Liz Tichenor, THE NIGHT LAKE
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[1:42]Reverend Liz Titchner is an Episcopal priest and currently serves as a rector at the Episcopal Church of the Resurrection in Pleasant Hill, California.
[1:51]She received her Masters of Divinity at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific and a Masters of Arts in Ethics and Social Theory at the Graduate Theological Union.
[1:59]Liz is the author of The Night Lake, Young Priest maps the topography of grief.
[2:05]After experiencing the tragic death of a newborn baby and the suicide of a mother struggling with alcoholism as a young Episcopal priest, Liz had to find faith where there seemed to be no hope and realized these terrible parts of her own life would join her in the pulpit.
[2:19]The Night Lake is the story of how Liz found a way through unimaginable tragedies that felt almost impossible to survive.
[2:26]Through her faith and dedication, Liz managed to carve out some space for the slow labor of learning to live again in grief.
[2:32]Welcome Liz, thank you so much for coming on mom's don't have time to read books to discuss the night lake.
[2:38]Yeah, thank you for having me.
[2:40]So your subtitle is a young priest maps the topography of grief and when I saw this whole cover and subtitle everything I was like,
[2:48]oh my gosh, I have to read that, that was really amazing and it was and oh my gosh, can you please tell listeners basically what it's about a period of time and what happened and what made you turn your experience into a book?
[3:05]Sure. Well, I had been moving towards being ordained as a priest for a long time and when it actually came to pass when it happened,
[3:16]my life was at a really different landscape than what I had imagined it would look like at that point.
[3:21]So my mom had been sick for a long time. She struggled with alcoholism for many, many years and it was just a couple of months before I was ordained as a priest that she died.
[3:34]She died by suicide. It was just awful and unexpected that it would end that way.
[3:40]And then a few months later, I was ordained and it was an unusual set up in some ways I decided to take an extra year in graduate school.
[3:50]So I was ordained and then was continuing that academic year studying more and so I began my first call splitting my time between a parish and a summer camp camp and conference center and my second child, a son was born about maybe three months after I began at that parish.
[4:09]So I started and was sort of just getting my feet under me in this new job and not just a new place, but my role in doing that work.
[4:19]You learn everything in school but it's pretty different when you're actually out trying to do the work and discover how you're going to do that work.
[4:29]And so I went on to maternity leave and then 40 days later our son Fritz died, totally, suddenly, totally unexpectedly. He'd been this huge, healthy, everybody said, I'm so big.
[4:43]And then all of a sudden I was the parent of a dead baby, which, you know, there are statistics, right, but I was young and I was healthy and I don't think I had ever really considered that that would be the
[4:59]shape of my life and maybe especially because my mom had just died, you know, one of the things that people said to me, wait, but, but you just went through that. How can you be going through this now? It was not even a year and a half later.
[5:12]So when I went back to work, it was maybe a month later after he died. I was still learning how to do this job and there are a lot of different ways to inhabit it hasn't been that long really.
[5:26]That women have been ordained that it's still a job, a role that is so influenced by the many centuries of male dominated leadership.
[5:37]And what I came to see pretty quickly was that I actually couldn't separate my grief and what I was doing there with authentically showing up.
[5:49]And yet my job was to lead people towards hope and to look for how that, you know, the moral arc of the universe is bending towards justice and where we might find good news together and in some ways that felt so at odds with the really dark and desperate place where I so often found myself in those days.
[6:16]And as I sort of began sticking my toes in the water a little bit, I discovered the more that I showed up authentically, the more I was honest about where I was wrestling, the more it seemed to work what I was trying to do in my job.
[6:35]And so the book is a sort of winding road through that process of grieving these two beloved people of trying to discover how to survive that.
[6:46]There were times when I wasn't sure I was going to come through on the other end or what that would look like and then trying to both lead a community and also parent.
[6:57]Water was to to and change when our son Fritz died and you know wrestling do we do this again, we wanted to raise siblings.
[7:07]How do we do that.
[7:10]And so it's a story of what is too much and how we try to rise to that and live through it.
[7:20]And I suppose what to the second part of your question why I decided to write the book.
[7:27]So I looked it up the other day I was curious. Brine Brown's book, Daring Greatly was published about two weeks after my mom died.
[7:36]So there was this sort of surge as that got traction.
[7:41]I found that book a lot of people found that book.
[7:44]And there started to be more conversation about this intersection between leading and being vulnerable.
[7:54]And it's not something that I saw a whole lot of it's I was not taught to preach vulnerable.
[8:02]And I was not, you know, we're taught to be really careful not to use the congregation as your therapist and I totally support that.
