Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, HUNGRY HEARTS: Essays on Courage, Desire, and Belonging
[0:01]Hi, this is Vivi Owens, and you're listening to the award-winning podcast, Momstone Have Time to Read Books.
[0:06]I'm also the host of Momstone Have Time to Lose Weight, and I'm the editor of the anthology,
[0:12]which you should run out and buy, called Momstone Have Time to Accarantine Anthology.
[0:16]I'll proceed to that book, go to COVID-19 Vaccine Research.
[0:20]And I'm the editor-in-chief of Momstone Have Time to Write, a new publication on Medium,
[0:24]and we're accepting submissions, so please send your personal essays there.
[0:29]And if all that isn't enough, you can follow me on Instagram, adzibioins, and my website is zibioins.com.
[0:35]Okay, now back to this amazing podcast.
[0:38]Jennifer Rudolph Walsh is the editor of the anthology Hungry Hearts, essays on Courage, Desire, and Belonging.
[0:45]Jennifer has sat as the nexus of entertainment media for nearly 30 years.
[0:49]She was WME's sole female board member and global head of its literary, lectures, and conferences divisions,
[0:56]and she represented such luminous clients as Oprah Winfrey, Bernay Brown, Alice Monroe, and Seaman Kid.
[1:02]In 2016, she co-founded Together Live, a traveling intersectional women's tour,
[1:07]driven by the mission of finding purpose and community through authentic and heartfelt storytelling.
[1:11]Over four years, the tour visited 35 cities, lit over 50,000 souls on fire,
[1:17]and produced three seasons of a widely-streamed podcast.
[1:20]She serves as a board advisor to see her, the National Book Foundation,
[1:24]and her alma mater, Kenyon College.
[1:26]After a lifetime in New York City, Jennifer relocated to San Francisco to walk beneath the redwoods with her family and three dogs.
[1:33]Welcome, Jennifer. Again, sorry for the tech slip-up.
[1:36]But anyway, welcome back to mom's time to read books.
[1:39]It's great to have you here to discuss your anthology Hungry Hearts, essays on Courage, Desire, and Belonging.
[1:46]Welcome.
[1:46]Thank you so much for having me, and I love being in the presence of a fellow book lover and a fellow anthology author.
[1:53]I feel like I'm right at home here, so I'm grateful.
[1:56]I can't believe we haven't met until now.
[1:58]I was reading your introduction, and I was like, oh my gosh, I have to meet this one.
[2:01]How do I not know her?
[2:02]So it's amazing.
[2:03]Thank you.
[2:04]So, okay, you were just starting to tell me about how this gut started and how the pandemic sliced into your plans as well.
[2:11]Tell me about starting in your whole enterprise and your intersectional love affair.
[2:17]So I spent the last 30 years as a literary agent and loved every minute of amplifying voices, particularly those of less celebrated potentially more marginalized voices, because I believe in my core that when you hear somebody's authentic story, you could never see them as other again.
[2:35]You'll find yourself in a story of somebody who you maybe have no shared lived experience with, and yet you find that, oh wow, they're telling my exact story.
[2:46]And so I have always been somebody who believes it's part of my mission on life to build the largest platform and the biggest megaphone to amplify stories.
[2:56]And five years ago that dream evolved because people write in solitude and people read in solitude and there was something about the digital connected world that made me feel more literally disconnected than I had ever felt before.
[3:12]So I was in constant contact with everybody all the time, I felt an absence of that intimate insides to insides connection.
[3:21]And from that space, we created something called together live, which was an intergenerational intersectional, traveling love rally, we set sale in 2016 and a bunch of intergenerational intersectional wisdom keepers would go from town to town and basically set people's souls on fire.
[3:41]And it's so much I never wanted it to end and, in fact, I left my full time job in December of 2019 to focus exclusively on this.
[3:50]And then the universe had its way, so COVID hit just as we were launching our first ever spring 2020 tour.
[3:58]And we thought, how can we take some of the magic from those rooms and manifest them in a book and that's how hungry hearts was born.
