Jenny Lisk, FUTURE WIDOW: Losing My Husband, Saving My Family, and Finding My Voice
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[0:37]Jenny Lisk is the author of Future Widow, losing my husband, saving my family, and finding my voice.
[0:44]Jenny is a bestselling author, and widowed mom, who is dedicated to helping widowed parents
[0:48]increase their family's well-being. In her book, Future Widow, Jenny draws on her personal
[0:53]and professional experience to provide a real-life guide for surviving and thriving,
[0:58]all-raising grieving children. Her show, The Widowed Parent Podcast, draws on over 100 interviews
[1:04]with experts, seasoned widowed parents, and people who lost a parent at a young age.
[1:08]It brings much-needed resources to widowed parents, helping them feel less lost and alone.
[1:13]Jenny's work has been featured in The Washington Post and Parent Map.
[1:17]Welcome, Jenny. Thank you so much for coming on momstone. Have time to read books,
[1:20]to discuss Future Widow losing my husband, saving my family, and finding my voice.
[1:25]Oh, thank you so much, Debbie. I've been looking forward to this all week.
[1:28]Oh, come on. Yes. That's fantastic. I've had this on my bedside for the past
[1:34]week or so as I've been reading it, and my husband's like, is there something I should know?
[1:41]Yeah. Yeah, I didn't really think of that when I named it, but the title was just too
[1:48]perfect, so I don't think I would change it even if I thought of that. But yeah, that's an
[1:51]interesting reaction. No, I know, and I know, you know, it came, well, I'm assuming it came from
[1:56]when you were invited to that group in the hospital, and you were like, is this the future
[2:01]widows group or something? Right? Is that when it? Yeah. Well, two things, there's that,
[2:05]and then also, I felt like, you know, I was very much in the spotlight during the
[2:09]late months when my husband was sick, particularly, you know, we had a large community
[2:13]following us, helping us to bring us, which was terrific, and I felt very much in the spotlight.
[2:18]And so I would go to pick up the kids at school, and I remember walking around feeling like,
[2:24]you know, in the scarlet letter, hester. Yes, that's right.
[2:27]Remember that section? Yes, yes. I felt like I had an fw on my shirt, you know, future
[2:33]widow, and like I was walking around and people would probably be thinking very nicely, right?
[2:37]Oh, there's that poor woman. She's going to be a widowsin, right? And, you know,
[2:43]everybody was super nice. And it wasn't that, it was probably more me, right, feeling it,
[2:47]but that was definitely part of this, this sense. And I think what made sense for the,
[2:51]for the book title as well. I do remember the husband section of your book. And I totally
[2:56]understand that feeling where people know what's going on, and they don't know what to say, and they
[3:00]don't know what to do. And, you know, there's something, and you can just feel it's like, you know,
[3:04]it's like at the porcupine, like, pricklers come out of everybody. Do you know, I mean,
[3:07]like, it's something just as like this extra sensitivity. So anyway, I totally understood that.
[3:12]Maybe I should back up and have you explain to listeners a little about, I mean,
[3:16]I know your subtitle kind of sums it up. But what this book is about, how you decided to turn
[3:22]your caring bridge entries into this memoir. And, you know, what else they should know about it
[3:28]before I ask you? Like a zillion other questions? Yeah, yeah. I just don't like, do we have? We could
[3:31]talk about that. I know, I know. Well, let's see. Okay. So just to kind of, you know, set the
[3:37]the background a little bit here. So my husband Dennis, Haglioblastoma, which is a very, very aggressive
[3:43]type of brain cancer. I had never heard of it before. Now we've heard, you know, John McCain,
[3:49]actually, I think his anniversary of his death was like yesterday, the day before. But Biden died
[3:54]of the same thing. So it's become a little bit more heard of these days. But it started for us when
[3:59]he just was feeling a little dizzy, right? No big deal. In fact, I had dropped off my son,
[4:05]he was a busy Friday, right? You're a mom, you know, how it goes. You're running your kids around,
[4:09]you come home. He's just come home from work. He's sitting on the couch and he has this
[4:13]funny look on his face. And I actually thought he looked kind of pissed off about something like,
[4:17]maybe something that got wrong during the day. Like, I knew something was wrong, but I didn't know
[4:21]what. So I said, Hey, what's going on? Well, I've been feeling a little dizzy lately. Well,
[4:26]dizzy. Okay, maybe he's dehydrated. Maybe he hasn't gotten enough sleep, right? I mean, like, who knows,
[4:30]right? We had this whole conversation about maybe he should call his doctor, you know, what had you
[4:35]been noticing blah, blah, blah. As you might do, I went out and got taken out. It was a Friday night,
[4:40]right? So I wasn't going to call his doctor. It would just be, does he need to go to the ER or
[4:44]something? He wasn't passing out. He wasn't, I mean, seizures. He wasn't, you know, nothing dramatic.
