Liz Petrone, THE PRICE OF ADMISSION
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[2:15]Liz Petrone is the author of The Price of Admissions.
[2:18]She is a true believer in the healing power of storytelling, a suicide survivor,
[2:23]and a recovering anorexic.
[2:24]She found unprecedented support and community in telling intimate stories
[2:28]to speak to the lessons learned in survival and recovery.
[2:31]She has built that community into a safe space for her beaters to gather and speak openly and
[2:35]honestly about their own struggles.
[2:37]Today, she's an author, blogger, speaker, and survivor.
[2:40]She shares her stories on Liz Petrone.com
[2:43]and lives in a creaky old house in Syracuse, New York with her ever patient husband,
[2:47]their four children, and an excitable dog named Bo.
[2:50]Welcome Liz.
[2:51]Thanks so much for coming on mom's don't have time to read bugs to talk about your amazing memoir,
[2:56]The Price of Admissions, Embracing a Life of Grief and Joy.
[2:59]Thank you for having me.
[3:02]Such a pleasure.
[3:03]Your book was moving and well written and soulful.
[3:07]And I was like, I don't know.
[3:09]I just was like, I love this woman.
[3:12]You know, when you read something and you're just like,
[3:14]rooting for the person so much and you care right away.
[3:17]Anyway, I had that feeling reading your book.
[3:21]So would you mind telling listeners what your memoir is about
[3:24]and what made you even write a memoir to begin with?
[3:26]Yeah, so this book was seven years in the making.
[3:30]And the book that got published is probably like the fifth iteration of this book.
[3:35]So it was a process.
[3:38]And what happened I think is, so in the book I talked about the loss of my mother,
[3:43]and we lost her after a struggle with addiction and mental illness,
[3:47]and she was bipolar and eventually she committed suicide.
[3:51]And that was about seven years ago now.
[3:54]So if you follow that timeline, you know, as soon as she died,
[3:57]I sat down and said, we need to be talking about this stuff.
[4:01]And I've said a lot in interviews and stuff
[4:04]since the book came out that I feel like my mom died of the disease of silence.
[4:09]You know, when we live in a society where we don't talk about these things,
[4:13]we don't do a very good job of dealing with addiction and loss and grief and mental illness
[4:20]as a society and we didn't do a good job as a family.
[4:23]So when she died, the very first thing I did was sit down and start writing,
[4:27]because I really believe that we need to be talking about this stuff.
[4:31]And that includes my own story, which of course is woven in through the book.
[4:36]So we talk about my mother, but I also talk about my own struggle with eating disorder,
[4:41]and my own suicide attempts when I was younger,
[4:43]and my own struggles with depression and anxiety.
[4:45]So I think these are universal things that we need to be doing better telling the truth about.
[4:52]That's amazing.
[4:53]And did you, so so many of the scenes here were crystal clear,
[4:56]as if you were like living them then, like seen in the elevator,
[5:00]like the scene with your daughter and your tummy,
[5:03]and like they were just so clear.
[5:05]So are you the type of person who was journaling or recording these along the way,
[5:10]or do you just have an amazing memory?
[5:13]Well, I think maybe it's somewhere in between those two things.
[5:16]I don't know if you do if you watch the office,
[5:19]but there's that when Pam and Jim are getting married,
[5:22]and they do that little like mental camera thing, you know, where there's these moments,
[5:27]and you just kind of know that these moments are something bigger than their,
[5:30]their feel like and the actual when you're living them.
[5:34]And I think like, especially if you're a writer,
[5:36]but probably if you're any sort of creator or artist at all,
[5:40]you look at your life as you're living it through that lens a little bit.
[5:44]And so there are these moments, I think, that scene sort of ordinary,
[5:47]and then you go, oh, this is going to mean something later on.
[5:50]I know those moments.
[5:55]I do. I know those moments.
[5:56]Well, there were so many passages that I wanted to, you know, at least flag,
[6:00]because I thought they were so beautiful.
[6:02]This is, I love this part.
[6:03]You said, and this is probably how you titled your book,
[6:05]but I've come to realize that the true lie the darkness tells is one of omission.
[6:09]The darkness doesn't tell you how pain is simply the price of admission,
[6:13]and it's a steal really a bargain.
[6:15]One, I will pay a hundred times over for the simple pleasure
[6:18]of a beautiful sunrise, or a mug of tea heavy in my hands,
[6:21]or another mile run, or a hug from a long time friend,
[6:24]or the smile of my arm to cry.