[4:07]Interesting. So how else did you take the in person, aside from this book, what else did you decide to do when you had to pivot.
[4:14]Well, for me personally, it had been 30 years of moving at a thousand miles per hour.
[4:19]And when you're in the representation business.
[4:22]It's a very specific kind of stress in that you are responsible for people's careers.
[4:29]And so in a weird way, it's almost more stressed than your own career because if you're somebody like me who takes this sacred honor and responsibility very, very seriously.
[4:39]amplified kind of responsibility.
[4:42]And once the COVID hit and I had to just take a deep breath and what I call the sacred pause, I realized I needed to just actually do nothing.
[4:52]And I'm very privileged to be able to have that opportunity to do nothing, but rather than pivot and try to make something happen.
[5:00]I felt like service through joy, like an opportunity to do something that I know how to do really well. I've published, you know, I've been the midwife to over 2000 books.
[5:10]So I thought, this is something I can do and I can do this with joy, but trying to recreate the live event, then experience in some virtual way.
[5:19]It just felt like it felt like work to me. And my soul told me that it was time for me to just take a deep exhale.
[5:27]And what I called my sacred pause, which I'm still on and really just worry about commuting with nature, hearing my own voice for the first time in 30 years, waking up in the middle of the night and not worrying about somebody else's royalty check from Japan.
[5:44]And, you know, but instead just hearing my own breath. And so it's been an incredible year. I moved to San Francisco, which nobody saw coming since as a friend of mine said when I said I was moving from New York, she said, but you are New York.
[6:00]So the beauty of this is I'm a lot of this. And right now I'm in the redwoods in San Francisco and I'm spending every day just playing with my dogs, spending time with my last child who's a senior in high school.
[6:14]And just kind of being, you know, I say I've finally become a human being instead of a human doing.
[6:22]Just been transformational for me and these stories inside these pages really kind of are emblematic of everything that I know to be true, you know, whether you're a trans woman from the Philippines or disabled, you know, woman from Muslim woman from New Jersey or
[6:41]over somebody who perceives himself as overweight former military guy who sings like an angel. Once you get inside of these stories, you realize, oh, that's me. Oh, that's my brother. Oh, that's my my sister. And then you could really never view that person as other again. But more than that, you see the beauty in your own story.
[7:02]So where the people, how did you pick the people that you include.
[7:04]Well, these were the people that were meant to be on the spring tour. So it was very easy. We kind of all meet all sort of, you know, kind of circled around and nobody wanted to let go of the sisterhood and brotherhood that we had created on the tour.
[7:17]And, you know, we called ourselves a road family and we would do these incredible shows and then every night we would have dinner together and the table would just grow and grow because everybody was welcome to bring whoever was in the audience for them.
[7:30]So it was it was it was magic. Just magic sounds amazing. Wow.
[7:35]Are you going to go back to it? Do you think when things go back to see myself moving backwards? No, that's it. No, I mean, I don't know what what what forward's going to look like.
[7:44]But right now I'm just I'm just luxuriating in the moment of I turned 54 and Valentine's Day at three days after this book was published.
[7:52]And I'm luxuriating in the fact that I could be 54 and have a joyful first. So being the author or the more morally the curator because I don't like to call myself the editor because the amazing Katie Nishimoto really edited this book and it was extraordinary and I love that because she started as a college graduate as my assistant.
[8:13]And then I watched her grow into the incredible powerhouse that she is and then several years ago she was recruited to go over to Random House and dial press.
[8:22]So to have her be the editor of this book was just so full circle for me and you know part of sort of all these beautiful children I have in the world that I have loved to death through the workplace and help them find like their own magic.
[8:38]Honestly, largely through authentic storytelling. Wow, I love that. And it's so great because I feel like first of all, I say the same thing that it shouldn't say edited my anthology shouldn't say edited it should say curated or even like hosted by I was like I assembled it all I like pulled it all together, but I had an editor for my book too.