[4:49]I went and got taken out, came back. And then of course, I'm like, okay, how you doing?
[4:53]Right? How you feeling? And he looks at me and he says, oh, I'm okay. But I've been feeling a
[5:00]little dizzy lately. And I looked at him and I was like, what? And I said, you know, so I'm calm on
[5:06]outside, right? Well, you know, you just told me that. And he said, I did. And I'm like, oh, my God,
[5:13]what is going on here, right? And yeah, 20 minutes ago, we were sitting right here, etc, etc. And
[5:17]he said, really? So then I'm thinking, okay, this is too weird. I don't think he's pulling my leg here.
[5:22]Right? But then he was totally normal, cognitively normal. So I'm thinking, am I over reading
[5:28]the situation? Am I imagining things? Right? Second guess in myself. Fast forward, I observed him
[5:34]for about a week of this getting progressively worse. And I was like, all right, I'm calling his
[5:38]doctor because he had called of course. And they're like, yeah, come in in three weeks. I'm calling
[5:43]the doctor. I'm stepping in and saying, look, this is what I'm seeing. And they said, bring him in
[5:47]today. They said, let's get an MRI. Then they said, actually, go back and see the doctor right now,
[5:53]you know, when I can do the normal, we'll call you in two days, right? The doctor says, well,
[5:58]there's something really wrong with your brain. Now we went, this is primary care, right? We went
[6:03]and thinking there was a little side effect of some medicine. No big deal. There's something
[6:07]really wrong with your brain. I don't want to scare you. It might be glioblastoma. I'm like,
[6:11]what's glioblastoma? You have to go see the neurosurgeon tomorrow. So fast forward, we see the
[6:16]neurosurgeon. He says we're doing surgery the following day. That started this whole thing,
[6:20]but became eight months of terminal illness and me being a caregiver and me being a future widowed
[6:28]parent, right? And not knowing, wow, how do I navigate this with the kids? This feels big.
[6:35]This feels like it's going to impact them. And without these, he's going to impact them in some way,
[6:40]forever. How do I do this? So hopefully it doesn't destroy them. So I was going to be part of the
[6:45]story, right? But how do I do this? So with a better outcome, then a less good outcome and ended up
[6:51]creating a caring bridge journal and blogging out. I'm rambling on and on here.
[6:55]Which direction do you want to go? No, no, I love it. I know. I mean, it's great. I got a lot of,
[7:01]I mean, it's great. People listening should hear it because that's a lot of the book is you're
[7:06]telling the story. And that's the way you tell the book. That's the way you wrote the book, too.
[7:10]It's as if we're talking to you now. This is like a perfect, you know, sample preview of the book,
[7:15]because it's all in your voice. And you can just hear you talking like, I knew this is how you
[7:21]you would talk. And I met you, which is great. I love that. That is so funny. That is so funny.
[7:25]That's awesome. Well, that's great. I'm glad they came across. Thank you. I didn't know that,
[7:29]but that's terrific. It's true. I'm sorry. I cut you off. No, no, it's fine. You know, well,
[7:35]so many things. One, the thing that I found so well, one of the things I found compelling is how
[7:41]even though this book is about being a future widow, there was so much about your children and what
[7:48]it would mean to you as you just said to be a future parent of a child who also had lost a parent,
[7:55]right? Like, so that was in the top of your consciousness all along. And even the way you talked about,
[8:01]well, in that situation, like this person had my kids. And then I worried about my kids. And then
[8:05]they came this one time and I didn't think that they should see my husband. And then they had
[8:09]a tantrum. And like all these realistic things, as we're doing anything in life, even something
[8:15]as gutting and all encompassing is the loss of a spouse. Like, it's hard to let go of the logistics
[8:22]of the kids, right? And all of that stuff that is always like, it's like the ball, like in the pool,
[8:27]like you're playing, you know, like keep it up with the ball. You know, it's like, you're still,
[8:31]you don't want that stuff to drop. And so I'd love to how you integrated that into your story.
