that there was light in the world.
[13:43]So the book is dedicated to him.
[13:45]He truly, truly kept me going through some very dark moments.
[13:49]The scene that you wrote about him feeding your dad when he was dying.
[13:53]I mean, I started crying.
[13:55]That was, I mean, just the image of that, like having a baby feed a diamond.
[13:59]Oh my gosh.
[14:00]It was just, you know, life and it's death and it's happening all at the same time every
[14:07]day.
[14:08]You know, we have to live in autopilot mode.
[14:11]I think sometimes just to get through kind of the necessary logistics of being a human
[14:17]on this planet.
[14:18]But when we stop and we really look at the juxtaposition of all these things and this cycle
[14:24]of life and the birth and death, it's so exquisite.
[14:29]It just, I marvel at it.
[14:30]And that moment of watching my dad who had been sick for several years by the time TC
[14:35]he was injured and then passed away 18 months after TC was assaulted.
[14:40]That moment of watching, you know, this life that had just begun taking care of a life
[14:45]that was fading.
[14:47]It was so much for me as I wrote in the book.
[14:50]It was so much for me.
[14:51]I wanted to look away because to look at it would be to know all the truths of the world
[14:57]and everything that ever matters in life to look right at it.
[15:02]And you know, I wrote this book in part because I hope people will take this story as
[15:07]an opportunity to look right at their lives.
[15:10]It's pretty incredible, everything that we are given on a daily basis just to get to
[15:15]wake up every day.
[15:18]And the fact that you feel this level of gratitude despite everything that's been heaved
[15:22]onto your plate is it's honestly beautiful.
[15:25]There's like no other way to say it.
[15:26]I mean, you have this fantastic blog which once I started reading for this interview, I was
[15:31]like, oh my gosh, like ours who got back, I was like, I've got to deal with my kids
[15:34]here.
[15:35]I was like, I guess I'm reading this blog.
[15:36]But you have one post that was gratitude saved my life and you wrote so beautifully about
[15:40]grief.
[15:41]And you said grief is a terrible wonderful thing.
[15:43]It is the teacher of all things important and worthy of knowing.
[15:46]It is the dark force that binds and breaks the universe at its will and it is the wise
[15:50]friend padding you on the back, insistent that you stop and smell the roses before there
[15:54]are no roses to smell.
[15:56]And I thought that passage was so great because grief obviously can be so terrible.
[16:02]I mean, goes without saying, but there's something that happens to people who go through
[16:06]a period of grief like this that is something that you can't attain in any other way.
[16:12]Even if you read a powerful book like yours, if you haven't like had the loss or the realization
[16:18]yourself, sometimes it's hard to get there.
[16:20]Do you know what I mean?
[16:21]Wow.
[16:22]Yeah.
[16:23]You know, and that's another reason for telling the story and sharing it.
[16:27]You know, wouldn't it be amazing if we could all wake up to our lives a little bit more
[16:31]without having had a terrible thing before us, for sure.
[16:35]Gratitude is this incredible strategy for survival.
[16:39]It really is, but it's available to all of us all the time.
[16:42]It's just, it's a choice.
[16:44]And I think when you go through something really challenging, you kind of hit this crossroads,
[16:49]at least this was true for me where you make a choice about whether you are going to
[16:54]harden around the edges and try to protect yourself from all the dangers that you now
[16:59]know truly do exist in the world.
[17:02]Or you're going to soften and if you choose to soften, you're going to open at the same
[17:06]time and you're going to open yourself to things that you didn't even know were possible
[17:10]to mindsets that, you know, they'll show you everything you wanted to know about life.
[17:16]And so you really do make this choice when you're on a journey like this.
[17:20]I also, I thought it was so great in the book that you didn't try to like sugar coat
[17:25]anything, like that you, you included the parts where you just couldn't, you felt like
[17:31]you couldn't go on and you included the parts where you got mad at TC because I was in
[17:35]my head.
[17:36]I was like, how is she putting up with like, you know, there are times where I was like,
[17:39]is she not like that all the range of emotions that I would expect anybody in your situation
[17:44]to feel, you then showed us that you felt, which I felt like was so open and honest
[17:48]and even when you were on your yoga retreat at the end and asking like, how can I love
[17:53]my husband again or will I ever love my husband again?