[8:56]I actually had I had Katie who's extraordinary and then the publisher Whitney Frick was also dovening over every single solitary piece of this so I mean there was so much love in this and you know we said from the beginning the only flavor we want on this is delicious and that's the only flavor we got.
[9:16]Are you from New York originally, like did you grow up born and raised honey in the city yep 60 street between Broadway to Amsterdam went to Riverdale High School, I went to Trinity, I was on 668th in Park, so we were right.
[9:29]Yeah, so we were right across the park and I read in your introduction, which by the way was so great because your whole focus on storytelling, I mean I could not you could not find a more receptive audience for what you're saying.
[9:42]This is what I try to preach like day in and day out and it's like somebody's just said it better than me, it's perfect.
[9:47]You said if I told you that my parents got divorced when I was nine years old it would communicate a fact, but it wouldn't help you know me better.
[9:53]What if instead I told this and then you go on about exactly what happened, you tell a story about it and of course immediately you're engaged.
[10:00]Because you've been your point. It's awesome. It's just like a brilliant way to start that. Thank you so much.
[10:05]Well, you know, it's interesting because I think people feel like the details of your story are unimportant and the truth is that the details of your story are your superpower.
[10:16]You know, in other words, it's like we could both say, oh, our parents got divorced, but then if you said to me, we had a family meeting too.
[10:25]Now suddenly we're both leaning in. We're both going, you know, what else, what else do we have in common and and frankly, what else do we have that didn't go the same way and how can I learn from what was different from you or how could you learn from what I'm saying to you and not in the advice way because advice has a very powerful role in the world, but I think storytelling is almost more profound because it's the old show not tell.
[10:49]Well, I mean, I can, I can tell you, but if I show you, then both of us are served because you see me and in the seeing of me, I can see you.
[11:01]And so, and you know, it's interesting, I was watching Jane Fonda's speech at the Golden Globes and it was, I felt like I could have written that me too.
[11:10]I mean, I was there. He's like, mom, that speech is so you.
[11:14]That's exactly what I agree with her completely. I learned about being a Muslim 20 something man from watching Rami. I learned, you know, what it means to, you know, to be a sexual assault victim from watching.
[11:26]You know, I felt the story. You look, I felt the exact same way and that's the power of storytelling. I mean, it kind of takes the judgment out of it.
[11:34]And it just puts us like firmly into the seat of our humanity.
[11:39]I could not agree with you anymore. This is like so great. It's whole thing. It's like music to my ears.
[11:44]And then of course, in your book, you have all these great stories. And see my kid. I had like, see my kid and love me by the way on my podcast. I think that was it.
[11:52]But see my kid's essay was so beautiful. Didn't you just like flip out when you read it or you like this wall.
[11:59]I mean, so writing that essay was really one of the reasons I wanted to do this anthology.
[12:03]Because she wrote that essay as a gift to me literally to an homage to together live.
[12:10]And when I read that essay, I was like, oh, I don't want to put this on some website. I want to publish an anthology around this.
[12:17]And you know, Sue is such an inspiration to me on every level. I mean, first of all, she was 54 when she wrote the secret life of bees.
[12:24]So at the time that I represented that book 54 seemed really like way in the future. But hello today.
[12:32]So she's been not that I have any interest in running a novel, by the way, just to be perfectly clear. But she's been such an inspiration for me in terms of how a creative life unfolds over time.
[12:43]And I think that there's a lot of focus on, you know, sort of early out of the gate. And in my own way, I was early out of the gate.
[12:50]But I'm really resistant to the idea that I have to compete with my past self in any way.
[12:56]I'm sort of, you know, new Jan or as my son calls me next Jan, you know, is really very much about integrating all the pieces of who I've been.
[13:05]being a lot less certain and a lot more curious.
[13:08]And Sue really personifies that for me with such grace and such beauty.
[13:14]It's amazing. And not just the inspiration for writers, which is here, but the inspiration for women.
[13:20]I just want to read, she said every day I would pause and she had the sign and read the words and try to take them in and the words were from Emil Zola.