[8:37]Well, thanks. You know, and so the speaking of Karen Bridge, so my sister suggested that I
[8:43]start Karen Bridge, which of course I was familiar with because it felt a lot of people in the
[8:46]community use it for things like this. And, and I thought, no, I'll just send some text updates
[8:51]here and there and some emails and pretty quickly became obvious that that was just not going to
[8:56]work. I was, you know, if you can only copy paste text so many times, right? And so I'll start the
[9:01]camera. And the first entries were very matter of fact, like, you know, he had surgery now,
[9:06]he's eating and maybe he'll come home next week. Like just, but what happened was over time,
[9:10]and I didn't realize this, it really became my vehicle kind of for reflecting and for sharing
[9:19]out, you know, speaking to my corner of the world, we had a lot of people who wanted to support us
[9:24]and who wanted to follow and I needed that support. We had a lot of meals, rides, dog walks,
[9:30]you know, you name it, all these things. And I found that I would, you know, if I was driving over
[9:36]the bridge to see him or to come back to see him or walking around taking care of X or Y or Z,
[9:42]I'd be turning over ideas in my head. My next post could be this, like here's what's happening,
[9:48]how, what are my reflections, how is this landing? What am I worried about, you know, and,
[9:53]and then thinking about even composing, you know, words in my head. As I was going around doing stuff,
[9:59]which
[10:00]So, you know, come to find out.
[10:01]I never heard the word anticipatory grief either,
[10:04]which turns out that's a thing.
[10:06]And I think that I was working out things along the way
[10:10]by taking time to turn over ideas in my head
[10:13]to process things and then to put them in writing
[10:16]as we went in the form of these essentially blog posts
[10:20]but reflecting as, you know, as we went along
[10:22]through the same months.
[10:23]And then at the end, I was like, you know,
[10:26]I've got 15,000 words here.
[10:29]This feels like the start of something.
[10:32]You know, 15,000 words of journal entries are not a book,
[10:36]but they could become the basis of a book.
[10:40]And then how do you do that, right?
[10:42]And never written a book before.
[10:42]How do you turn a bunch of journal entries
[10:45]into something that becomes an actual compelling book
[10:47]that somebody wants to read?
[10:48]That's not like this happened.
[10:50]This happened, this happened, this happened the end, right?
[10:53]Like, so that's when I started thinking about,
[10:55]okay, I could turn this into a memoir
[10:56]and started working on that.
[10:58]So that was after I started the podcast, I should say.
[11:00]So, yeah, tell me about starting the podcast.
[11:03]Yeah, so it's called the Whittered Parent Podcast.
[11:05]And I felt like all along, I wasn't finding resources
[11:13]and I felt lost as a Whittered parent, right?
[11:16]So like, as far as me and being a Whittered person
[11:19]and being a grieving person in myself,
[11:22]I'm not seeing it with easy at all.
[11:24]I'm seeing I found resources, right?
[11:26]I found a million books, I went to Camp Widow,
[11:29]I found a terrific therapist, I had great friends,
[11:33]I could talk to, you know, there were all these things.
[11:35]I could see a path, right?
[11:38]I could see, I didn't feel as lost.
[11:41]But on the parenting side, it's like, how do I do this?
[11:45]And who can even help me figure out what, right,
[11:47]what to do here?
[11:48]It turns out there are a bunch of resources,
[11:50]but they're kind of fragmented
[11:51]and you don't really know about them
[11:53]unless you're kind of plugged in or somebody
[11:55]knows what's plugged in.
[11:56]There are grief centers and communities
[11:58]all around the country and other places too.
[12:01]There are books, there's stuff.
[12:03]And so as I was learning about this
[12:05]and feeling lost, I realized a podcast is a good format
[12:09]for me to go out and interview people.
[12:12]People who could shed some light on this, you know,
[12:15]equation, you know, how to be a Whittered parent essentially.
[12:18]What do I need to know?
[12:18]What do I need to be aware of?
[12:19]What do I need to do?
[12:21]All of these things, and so I realized, you know,
[12:22]most Whittered parents aren't gonna take the time
[12:24]or make the time to go out and interview all these people
[12:27]themselves, and there's no need to.
[12:29]But I could stand in their place in, you know,
[12:33]behind the mic, interviewing somebody
[12:35]who could shed light on some piece of this
[12:37]and bring all these together in a weekly format
[12:39]and share it out, you know, with listeners.
[12:41]And so that's how it started.
[12:42]And it started that during Children's Beef Awareness Month,
[12:44]which is November every year,
[12:46]which is coming up again.
[12:46]So this was three years ago.
[12:48]And then eventually what I did,
[12:50]as I started kicking around the book ideas,
[12:52]I realized that I was learning an awful lot
[12:54]through the podcast,
[12:56]that I wished I had known five years ago, six years ago.
[13:00]And so applying some of those lessons,
[13:01]and I wanted to bring that element.
[13:03]And this was part of, you know,
[13:04]why how journal entries become a book in my case
[13:07]was I had the journal entry and then I added,
[13:10]as you know, a reflection or additional information
[13:13]or something, you know, after each one.
