Jodie Patterson, THE BOLD WORLD
[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.
[0:15]If you like what you hear, please follow me on Instagram at Zivey Owens,
[0:19]and also at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Thanks so much for listening. Enjoy it.
[0:23]Today's episode was sponsored by Nest Notes, which is a company founded by a mom named Chase
[0:28]Simmering, who's in Miami, and they create print keepsakes that tell stories,
[0:33]which, as you all know, stories are like my favorite thing, whether they're family stories or
[0:37]stories of the places we call home. So shop, kid stationery, and papergrids, and little journals,
[0:42]and all the rest at this amazing company, NestNotes.com. Oh my gosh, I did not want my interview
[0:48]with Jody Patterson to end. I had a feeling it was going to be great because I loved her book so much.
[0:53]It's called The Bold World, a memoir of family and transformation. And it was so good. It's really
[0:59]one of my favorite memoirs of the whole year, and probably of all time, but it was just,
[1:03]she's such a good writer. Anyway, here's her bio. Jody Patterson is a social activist,
[1:07]entrepreneur, and writer. She has been lauded for her activist work by Hillary Clinton,
[1:11]the advocate, family circle, essence, cosmopolitan, and Yahoo, among others. She works closely
[1:16]with a number of genders, slash families, slash human rights organizations, including serving as
[1:20]chair of the board of the human rights capital foundation. And as a sought after public speaker,
[1:25]addressing a wide range of audiences about identity, gender, beauty, and entrepreneurship.
[1:29]She was appointed by the United Nations as a champion for change, and perhaps most impressively,
[1:34]it says this is in her bio. I'm not making this up. She is a former circus acrobat who performed
[1:38]in the Bay Apple circus. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, where she co-parents her five children
[1:43]with love, education, and family solidarity. Enjoy our conversation. I had the best time.
[1:48]And in some way, I'm going to continue this in some format. So enjoy. Welcome, Jody. Thank you so
[1:53]much for coming on monster and have time to read books. So classic, I love the name of your podcast.
[1:59]And I'm so happy here. And I'm glad that sometimes we do actually have a moment to read. Me too.
[2:06]I don't know what I would do without books. Yeah, I have a stack of books on the side of my bed,
[2:11]my desk, in my living room. And sometimes I just read, you know, two pages or something like that,
[2:17]which many years that felt like a failure when I did, if I couldn't like finish the entire book,
[2:23]right? And now I just really enjoy reading two pages, five pages. And so it takes, I mean,
[2:28]takes me forever to finish a book, but just the process of reading without the pressure is really good.
[2:33]Hey, totally agree. I used to feel like if I didn't finish it in a certain amount of time,
[2:37]it was on my nightstand too long, I had to shuffle it out because there were new books. And I
[2:42]I was always feeling like disappointed in myself. And really, it doesn't have to be start to finish.
[2:47]A little glimpse in someone else's life and mind is such a treat. Yeah, that feeling of like not
[2:52]being accomplished is just it's probably habitual for for many of us. Yes, I'm trying not to feel
[2:58]that way, but I noticed myself. I have to like, like the temptation to feel and accomplished even by
[3:04]like not finishing a book with cares, right? I know. I'm like, oh, you should have finished that.
[3:09]There's a new time of housey coat book out. You know, you need to get on that. Totally. I'm like
[3:14]constantly feeling behind. Meanwhile, it's impossible to keep up on every single book coming out
[3:18]every day. I even like put this pressure on myself once I start a series like on Netflix or like
[3:23]I'm not even finished with normal people and it's been so long. How can I when am I going to finish
[3:27]this series? What if I forget it doesn't even matter? And then for me, and I probably just jumping
[3:34]into this, you know, topic conversation, but like when March came and when we the world changed pace
[3:43]and when many of us didn't leave our homes for weeks, I just remembered another way of living.