[13:27]But if you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist will answer you, I am here to live out loud.
[13:34]And then she said, what if I substitute the word woman instead. And then she said how she has to get through her fear. And she had to face down insidious voices in my head that told me I shouldn't write because it was too big a risk.
[13:46]But, and I didn't have an MFA. The sinister twins don't and can't. I mean, it's just amazing. The whole thing.
[13:53]Oh, good. I know. I know.
[13:55]Did you read Jan as Kaplan's the genius of women, by the way, that book. Oh, it's she wrote a whole book on the series of like why women geniuses aren't called out. Why does that have to be a women genius. Why isn't it just a genius.
[14:08]Yeah, Alice Monroe wrote a collection that I represented many years ago called, who do you think you are. And I always thought that that question is like a kryptonite to women. It's like, you know, if somebody somebody kind of says to you, who do you think you are it automatically flattens you.
[14:25]Because we don't know how to authorize ourselves. We don't know how to give ourselves permission to be dot, dot, dot, whatever we are.
[14:32]And so right so brilliantly to that sort of giving of one's permission and in her case, you know, to have a voice. I mean, it just seems like that should just be the entry level like that all of our girls.
[14:47]And so I would believe that they have a voice and that voice matters critically necessary to funny. I mentioned to somebody this morning, even I was talking about how because on Instagram, I tend to write like I live in experience and then I immediately kind of write about it to capture it.
[15:01]So I remember it and be out of this like compulsion to share it and like connect over it knowing that like other people are having the same experience. I don't know.
[15:10]So I literally was saying so I was like, yeah, I just read this essay and they talked about living out loud and that's exactly what I feel like I'm doing in a way like everything that's inside and you have this whole notion of like hungry hearts and the hunger that lives within and like the love that needs to come out.
[15:25]Like I feel like I'm like in that moment, you know, like like where I love that, like come bubbling out and this is like the articulation of it. So it was great.
[15:33]I love that sweetheart. And you know what, I think we're all in that moment. I think that, you know, one of the blessings. And again, I don't have small children. I'm not, you know, dealing with Zoom school.
[15:44]I'm not worried about putting food on my table. So let me just put all that in like that, you know, in the blessing category.
[15:50]But I am therefore able to see from a distance all the positives that are coming out of the fact that everybody has been forced to just sit down and, you know, and actually stop making themselves busy busy busy, but instead to actually hear that sort of hungry heart and the voice of that heart.
[16:09]What that heart wants is always good. I mean, I think we've almost been, you know, we've almost been trying to trust it. Like as if you trust it, you're going to lose everything, you know, and I think that for me personally, it's like there's scarcity thinking and then there's, you know, abundant thinking and scarcity thinking is, well, if I, if I speak my truth, I'm going to lose what I have or I'm not going to get what I need.
[16:34]And abundance thing is if I speak my truth, there'll be more than enough for everybody and it's collaborative and it's clarifying and it's validating.
[16:46]And I just, you know, I love to see people sort of step into that into that abundant love mindset and away from that fear, you know, scarcity mindset.
[16:56]And I think that stories are the perfect platform for that because we all have them. We all have stories and I think literally pretty much every single person you know is carrying a burden that would put you bring you to your knees.
[17:11]I mean, and it's very, very easy to, you know, compare what's in your heart to this perfect picture on Instagram, you know, to Zibi's gorgeous bookshelves that are color coordinated and your gorgeous children.
[17:27]And I think that the vision that your heart is not filled with first of all, pain and heartache, but also dreams and longing and, you know, our authentic stories gives me the opportunity to have an x-ray.
[17:40]So I don't have to compare my insights to your outsides. I can just go right directly from my heart to your heart.
[17:47]I mean, yes, I did those bookshelves after being sick and bad with COVID for nine straight days and finally getting out of my bed and realizing like I was so glad to be like healthy and alive and myself that I gorgeous took all this energy and did it, but it's not like, I mean, people can make all sorts of assumptions, but like, I mean, that on the other side of that shelf, I wasn't like sick and bad or, you know, I mean, like, that's exactly what I'm saying.