[8:11]And and the other adage that I heard, which I to a certain extent agree with is to preach from your scars not from your wounds.
[8:21]And don't don't go up there and bleed all over everybody.
[8:24]And that makes a lot of sense to me.
[8:27]And it breaks down when you're in the midst of life and life is happening.
[8:35]And all these people knew that my mom had just died by suicide. They knew that I had just lost our baby totally unexpectedly.
[8:43]And so for me to get up there and unpack our sacred texts or try to point to different ideas leading us forward and and not bring myself into it just felt it felt dishonest.
[8:57]And so somewhat to the the concern of some more traditional folks I started doing that I started being just just real and sometimes raw in what I shared.
[9:12]It wasn't for everybody, you know, not everybody is ready for that, but the folks who needed it the the response was really stunning. I remember one day several years ago, someone who's now a friend came to me after hearing one of these and said, okay, so when are you going to write that book.
[9:34]And she had been through some some really tough stuff to just a terrifying diagnosis and life unraveling and then coming back together on the other side of that.
[9:45]And I couldn't really get away from it. It felt like it needed to come out of me. This is such a powerful story.
[9:52]How did you maintain your faith in God after everything that happened to you.
[9:58]It was really hard.
[10:00]Honestly, there were some pretty bleak days and seasons.
[10:06]I think some of what made a difference for me
[10:09]was that my faith is not a one-on-one kind of thing.
[10:14]It's not just me, Liz, and God, and we go back and forth,
[10:19]and it all depends on that line.
[10:22]I believe that this happens in community,
[10:24]and that's a way that I have tried to engage it for.
[10:29]Well, for as long as I've been part of a faith community,
[10:34]I found my way into the church as a teenager
[10:38]when things at home had gone really sideways,
[10:42]and I needed, I had briefly plugged in as a family
[10:46]when I was, I don't know, 11 or 12,
[10:48]and then my parents divorced and everything sort of unraveled,
[10:51]and I went back when I got my driver's license
[10:55]and found this group of people who were ready to show up
[11:01]and be said, and I looked rather different than I had
[11:04]in various terms like a shaved head and bright green hair,
[11:08]and they said, well, we're so glad you're here.
[11:12]Who would you like to step up and leave this part?
[11:14]Would you want to come to this class, sure?
[11:17]No, you don't have to, it was amazing.
[11:21]And that continued for me, especially in college,
[11:23]there's just an amazing crew of folks
[11:26]and that we chose to be kin together
[11:31]that we could do this work of seeking
[11:34]of wrestling really big questions
[11:36]that don't have answers of trying to discern
[11:40]what to do with our lives,
[11:42]that we could do that in community.
[11:45]And so both when my mom died and when Fritz died,
[11:50]those were the people that showed up physically
[11:54]and also finding really creative ways
[11:57]to be with us from across the miles,
[12:01]and they showed up again and again,
[12:03]and again, not with platitudes, not with,
[12:05]oh, he's got needed another angel and blah, blah, blah,
[12:10]not in the event, but just we're with you.
[12:13]We're letting our hearts break with you,
[12:16]and we're gonna stay alongside.
[12:18]And I think how I ultimately held onto my face
[12:23]was allowing these other people to have that faith
[12:26]on my behalf when I couldn't,
[12:29]that there were times when long periods of time
[12:32]when I felt like maybe I wanna pray or connect
[12:35]or listen and I have no idea how to even begin to do that.
[12:40]I don't know what those words would be,
[12:42]but I knew that there were other people joining me there
[12:46]who could and would who were doing that on my behalf.
[12:51]And I think that's ultimately how we can make it for.
[12:53]We take turns.
[12:54]We don't all have to have it figured out or steady
[12:58]or every day all the time,
[13:00]but we can carry each other in that.
[13:02]And I think that's really what carried me through.
[13:06]Wow.
[13:06]It's really, you know, it just, it speaks to the power
[13:09]of community more than, more than really anything.
[13:12]And image, you just strap up if you're walking
[13:16]through the door and feeling welcomed.
[13:17]I mean, you like at its core,
[13:20]that is what we are all looking for,
[13:22]whether it's online or in a church or in, you know,
[13:28]in a recovery group or in any, you know,
[13:30]all of these, and we watch it, right?
[13:32]People are just longing for connection in any way
[13:37]and the fact that yours had the perk
[13:40]of having got attaches.
[13:41]Like bonus, bonus, bonus, bonus group member there.
[13:47]Well, I think that's beautiful.
[13:48]What you just said about being close to people
[13:51]who can maintain the faith when you're as wavered.
[13:53]It's just beautiful.