[6:27]I have a child across the crowded room for the comfort of my seem to be husband's arms
[6:31]strong across my waist while he watched me sleep.
[6:33]For the moments when the darkness whispers its lies in the night,
[6:36]and I am able still to answer it with the only two words that matter.
[6:40]I'm here. Oh my gosh.
[6:43]Does that make you want to cry too?
[6:44]Hearing it again, it makes me want to cry.
[6:46]Well, hearing you read it gives me goosebumps.
[6:48]I think you should just read the book to me all day long.
[6:52]I have more passages.
[6:53]I don't usually just sit down and read somebody's book to themselves, but that story,
[6:59]that particular story, which is really the story of my own suicide attempt.
[7:04]For me was the hardest story to tell, and it was the story.
[7:07]Like there's this idea in writing that every story that you tell will be the same story,
[7:13]and some fashion until you tell the story you're supposed to tell.
[7:16]And that was that for me, which is why it was important to me that the book be named
[7:22]the price of admission, and that that kind of be the lynch pin.
[7:25]Even though I set out to write a story and my mother's honor, it really, that story,
[7:30]for me was the one that I was very, very scared to release into the world.
[7:34]And it's also the one that was the most freeing to tell the truth about.
[7:39]In the book, you were saying how you were afraid to even tell your husband,
[7:42]and you have the moment where you finally confessed to him.
[7:44]And like, he was your boyfriend that, right?
[7:47]I think you weren't even married, and now you've gone from that place of like,
[7:51]should I tell the person in the world closest to me to like,
[7:54]actually now I'm going to tell anybody who can read it.
[7:57]Tell you in the grocery store, while I'm leaving.
[8:01]Wait, tell me more about how it feels freeing.
[8:03]You know, I think we carry this stuff with us, and we think that we are the only
[8:08]person that could possibly ever feel this way.
[8:11]And that could be anything.
[8:12]You know, for me, it was that story, but it could be anything for anybody,
[8:15]any story of struggle or hardship or any story where you feel like you are not necessarily
[8:21]the hero or painted in the best light.
[8:24]And those are the things that when you put them out there,
[8:26]I feel like they make the most immediate universal connection with people,
[8:30]because everybody has that.
[8:32]It doesn't have to be the same version of that, but everybody carries that kind of stuff with
[8:36]them. And so what I really found is the hardest stuff to put out there is the stuff that makes
[8:42]the most immediate and true connection with people, which is really a gift, I think, when you think
[8:47]about it. It's true.
[8:49]I mean, we hide so much. I feel like, you know, like you I always am sort of like hard on my
[8:55]sleeve and my writing, but not as much in my talking with people. And people have said like,
[8:59]oh, you're brave to write about this. And I'm like, well, it doesn't feel like bravery to me.
[9:03]It just feels like finally I can like get it out of my own head.
[9:07]Yeah, like you know, and just like get it out. I don't know.
[9:10]I feel like it cuts through a lot of that minutiae. So, you know, I have relationships with people
[9:15]that I met as a result of writing, right? As a result of things they've put out on the internet.
[9:21]And we get to skip through all these preliminary layers, because it's already there.
[9:26]You know, we've already laid the baseline of, okay, we're going to do this and we're going to be
[9:30]intimate. We're going to tell our stories, which for me, somebody who's integrated and not
[9:34]really good at that whole small talk minutiae stuff, that's also a self serving gift. So,
[9:40]I mean, I hear you when I get that to that whole all year so brave to be putting this out there.
[9:43]But in many ways, I'm doing it for myself just as much as I'm doing it for the rest of the world.
[9:50]I know it's true. It's like I've been talking to you for maybe five minutes and we've already
[9:53]talked about your suicide attempt today. I mean, it's like you're eating disorder and all this stuff.
[9:59]And if we met it,
[10:00]cocktail party, this would never even come up, you know.
[10:03]I mean, obviously, this is a different format
[10:04]and I'm interviewing you for a reason,
[10:06]but I want to read just one more part.
[10:08]I didn't know it then, of course,
[10:09]but it was the last, this is when your mom calls you
[10:11]after your second elevator.
[10:13]I didn't know it then, of course,
[10:14]but it was the last conversation we ever had.
