Lisa Baker Morgan, PARIS, PART TIME
[0:08]Hi, I'm Zivey Owens, and you're listening to the award-winning podcast,
[0:11]Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Thanks so much for listening to my podcast.
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[1:09]We've had a long spring. PageOneBooks.com. Hey everyone. I am so excited, but I'm trying something
[1:16]new this week. I'm doing a July book blast. So I am releasing a ton of episodes for 10 days in July
[1:23]for a couple of reasons. One, a lot of these are books that came out during the quarantine,
[1:28]and talk about the quarantine, and are very timely. And I don't want them sitting around for
[1:32]too long. These authors deserve to have their books out there. So I had a little bit of a backlog.
[1:37]And I want to get them out so you can enjoy them. And the second reason is because a lot of these
[1:43]are great books to read in the summer. And I didn't want to start releasing these episodes in
[1:47]September when there's less time to read. I mean, I don't know. Maybe there'll be more time to read
[1:50]if school actually starts. Anyway, this is your July book blast. And today is the first day
[1:57]of the book blast. And I'm calling this memoir Mondays. So today you're going to hear from some of
[2:02]my favorite recent memoirs about their books. And I really hope you enjoy every one of them.
[2:09]I recorded my interview with Lisa Baker Morgan originally as an Instagram Live when I was doing my
[2:14]Instagram Live quarantine show. She was one of the last episodes that I did. And she is the author
[2:19]of a memoir called Paris Part Time, which if you're feeling a craving for jetting off to Paris
[2:25]and escaping this book is your next best option since that's not in the cards. In reality,
[2:30]Lisa Baker Morgan graduated from the University of Southern California with a degree in English
[2:34]literature. She obtained her Juris Doctorate from Southwestern Law School and her culinary degree
[2:39]from Le Cordham Bla College of Culinary Arts, like that accent. Morgan is the co-author of Home
[2:45]Grown Herb Garden and the author of Simple Pleasures 52 Weeks of Turning Ordinary Ingredients
[2:50]into Extraordinary Moments. For many years, Morgan authored a travel and food blog, Chef Morgan.com,
[2:55]and has written numerous guest articles for food websites and blogs. She was featured in the
[3:00]Mothers of Reinvention as a mother who faced change in a positive way. In addition to her writing and
[3:05]cooking, Chef Morgan has taken on humanitarian and philanthropic causes in the United States and
[3:10]internationally, including advocacy on behalf of adults and children who have endured childhood
[3:15]sexual assault and trauma. She currently, well, maybe not currently. Typically, she divides her time
[3:19]between Paris and Los Angeles. I hope you enjoy our conversation. I know I did. Hi. How are you?
[3:25]Good morning. How are you? Good. It's a nice to talk to you. Nice to talk to you. Happy
[3:30]belated Memorial Day, although every day seems to feel like Monday, right? It's true. Although
[3:35]I have to say, I felt like it was a day off yesterday in a way that I wasn't expecting it to feel.
[3:40]Do you feel like that or not? Yeah, I agree. I mean, I'm in LA right now, so we were just hanging
[3:45]out by the pool and barbecuing all day and the girls took the day off from studying. They
[3:49]have finals this week. The older ones graduating, so it was a day of relaxation. In my head,
[3:54]your girls are still young because I just read the book. Do you know what I mean? So I'm
[3:57]picturing them. It's so little. Of course, yeah, they were very little when the book was written,
[4:01]but the older one is 18 and my younger one is 16. So that's awesome. Yeah, I feel like the only
[4:07]difference between a day off and that is just the flood of emails. When the emails slow down,
[4:11]that's a nice day. There's some days I'm like, you know, it's email bankruptcy. I just can't
[4:17]get to all of them today. It's just I call it a day off. Yeah, thank you. But then it's twice as bad
[4:22]the next thing. But anyway, whatever, this is my own. So you have become this American chef,
[4:27]but you say you have a French soul and you wrote this book called Paris Part Time,
[4:31]which I have to say that first section where you were sick in the hospital was so gripping.
[4:37]I felt like time stood still. And I was just like, what is going on? What is what is happening?