[3:50]And it's like, it's such a strange time and I've got you know, there's so much pain and so much
[3:53]death, but there's something really for me optimistic about right now and powerful. And part of
[3:59]that is just the change of pace for me. I needed that. I needed a break like not a break as in
[4:06]the time out, but a break like a crack. I mean, we've seen a huge explosion, right with COVID and
[4:12]the murder of George Floyd. And I just in a sense, I think it is just a powerful time. We can
[4:18]redo a lot of we can change a lot of things. So I take it actually as I like that is a blessing in
[4:22]a sense right now. It's this time. It's helpful to look at things that way. I think I know you have
[4:28]many kids and I have many kids and where everybody's trying to do so much. It's like almost impossible
[4:34]to keep up at the pace. And I know we were talking earlier about living in New York and not living
[4:39]in New York. And I also feel there's some freneticness to just living there. Like it's go, go, go,
[4:45]go. And almost everyone I've talked to since the pandemic is like, I don't want to turn that
[4:49]back on. Like that was a lot. I had a girlfriend who's like, even just like getting my eyelashes
[4:57]extended. Like I can't even do it anymore. I know done. And it's funny how we all can relate to
[5:04]something like that. I mean, I said the same thing. I actually stopped doing my lashes and stopped
[5:08]toes and fingers and all that stuff and getting still like continue. You continue. And we find new
[5:14]ways to be beautiful. I mean, you know, I don't take for granted the small things in life that
[5:18]make us feel pretty or, you know, glamorous. But we can find those things can be created over and
[5:24]over again. So it's not that we don't want the act of something pretty. But it's like we don't
[5:31]have to be stuck in one act. You know, and my lashes, I actually really enjoy getting my
[5:35]into lashes put in. And I love the way it looked. But that's not what's happening right now.
[5:39]And so I found other ways I found glasses that are fun. I love those glasses. Those are awesome.
[5:43]Yeah. And actually what I also noticed is if I do a run in the morning and sweat, then my eyes
[5:50]look less puffy. And it's like natural makeup. There you go. You know, two in one.
[5:58]Two benefits. Yeah. I just completely relate to all of that. I feel like if I run in the morning,
[6:03]I end up hobbling around. But anyway, aside from that, it's usually good. I actually started
[6:08]your book on audio and then switched to paper when I was reading yours. It's audio is like a new
[6:14]thing for me. But anyway, I loved it. And it was you reading it. So it's like amazing. So I feel
[6:19]like inadvertently like you and I took this nice long run together. And you just didn't know.
[6:25]I love writing the book. And that was over, you know, many months, maybe two years actually,
[6:30]I think about it. And I also loved recording the book in, you know, an audio format.
[6:37]It was several days, I think four days of studio work, which I had never done before. And no one
[6:44]likes to sound through their voice. You know, it's creepy to hear your own self speak.
[6:48]But the book is so intensely personal. And I went to places. I had to recall things that were
[6:55]really deep down and buried. I recalled them by looking at my journal and journals and looking
[7:01]at letters and pulling out notes that I'd scribble down and tucked away in drawers. So I was like
[7:07]unearthing a lot of stuff memories. And so when I was recording it, I was sort of in my really
[7:13]in my emotions and really in my feelings, holding sometimes I wasn't able to hold back the tears,
[7:18]just recording it. And so it took it off of the vanity level on the vanity level. I don't like to hear
[7:24]my voice, but it was such a powerful moment for me to record my own words because those words
[7:30]had been dying to get out for since I was a kid in many situations. So I do, I take it like
[7:36]as a blessing to be able to write the book but also to record the book. And actually, here's a
[7:41]secret. Sometimes I go back and listen to my own audio. I love that. Why not? Oh man, I do. Sometimes
[7:50]if I just need a good cry or good laugh. Oh, see this? Like an unanticipated benefit of writing
[7:57]a book and recording it. You can, it's like your own therapy. It's like self-fulfilling.
[8:02]Maybe we should back up as like about the book and how it even came to be a book. I mean,
[8:06]you, first of all, I have to just say that since I started this book, I have been recommending it
[8:12]to like write and laugh. I was like, I love memoir and I read lots of memoirs and this was just
[8:18]just like stood apart. It's so good. And I've been trying to tell people I'm like, well,
[8:23]it's marketed a little bit about her having a transgender child. But I think it's
[8:26]mismarketed a bit because that's one piece. But like, it could have been a child with anything.
[8:31]It's how she handled it. Like I had a child with, let's say, eczema. I know that's not to minimize,
[8:38]but it's really about you. It's about you and your life and the things that you had to deal with
[8:44]across the board from start to finish. And that it's like, it's more than a coming of age. It's like,
[8:50]it's just amazing from the parenting to the being parented. Okay. Anyway, go I now you talk.
[8:57]I'm bursting because I'm so glad you saw that and said it so quietly because the book
[9:02]is not a story of my son. I have five children. One is trans. My third child identifies as a trans boy.
[9:11]And that means when he was born, I assumed a girl. I looked at the body. The doctors looked at
[9:16]the body and we said, oh, you have a girl. We named that child Penelope after grandma. And then by age
[9:22]within the first year, there was all of this unrest in Penelope and anger. And by two,
[9:28]and then two and a half Penelope had become a bully. Penelope was pissed off crying all the time.