[10:16]She died a few days later,
[10:17]and then the first chaotic weeks of grief,
[10:19]I thought of that elevator,
[10:20]and how quickly everything can change.
[10:22]You can be just standing still,
[10:24]all minding your own business,
[10:25]when the floor drops out from under you,
[10:27]and you're thrown right off your feet.
[10:28]It's completely terrifying,
[10:30]and it's easy then to get stuck
[10:31]and unfamiliar territory where the only way out
[10:34]is going to be calling out Marco and trusting,
[10:36]even while your heart tries to gallop right out
[10:38]of your chest, that the polo is coming,
[10:40]and it is.
[10:41]There are people who will quite literally lift you up,
[10:44]grab your hands and pull.
[10:45]It's happened before, and it will,
[10:47]I'm gonna cry again,
[10:48]and it will happen again, of this I am sure,
[10:50]as long as I continue to have the faith to call out.
[10:53]Oh, it's so nice.
[10:55]Oh my gosh, sorry, I'm like so emotional.
[10:57]I know that you were going with your own grief right now.
[11:03]No, it's just anyone who's gone through grief has found,
[11:07]or really anything hard,
[11:08]as you point out so eloquently,
[11:10]having just literally dropped, you know,
[11:12]floors in an elevator and didn't suck,
[11:14]you know, that your life just sort of followed the feeling,
[11:18]and you just captured it so beautifully anyway,
[11:21]especially because you were 36 weeks pregnant
[11:23]in the elevator.
[11:24]Oh my gosh, could you even get into another elevator
[11:27]after that?
[11:29]I worked on the, I think it was the 16th floor at that time,
[11:32]so I was hesitant to get into an elevator,
[11:35]but I think it was even more hesitant to walk down 16 flights
[11:38]of stairs.
[11:39]And what was that job?
[11:42]Like what were you doing in the office building?
[11:43]I was a computer programmer,
[11:44]I still am a computer programmer,
[11:46]although I don't work in that building anymore,
[11:47]but it's a very opposite of writing professional life
[11:52]that I have.
[11:53]Wow.
[11:54]Like coding and building flights and all of that?
[11:57]Yeah, I mean, I work, I support financial systems,
[11:59]so I'm sort of an application programmer.
[12:01]And it's funny, I think that though two sides, you know,
[12:04]the computer programming world where there is a very clear
[12:07]and finite answer to a problem,
[12:09]and I find that answer to a problem,
[12:11]and I give it to people and it's very satisfying.
[12:14]And then there's the creative side of telling a story
[12:16]where you could tell a story 800 different ways,
[12:19]and you have no idea what's the right way
[12:20]or the wrong way,
[12:21]or how that story is gonna be received
[12:23]when you give it to the world.
[12:25]And they sound like very opposing ideas,
[12:28]but they do a really good job,
[12:29]I think, of balancing each other out.
[12:32]Wow, that's really interesting.
[12:33]How amazing you have both sides of your brain.
[12:35]I only have one of those sides, so, yeah, amazing.
[12:39]Tell me about a little bit more about the eating disorder
[12:42]piece of your story, if you don't mind,
[12:44]and how you told in the back about going to an inpatient
[12:48]facility with a much older woman named Tina,
[12:50]and how that was sort of a warning flag for you
[12:52]that you would not let yourself become that person
[12:56]when you got older.
[12:57]But tell me about you're sort of not getting over it,
[13:00]but how you worked, how you found your way through that mess
[13:04]and what lingering effects do you still wrestle with today?
[13:07]Sure, so the active part of my eating disorder
[13:11]was really, I mean, we're going on over 20 years ago,
[13:13]now, 16, 17, 18.
[13:16]And I was anorexic primarily with a little bit of bulimia
[13:20]in there on the later stages.
[13:21]And at the time, there really just wasn't the treatment
[13:24]options that there are now.
[13:26]And think out that there are now, I think that's important.
[13:28]And I've done some work with some agencies
[13:30]and I'm excited that that is happening finally.
[13:34]But at the time, we just kind of all were
[13:35]shepherded into a treatment facility,
[13:38]which was a generic place where they treated addiction,
[13:41]suicide attempts, eating disorders, anything
[13:44]where you weren't safe being home by yourself.
[13:47]And I had a roommate who was also
[13:51]on eating disorder patient.
[13:52]And she had to be in her, I think, 50s, maybe,
[13:55]which to me at the time was ancient because I was a teenager.