[4:43]Like how is she going to do this? Like what about her boyfriend? Like it was so good. And it like
[4:47]makes you want to see everything else that happens with your life. So now I feel like I'm totally invested
[4:52]in like what's going on with you. Oh, thank you. I'm pleased you enjoyed it. It's interesting
[4:59]there because the book as it is now is not how it was originally intended. It was intended actually
[5:05]just to be a travel log in a in a food war, basically of my journeys and friends and bind the
[5:10]place in France. But then when I did that, it kind of begged the question of what are you? Are you
[5:16]in lunatic? Like why are you buying this place in France when you're a mother and your divorce mother
[5:22]and you can't live there full time? So that's when the backstory came out, the part that you're
[5:26]referring to. It was the hardest part to write for sure. And I hesitated to add that memoir element
[5:32]to it simply because I'm the type of person who's probably a better interviewer that interview
[5:37]me. And I'm more comfortable cooking for somebody with them being served. So there you go. But I
[5:45]thought about it after some time and Tony Morrison's words, you know, I'm paraphrasing, but she said,
[5:51]if there's a book that you want to read and it hasn't been written, you need to be the one to write
[5:57]and I love reading books about people's journeys, about their triumph over tragedy and their
[6:04]experiences and their lives. Like I love biographies and memoirs. But at that time, I hadn't read
[6:11]any that were about mothers. And certainly not about single mothers trying to, you know,
[6:17]create their dreams and make a life for themselves and their children within the parameter of a
[6:23]child share schedule. I mean, it's a very different thing. Divorce does change the scheme of things.
[6:30]And so that's why it became important for me to go ahead and include those things because I thought,
[6:34]you know what? There's a voice there. There's a lot of people who do go through this. And it's
[6:40]not an experience that just happens to you and you're like, okay, I'm done now. If you have children
[6:45]and they're younger, that's going to set the parameters of your life and your mindset for a
[6:51]really long time. You know, what does it feel like when all of a sudden you're divorced and you're
[6:55]children out with you on the holidays? Or, you know, you want to go on vacation or they're going
[6:59]on vacation with their, you know, your former spouse, but you don't have no idea with who they're
[7:03]with. So that's why I went back and I threaded those real moments into the book.
[7:11]Well, I am divorced and remarried. I am four kids with my previous husband and the passages
[7:17]about that for me were like, oh, finally, like, if you're right, people don't write about it a lot.
[7:23]There is one thing you wrote in the book. You said, the loss of time with my daughters was the
[7:27]toxic coating on the divorce pill. I was forced to swallow. It is hard to accept that suddenly
[7:32]your children will only be with you part of the time. And when they are not with you, you have
[7:36]no say or control over what they do for whom they are with. And I was like, amen. Like, it is so
[7:42]hard. I mean, I mean, it's been five years for me. It's not like it gets all that much easier when
[7:47]you're out of control of the most precious commodity in your life, basically. So anyway,
[7:52]and I think that, you know, it's 50% of all marriages, right, into the divorce. There's a huge
[7:58]segment of the population that has this as a reality in their life and how that changes.
[8:05]And they say the divorce is second to death in terms of tragic things that you go through in
[8:11]your life. You know, and it really does change, you know, people's perspectives and everything
[8:16]else. And so that's why I decided to go ahead and add those parts because I wanted other women
[8:22]or men, but I think the book honestly feels more to women than men. I wanted them to know that,
[8:28]you know what? Yeah, I feel this too. And these kind of vulnerabilities and the expectation to be
[8:33]this mother, but at the same time, you're still a woman with desires and wants and dreams of
[8:40]your own and how do you do both? And why is everybody always criticizing the mom? Oh, she's doing
[8:46]this so she must not be a good mom. So those are, you know, that's why I wanted to add the divorced
[8:53]mother and the woman aspect of it in this. So that's how it came about. Wow, that's great.