[17:56]Like, oh my gosh, it's like to admit it is also so brave, right?
[18:00]You can love someone in some ways and yet struggle so much in other ways.
[18:05]I don't know.
[18:06]It's terrifying to be that honest with yourself is it's terrifying.
[18:10]I felt like a terrible guilty person for so many moments on this journey, particularly
[18:17]because, you know, I think women particularly are kind of fed this line about caregiving
[18:22]being this noble act that we are just, you know, so blessed to be able to serve others,
[18:29]you know?
[18:30]And I didn't feel that way for a lot of moments.
[18:33]Caregiving is a thing that happened to me and I don't have a choice to accept it and
[18:39]there is beauty in it for sure, but I still wanted a life for myself and even acknowledging
[18:46]that, you know, to myself and private was very scary and what I realized though is that
[18:51]I can't be the only person who feels this way.
[18:54]All the things that I'm feeling, this range of emotions, like the rage I feel at a man
[18:59]who I love but I'm so frustrated by because he's standing right in front of me and he
[19:04]looks like a man I was in love with and he's not that same man.
[19:08]I mean, these are things that are hard to say to the people who, you know, would like
[19:14]to leave you with a platitude about this, you know, I'd never give you more than you
[19:18]can handle and walk away.
[19:20]It's really hard to turn around and say, really?
[19:23]Because I, you know, this feels like too much, but more than I can handle right now.
[19:29]But for me, you know, the idea of living something untrue, I knew that would bury me.
[19:35]I knew that would eat me alive that if I couldn't get honest with my doubts and my fears
[19:41]here.
[19:42]I'd just swallow them.
[19:43]I would make myself sick, you know, and I think we know enough about trauma to know these
[19:49]days that when we try to suppress it like that, it doesn't work.
[19:53]You know, we have to get, we have to get in front of it and we have to face it and we
[19:57]have to be really honest, especially about our own...
[20:00]certainty were all just on certain beings,
[20:02]but it is okay to admit that.
[20:04]And for me, just the admitting of it was really liberating.
[20:07]Well, it was, those were some of the best parts
[20:10]I felt like in the book, just as open,
[20:12]because I feel like fighting, even if you haven't had a trauma,
[20:17]like a fight, people don't talk about the ins and outs
[20:20]of marriage as much.
[20:21]I feel like there's like this curtain that goes down
[20:23]and I mean, I for one, I'm divorced
[20:26]and I never used to talk about what was going on.
[20:27]And I still don't talk about what I used to go on,
[20:29]but it goes on.
[20:30]And so when you read things that go on
[20:32]and the intimate lives of other people,
[20:34]it just, it's just beyond how it's really helpful.
[20:37]And, you know, I don't know, I thought it was good.
[20:39]Well, you know, we're all living these
[20:43]like very unique circumstances in one way
[20:46]and then all the feelings around those circumstances
[20:49]are pretty universal.
[20:51]There were times when I was writing this book
[20:54]and I'm writing about how difficult it is
[20:56]to be married to somebody who I can't communicate
[20:58]with anymore because you literally cannot speak.
[21:01]And it's really no different than being in a marriage
[21:04]where you communicate differently
[21:06]and you keep missing each other
[21:07]and you're saying the thing and you think your partner
[21:09]can hear it and your partner can't hear it.
[21:11]Like that, that's just being in a relationship.
[21:13]And so, you know, for me, as much as this story was about
[21:17]brain injury, it was also just for me a journey
[21:20]about partnership and figuring out how to change
[21:24]because I think when you sign up for marriage,
[21:27]at least I did not realize I was signing up
[21:30]for a constant evolution.
[21:32]I was signing up for, well, if you change,
[21:34]then I'm gonna change too.
[21:36]And, you know, TC's brain injury taught me a lot
[21:39]about the brain, but at first I only thought it applied
[21:41]to him and his brain.