[13:15]In some cases it was, you know,
[13:17]here's how things went, and I wish I had done X instead
[13:20]because things would have been set up better, you know,
[13:23]as far as grieving kids and things.
[13:26]In some cases it was, here's what was going on.
[13:29]I didn't, you know, lie about anything in the journal entries,
[13:32]but I also didn't share everything
[13:35]that was going on behind the scenes and some stuff,
[13:37]you know, just maybe wasn't ready to share
[13:39]or whatever at the time, but now I said, all right,
[13:41]here's some more kind of backstory of some other things
[13:43]going on, you know, bringing that in as well.
[13:46]Wow.
[13:47]Now it all comes together and wow.
[13:50]No, it's, it's really great.
[13:52]The resources you provided and, you know,
[13:55]it's hard to pull off, right?
[13:57]It's hard to pull off because I've read other books too
[14:00]where you take a deck because, okay,
[14:03]having a journal or a diary of a really emotional experience
[14:06]often makes people wanna go back and write books about it, right?
[14:10]But a lot of times they'll include like paragraphs
[14:13]or I don't know, it's just hard to pull off.
[14:15]And I think you did a really good job
[14:17]because it wasn't just that you were using the passages,
[14:21]but I loved your reflection after the fact, right?
[14:24]Like because time passes and you think about it,
[14:27]you're like, oh my gosh, I remember that.
[14:29]And there's also something to it too
[14:32]where it's like, you wanna know,
[14:34]like when I read Caring Bridge of people
[14:36]or I hear about people going through stuff
[14:38]and you get like an update, you really wanna know
[14:41]like what else is going on?
[14:42]What else can I do?
[14:43]How can I help?
[14:44]Like what are they going through?
[14:46]What does that look like?
[14:47]And that's what this book has said well.
[14:49]It's like this is really what, you know,
[14:51]this is what it was like coming back to my kitchen
[14:53]when like we had been in a remodel
[14:55]and that was like the worst time ever.
[14:56]And you know, literally I was thinking of myself reading this.
[14:59]I'm like, I don't know if my school community
[15:01]would come out the same way.
[15:04]I mean, you were so lucky with your-
[15:06]I would say critically.
[15:07]It was so nice of all of them.
[15:09]Yes, I was so lucky and I learned a lot from that.
[15:12]And that's because I'd never been on this side
[15:15]of receiving end of support in a crisis situation.
[15:20]And you learn a lot, both on practical stuff,
[15:22]what people do that's helpful,
[15:24]but also like you see how different people react
[15:26]and you see who obviously has some experience
[15:30]somewhere with grief and is comfortable
[15:31]and doesn't run away and who seems uncomfortable
[15:34]and doesn't know what to say and maybe doesn't say anything
[15:37]because they don't wanna say the wrong thing.
[15:39]So one of the things I tried to weave in here,
[15:42]one of the kind of sub-themes was also had to be an ally,
[15:45]right, how to support grieving people.
[15:47]And I realized that I was doing that
[15:49]through Karen Bridge in real time.
[15:52]And I was deliberate about that.
[15:53]And then I was deliberate about doing that here too
[15:56]and trying to, you know, I'm not hitting people
[15:57]over the head with it, but you know, showing an example.
[16:01]And I've had readers who are not widowed parents
[16:03]who read it anyway who say, whoa,
[16:05]I've liked so much about supporting my friend
[16:08]who's going through cancer or my friend
[16:10]who's husband just died or et cetera.
[16:13]I've had to be a good ally just, you know,
[16:15]by reading my story and those elements too.
[16:18]You have a tip that I always forget
[16:20]and so important too instead of asking people,
[16:22]how are you?
[16:23]It's how are you today?
[16:24]Like, has your day going today?
[16:26]Yeah.
[16:27]Because often you can't think past that.
[16:28]And that's, you know, when you hear your trained
[16:32]of thought with, do I really wanna go into the whole thing?
[16:34]Does this person need to hear the whole thing?
[16:36]Like, how am I feeling?
[16:38]Like, you're like, I had 57 thoughts
[16:40]and half a second and then I ended up just saying fine.
[16:42]Exactly, yes, exactly, and fine.
[16:45]Was not accurate, of course not.
[16:46]Now listeners, listeners can't see
[16:48]I'm doing air quotes here, fine,
[16:50]but I couldn't, but there was no other answer
[16:52]that was really possible,
[16:54]even though it wasn't accurate or helpful
[16:57]to me, to them, to anybody.
[16:58]And somebody asking really did care and what,
[17:01]you know, usually to know,
[17:03]but yeah, it just retreat fits of uncertainty in me.
[17:07]So yeah, that was, I hate that question.