[9:34]And so temper tantrums. And I really couldn't figure it out. I was trying to do everything like
[9:39]change the diet, take out dairy, make everything vegan, read more stories, you know, tell Penelope
[9:46]how much I loved Penelope snuggle and nothing worked until one day. Penelope just said, mom, everyone
[9:52]thinks I'm a girl and I'm not a boy. And that is like the impetus for my growth. So it's really not.
[9:58]And so there's so much
[10:00]ways on this one kid. But as you know, mom of multiples, your life is not one kid. And so it
[10:05]took me a minute to get out of the darkness of realizing that your kid is so different from
[10:11]anything you've ever imagined. That was pretty scary. But the real book is about the crunch of
[10:16]the book is about how I was able to shift my way of thinking. And you're right, that kid,
[10:21]that unexpected twist could be anything. I mean, as we see now, it's like COVID, like life delivers
[10:28]a sinkhole, something that you're a fisher, something you're not expecting. And you have to deal
[10:33]with it. Penelope was my disruption in life, in a sense, a beautiful disruption. I thought it was
[10:40]I thought it was going to be, you know, the end of the family. I look back at it now and I'm
[10:45]laughing because I thought, oh gosh, what's it going to mean for Penelope? What's it going to mean for
[10:50]our family? We're doomed. And it was most, it was one of the most profound breaks in reality that
[10:55]forced us to create a new reality. And we're better off for it. But so the reality is, yes, any
[11:01]mom can listen to this or read this book because it's really, how do we shift? How do we shift for our
[11:05]kids? How do we keep a flexible mind? And how do we stay with the ones we love even when we don't
[11:12]understand or even if we don't agree? I mean, not everyone in my house agrees on this big
[11:20]concept of gender. Just don't one kid said, well, I mean, I love my brother. I always use the
[11:26]right pronouns. But scientifically, you're a girl. Like, let's be up to, you know, stick to science.
[11:32]Now I know that the science shows gender fluidity and gender diversity. But this is my kid
[11:38]also who's saying, I love my brother, but I don't believe that gender is anything more than two
[11:44]options. What male or female? And so they've been talking this out for 10 years. They still don't
[11:50]agree. But they eat dinner together. They play basketball together. They live in this in-house together.
[11:55]You know, this is what the book really taught me that we just don't have to agree. We have to just
[11:59]be used to quorum. We have to discuss and debate with decorum and then shoot some basketball
[12:04]together at the end of the day. Which PS is like the best advice for the world at large.
[12:09]Do you know what I mean? Like, I feel like everybody right now, that is not just about within
[12:13]families. And I feel like every parent can relate to or every person who's grown up in a family
[12:18]with many kids can relate to the incessant fighting of the stupidest things or the biggest things
[12:22]and not being able to agree. Because after all, I mean, yes, you have shared DNA. But every kid
[12:28]that comes out is like completely different. You know, I mean, completely. Some have, some of my
[12:33]kids have like nothing in common. And then others are very similar. And I'm like, where did all
[12:36]these people come from? It's like, what would that? It's good. It's insane. But the ability to
[12:42]tolerate that and make sense and navigate. I mean, I think many grown-ups would be wise to
[12:48]heed that type of advice. It takes a lot of practice. It takes a lot of times. It's not the
[12:54]efficient way to run a house. Sometimes we'll sit and you're right. It's about little things and big
[12:58]things like who gets the front seat in the car can be on the department. And then how do we look at
[13:03]gender? A massive disagreement. And so we have this process called the lab and we sit down on the floor
[13:09]and each person can speak as long as they want. Do you have the microphone you speak? And you
[13:13]can take however long you want. And in my house, that can be ours. But you know, you can't interrupt
[13:20]and you have to just speak your truth. And so we'll talk about gender and the identity of being
[13:25]trans. And we'll talk about faith. The same kid who doesn't see transgender as a reality also doesn't
[13:31]see God as a reality as a scientific reality. And I think into myself, who raised you? Like,
[13:37]how can you be my child? I'm a member of my church and I have a strong faith. And then here's my kid
[13:44]who I raised who scientifically says that God cannot exist scientifically. And so like at a certain
[13:51]point, I just I'm not willing to throw the kid out. That's good. How many kids do you have?