[18:08]So it's really easy to look at you and think, Oh, you know, you belong on that show home, edit your perfect.
[18:13]No, I'm not perfect. And I am the first one to say, you know, nor am I. And not even close.
[18:18]I think there should be a line of t-shirts like our line of things where like you would say, you know, like you could check the box like narcissistic mother and, you know, recovering from abusive relationship or like whatever, make it up, right?
[18:31]Like, have you ever seen by the way, have you ever seen in and of itself on Hulu? It's like an incredible show. You got it.
[18:37]I saw it. I saw it as a magic show in Union Square like four or five years ago, and I actually took an idea from there because you walk into the show. I don't want to.
[18:46]You will love this. You could have texted me so excited.
[18:50]But you walk into the theater and there was like, I am. And it was just a million cards. And it was like, I am a priestess. I am a survivor. I and everybody took a card.
[19:01]And so I did that one year to get her live.
[19:04]And it was incredible. People got stickers that said, you know, I am, you know, I am a survivor or I am a healer or I am.
[19:14]And I agree. It's like, I am recovering from these things, but also these things do not define me.
[19:20]Right.
[19:21]I am a piece of my story is a piece of who I am, but it's an ongoing dynamic like living story. It's a living history. And so, you know, for many years, I used to think I was sort of like the oak tree and everybody's life like the unmovable object.
[19:38]And I didn't do that. But guess what, I moved.
[19:44]So I am no longer an unmovable object and that's good too. It doesn't mean that I wasn't one for 52 years, 53 years, but it means I don't have to be for the next.
[19:54]And you know, when you sort of can be a little bit free and easy with the way that you identify yourself, then I think that's where the real opportunity for
[20:00]action and transformation and healing comes in.
[20:03]I feel like a broken record saying it again.
[20:06]I totally agree, but I just told it.
[20:08]I agree.
[20:10]I feel like holding secrets inside has like,
[20:13]that's like what most writing is.
[20:15]It's like finally getting the secrets out.
[20:17]And everybody has like a story.
[20:20]Everyone has a secret.
[20:21]And that's, it's in a lot of fiction.
[20:23]It's in a lot of, it's makes up almost all of memoir.
[20:26]Like all these things, right?
[20:27]That you're just holding back.
[20:29]Yeah, and then you know, our mutual friend,
[20:31]our mutual friend, Danny Shapiro, who we both adore,
[20:34]shout out to Danny Shapiro.
[20:36]She does something in her writing class.
[20:38]I think she told me that it's an exercise she does
[20:40]when she's doing a writing workshop,
[20:42]where she says to people,
[20:44]I want you to write down like the thing that you think
[20:46]is the most unlovable, your biggest secret,
[20:48]the thing that you're most ashamed by.
[20:51]And people start writing right away.
[20:53]Nobody needs one second to think about it.
[20:55]And then she says, now if I were to play a dirty trick on you,
[20:58]which I'm not going to do.
[21:00]But if I were and told you that you had to read that out loud,
[21:03]you would imagine that that would be the end of the,
[21:05]the end of your possibilities.
[21:07]And yet the truth of the matter is,
[21:09]if you did do that, it would actually make you closer
[21:12]to every single person in this room.
[21:15]And it's hard to make people believe that,
[21:17]but it's really very true.
[21:19]Wow, I think the only thing,
[21:21]I think staffing people, not the only thing.
[21:23]One thing is like the effect on other people.
[21:26]Because it's rare to have a secret that's just yours.
[21:29]I mean, like, you went through it together.
[21:31]It involved your family or it involved this person.
[21:34]Or I feel like there's something where people can keep things
[21:37]under wraps or maybe that's an excuse.
[21:39]I don't know.
[21:40]That's what I'm thinking.
[21:41]I mean, not an excuse, but it's a created obstacle
[21:45]because I think that if what you say you say with love
[21:48]without judgment, then I think people can always hear the truth.
[21:52]And I think I heard this story.