[17:09]It took me a long time before now I'm kind of back
[17:12]to where someone says, how are you?
[17:13]And now I can be like, fine, you know,
[17:15]because it's become one of those questions in society.
[17:17]It's not even really a question.
[17:18]How are you fine?
[17:19]How are you, you know, fine?
[17:20]Okay, good.
[17:21]And you move on, right?
[17:22]And for a while though, it was not,
[17:24]it was an actual question to me and it was just terrible.
[17:28]Yeah.
[17:28]It's like in French, you know, they say like,
[17:30]sava, and all you're supposed to say is sava, right?
[17:32]Like, you okay?
[17:33]Okay, right?
[17:34]Like, that's all they really need to do.
[17:36]It's the same thing.
[17:37]It's just like, it's a greeting.
[17:39]Right, nobody actually cares how you are.
[17:41]I mean, they might care,
[17:42]but then that's the next question.
[17:44]Right, right, right, right, right, right.
[17:45]They do care, but that's not what they're,
[17:48]except not in that exchange.
[17:49]Although the way you pointed it out was like,
[17:52]how are you, right?
[17:53]Like, you could tell that people were saying it like that.
[17:55]Like, how are you?
[17:56]Yeah, with the head tilt.
[17:57]Yeah, with the head tilt.
[17:58]Head tilt.
[17:59]I'm just like, you can tell me, right?
[18:02]Right, let's really go there.
[18:03]You're like, well, I don't know about that.
[18:06]Right.
[18:07]And sometimes it's like, well, you know,
[18:08]how much do they know?
[18:10]Do I need to have they read all the care images?
[18:12]And therefore they just want to know the latest,
[18:13]what happened in the last two hours?
[18:15]Or do they really, they only kind of know
[18:18]her husband has cancer and there's a problem,
[18:19]but they don't know the details.
[18:20]So I should just give some more summary information
[18:22]and like parsing all that in a half a second.
[18:25]And then figuring out what to say is just impossible.
[18:28]I like how you also said for all the people
[18:31]who came to help you, right,
[18:33]that that's something that they needed to do too.
[18:37]Like you get a lot out of helping someone who needs help.
[18:41]Right.
[18:42]I feel like people are very reluctant to ask for help
[18:44]in basically any situation.
[18:46]And then people are afraid to just pitch in
[18:48]because they don't want to overstep and all of this.
[18:51]But if you just show up and do something,
[18:53]no one's ever going to get mad.
[18:55]Like no one's like, oh, that person was too helpful
[18:57]in my time with me.
[18:58]Right?
[18:59]Yeah.
[19:00]So I feel like people need to remember
[19:02]that when you have someone who's struggling,
[19:04]like right now, like there's probably someone listening
[19:06]who has somebody they know who's going through something
[19:08]or a family going through something
[19:10]because in today's world,
[19:11]I feel like everyone's going through something.
[19:13]No, just send dinner.
[19:14]Just send something to do something, right?
[19:18]I don't know.
[19:19]You might as well.
[19:20]It can, and it'll make you feel good too.
[19:23]Well, and the thing that I've learned,
[19:25]one of the things that I've learned is that
[19:27]everybody wants to fix it, right?
[19:30]Everybody, the thing, the number one thing they want
[19:32]is to fix it.
[19:33]Whatever fix it means, take away the cancer,
[19:35]take away the terminal diagnosis, take away the problem.
[19:38]The fact is, they can't fix it, right?
[19:42]The doctors maybe can, depending on the situation,
[19:46]but, you know, your neighbor can't actually fix
[19:49]the underlying problem.
[19:50]But what they can do is fix the practical problems
[19:55]that you have.
[19:56]The fact that you need dinner tonight
[19:58]and you are spending all day at the hospital.
[20:00]And then your kids have to be here and here and then you're going to be too tired and now you have a problem because you don't have dinner to eat. They can fix that.
[20:07]They can fix the fact that your kids need a ride to soccer because you're going to be doing, you know, whatever with treatments or whatever you're doing.
[20:14]Right. There's a lot of practical problems they can fix. And that helps me handle things better. Right.
[20:22]And I didn't really realize that before I was on this side of it because like you said, you feel like you don't want to overstep or interfere or whatever. And you know, I learned, you know, when people would say, let me know if I can do anything to help.
[20:35]That's almost harder. I know that it really is.
[20:39]That was my right because first of all, I might not know what I need. Secondly, and I have to be worried about well, okay, right this second, maybe I don't need something.
[20:47]But you know, when I do need to the paper from Costco next Tuesday, if I call them, they're probably going to be in the middle of whatever they're in the middle of and it's not, you know, now I'm burning them to, right, you know, to do. I'm probably not going to call.