[21:43]So I'm, you know, learning from doctors
[21:44]that it's possible to retrain your brain
[21:47]and to create new neurological connections
[21:49]and I'm thinking, this is great news.
[21:51]I can do this for TC.
[21:52]And what I realized year into it, you know,
[21:55]as I'm looking around at my life
[21:56]and feeling like I don't have a marriage anymore,
[21:59]you know, everything's kind of crumbled.
[22:01]I realized I have to do the same thing for myself.
[22:04]I have to treat my brain in the same way.
[22:06]I have to believe in its capacity to change.
[22:08]I have to believe in my own capacity
[22:10]to be something more than I was yesterday,
[22:13]to be the kind of person who can manage this situation
[22:16]and still serve my own life and my own purpose,
[22:19]which is hard to do as a woman.
[22:21]It's hard to do, especially as a caregiver for others.
[22:24]Totally.
[22:26]Even when you said, you know, you did this great video
[22:28]on brain line, just to shift gears slightly here.
[22:32]And I want to hear about you how you got involved
[22:33]with brain line and, you know, eventually
[22:35]you became this woman of the year
[22:37]and all this amazing stuff.
[22:38]We have this blog called Reinventing Our Family on That site
[22:41]and you talked about how you were so used to doing things
[22:44]when TC was more incapacitated.
[22:47]You just took over and ran everything
[22:48]and then as he got better,
[22:50]he, you know, he was giving baths
[22:52]and doing all these other things
[22:53]and it was hard for you to let go in a way
[22:55]being the primary doer.
[22:57]What was that like for you?
[22:59]Yeah. Well, I think I'm a super control freak.
[23:01]I think I learned that from writing this book,
[23:03]examining a lot of moments and, you know,
[23:07]where I'm being like,
[23:08]I really like to be in control.
[23:10]But, you know, when the person you love is, you know,
[23:14]even when you have a newborn baby,
[23:15]you know that you have to do everything for that baby.
[23:18]And so when TC was, you know, in a coma,
[23:20]which he was in for weeks and he was in a rehab facility
[23:24]for months after that, you know,
[23:26]it was very clear to me that I had to do everything
[23:28]that I had to pay the bills that I had to be in touch
[23:31]with his employer that I had to take out the trash.
[23:33]All those things, it was obvious.
[23:35]But as he started to get better,
[23:37]which is a very different trajectory
[23:40]than some other illnesses and injuries,
[23:43]I had to learn how to back off.
[23:46]And his recovery, his ability to regain independence,
[23:49]you know, was dependent on me backing off.
[23:52]And that was hard for me because I really felt at that point,
[23:56]as hard as it was to be without a partner,
[23:58]it was very empowering to know I could do these things myself.
[24:02]And so part of my reluctance to let him take over
[24:05]was also this sense of if he ever leaves me again,
[24:08]if he dies, if I'm alone,
[24:10]I'll have settled into, you know, being dependent
[24:13]on somebody else again and that's scary.
[24:15]And so I really had to acknowledge that for myself,
[24:18]that to be in a partnership with him again,
[24:21]meant that I was going to have to be vulnerable
[24:23]and my vulnerability at that point
[24:25]was going to be to let somebody else take care of me.
[24:28]Wow, so amazing.
[24:29]And I feel like you're so self aware.
[24:31]I think, you know, as you can tell from reading your book,
[24:34]but it's just like you're so articulate
[24:36]and talking about your own feelings
[24:38]and your own experience.
[24:41]I, you know, I, writing was really my therapist
[24:43]for this adventure, adventure, maybe being more word.
[24:47]But, you know, I started to write maybe 10 days
[24:51]after TCS assault.
[24:52]I sat down and tried to write an email
[24:55]to our family members about how he was doing
[24:57]because people were asking these really innocuous questions
[25:00]about like, well, is he better yet?
[25:02]And it made me realize that like,
[25:04]they had no idea what a brain injury was.
[25:07]The same way I had no idea what a brain injury was
[25:09]before it happened.
[25:10]So when they're saying is he better yet
[25:12]and I'm thinking of the respirator
[25:14]that's breathing for him and his head
[25:16]that swollen, you know, to twice its size
[25:19]and his eye that's not opening
[25:21]and the fact that he can probably never speak again,
[25:24]I realized I was going to have to educate people
[25:27]about this injury.