[13:58]And to see her struggling honestly in the same way
[14:02]that I was struggling was so, it was such,
[14:07]like you said, a wake up call to me because I really
[14:09]had thought, OK, well, I'm dealing with all this crap now
[14:12]because I'm young and I don't know what I'm doing.
[14:14]But I mean, by the time I'm in my 50s,
[14:16]I will have figured everything out
[14:18]and everything will be fine.
[14:20]And to realize that that wasn't just a given
[14:24]was kind of jarring and scary.
[14:26]And I credit that moment really more
[14:29]than any therapy session or treatment
[14:32]that happened as kind of an impetus
[14:34]to really start pursuing getting better and getting healthy.
[14:39]Now, getting better and getting healthy
[14:41]was a long, convoluted process.
[14:43]It probably is spreading, but especially
[14:45]then when we didn't really have a lot of options
[14:47]as far as treatment.
[14:48]And I think anybody who's ever lived with an E
[14:51]and sort of would tell you, you don't ever really
[14:53]get away from that completely.
[14:56]I would never stand here and stand totally healed.
[14:58]It's still something that lingers in the background
[15:00]all the time.
[15:01]But I've had to develop a much healthier relationship
[15:04]with my body, especially through four pregnancies
[15:07]and raising children and especially not to generalize,
[15:10]but raising daughters, teenage daughters
[15:12]who are starting to deal with some of the same ideologies
[15:15]that haunted me then.
[15:16]But it lives there, you know, when it lives there,
[15:18]I see it when life gets stressful.
[15:21]And I mean, I'm not sure I've had like
[15:23]good more stressful than it is right now.
[15:25]So it's definitely there.
[15:28]There's another reason why I think it's important
[15:30]that we talk about this stuff
[15:31]because if I didn't talk about it,
[15:33]they would be unhealthy for me personally.
[15:35]So do you still get therapy?
[15:36]Like do you still have like things in place
[15:39]to make sure you don't sort of split back?
[15:41]I don't actively get eating disorder centric treatment
[15:45]right now, but I do keep in place for myself,
[15:49]like a support network of things.
[15:51]And I will fall back on that when I can see
[15:55]that stressors are popping up or, you know,
[15:57]triggers are popping up.
[15:58]I think a good example might be.
[16:00]So when my third daughter was born,
[16:02]I had postpartum depression.
[16:04]And I had never, I didn't have postpartum depression
[16:06]with the first or the second.
[16:08]So it was kind of a surprise when it happened
[16:10]and I didn't have any experience with it
[16:11]and I wasn't prepared.
[16:13]So when I got pregnant for the fourth time
[16:17]and then my mom died during that pregnancy,
[16:19]very close to the end of that pregnancy
[16:21]when my son was going to be born,
[16:23]I said, okay, the risk is huge right now.
[16:27]You know, I've had postpartum depression before
[16:29]and dealing with grief at the same time.
[16:31]So I'm going to mobilize this network.
[16:33]You know, I'm going to reach out to my people.
[16:35]I'm going to reach out to my treatment providers.
[16:37]I'm going to kind of this safety net underneath myself
[16:41]and have people check in and have myself check in.
[16:44]And, you know, that's the beauty of having been
[16:47]through stuff before.
[16:48]But I think the problem is that you don't know to do that
[16:51]if you haven't lived it before,
[16:53]which is again, why we need to be talking about this stuff
[16:56]and why we need to be laying that groundwork for people.
[17:00]So there's someone in my life who's struggling
[17:02]with an eating disorder now and doesn't want to get treatment
[17:05]as somebody who loves her so much,
[17:07]what advice would you have?
[17:09]Like what can I do as a friend
[17:10]or I'm sure other people out there
[17:12]have people who maybe they suspect
[17:13]have eating disorders or things like that?
[17:16]Is there anything you can do?
[17:17]Or does the person have to be ready?
[17:18]What do you think?
[17:19]I mean, the person is just like any other addiction,
[17:23]really, where I think the person has to be ready
[17:25]to pursue treatment in order to get healthy,
[17:29]but having people in your life that are understanding
[17:32]and supportive and primarily understand
[17:35]that this is an illness and not a choice,
[17:37]which is not always how people view things like this,
[17:40]but if you can look at it like that,
[17:42]that kind of gives you permission and grace
[17:45]to always be there no matter what the situation is,
[17:48]and that is so important,
[17:50]because I think when you're especially
[17:51]when you're in the late stages of an eating disorder,
[17:54]which is both when you're getting really close to eating treatment,
[17:57]but also when things are getting dangerous,
[17:59]I think they kind of go hand in hand.