[21:01]But then you have to make them feel like, you know, oh, thank you so much and sitting here saying to yourself, well, now I'm not going to call you because I don't know what you really want to help me with.
[21:10]If you're a person that I should ask for shopping for car pools or for dinner as too hard to figure it out, right.
[21:16]But if someone says, I love to bring you dinner, you know, is there a night of the week that's not covered and you can say, you know, and what's your kid's favorite food?
[21:26]And you can say, you know what, Wednesdays and sushi, like, and, you know, and when one person did this and he said, how about if I bring sushi the next, you know, what's your favorite takeout place for sushi, I'll bring it the next four Wednesdays does that work for you and I was like, oh my God, yes, right.
[21:44]So that kind of thing and because if it's a specific offer, yes, it's easier for me to evaluate first of all and it's easier for me to get a sense of what kind of things you might want to help with and it's easier for me to say, well, no, I don't need the dog walked, you know, on Mondays, but I do need them, you know, her walked on Tuesdays.
[22:05]And then they can say, yes, you know, to that or whatever, right, rather than kind of a more global, yes, let me know if I can do anything, which just puts the burden back on me, which is just really impossible to handle when you're already handling all these other things.
[22:18]Wouldn't it be great if people listening if we could start some sort of like hashtag send dinner, something.
[22:26]So that people, maybe all the people who are like on their walks today and they're hearing this conversation and they're feeling bad, maybe that they didn't do it before feeling empowered, like, they could just go, you don't even have to make it yourself.
[22:38]Like you don't have to send a casserole or whatever they used to do it.
[22:41]Like when I had a friend going through something, I went on open, was open table or seamless or whatever and like sent them like a whole thing of pasta and pizza, like whatever, who's going to turn that?
[22:51]I would say if there's somebody you know out there today, just go on open table or call your local takeout place and just have them to live or a pizza or something and it will make your day.
[23:02]So anyway.
[23:03]Well, and you might want to check and make sure they're not going to actually be home, right?
[23:07]Yeah, so there's.
[23:08]Oh, yeah, but that's an awful other thing.
[23:10]I would just just tell them to leave it on the thing.
[23:12]Like, yeah, yeah.
[23:13]Well, and so, you know, along those lines.
[23:15]One of, I remember one of my friends, she said, we had somebody set up a meal train and some people signed up for different nights and someone signed up for whatever day.
[23:22]And a couple of days before that day, she said, my night is Thursday. I'm going to get pizza from, you know, the good pizza place.
[23:28]What toppings do you like?
[23:29]And what time do you want it delivered?
[23:31]And so I told her and she made all the arrangements and the pizza showed up.
[23:35]And and the kids love it because you know what, they were tired of.
[23:40]Yeah.
[23:41]You know, or what you might call, you know, other people's friends, right?
[23:44]As an adult, I'm like, somebody else's casserole. Great.
[23:47]And they have to go get great, right?
[23:49]But, you know, kids, they often like, you know, the food is familiar and the food that their parents cook and the stuff that feels like home or whatever.
[23:57]And if it's somebody else's food, it feels maybe like you're visiting someone else's house.
[24:00]Yeah, I'm not sure I've ever even had a casserole.
[24:02]Have you?
[24:03]I'm literally, I mean, I have the, I have like the glass dishes.
[24:07]I've had like a furtata or something, but I don't think a casserole.
[24:11]I don't know.
[24:12]Yeah.
[24:13]Anyway, my mom made a casserole when I was growing up called Jean's dinner dish and that that recipe is passed down through the years.
[24:18]So we do occasionally have casserole.
[24:20]We have like, we have like a little cuggle in that dish, like a, a cuggle.
[24:24]Like anyway, but that's anyway, I'm getting off topic here.
[24:27]I'll just say, you know, if there's anything to take away and there's so much to take away from your story about how to help friends, how to help families, your whole journey is like designed to help other people in so many ways and to increase empathy and to help us really understand what it's like for you for the widow for the children, you know, all of it.
[24:48]It's just like picking up this small little details and making someone's day.
[24:53]So it's something you can do.
[24:55]Anyway, so Jenny, what else, what are you doing?
[24:58]So you're doing your podcast.
[24:59]You have this amazing book.
[25:01]What is your, like, do you want to take this new places?
[25:04]Do you want to keep doing this?
[25:05]Like what are your visions?
[25:07]Is this, are you doing this for a set amount of time and that like, I know you were a sense like a operations consultant or something?
[25:13]Like I'm blanking the word.
[25:14]IT IT IT. Yeah, 20 years.
[25:17]In fact, I was in your area in New York.
[25:19]Oh, yeah. Awesome.