[13:59]I have four kids. You've got four. Mm-hmm. A lot of men. It's not five. I mean, well, I had I have a
[14:07]birth four and then no, I birth three. No birth four. You should know this. You should have this part
[14:15]down. Okay. So I did have I was I had three on earth. And I had my fourth in my belly. And I adopted
[14:23]a young man. While I was pregnant, I believe that my fourth. So he's he came technically at the
[14:30]end of all of the children. But he's our so he's our baby in that sense. But he's the oldest because
[14:35]we met when he was 18. So I've got, you know, two, three children from my second marriage, one child
[14:41]from my first marriage. And they want to adopt it. It's really a blended family. And when you talk
[14:46]about being right or being with the ones you love, you know, that's the story of blended families,
[14:52]there's no one right. But there's just a million rights every freaking day.
[14:57]Oh my gosh. It's true. And I loved in the book your whole story of how you ended up adopting him
[15:02]and like coming into the was a record store, wasn't it? But your store is a beauty stores.
[15:06]But I thought there's something to do with records or he was bringing records or something with
[15:09]music. He's really into music. And we talked for hours about music. Yes. Okay. So in my head,
[15:15]I turned your beauty salon into it. I mean, I would have I know exactly what you were doing,
[15:20]but in that scene, I had you somewhere else in my head. So this is what happens when I when I don't
[15:23]read and I listen. Things are not perfect. But that whole that whole thing. I mean, that's like
[15:30]just to take on another person like that and the way you did it. And that's, I mean, that's really
[15:34]amazing with all the stuff you had going on. And I don't know. I know, but still it's still on this
[15:40]on paper. Well, I'll say this when I came home that that month until my husband at the time,
[15:46]we have a new child, child is 18. And he's moving in. My husband thought that I was really
[15:51]being irrational and quite dangerous to the family. Right. So it sounds like in hindsight, it's
[15:59]this really beautiful story. But in the moment, we had a real clash between my husband and I,
[16:03]I kept saying, I know it's irrational, but it makes sense in this in a heart way. Not in a
[16:08]logistical way, but in a heart way, it makes sense. And he said, no, absolutely not. We cannot take a
[16:13]a grown man into the house that we don't know. So there was like maybe a month where the two
[16:19]of them would put basketball together on the courts and take walks together on the pier on the
[16:23]Hudson River. And they got to know each other. So my, you know, husband who was 40 something and
[16:29]this child, young man who was 18, they had their own way of developing their own relationship.
[16:34]And in the end of that, at the end of that month, my husband said, okay, you're right. He's special.
[16:39]He's ours. We're his and we joined as a family, but you know, it deserves its own book.
[16:46]Yeah, I was going to say you could flush that one out pretty easily.
[16:50]If you write that book, and I know you're already working on other books, but a minute ago,
[16:54]you said that, you know, finding out about Penelope. And when he said that he wasn't a girl,
[16:58]he was a boy, you called that a beautiful disruption. And I think that would be a good title.
[17:02]So you could just, you know, you should just store that one away for something.
[17:05]I have been thinking about that a lot because COVID, well, I don't know if you know this, but I was
[17:11]patient three positive with COVID in the state of Nevada.
[17:17]I didn't know you were patient three, but I've been following your Instagram where you talked
[17:20]all about it. And I'm so, I can't believe that that happened to you. I really, and that you were
[17:24]separated from your family for so long. Like, tell me a little about that. This podcast could be
[17:28]like five hours. I would have had to be careful here. I could talk to you forever. Oh, my gosh,
[17:33]well, tell me about being patient three.
[17:36]So I was traveling as I do a lot for work. I was speaking and I was on a plane,
[17:41]then a train, then a bus, then a plane. And I was, it was black history month, which was February,
[17:47]which is a big month for my speaking gigs. Going into women's history month, March, another
[17:52]big month for giving conversation. So I had just been flying. And my immune system was really
[18:00]shitty. You know, I was tired changing on the plane, you know, changing in the upward.
[18:06]And I get to beg us on Friday. I speak on Saturday by Sunday. I have this excruciating migraine
[18:13]and spinal pain and joint pain. And I put on some pajamas in the hotel and I asked the
[18:20]tag to make my way downstairs and asked the taxi cab driver to take me to the New York Hospital.