[13:54]I bet those people now that you're not necessarily
[13:58]on the other side, but in a different place
[14:00]and in the depths of despair must feel so sort of proud
[14:05]of you that they've helped pull you through.
[14:07]And I bet you'll turn around.
[14:08]And if you haven't already,
[14:09]you'll be the one pulling them through
[14:11]whatever life throws their way, right?
[14:13]Yeah, I hope they know that.
[14:14]Some of them have like the key people
[14:17]who show up in this book have read it.
[14:19]You know, I ran it by them.
[14:21]But I wonder that sometimes in people can be so,
[14:24]especially the ones who are especially generous
[14:28]and loving and just so thoughtful.
[14:31]They're often also the ones who end up being the most humble,
[14:34]I think.
[14:35]I wonder sometimes if they know how critical they were,
[14:41]how much of a difference it made.
[14:44]You know, sometimes for me,
[14:46]they were times when I couldn't respond.
[14:48]I could receive it.
[14:49]And that was about as much energy as I had.
[14:53]And so I wonder, you know,
[14:54]sometimes you send things out into the void
[14:56]and you hope maybe it'll make a difference,
[14:58]maybe it will, you don't know.
[14:59]And I hope they know that.
[15:01]Well, first of all, you can now play them this podcast.
[15:05]Yeah.
[15:06]You should like set aside, you know,
[15:09]half an hour this afternoon and just like send a few emails
[15:12]and or text, you know, just tell them
[15:14]because I bet it'll make their day.
[15:16]Yeah.
[15:17]Anyway, okay, not to give you more work.
[15:19]Good work to do.
[15:21]Yeah, good work to do.
[15:22]There were so many parts of this book
[15:24]that were just beyond beautiful.
[15:26]I also loved the whole tradition you had of folding up the notes
[15:31]and then as the book went on,
[15:32]pulling out the little scraps of paper,
[15:34]can you just explain that a little more
[15:35]and talk about the power of these little
[15:38]thoughts that your closest women in your life
[15:41]had to impart over time.
[15:44]Yeah. So Fritz was our second child.
[15:46]We had everything we needed.
[15:48]We did not care about dressing a boy in girls' clothes,
[15:53]you know, his baby at like whatever.
[15:55]We also said this point we were living
[15:58]at the camp where we were working at Lake Tahoes,
[16:00]right on the shore of Lake Tahoe.
[16:02]And we were living in a cabin that was,
[16:05]I think it was 340 square feet,
[16:08]including the outside shed thingy that was a pack.
[16:11]It was, it was very cozy.
[16:13]And so we also really didn't need more stuff.
[16:16]We did not want a baby shower,
[16:17]but one of our neighbors who lived at the camp there
[16:21]just felt like, you know, ritual matters.
[16:23]We need to mark this.
[16:24]We need to celebrate and welcome this baby.
[16:27]And no, we don't need to give you more things,
[16:30]but we need to do something.
[16:31]And so she gathered the,
[16:34]basically the women at camp,
[16:36]the women and girls who lived at camp.
[16:37]So it was me and my best friend, Lori, who's the chef there.
[16:41]And her two daughters who I'm not gonna get their ages right.
[16:45]There may be like seven or nine, seven or nine,
[16:47]something like pretty little still in my mother-in-law.
[16:51]And we gathered in their home at, you know,
[16:55]some of the setting over Lake Tahoe
[16:57]and eight all kinds of wonderful food.
[17:00]And the girls really sloppily painted my fingernails,
[17:03]my toenails.
[17:05]And then they, what they decided they wanted to give me
[17:10]was not, you know, onesies and pacifiers,
[17:13]but their well wishes and their intentions
[17:16]and their love in the form of these little,
[17:20]these little notes.
[17:21]And they were, I don't know, maybe three by two
[17:24]or not even that, like two by one,
[17:26]in very small pieces of paper.
[17:29]And they wrote these wishes for me with the intention
[17:33]that I opened them while I was in labor with Fritz
[17:38]and that that would give me strength and encouragement.
[17:41]And, you know, I know they were with me and all that.
[17:45]And so they gave me them in this little bottle.
[17:48]And Fritz was really late, like really, really late.
[17:53]We cried, oh my goodness, everything.
[17:56]So I walked so many stairs with that baby,
[18:00]trying to get them out.
[18:01]And finally, as I was sort of in Nevada,
[18:03]the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe,
[18:05]where at least at the time,
[18:07]they're not a whole lot by way of regulations.
[18:09]And so we were planning a home birth.
[18:12]Alice had been born at home with a midwife also.
[18:15]And we came to like the very last day
[18:19]that they, even in Nevada, they would let us do this.
[18:22]So he was 20 days late.