[25:20]So what's going to come next and also how do your children feel about this becoming sort of part of your professional identity?
[25:26]Yeah, well, interestingly, and there's 17 and 14 almost 15 now.
[25:30]They haven't read it yet. They're welcome to.
[25:32]They, I think they're in a phase where they don't pick up books as much.
[25:35]So, you know, there's copies all over the house.
[25:37]They can pick it up whenever they want to.
[25:39]You know, as far as what's next, oh my gosh, there's so many plans.
[25:42]In fact, I have heard you talking about your children's books and your anthologies.
[25:45]And I'm like, I'm just going to copy Zibi and follow what I'm talking about.
[25:49]Because I actually, I have planned in the works.
[25:51]I have a couple anthologies.
[25:53]I want, I think that's what I want to do next with widowed parents with essays.
[25:56]And so I will organize the topics, you know, write the introduction, the conclusion and get contributions from widowed parents on some different themes.
[26:03]I think that's going to be the next project.
[26:05]And I think there could be different versions or volumes or that maybe one with, you know, widowed dads and one with hearing from people
[26:11]who lost a parent when they were young and hearing their reflections.
[26:14]And there's all kinds of flavors.
[26:15]So I think I have a few there.
[26:16]I have an idea for the line of children's books as well.
[26:18]And I think it's going to be called the kids like me series or something like that.
[26:23]They'll be, it's going to be 24 because they're 24 positive psychology traits.
[26:30]I don't know what they call them character virtues or something.
[26:32]Like different.
[26:33]Each one, each one will have a theme of each one of those.
[26:35]And the kid in the story is a picture books like for little kids, right?
[26:39]It's not going to, the kid will have lost a parent.
[26:42]But it's not, it's not going to be grief so much like, like some of the, you know, the dinosaur whose dad dies or things like that.
[26:48]But it's going to be more like a, like a problem like, oh, my, you know, my dad died.
[26:52]So who's going to teach me how to tie my shoe.
[26:54]And then that's like the problem.
[26:55]And then they have to solve that by using one of the traits of positive psychology of like, I don't know, resilience or creativity or something.
[27:02]I haven't mapped it all.
[27:03]I love it.
[27:04]Yeah.
[27:05]I think it would align nicely. Yeah. And pulling in this.
[27:08]And, you know, kids and unexpected lesson, like I learned that I'm creative. So therefore, I can do X and even though my mom died.
[27:14]You know, I found whoever to help me or I don't know. I haven't worked at all that yet.
[27:18]But I think that kids need to have those kind of examples of there are other kids like me who lost a mom or lost a dad that are in the world with also, you know, real life problems and situations and stuff.
[27:32]That example, because a lot of kids feel really alone. Yeah.
[27:35]They don't know anybody in their school and their neighborhood with a dead dad or dead mom.
[27:40]They did just, you know, just based on how the numbers work out or whatever. They don't know anybody in their personal circles, which is one of the reasons why connecting kids with grief centers and grief programs is really useful because then they are with other kids who get it.
[27:53]And they can see that this is, you know, normal for a subset of the population. There are other people going there, not the only weird person in the whole world who's dad died or something. Right.
[28:03]And so I think I can do the same, I'd like to do the same thing through a book, a line of children's books, same kind of messaging and framing around that. And then the real thing, not the real thing.
[28:13]is the magnum opus, the widowed parent handbook, which will be the nonfiction book kind of campaigning to the widowed parent podcast.
[28:23]So the podcast interviews are a lot of the research inputs into that.
[28:27]I'm finding it tricky to think about an outline because it's not an easy question. Right. It's not like if there was an answer if I said, what do you need to know.
[28:35]XYZ, everything will be fine. The end. That would be an easy book to write. Right. But there's a lot of different stuff to think about. And yet it's not that there's nothing. Right.
[28:45]There's lots of useful information people need to know. So how do I cope with some kind of model and structure that. So anyway, that's all in the works.
[28:52]It's kind of a matter of like, well, what do I start first because these are all way too exciting.
[28:57]That energy. It's when you find your yes, you find your thing. You just can't stop. It's exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. No, it's been a lot of fun and you know connecting with amazing people, you know, both on the.
[29:10]On the podcasting aspect and on the writing aspect, you know, kind of all these communities talking with people's a lot of fun and just, you know, because deep down it's all about helping people who feel lost and alone as I have, you know, had felt, you know, and trying to get that message out and and help people who can identify, you know, with some of these challenges with information and resources and help them feel less alone and just try to make things a little.
[29:38]Yeah. I don't know if easier is the right word, but you know what I mean anyway.
[29:43]That's great. Okay. Last question advice for aspiring authors. Oh, yes. Okay. Good one.