[18:24]Assembly because the pain was so intense. I did a really, I mean, I knew of COVID, of course,
[18:29]we were aware of it then. No one was wearing masks. I was wiping down like my hand,
[18:34]my door knobs at the hotel, but I wasn't thinking that this was COVID. I had no symptoms that
[18:39]were typical, no congestion, no bronchial, no fever, but I had just excruciating body pain and
[18:45]head pain. Get to the hospital, never left. So I was there for two weeks, positive with COVID,
[18:50]third patient in the state, but also just I had, I guess the lucky part was that I had an entire
[18:56]hospital with the attention of the entire, but there wasn't overcrowded. The doctors were
[19:02]attentive. And in the end of two weeks, I was able to come home, but those two weeks felt like
[19:08]forever. I had no one there with me, my family wasn't there. You know, I was a bit anonymous
[19:15]in terms of like being in the hospital is a weird thing. One, you're just, you're a patient,
[19:19]so you're anonymous in that sense. They just treat you in a way that just doesn't feel very
[19:23]personal. I don't know. I've described that, but then also I've noticed this thing where
[19:28]as a woman, as a black woman, if I'm not, if you don't know my title, like, I don't know,
[19:34]one of my titles is Chairman of the Board of the Human Rights Campaign Foundation.
[19:38]If you don't know, if you haven't read my book, right, or if you haven't, if I don't have my
[19:41]clothing on right, I roll out of bed, if I don't have jewelry, or if I don't have lipstick, or
[19:46]something that registers for non-black people. They just, I was treated like a random person,
[19:56]people were talking over me and around me. They weren't, I did not paint.
[20:00]medication for the first 12 hour that never toilet,
[20:03]I'm asking for things.
[20:05]And it sounds like a one off and people say,
[20:07]well, you know, they were,
[20:09]it's just gonna have hospitals do,
[20:10]but it's more than what hospitals do,
[20:12]because I've been in a hospital a lot with my pregnancies.
[20:15]And I've seen it over and over and over and over again,
[20:17]but they just don't,
[20:18]they don't believe what I'm telling them.
[20:20]And I kept telling them, I'm in a lot of pain.
[20:22]I please test me for COVID.
[20:25]And it took a while for people to get,
[20:27]to communicate with me in the way
[20:29]that I'm used to being communicated outside in the world.
[20:32]And so that was a really difficult experience
[20:35]to be alone experiencing without an advocate.
[20:38]And I used to being the advocate, right?
[20:40]So I didn't have what I needed for the first few days.
[20:43]I am so sorry you had to go through that.
[20:45]I mean, an hour in a hospital is like a gear in human time.
[20:50]Like I feel like hospitals are this awful time warp
[20:53]and our whole lives were treated based on who we are.
[20:58]Emotionally and everything.
[20:59]And once you're in the medical setting,
[21:00]it's your body, which half the time we pay no attention to.
[21:03]Like what do I, I mean, I don't know.
[21:05]I don't even pay attention.
[21:06]My vital is like, who cares?
[21:07]I'm, you know, I have better things to do.
[21:09]I'm too busy for that.
[21:10]But in the hospital, forget it.
[21:12]It's like, and also there's that feeling of being trapped.
[21:14]Like I remember going in the emergency room
[21:16]for various things that we can't leave yet.
[21:18]And I'm like, well, I'm on a cane here.
[21:20]Like, what do you mean?
[21:21]My head's fine now or whatever it was, you do.
[21:23]Anyway, so I didn't have to do it.
[21:25]Right.
[21:26]Anyway, but having to go through that in the uncertainty
[21:29]and that's such an interesting point of view that you had.
[21:31]I mean, it's terrible.
[21:32]It's really awful.
[21:33]And there's so many studies on that.
[21:34]Like just how women are treated differently in hospitals
[21:37]and then how black women are treated
[21:38]and has differently in hospitals
[21:40]and how we don't survive similar situations.
[21:43]Black women compared to non-black women
[21:45]simply because we are not taken for our word
[21:49]and we are misdiagnosed and we are, I mean,
[21:51]Serena Williams, so many women have spoken about this
[21:55]where their bodies are, of course, not theirs in the hospital,
[21:59]but also their sense of what's going on
[22:01]is not taken into consideration.
[22:02]So I had that experience with COVID
[22:05]where I was really like torn from my reality
[22:08]being sick, but also being in the hospital
[22:10]and being with a family.
[22:11]And I had to, interestingly enough,
[22:14]rely on some of the techniques that I had developed
[22:17]from raising my son who identifies as trans
[22:20]and some of those techniques you would think,
[22:22]I mean, I thought this is a technique to raise a trans kid,
[22:26]but it's really a technique to do with life.
[22:28]We were talking about that earlier, like I developed
[22:31]some skills raising Penelope that I was able to apply
[22:34]in the hospital to help just mother myself.
[22:38]Like what?
[22:39]Well, like detachment, right?