[18:24]And as a last ditch effort, I drank castor oil
[18:27]and the next morning woke up in just roaring labor.
[18:31]And he was nine and a half pounds.
[18:34]It was wild.
[18:35]There was no stopping to read notes at that point.
[18:38]I don't know if they even crossed my mind.
[18:40]And then, you know, we were in the baby fog, newborn,
[18:43]chasing a toddler, all that.
[18:45]And I don't really remember,
[18:47]but I don't think I really thought about them
[18:49]or noticed them until he died.
[18:54]So he died at night and getting up the next morning
[18:57]and there's light everywhere and there's no baby.
[19:00]And I just thought, how the hell am I gonna do this?
[19:03]How do I even do this first day?
[19:05]And I saw this, this bottle, this little green glass bottle
[19:11]sitting on the shelf next to the plates and stuff.
[19:14]And I took it down and pulled a note out
[19:19]and I read it and I'm not gonna remember.
[19:22]It's in the book, which came one.
[19:24]But I decided I was gonna read,
[19:27]open one a day until they ran out
[19:30]and it got me through the first week.
[19:33]And then I sort of strung thread through them
[19:36]and taped them up in the window.
[19:38]They're like totally bleached out now.
[19:40]You can barely, barely read the words anymore.
[19:43]But it was just this sort of connective tissue
[19:48]between the life that these beloved women and girls had wished
[19:55]for us and sent towards us and then unfold.
[20:00]in this entirely different way. But trying to trust that the love they offered to me and this
[20:07]child was still there. So beautiful. By the way, I think that's a really nice thing to do
[20:13]even for people who have lost them in recently. Just like maybe this will get you through a week
[20:19]because in that frame of mind, that's basically as far as you can even see. And even that feels like
[20:25]insurmountable. So for everybody who's like, what can I do to help somebody who's grieving?
[20:30]What should I say? What should I do? Just putting like seven scraps of paper in a box
[20:35]might just be the most helpful thing you can do. It's a start. To get you. To get you,
[20:41]yeah, just, you know, it's like the jumper cables on a car, you know, that's not going to,
[20:46]it's not going to fix, it's not going to fix the car, but it'll get you to the shop. So
[20:49]Yeah, I love that. Yeah. Tell me a little more about writing this book. How long did it take you
[20:56]to write it? When did you find the time to do this? Where did you do it? Like, all of it, the process.
[21:01]Oh, geez. So you're sort of kicking around and you know that nagging that doesn't go away.
[21:09]And it was I think December 2017. I emailed a friend who has written many books and said,
[21:21]Jane, okay, fine. Like, I'm ready. But how do I do this? Where do I even start? And we got together.
[21:29]And she said, okay, how you start is I want you is the way past the deadline, but I want you to
[21:35]sign up. Why for this writing fellowship? Anyways, just just do it. And so it felt totally just
[21:44]sort of fell from the sky gift. I was able to join this writing fellowship. It's this sort of
[21:52]bizarro artist farm thing up between Palo Alto and the sea like way up this old ranch converted.
[22:01]And so I went that January in 2018 for five days with, I don't know, maybe 10 other writers and just
[22:08]sort of, I worked through all my old journals and made lists and started writing some of it.
[22:14]Then then the shape of the program was that month by month, I was supposed to turn in
[22:19]pages and get feedback back, which was so incredibly helpful. If writers who are listening,
[22:26]if there's any way to build some kind of accountability in, you know, month by month or whatever
[22:33]interval, that felt just incredibly helpful to have to put it out. So I worked for in sort of
[22:41]whatever bits and pockets of time I could find that winter and spring. So at that point,
[22:48]I had, let's see, can I do math, Alice was six. And by that point, we had had another child Sam,
[22:57]and he was turning three. So seven year old and a three year old. And I was working full time.
[23:04]And I remember hearing an author describe her process and her way in was she had this amazing
[23:12]an elaborate ritual to get ready to write. And it, I don't know, I mean, I wouldn't involve,
[23:18]you know, a particular food and a way of making tea and some exercise and setting her space.
[23:24]It took like two hours she told us to get ready. And then at that point, she had invested so much
[23:30]time in getting ready that she was compelled to write. And that worked really well for her. And
[23:36]her book is incredible. It is so gorgeous. And I was sitting there with a couple of her moms
[23:42]listening to her describe this and trying so hard to be gracious and supportive because it was
[23:49]beautiful. And it was really clever, frankly, how she worked this out. And I was thinking,
[23:55]oh my goodness, if I had two hours, like I could, if I had two hours uninterrupted, I could write
[24:02]so much just at that time. And so, you know, I tried various things. I tried making current times on
[24:09]my calendar. I tried hard to write five days a week. And sometimes that would be for 15 minutes.