[29:48]You know, I think the most important piece of advice that that I got which I'd like to pass on to other aspiring memoir writers is that memoir is really an active service.
[29:59]And I guess.
[30:00]This from Julie Lithcut Hames, who is a best-selling
[30:03]parenting author and also has a memoir on the topic of race.
[30:06]And she's talked about how memoir is really an active service.
[30:10]And it's a good memoir.
[30:13]It's not just a recitation of events.
[30:15]It's not just a navel gazing exercise of some kind.
[30:19]It's intended to serve, right?
[30:21]You want your reader to learn something
[30:24]or think of something differently or get
[30:26]a new perspective on themselves or on the world
[30:28]or on the human condition or something.
[30:30]You want to introduce them to something that helps them think
[30:34]or moves them in some way or inspires them
[30:36]in some way or helps them in some way.
[30:37]And in fact, I heard you say recently
[30:39]on an interview you did with Allison Gilbert.
[30:41]You were talking about memoirs, like sitting down with a friend
[30:45]over coffee who is going through something,
[30:47]maybe going through something worse than you are
[30:49]and chatting with them and learning something
[30:50]from their story that you can apply to your life.
[30:52]That's memoir being an active service.
[30:56]And as a writer, I think keeping that in mind
[30:59]of why you're doing it is helpful to the story,
[31:02]to making the book better.
[31:04]And it's also, I think, helpful.
[31:06]I find it critical as a writer.
[31:09]Every time I was questioning myself,
[31:11]why am I doing this anyway?
[31:12]Maybe I should just trash the whole thing.
[31:15]Is it going to really help anybody anyways?
[31:17]Is this, it's just doubt and all that stuff, right?
[31:20]I wrote a little sticky note.
[31:21]memoir is an active service.
[31:22]Julie Lipp got Hames and I posted it on the wall
[31:25]of my computer.
[31:26]Every time I started to add in myself,
[31:28]I would look at that and say,
[31:28]that's why I'm doing this.
[31:30]And it kind of bring me back to keep me motivated.
[31:32]So I think for those two reasons,
[31:34]keeping that firmly in mind is helpful
[31:37]to aspiring memoir writers.
[31:39]And write a little sticky note,
[31:41]put it above your computer if that has been.
[31:42]I have my sticky note here.
[31:44]This is like, I came and remember who said it,
[31:47]but I was on a podcast and she said,
[31:48]God never wastes a pain.
[31:51]I just love that.
[31:51]Yeah.
[31:52]I don't know, because it's like,
[31:53]why did this happen?
[31:55]What can I do about it?
[31:56]I need to keep something.
[31:57]There was a reason I have to get this out of the world.
[31:59]Anyway, so everyone needs a sticky note of something.
[32:02]Yeah, for sure for sure.
[32:04]Anyway, Jenny, it was so nice to meet you.
[32:06]I'm so sorry, I should have started off
[32:07]this podcast by saying how sorry I was for your loss.
[32:09]I meant to say that right away.
[32:11]And of course, I got distracted by your book and all of it.
[32:14]But you know, it was really great.
[32:16]I feel like I know your husband now too.
[32:19]Like it's really, it's a mitzvah what you did.
[32:22]You know, you brought him out into the world.
[32:23]So anyway, thank you for everything.
[32:26]And I'm delighted to be connected.
[32:28]Thank you.
[32:29]So this is great.
[32:30]And thank you for everything you're doing for authors
[32:31]and your podcast.
[32:32]I was re or what your podcast.
[32:33]But I was meant to say your book.
[32:35]I was reading the intro and the conclusion
[32:37]about your story of setting out this up.
[32:40]And I just think it's a terrific platform for authors.
[32:43]And you talk about a mitzvah to be able to help authors
[32:47]and create your connect authors with readers.
[32:49]You're providing a good service to the authors and the readers,
[32:52]readers want to find interesting things in this time
[32:55]when there's too many crazy things to read about.
[32:57]We also, you know, maybe can get away
[32:59]and read some interesting books that you bring to us.
[33:01]So thank you for that.
[33:02]You're welcome.
[33:03]Thank you for saying that.
[33:04]All right.
[33:05]Well, have a great day.
[33:05]And then we'll see you in a chat.
[33:06]Thanks.
[33:07]OK.
[33:08]Sounds good.
[33:08]Bye.
[33:10]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time
[33:12]to Read Books.
[33:13]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zebi Owens
[33:17]and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[33:19]Also sign up for my newsletter at zebiowens.com
[33:21]And sign up for my virtual book club
[33:23]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[33:25]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound
[33:28]for the Sound Editing.
[33:29]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[33:31]for providing this fantastic intro and now trim music.