[22:42]And this is something, it's very esoteric in a sense.
[22:45]I think that we need to teach our children
[22:50]and perhaps ourselves first as mothers
[22:52]to be able to detach.
[22:54]And I don't mean to disregard,
[22:56]but to detach from the things that define us.
[23:00]So as a mother, I needed to learn how to detach.
[23:03]Well, I'll start from, as Penelope needed
[23:05]to be able to detach from any thing that I needed him to be.
[23:09]I needed him to be a girl at first.
[23:10]Because that's what I thought.
[23:11]I needed him to be this really bubbly, smart,
[23:14]beautiful girl named Penelope
[23:16]in all of these great vintage dresses
[23:18]and this beautiful blonde afro.
[23:20]I needed that so badly.
[23:21]Because that made sense.
[23:22]But I had to teach Penelope to detach
[23:25]from certain obligations.
[23:27]Because you cannot be free if you're always attached
[23:30]to things, doesn't mean to detach forever.
[23:33]So as an adult, as a woman I've learned,
[23:35]there are some things that define me.
[23:38]Being a mother, my children define me, my husbands
[23:41]have defined me, my morals have defined me, jobs.
[23:45]And at some point during each day or month,
[23:49]I detach from all of that.
[23:51]So my kids go to their dad's house.
[23:53]I don't cook them yellow if I don't want to.
[23:56]I might do something really wild.
[23:57]I have sex with my boyfriend in the kitchen,
[24:00]on the table, and play it, right?
[24:03]This is like, these moments of detachment
[24:06]are radical for women, the radical for our children.
[24:09]They don't last very long.
[24:11]My kids come back and I go back to the routines,
[24:14]but I'm better.
[24:16]I'm more creative, I'm looser,
[24:19]no pun intended.
[24:19]I'm more flexible in my mind.
[24:22]I am a better leader.
[24:24]I have more vision.
[24:26]So I had to detach in the hospital.
[24:28]And I had practiced that with my son,
[24:30]Penelope, and my children, and with myself.
[24:33]And in the hospital, I was able to detach, in a sense,
[24:37]where the hospital did not bring me down 100%,
[24:40]it didn't scare me 100%, it made me depressed 100%.
[24:45]I was able to kind of detach myself
[24:47]and hover above it all.
[24:49]Some people call it meditation.
[24:50]I like the detachment.
[24:51]And by the way, I have the same thing as you,
[24:54]and I have so few people who I ever talked to about it,
[24:56]because I'm remarried.
[24:58]I got divorced five years ago.
[24:59]I have a new husband.
[25:01]We don't have the kids every other weekend,
[25:02]and I have a dual identity.
[25:05]It's like who I am on today versus who I would be,
[25:08]if you talk to me Friday, is night and day.
[25:11]And it's amazing.
[25:12]And then I'm so revived,
[25:14]because I have time to remember who I was.
[25:17]Right?
[25:17]It's just insane that it's hard.
[25:21]I feel, and I don't know how you feel,
[25:22]but sometimes when the kids are gone,
[25:24]I'm just crying.
[25:25]I just can't stop.
[25:26]I feel so torn apart.
[25:28]Other times, I'm like, well, this isn't bad.
[25:30]But either way, when they come back, I'm better off for it,
[25:34]but I don't know.
[25:34]It is crazy that detachment that you're talking about,
[25:37]and the two parts of being a mom,
[25:40]and then when you're without your, anyway,
[25:41]we should just have some coffee at some point.
[25:45]Yeah, we can swap stories.
[25:47]I think we get better at detachment over time.
[25:50]At first, it feels reckless to the women.
[25:52]I mean, there's so much around this.
[25:54]We derive our worth from our children, from others.
[26:00]We are really taught how to be good wides and good mothers
[26:03]and good citizens and good employees,
[26:06]and much of the work, much of the profit of families,
[26:10]and of the, I would say the world is on,
[26:13]the free labor of moms and women, right?
[26:16]We really have supported a lot of things,
[26:18]and so we understand how important we are
[26:20]to anchor our families.
[26:21]But so when we are away from that,
[26:23]it feels reckless, it feels guilty, I feel guilty about it.
[26:26]But over time, I have learned how important it is,
[26:30]not just for me, selfishly, but for my children,
[26:33]for me to learn how to attach.
[26:35]Because I'm telling you, when I come back to them,
[26:38]after that week or hour, I'm better.
[26:41]I'm better raising them.
[26:42]So it's not like I'm just doing it for myself.