[21:54]I think it was Maxine Hum Kingston
[21:56]that told the story at a reading I went to once,
[21:59]where when she wrote her memoir,
[22:01]she said to her family, like,
[22:03]you guys can change anything you want.
[22:05]Like just she gave it to her family
[22:07]and just then just change anything.
[22:08]But because she had written it with so much love
[22:10]and compassion, like nobody changed anything.
[22:13]And I think that a lot of times,
[22:16]people are have an axe to grind
[22:18]or they haven't fully digested what's happened.
[22:20]I mean, I don't enjoy writing
[22:23]that comes from the like the bloody posse wound.
[22:26]But I like writing that comes from the from the scar, you know,
[22:30]the scar that's healed, but still visible.
[22:34]And that says this happened.
[22:35]This is what happened.
[22:36]I mean, you know, sort of the idea of instead of saying
[22:39]what's wrong with you, we start saying to people,
[22:41]what happened to you?
[22:42]I love that.
[22:43]Do you teach your own writing classes?
[22:45]You have to put that on the target.
[22:46]You should.
[22:47]Oh, no, thank you.
[22:49]You can just get up and say that.
[22:50]I am busy walking with the red ones.
[22:53]I'm too busy being free.
[22:54]Okay, all right, you'd be free.
[22:56]But I think that's if you want to come back to not being free.
[22:59]And you can even just like do a video of yourself
[23:02]and like put that on some class
[23:04]and people would sign up and just like start writing.
[23:06]You know, you should, I'll just give you this YouTube.
[23:08]Whatever.
[23:09]I'll give you like the clip.
[23:10]You can see it.
[23:11]You'll inspire people.
[23:12]Well, you know, something that I do want to say though,
[23:14]because all of these all of these essays are so amazing.
[23:18]You know, milk talking about her own path
[23:21]and finding her voice.
[23:22]Lovey talking about a platonic breakup,
[23:25]which I think is incredible.
[23:27]Bose talking about love after love.
[23:30]Like Bose must say, John, I mean,
[23:31]they're also brilliant and beautiful.
[23:34]And one of the distinctions I like to make,
[23:36]I mean, these people are incredible
[23:37]and they are published authors.
[23:40]But I don't think that telling your story
[23:42]and getting published should always be conflated.
[23:46]In other words, everybody has a story
[23:48]and their story matters.
[23:49]But that doesn't mean that everybody's story
[23:50]should be published.
[23:51]Interesting.
[23:52]I started this thing called Moms.
[23:54]I don't have time to write because I didn't,
[23:56]because in my anthologies,
[23:57]I only had the published authors.
[23:59]But I was like, well, what about everybody else?
[24:01]Right.
[24:01]So that's where, for me at least,
[24:03]I'm trying to get like everybody else.
[24:04]Like here, go just put your stuff out.
[24:06]So I agree.
[24:07]But I would have to say that if the measurement is publication
[24:11]and I think a lot of people are gonna be frustrated
[24:13]with the process.
[24:14]And so I would like the measure of success
[24:17]of having shared your story
[24:18]to be judged by connection and healing.
[24:22]So if you tell your story in a way to somebody
[24:25]who's willing to witness you in your full humanity
[24:27]and then you encourage them to bravely share theirs,
[24:30]that's a success for me.
[24:32]And this is how in my mind,
[24:34]we write tattoos on each other's hearts.
[24:35]I mean, there are people whose names I can't remember
[24:38]but there's stories I will never forget.
[24:40]Yep, that's so true.
[24:41]No, I was saying, I said something so simple.
[24:43]I was like, the point of writing
[24:45]and even the point of writing a book
[24:47]is not to necessarily be a bestseller.
[24:49]Like that doesn't have to be your goal
[24:51]just because it's other people's goals.
[24:52]Like if you change one person's life with your book,
[24:56]isn't that, that's amazing.
[24:57]That's a whole life.
[24:59]Like think about the power of that.
[25:00]That's in my newsletter today.
[25:02]Oh my God.
[25:03]Yeah, it said just be that, be the one person.