[25:29]And more than that, I wanted them to feel what I felt
[25:33]which was heartbroken.
[25:34]I wanted them to know the kind of man that we had lost
[25:38]because if my husband didn't make it, God forbid,
[25:41]he was only 29 years old.
[25:42]This world might not know TC Maslan
[25:45]and I wanted the world to know.
[25:47]That blog, you know, it just took on a life of its own.
[25:51]So it started out as an email and my sister said,
[25:54]why don't you make it into a blog that way?
[25:56]People can read it or not read it.
[25:57]You can reach whoever wants to be, you know, in the loop.
[26:01]And I couldn't have imagined at that point
[26:03]that it would turn into a book.
[26:05]But for me, it was really just this cathartic way
[26:08]of processing something that, you know,
[26:11]made no sense, continues to make no sense, really,
[26:14]but has allowed me to kind of die for the wisdom in it
[26:18]and really try to mine those tidbits that I think are gonna
[26:22]help me live differently from this point on.
[26:24]They're gonna help me live more meaningfully.
[26:26]And how did it become a book then?
[26:29]Yeah, I wrote an essay in March 2013
[26:33]and it was called Love You Hard.
[26:35]And it was, I put it in an essay contest called Notes and Words
[26:40]which was sponsored by Kelly Corrigan, who's a memoirist.
[26:43]And it won the contest which was so amazing
[26:47]and one of the prizes was a phone consultation
[26:50]with a literary agent.
[26:51]She was Kelly's agent at the time.
[26:53]And so I got on this phone call with a literary agent
[26:57]having no idea whether I would ever even want to write a book.
[27:01]And it was funny cause I remember this
[27:03]so while we were in Canada, getting therapy for TC.
[27:06]So he's in the next room, doing speech therapy
[27:08]and I'm like in the waiting room,
[27:10]having my phone call with a literary agent,
[27:12]thinking, a year ago my life was very different.
[27:15]How did this all happen?
[27:16]And she asked me if I had written anything
[27:19]and I had about 20 pages of what would become this book
[27:23]and she offered to represent me.
[27:24]So really from there I had to make that commitment to myself
[27:28]that I was gonna see this project through.
[27:30]But I hit a lot of roadblocks.
[27:33]I got a year into writing this book
[27:35]and realized that my marriage was crumbling
[27:38]and I couldn't write a book with a happy ending.
[27:41]And I was still very much living this story.
[27:44]I needed the time to process it
[27:46]and to close a chapter and open a new one
[27:48]before I could put this out into the world.
[27:50]So it took about six years altogether.
[27:52]And how has events since it's come out?
[27:54]Yeah, it's been in some ways life is still the same
[27:57]which I think is a good thing to remember
[27:59]cause the idea of writing a book
[28:01]and publishing it is so exciting and but not very grounding.
[28:04]So nice to remember that you still have children
[28:07]and they'll still want to be fed
[28:08]and you'll still have responsibilities.
[28:10]And in other ways it's just opened up
[28:13]just beautiful dialogues that I feel so privileged
[28:16]to be part of.
[28:17]I've been all over the country promoting this book
[28:19]and the people who have come to my signing,
[28:23]they're there because there are people like me,
[28:26]people who have lived through something
[28:28]and the stories they have shared with me.
[28:31]I mean, it's just so humbling to be trusted
[28:33]with people's stories.
[28:35]And I feel every time I have an event
[28:38]just more deeply connected to humanity in general.
[28:42]We cannot hear someone's story
[28:45]and then not see ourselves in them
[28:48]and know that we are all so, so deeply connected.
[28:52]And that's a really incredible feeling.
[28:55]So I'm really, I'm grateful the book is out there.
[28:58]I'm hopeful that will be helpful to people
[29:01]who are going through any kind of life event
[29:05]or just people who want a shakeup
[29:08]in their way of thinking about life.
[29:10]But yeah, now I've got to move on to the next project.
[29:12]So it's an exciting chapter to be putting to bed in one way.