[26:44]I think we should be doing things for ourselves,
[26:46]but also the upside of detachment is
[26:50]when we come back to our team for better leaders.
[26:53]And that to me is the goal.
[26:54]I don't wanna be, I wanna be a really good leader of my team, right?
[26:58]Yes, you're absolutely amazing.
[27:00]So I just wanna ask a couple of quick questions,
[27:03]because I feel like, anyway,
[27:05]what books are you working on now,
[27:06]because you said you were hard at work,
[27:08]and then I want some advice for aspiring authors.
[27:11]Okay, so I wrote the bold world,
[27:13]which is the first book, my memoir.
[27:15]And then I wrote a children's book,
[27:17]called entitled Born Ready,
[27:20]The True Story of a Born in Penelope.
[27:22]And I wrote that with the help of my children,
[27:24]because I wanted up the child's perspective,
[27:27]Penelope's perspective of how he helped his communities
[27:32]to change and to shift and to support him.
[27:35]So the bold world was my story,
[27:36]but the true story of a born in Penelope
[27:39]is Penelope's perspective on it.
[27:42]So my kids helped me with the language,
[27:43]and they helped me with the storyline,
[27:46]and that will come out at the end of the year.
[27:49]Thank you.
[27:50]That was really exciting to do, a children's book.
[27:52]And then my third book that I'm working on now,
[27:54]which is still taking me some time,
[27:57]is about radical parenting,
[27:59]and these sort of lessons that I've learned over time,
[28:03]that develop in the home,
[28:05]but can be used beyond the home.
[28:09]So it's looking at mothering
[28:11]as sort of like this architectural power structure.
[28:14]Okay, so it's now like,
[28:16]I'm not talking about mothering like Hudson Kisses mothering.
[28:19]I'm talking about the strategies
[28:21]that we mothers, some mothers have used
[28:23]to build up our community of children.
[28:26]And then you can take that strategy,
[28:27]and I use it actually in the boardroom.
[28:29]I use it on the streets or in classrooms,
[28:32]or in startup communities,
[28:33]when I'm going to talk to businesses,
[28:35]it's mothering as an architectural power structure.
[28:38]I love that.
[28:39]Oh my gosh.
[28:40]Well, I'm here if you need a proof reader or something.
[28:42]I need that, but I need that book like tomorrow.
[28:46]I need better management of my community here.
[28:50]That's awesome.
[28:51]Any advice to aspiring authors?
[28:53]Yeah, I like to brain dump.
[28:55]And I think it's really scary to write a book,
[28:57]or to even conceive of writing a book.
[28:58]So I like to start with brain dumping,
[29:01]and that is get a journal or get several journals,
[29:04]and just, or, you know, your laptop
[29:06]and just brain dump on a topic,
[29:08]don't think of structure, don't think of order,
[29:11]and spend a few months brain dumping on topics.
[29:13]Like I have about 1,000 notes
[29:15]that were just brain dumps that turned into a book.
[29:18]And then, so brain dumping is one great way,
[29:20]if you're really interested in writing a book.
[29:22]And then, this is a big leap after that,
[29:26]get find an agent, because it is really a business.
[29:30]And you can't write a book,
[29:32]and then think it's going to just get published.
[29:33]You need a team.
[29:34]So I guess get an agent also can be broadened to,
[29:38]you know, start thinking of the structure of the team.
[29:40]So you need an agent, you need a publisher,
[29:42]you need a best friend who I want to read some of your pages.
[29:45]I have a few friends of mine that read my brain dumps,
[29:49]and they go, ooh, that's a good point.
[29:52]Build on that.
[29:54]Or that's the book.
[29:55]Forget everything else.
[29:56]That brain dump right there's the book.
[29:58]So I'd say brain dump first,
[30:00]then start to build your team with agents
[30:02]and possible agents and possible best friends
[30:04]who can help you edit through your brain.
[30:07]Wow. Well, I might have to borrow your best friends
[30:09]at some point. I think I'll start sending them my emails
[30:11]and see what happens if it ends up in books as good as this.
[30:15]I mean, you know, oh my gosh.
[30:20]Well, I don't even want to stop talking to you
[30:21]because I have like a thousand other things.
[30:23]I didn't even read any of my quotes.
[30:24]I have like every other page is like doggier in here.
[30:26]Oh my gosh.
[30:28]You want one quote?
[30:29]I'm going to pick one at random.
[30:30]OK.
[30:31]I thought this was ridiculous.
[30:33]Thinking lingerie could dissolve what I knew
[30:34]with sexism, plain and simple.