[18:01]The instinct is to push everybody away
[18:03]because people are starting to notice and be concerned
[18:07]and push you towards treatment.
[18:08]So anybody who can survive in their own way,
[18:13]because it's hard to love somebody in that situation.
[18:15]Anybody who can survive and stay there with grace and patience
[18:18]and understanding is giving that person,
[18:21]I think, a better chance than they would have
[18:22]if they were truly all alone.
[18:24]And what would you say to the person,
[18:26]if they, let's say there's somebody listening
[18:28]who's really struggling themselves right now?
[18:30]It gets better.
[18:31]There is hope on the other side of all of this,
[18:35]and it is better on the other side of all of this.
[18:38]That leap is probably one of the scariest things
[18:41]I've ever taken in my life,
[18:43]that leap to abandon what becomes
[18:45]the comfort center of living in this illness
[18:48]and what becomes the identity of living in this illness.
[18:51]It sounds crazy because you're sick and you're in pain
[18:55]and you're not in a good place,
[18:56]but that becomes almost your comfort zone.
[19:01]And to leap out of that is terrifying,
[19:03]but to land someplace, softer and safer
[19:07]and healthier is so worth it.
[19:09]It's so worth it.
[19:11]Thank you, that was, I'm hoping that somebody
[19:13]who needed to hear that today heard that, so thank you.
[19:16]I have to get a tissue.
[19:17]We'd hold on one second.
[19:18]I don't want to give it over to this before in the middle,
[19:20]but I'm in the second, hold on one second, hold on one second.
[19:23]Okay, I'm so sorry.
[19:25]No, you're fine.
[19:26]I could just sit here and stare at your color code
[19:29]and book arrangement.
[19:30]It's so satisfying to me.
[19:32]Yeah, I know.
[19:33]It goes all the way around.
[19:35]Oh my gosh, yeah.
[19:37]I have to redo it soon, but because I've gotten so lazy,
[19:39]I'm like throwing things everywhere.
[19:42]I'm like overflowing with bugs.
[19:43]How do you find time to read all these books?
[19:45]It's what I want to know.
[19:47]Oh, man, I don't know.
[19:49]I mean, I just do.
[19:52]I don't finish every single book, I sit down to read.
[19:54]And I figured out a way to like, I don't know if it's
[19:57]called speed reading.
[19:58]I don't know what it is I'm doing, but I
[20:00]can look, I can go through
[20:02]with just like a second or two
[20:03]and get most important information off of every page.
[20:07]Every other weekend, I don't have my kids.
[20:09]So like I don't have them today, they're with my ex.
[20:11]So I can read all day.
[20:13]And I'm like, I'm about to take a drive
[20:14]and I'm gonna listen to a book the whole time.
[20:16]Yeah.
[20:17]You know, I can, I don't know.
[20:19]I just find the time with my kids.
[20:21]Like I'm always at bedtime, have a book
[20:23]because it's like bedtime.
[20:25]It's like, it takes like four hours to put your kids to bed.
[20:27]So they know that as soon as the first time
[20:29]they go in the bed, I'm gonna sit down and start reading.
[20:32]Yeah.
[20:32]So I always get a good hour.
[20:34]I do that too.
[20:35]I've read it before bed since I was five years old.
[20:38]And I think that's where wanting to write a book comes from, honestly,
[20:41]is that like, voracious consumption of reading.
[20:45]It becomes like the logical way that you think of
[20:48]to tell a story almost.
[20:50]What type of subjects do you like to read?
[20:52]Um, I mean, anything really.
[20:55]I probably prefer women stories and women authors,
[20:59]but I am, since the pandemic started,
[21:00]and I'm in this ridiculous cycle of only reading
[21:03]psychological thrillers because they're so absorbing
[21:06]that they can distract me from everything else that's going on.
[21:09]But I do worry what that's doing to my mental health
[21:12]because I find myself going, okay, do you know
[21:14]that's a murderer?
[21:18]That's the great thing about books.
[21:19]So you can decide it's so crazy.
[21:22]Like they all look the same, right?
[21:23]Yeah.
[21:24]But in one, you're going to be like terrified.