[8:59]It's so nice. I mean, the show so far, first we were like in war tour in Turkey and then underwater
[9:04]swimming. And now here I am with you like walking the streets of Paris and like cooking and
[9:10]you know, I mean, like all these books, it's just amazing. Like also the senses of books from
[9:15]your book too. I mean, you were so detailed about like where you would go to get a certain,
[9:21]you know, I don't know, like all these places you were exploring and getting ingredients and
[9:26]apartments you were visiting. I was like, this is great. I'm unlike an apartment tour of Paris.
[9:31]Like I never have to go to an open house in Paris. I've done it all.
[9:35]Well, I wanted people to go there with me, you know, and I think I always wrote like that because
[9:41]for example, my parents really never traveled. And so I was always explaining to them like trying
[9:47]to share the experience with them. You know, I talk about how I described to my grandmother
[9:51]being out of that time. And for me, you know, if we're fortunate enough to have the ability to travel,
[9:57]you know, I think it's nice to share that with other
[10:00]people. And that's what I find so lovely about books is we can go into someone else's world
[10:05]without actually being there and learn something, experience something, and add to our own
[10:10]to-do list for our lives. It transported me in a way and also sort of validated a lot of my
[10:16]own feelings about my own family. So when a book can do two things and ones, I'm like, this is
[10:21]great. Plus the whole overcoming, like, you know, you're saying you love memoir. I love memoir
[10:27]too, especially when people get over something. And you did that, like, that illness that you
[10:32]described in the beginning, which I keep coming back to, was so, you know, life or death and
[10:37]debilitating. And then you, you sort of rose from the ashes and ended up doing all these things as a
[10:42]result. So I don't know. It has like all the ingredients not to, you know. Well, the truth, I was driven
[10:48]by panic, really, because I went from being happy and like, oh, I'm rebuilding my life and look at how
[10:55]happy I am and lively within 12 hours. My body was poisoned in itself. And nobody could ever
[11:01]tell me how I got so sick. It wasn't like I was in a car accident and there was, oh, there's an
[11:05]explanation or you caught this. And it was that kind of impermanence really put a fire under my
[11:11]bum to go, I don't know how long I'm going to be here. And what do I want to teach my daughters?
[11:16]And what do I want to do for myself? You know, so I went from, you know, emailing my sister-in-law,
[11:22]the combination to my safe, to having the ability to write it to-do list. And I'm like,
[11:28]okay, if I have this gift of days, I want to make the most of it. And how does, you know,
[11:33]that's up to me. And so as you know, especially when you're in a divorce framework,
[11:39]A to B is not going to be a straight line. But I think it's important for people to realize that.
[11:44]And it doesn't matter anytime, you know, how old you are or what your circumstances are,
[11:48]because we all have different talents and circumstances that you can make it happen. And so we
[11:53]can all find our joy of life. Because tragedies and bad experiences are going to happen to all of
[11:59]us. And we'll always be searching for that, that calm after our equilibrium is shaken up. And so
[12:06]this was, this was mine. And I hope it resonates with other people as well. That's great.
[12:11]Well, thank you. Lisa, thanks for coming on the show. Like to be continued, there's like so
[12:16]much we didn't get to. These 10 minutes are like too fast, but to be continued. Thank you for
[12:21]coming on today. Thank you. Do have your book right there. It's just to hold up Paris for our time.
[12:26]I do. It looks amazing. Awesome. But we some more again. So add it to your list.
[12:32]Thank you so much. Enjoy your day. You too. I hope you've enjoyed listening to one of the amazing
[12:37]memoirs on my memoir Monday part of my July book blast. And this is really special collection of
[12:45]podcasts. And I really hope you enjoyed it. So please keep listening to more. Thanks.
[12:51]Thanks again for listening to my podcast. Moms don't have time to read books.
[12:54]If you liked this episode, please follow me on Instagram at zippyowans and at moms don't have time
[13:00]to read books and sign up for my mailing list at zippyowans.com. So you can always hear about
[13:06]the latest things I'm up to. Thanks a lot. Thanks so much to page one books for sponsoring today's
[13:10]episode. I hope you'll all check out my summer beach bundle at page one books.com. Thanks so much
[13:15]to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound for the sound editing. And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[13:20]for providing this fantastic intro and outro music. Thanks for listening. You can always email me
[13:25]at zippyowans.com.