[30:36]But I tried taking my mother's approach
[30:38]of being less combative and more grateful with Joe.
[30:40]Sometimes it worked, and I could hold my tongue.
[30:42]But as the disparities in our relationship grew,
[30:44]it became harder for me to diffuse our fights.
[30:46]And often I was adding my own fuel to the fire.
[30:49]Yeah. That's just like sticking my finger anywhere
[30:52]in this book is like a passage like that.
[30:55]So that quote is either only person that's
[30:59]pulled that one out in all the conversations that I've had.
[31:02]And that quote to me was so, or that moment
[31:05]with my mom was so important.
[31:06]I had been battling with my husband at the time
[31:09]on so many different topics, power and children and money
[31:12]and all the stuff that we battle on.
[31:14]And I confided in my mom and she said, well,
[31:17]what about lingerie?
[31:19]Because lingerie men love lingerie.
[31:21]And if you put some on, it will make everything better.
[31:25]And I was just frustrated by the fact
[31:28]that we have so for so long just not called sexism for what
[31:32]it is.
[31:33]And we're seeing that now in the Me Too movement.
[31:36]And we have not called racism for what it is.
[31:38]And we're seeing that now in Black Lives Matter.
[31:40]And we haven't called so many things out for what they are.
[31:44]And I think as we get older and more mature,
[31:46]we just start to not want to lie about stuff anymore
[31:50]and we'll have call it for what it is.
[31:52]And so you noticing that you're definitely
[31:55]on the mom's side that just no longer
[31:57]wants to keep quiet about stuff.
[32:00]We're on the, I've got to call it for what it is at this point.
[32:03]PS, my mother, when I, in my previous marriage,
[32:05]which I shouldn't even be talking about,
[32:06]but it was like put on some lipstick,
[32:09]put makeup on when he gets home, have a drink ready.
[32:12]Come on, like show me your best.
[32:13]And I'm like, what?
[32:14]Yeah, I would have a drink ready.
[32:17]What am I frickin' day?
[32:19]Like, anyway.
[32:20]So I think I related to that advice
[32:23]from an older generation that, yeah, yeah.
[32:26]So I think that's what made me put out.
[32:28]But among a zillion other things,
[32:30]that I was like, oh yeah, that's the one.
[32:33]That's the one.
[32:34]And a generational divide in some ways.
[32:36]And my kids have pointed out ways in which my language
[32:40]was all long.
[32:41]And I think, as my mom did, and as I have done,
[32:46]we've shifted our language.
[32:47]My mom, my mom, from that, today my mom is on board
[32:52]with a new approach to life.
[32:54]I'm on board with a new approach to life.
[32:57]And we've listened to our kids.
[32:58]She apparently listened to me a little bit.
[32:59]And I definitely listened to my kids
[33:02]when they were just like, mom, if you don't change,
[33:05]it's just gonna be old and weird.
[33:07]And no one's gonna be old.
[33:08]I don't do you anymore.
[33:10]That's so true.
[33:11]That might be the best advice of this whole conversation.
[33:13]If you don't change, you're gonna be old and weird.
[33:15]I feel old and weird like every day these days.
[33:16]So, yes, that is great advice.
[33:18]Yeah.
[33:20]Yeah.
[33:21]Well, thank you.
[33:22]Thanks for coming on mom's time to read books.
[33:24]I hope we can continue this in some form
[33:26]one way or another.
[33:27]And yeah, thank you for this amazing memoir.
[33:30]And I just loved it.
[33:31]I just loved it.
[33:32]Thank you, thank you, thank you.
[33:34]And I will come back any time
[33:35]you can pick this conversation up at any moment.
[33:37]Perfect.
[33:39]All right.
[33:40]Thanks, Judy.
[33:41]Okay.
[33:41]Bye.
[33:43]Thanks again for listening to my podcast.
[33:45]My mom's don't have time to read books.
[33:47]If you liked this episode, please follow me
[33:49]on Instagram at zippyowans
[33:51]and at mom's don't have time to read books
[33:54]and sign up for my mailing list at zippyowans.com.
[33:57]So you can always hear about the latest things I'm up to.
[33:59]Thanks a lot.
[34:00]Thanks so much to nestnotes.com for sponsoring today's podcast.
[34:04]Check them out for some amazing print keepsakes
[34:07]that tell your family stories.
[34:08]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at TextureSound
[34:11]for the sound editing.
[34:12]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[34:14]for providing this fantastic intro and now trim music.
[34:17]Thanks for listening.
[34:18]You could always email me at zippyowans.com.