[21:26]And I'm going to be crying with emotion.
[21:28]And then one, you're going to learn all these factual things.
[21:31]And they all just look like words.
[21:34]I mean, I know this is like ridiculous that I'm saying.
[21:36]But it's like, no, when you write a special,
[21:38]to me it's like a level playing field.
[21:41]You know, you can be a nobody in write a book
[21:44]and you can be, you know, the world's most famous person
[21:46]in write a book and they're both books on the shelf
[21:48]at Barnes and Noble.
[21:49]It's crazy.
[21:50]Right. Exactly.
[21:51]Yeah.
[21:52]Which is great in a way because that's really what people,
[21:55]I mean, we all are just people with thoughts and feelings
[21:57]in our heads getting them out on papers.
[21:59]It's just one way to share.
[22:00]And I mean, famous or not, I mean, who's
[22:03]to say you're any more, your story is any more important
[22:06]than yours?
[22:07]You know, I mean, like, anyway, so sort of Lucy Goosey talk.
[22:14]But one last thing I just wanted to touch on
[22:16]was the suicide element of your loss
[22:18]because that's a particular beast in and of itself.
[22:21]When you talked about the priest at the time asking if it was
[22:24]the kid to even share at the service that it was a suicide.
[22:27]And while you were saying, yes, everybody was saying, no,
[22:30]I'm wondering like in your own family or your own extended
[22:34]circle, when did that sort of protection and hiding almost
[22:39]go away if it did?
[22:40]Or is this like a big sort of like coming out of her death?
[22:44]So her family is not okay with me talking about this.
[22:49]Interesting.
[22:50]Okay.
[22:51]There's a big schism there and has been since shortly after the death,
[22:56]which is a huge sort of sadness for me.
[23:00]But not enough that I felt like I had to stop
[23:05]because I feel like putting this story out there
[23:09]was honoring her, which I think is kind of a funny thing
[23:12]to say because, you know, I tell some stories about her
[23:15]that probably are not totally flattering.
[23:18]But my mother, despite all of her faults,
[23:21]despite the fact that, you know, she would wake up in the hospital
[23:24]after us calling 911 and her going in an ambulance and
[23:28]intoxicated and say, did the neighbor see?
[23:31]I think she would have wanted the end of her life
[23:36]to help save somebody else in this life.
[23:38]I truly, truly believe that.
[23:40]And, you know, without getting into all sorts of proof of stuff,
[23:43]our relationship didn't end when she died.
[23:46]And I have full confidence that she supports this book
[23:50]and the story and the work that I've done.
[23:53]And I wouldn't be doing it if I didn't believe that.
[23:56]But to specifically address what you're asking me,
[23:58]I know we do not do a good job talking about suicide.
[24:01]We don't do a good job talking about death in general.
[24:03]And suicide is a whole nother level.
[24:05]And then grieving as suicide is a whole nother level
[24:08]because it takes you a while to get to where you would start
[24:13]if you just thought not.
[24:14]And I was like, just, did you had lost somebody
[24:16]in a more natural fashion?
[24:19]And so like, I was saying earlier, I started writing this book,
[24:22]you know, seven years ago when I'm on first,
[24:23]I was at first iteration of this book was angry.
[24:28]And her and abandoned and, you know,
[24:32]I was the martyr and she was the villain
[24:36]and thank God that thing has not seen the light of day.
[24:39]But also thank God that thing came out of me because it had to.
[24:43]And I don't think, you know, that kind of grief
[24:46]is not the kind of grief that people are going to necessarily
[24:49]feel comfortable talking to their friends about
[24:51]because who wants to say, you know,
[24:53]my mom died a month ago and I'm still so mad.
[24:57]That's not a thing that people feel comfortable saying.
[24:59]And I think it's just the natural progression
[25:02]of losing somebody in that fashion.
[25:04]So seven years I've gone by and I'm not angry anymore.
[25:09]But that takes time.
[25:10]And I think it takes honest conversations.
[25:13]And I hope that the book can help people have those
[25:16]honest conversations and help people understand
[25:20]that all of those reactions, the anger, the abandonment,
[25:23]the sadness, the everything is totally normal.
[25:27]And when you lose somebody who's been struggling like that
[25:30]and you've had this tumultuous relationship,
[25:32]there's that, I'm going to screw this up
[25:35]and I don't want to say it wrong,
[25:36]but almost this sense of, oh, relief.