[24:17]And sometimes I would get an hour. And sometimes I would get nothing for weeks. And it would be
[24:22]really hard to reset. But coming back to it again and again. And then really what made it possible
[24:30]was that summer in 2018, I had the gift of a sabbatical. I'd been in my new position for,
[24:38]I don't know, four years at that point. And it was just a gift. So I took, I spent 10 weeks
[24:44]and we traveled to spend time with various people that we love dearly and don't see enough of.
[24:51]And my husband Jesse would run with the kids in the morning. And I would write in the morning.
[24:58]And then we would adventure the rest of the day. And I think especially because I, you know,
[25:02]I had those chunks of three or four hours each morning and was not trying to produce creative work
[25:10]for my job. It was just gold. It was such amazing time. And so I was able, when we came back at
[25:18]the end of the sabbatical, I had a first draft. And then after that, it was just totally catch,
[25:23]as catch can there. I took a couple of weeks of vacation to to charge through edits. There were a
[25:31]a lot of late nights this past spring, a little over a year ago, I got the book deal. And then
[25:35]there were some more rounds of edits. And we, like I had received what I, you know, the sort of
[25:42]tentative schedule of how things were going to be going back and forth. I took a new job around
[25:47]this time last year. And in April, we moved. They're just just a half hour away, but to a new,
[25:52]new house. And I think it was actually on our moving day that I received the copy edited manuscript
[26:01]back and the request to turn it around in two weeks. And I think I sort of laughed and cried
[26:08]at the same time. So we were just moving. And of course, you know, in the depths of pandemic,
[26:14]there was no school, no childcare at all. I guess I'm not really going to sleep a lot. And, you know,
[26:22]I wouldn't recommend that as a sustainable practice. But, you know, once in a while, that's how
[26:28]it happened, you know, but that's you've finally done. You can and you get it done. Yeah,
[26:34]two hours uninterrupted for a mom is like striking gold. Amazing. Anyway, I hear what you're saying.
[26:42]Yes, last weekend I had two hours and I was only interrupted like every seven or eight minutes.
[26:48]And even that right now was yeah, it was the best. Amazing. Do you have any advice to aspiring
[26:56]authors aside from finding two hours of uninterrupted? Good luck with that. Even 10 minutes, 10 minutes,
[27:02]you know, take what you can get. I think what feels most live for me to share or to encourage
[27:09]is to write what what you can't not write. You know, if there is something that that just you
[27:17]really feel you have to put down on paper, whether or not anyone else ever reads it like that.
[27:25]And if you if you understand why it matters, it matters and find the people who get it.
[27:33]You know, this probably won't surprise you, but there were there are some people who really did
[27:39]not think this book was a very good idea that it was just way too much sharing or way too sad or
[27:47]I don't know who wants to read about a suicide and a dead baby, right? And that's fine.
[27:53]They don't need to read it. I'm okay with that. I do. Well, and that's what I thought. You know,
[27:58]I thought well, I think that I think there are people who are I think most people actually are
[28:05]handed at some point a loss or grief or confusion that is just so beyond them. And what do we do
[28:11]with that? Can we talk about that? So I'd say try to find the people who understand that
[28:18]and are ready to run with you and bringing it out into the world because they're there
[28:24]and just ignore the people who weren't ready for it. That's okay. Amazing. Well, Liz, thank you.
[28:30]Thank you for sharing your painful yet inspiring story of survival through the depths of despair
[28:38]and keeping the faith and just all of it. So thank you for your time and for your beautiful book,
[28:44]which I truly, I mean, I can't say I feel bad saying I enjoyed it because it was like no,
[28:49]you can. I mean, you know what I mean? It was so upsetting too, but it was very meaningful to me
[28:54]and memorable. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you for having me. My pleasure.
[28:59]All right. Take care. Okay. Bye bye.
[29:03]Thanks so much to today's sponsor. My bookshop.org and my Amazon influencer store.
[29:09]You can check out my Amazon store at amazon.com slash shop slash mom. Don't have time to read books.
[29:16]And my bookshop.org store, which is bookshop.org slash shop slash zibi ellens.
[29:24]And I hope that you will find every book that you were looking for. Thanks. Thanks for listening to
[29:29]this episode of mom. So don't have time to read books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at
[29:34]zibi ellens and at moms. Don't have time to read books. Also sign up for my newsletter at zibiowens.com
[29:40]and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on zoom every other week.
[29:44]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at texture sound for the sound editing.
[29:48]And thank you to morning moon productions for providing this fantastic intro and now trim music.