[29:16]And what's your next project?
[29:17]Yeah, you know, I am a special educator.
[29:19]So that keeps me very busy.
[29:22]But I am definitely going to continue writing.
[29:24]I have another book in me, but it's very different from this.
[29:28]And so right now I'm just writing for fun.
[29:30]I'm, you know, this was an emotional labor.
[29:32]This book was, but what I'm working on right now
[29:35]is just for the fun of it, for the joy of writing
[29:37]because despite the fact that I've lived these very dark chapters,
[29:41]I am a pretty light-hearted, you know, energetic person.
[29:45]And I do want to remember to make time and room
[29:49]and space for joy and for lightness.
[29:51]And that's why we're here on Earth.
[29:53]We have a responsibility to practice all of that.
[29:56]So it'll be something very different.
[29:59]That's all I can say.
[30:00]Well, you are super inspiring.
[30:02]Oh my gosh, just, I mean, this is like the most uplifting.
[30:06]I mean, the book was amazing, but just hearing you talk about everything.
[30:09]It's, it's really fantastic.
[30:11]Thank you for sharing all of your story with me and for everybody listening.
[30:15]And that's just really fantastic.
[30:16]So I just want to know also, so, so I've been following online and everything.
[30:22]But what's the latest with TC now?
[30:24]So what's like, how is he doing?
[30:27]And that you have two kids now and Rosie and everybody, like, how is it all going?
[30:32]Well, like, very ordinary in one way, right?
[30:35]So, you know, we went from thinking that we were never going to have a life that resembled
[30:42]the life that we lost to working really, really hard, particularly TC, who just drove
[30:47]his therapy so hard.
[30:49]He went back to work as an energy analyst two and a half years after his injury, which
[30:54]is incredible.
[30:55]He lives with physical disabilities, you know, every day, he's got very limited mobility
[31:01]on one half of his body.
[31:03]He's got limited eyesight.
[31:04]He will always have aphasia, which is the communication disorder that he suffers from.
[31:09]But he, he navigates around it just remarkably and, you know, people who are meeting him
[31:15]for the first time don't often realize there's anything about him that might be a little
[31:19]different.
[31:20]So, we, you know, we powered through that.
[31:23]He got back to work and a couple of years after that, we were sitting there deciding whether
[31:30]we could bring another child into this in this family, which was something we always
[31:34]wanted.
[31:35]But I kind of put that dream to bed and I talk about it in the book a lot.
[31:39]I still really wanted to be a mother again.
[31:42]And so now we've got a wild, very, very strong willed, really intelligent three-year-old
[31:48]girl named Rosie and Jack is eight now, so they keep us very busy life.
[31:53]Life probably looks pretty similar to me for me as it does for, you know, any other working
[31:58]moms out there.
[31:59]But I'm really grateful for that because underneath the surface, it feels quite different
[32:03]and it will always feel quite different.
[32:05]I understand the subtleties of what makes our lives work and I realize that everything
[32:11]is just very delicate.
[32:13]You know, we have to manage our lives in a way that TC can get enough rest and be his
[32:18]best person and get all the things he needs in his recovery.
[32:22]And so it's all kind of precarious and wonderful and it's a very happy chapter and I'm
[32:28]really grateful to know exactly what I have in the moment that I have it because I can
[32:33]appreciate it in a way I didn't before.
[32:36]Oh, well, Abby, thank you so much.
[32:38]Everybody needs to go out and get love you hard by Abby Maslin, a memoir of marriage, brain
[32:42]injury, and reinventing love.
[32:44]Thank you so much for coming on mom's and have time to read books.
[32:46]Well, thank you so much, Debbie.
[32:48]Thanks again to my sponsor, Libro FM audiobooks.
[32:52]Thanks for listening to moms don't have time to read books.
[32:55]You can follow me on Instagram at moms don't have time to read books and at zippy Owens
[33:00]and my new podcast at Kids Do Have Time to Read.
[33:03]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the Sound Editing and thank you
[33:08]to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.
[33:12]Thanks for listening.
[33:13]You can always email me at zippy at zippy Owens.com.