[25:40]Like, okay, we'll at least that's over.
[25:43]And that is a thing that people really can't talk about
[25:45]because it sounds so off putting and terrible
[25:48]that it's just natural.
[25:49]It's just part of all of that.
[25:51]And I think we need to talk about that stuff.
[25:54]It's amazing.
[25:55]I hope you're thinking of starting if you haven't already
[25:57]and I just don't know about it.
[25:58]I don't know.
[25:59]Some sort of bigger, I don't know,
[26:02]way of spreading like a movement about what you're talking
[26:05]about because you need to be the leader
[26:07]of this movement.
[26:09]I do know that the book is out there
[26:12]and that work is done.
[26:13]I really do want to start doing some community work
[26:17]in this realm because my story of having
[26:21]that a suicide survivor myself and then losing my mother
[26:24]to suicide, I think gives me the ability
[26:27]to see it from both sides and to speak
[26:29]to both sides and sort of a unique way.
[26:32]And I think I want to encourage more people
[26:34]to be having this conversations.
[26:36]I shouldn't introduce you.
[26:37]If I'm on the board of the Child Mind Institute,
[26:39]it's for children's mental health
[26:41]and also to help reduce the stigma of mental illness.
[26:44]And it's more for childhood issues,
[26:47]everything from anxiety to depression to everything.
[26:50]But maybe you could reach parents that way
[26:52]or you could reach the children who were struggling
[26:55]and tell your story to them and, you know,
[26:57]well, anyway, yeah, no, that would be great.
[27:00]I'll find about it, but yeah,
[27:01]just trying to think of good channels
[27:03]for you to be able to use that are already existing
[27:06]as opposed to having to put your own community together
[27:07]to get the message out.
[27:09]Anyway, not that this is my job.
[27:11]But okay, last question, what advice would you have
[27:13]to aspiring authors?
[27:16]Oh, right.
[27:18]Right, button chair, right.
[27:20]It's funny, I did apply for this yesterday
[27:21]and that the host asked me, you know,
[27:23]so how loves the experience of writing this book?
[27:25]And I'm like, I was the worst thing in my life.
[27:29]Which doesn't sound like much of an advertisement
[27:31]for writing,
[27:32]but I think that's how you know it's what you're supposed
[27:34]to be doing, is that it is just so unbelievably hard
[27:39]and exhausting and consuming.
[27:41]And all in, you know, like I remember going to bed at night
[27:45]and falling asleep and then I would wake up an hour later
[27:48]just with chapters like flying through my brain.
[27:52]And I think we all need to be telling our stories.
[27:55]And it's not about, you know, being trained as a writer
[27:58]or being, even being a glue writer,
[28:01]it's about putting pen to paper and putting the story out there.
[28:05]I remember going to a book lecture
[28:07]when I was probably in my 20s.
[28:09]And I had always wanted to write, you know,
[28:12]then that wasn't my career.
[28:13]And in the author, I can't remember who it was, stood up
[28:16]and said, you know, people are always coming up to me
[28:19]and saying, I have a story inside of me.
[28:22]And she was saying that she found that offensive.
[28:24]Like nobody comes up to a surgeon
[28:25]and says I have a surgery inside of me.
[28:27]But they know that writers are saying they have a story
[28:29]inside of me.
[28:30]It's funny because I think my reaction to now that
[28:34]happens to me, you know, people come up to me
[28:35]and say, what would your advice be to write?
[28:38]Or, you know, I want to tell this story.
[28:39]Or they tell me their story.
[28:41]And I think the fact that people are constantly coming
[28:44]up to me and saying they have a story inside of them
[28:46]is the best part of all of this.
[28:49]You know, there's nothing more universal than the fact
[28:52]that we all want to be heard.
[28:54]And we all want to relate.
[28:56]And we all want to have that community.
[28:58]It's beautiful.
[29:01]Well, this has been really inspiring.
[29:03]And I hope that we stay in touch.
[29:05]And I'm just so happy to have met you.
[29:09]Oh, thank you so much.
[29:11]Thank you for your beautiful book, Price of Admission.
[29:14]I think we could go pick this up.
[29:16]Anyway, thank you.
[29:17]Thank you for coming on the show.
[29:19]OK.
[29:19]Bye, Liz.
[29:20]Bye, thank you.
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[29:42]Have Time to Read Books.
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