[25:06]Because that's all.
[25:07]I mean, you change one person's life to do a magic night.
[25:11]And that's incredible.
[25:13]And you know, the truth is that through this whole process
[25:16]as much as I loved every minute of it,
[25:19]I have no interest in the sales side of this.
[25:21]And I've never once looked at Amazon.
[25:23]I do the heart math.
[25:25]I mean, this is a little gift.
[25:26]It's a little offering, you know, with a heart on it.
[25:29]And I love it so much.
[25:30]And people have reached out to me to tell me
[25:32]they bought 10 copies and they gave it to their daughters,
[25:35]their sisters, their mothers, their, you know,
[25:37]their best friends, their bosses.
[25:39]So I love that.
[25:40]That is success to me.
[25:41]I do the heart math.
[25:43]I don't need some outside measure
[25:45]to tell me that this has been successful.
[25:47]The fact that you loved it, that's the fises for me.
[25:50]Amazing.
[25:51]Well, you can just show me all your work
[25:52]and then we could just be done, you know.
[25:54]I love it.
[25:55]I love that.
[25:56]Do you have any advice?
[25:57]I mean, that was all kind of advice for aspiring others.
[25:59]But I always ask it's like a last question.
[26:01]Parting advice, like one little sound bite aside
[26:03]from just changing, doing the heart math,
[26:06]although maybe I should just use that.
[26:07]But if there's a lot of money,
[26:09]I do have one piece of advice.
[26:11]My grandfather told me this many, many, many, many, many,
[26:13]many decades ago.
[26:15]And it really has helped me sort of mid transition
[26:19]or mid mistake or mid fall,
[26:21]which is that it's not what happens.
[26:23]It's what happens next.
[26:25]And I know that sounds really basic,
[26:27]but actually as somebody who got kicked out
[26:30]of 11th grade for failing to live up to my potential,
[26:33]I was like, oh my God, I would gladly live up to my potential
[26:36]if I only knew how, you know,
[26:38]I felt like I'd already been to use today's vernacular.
[26:41]I'd already been canceled.
[26:42]And I was 17 years old and I was like already being thrown out
[26:45]for failing to distinguish myself.
[26:48]And, you know, you can step into your power
[26:51]after a bad thing has already happened
[26:53]and realize that what happens next
[26:55]is actually where the opportunity is,
[26:58]that what's behind you, you have no power over.
[27:01]But what happens in a moment
[27:03]and your next foot forward is where all the beauty
[27:06]and all the sort of the delicious marrow of life exists.
[27:10]So that's my advice to anybody who's listening.
[27:12]Forget about yesterday.
[27:14]You know, that's the place you can't have power,
[27:17]but you can create a change narrative
[27:20]by doing what's next.
[27:22]So great. Oh my gosh.
[27:24]I've loved this. This is amazing.
[27:25]I'm so glad I met you, thank you so much for having me.
[27:30]And thank you for creating this incredible space
[27:32]for book lovers to commune.
[27:35]It's my pleasure.
[27:36]No, and I hope I meet you in person someday.
[27:38]And I know you're like communing with the trees and whatever,
[27:41]but stay, I want to stay like a breast
[27:43]of what you're doing because I'm just such a fan now
[27:45]that I don't know how I didn't know you before,
[27:47]but I'm like, anyway, my bad, if you will.
[27:50]I'm driving. It's absolutely perfect.
[27:54]All right. Well, so thank you so much for having me.
[27:56]Thank you. And thanks for hungry hearts.
[27:58]It's absolutely gorgeous.
[27:59]And I'm so glad I got to read it.
[28:01]Thank you. Okay. Bye. Bye.
[28:05]Thanks for listening to this episode
[28:07]of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[28:09]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zebiowinds
[28:12]and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[28:14]Also sign up for my newsletter at zebiowinds.com
[28:17]and sign up for my virtual book club
[28:18]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[28:21]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan in fact,
[28:22]texture sound for the sound editing.
[28:25]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[28:26]for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.