Vanessa Zoltan, PRAYING WITH JANE EYRE: Reflections on Reading as a Sacred Practice

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[0:41]Vanessa Zoltan is the author of Praying with Jane Eyre, Reflections on Reading as a Sacred Practice.

[0:46]Vanessa is a chaplain, podcaster, and owns not-sorry productions,

[0:50]a feminist production company based in Boston, Massachusetts.

[0:53]She is a non-denominational chaplain whose work is dedicated to treating secular things

[0:58]as if they were sacred.

[0:59]Her podcasts include Harry Potter and the Sacred Text and Hot and Bothered.

[1:04]She is the author of Praying with Jane Eyre, which we discuss and was really awesome.

[1:08]Welcome, Vanessa.

[1:09]Thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to read books and so excited to have you on.

[1:13]Thank you so much for having me on.

[1:15]I am excited to talk about your book and your podcast and your whole approach to reading

[1:20]a sacred text.

[1:21]This is like speaking to the choir here, preaching to the choir.

[1:26]Tell me.

[1:27]Talk about the book, the year idea for the book, the whole pivot to divinity school and how

[1:33]you sort of arrived at using Jane Eyre's inspirations.

[1:36]Absolutely.

[1:37]So I grew up as a Jewish atheist, grandchild of four Holocaust survivors.

[1:44]So atheism was sort of hard one.

[1:47]And I worked in education for 10 years.

[1:50]I always wanted to be a teacher and that's what I would school for.

[1:54]And then I worked in education on profits.

[1:57]And obviously we need wonderful people in education.

[2:01]But the education and nonprofit world sort of chewed me up and spit me out.

[2:06]I really found it dispiriting that I think way as a country just don't believe that black and brown children deserve to learn.

[2:14]Otherwise, we would fund schools irrespective of property taxes.

[2:18]And pay teachers more and do all these things.

[2:21]And that to me seemed to be a sole problem that we as a country have this Calvinist notion that even at birth, you must have done something wrong for your bad luck.

[2:32]Right.

[2:33]We culturally, if you find out someone has cancer, we as Americans immediately want to be like, Oh, did they smoke?

[2:40]So did they right we want to blame people for their racial identities or bad luck or whatever it is that we see as like them deserving right their poverty.

[2:52]And yeah, that just really seemed to be something like crushing and depressing about the American soul.

[2:58]And so I wanted to go to divinity school.

[3:01]And I sort of think that through and this was also the thought occurred to me in 2008 in 2009 i'm a millennial so I was like i'm never going to be able to retire anyway.

[3:12]So some this screwed.

[3:14]It might as well do something I like and so chaplaincy, which is what I wanted to do when I went to div school is like reading writing and chatting.

[3:23]And I was like, I love those things. And so I went to divinity school and about halfway through, I realized that I was not going to be able to teach myself how to pray.

[3:34]I really wanted to because I was visiting people in prisons and hospitals and they were asking me to pray and I just felt like I was speaking it and performing.

[3:43]And the reason was I would go to temple and I would just every time I heard the show, I would picture my family members in the schmoll right is the gas came out right like I just like couldn't get over that home.

[3:54]And so I asked a professor to teach me how to pray using jayner because it's my favorite book.

[3:59]And I thought this won't trigger me.

[4:02]And I was right and wrong. So we spent six months figuring out what it meant to pray and sort of starting from scratch and really breaking down what prayer was because we were using a secular text.

[4:15]And I mean, you know, I realized all the things that are probably obvious to a lot of other people that the jayner is patriarchal and racist and all the things that make it difficult.

[4:28]But I still found, you know, praying with it really rewarding.

[4:32]And so my book is a collection of sermons using jayner as the luxury.

[4:39]So just like you would go to tublana Friday or church on a Sunday, you know, there's a piece of text that you are in conversation with.

[4:48]And so my book is about resentment and romantic love and anger, but using jayner as the luxury instead of the Bible.

[4:57]That was very long answers. I'm sorry.

[4:59]Don't apologize. It was great.

[5:01]You know, reframed. It's also a collection of essays.

[5:05]I mean, whether you call it a sermon or an essay or whatever, there are reflections right there reflections on texts or reflections on you.

[5:13]It's really a memoir and essays. Let me just tell you what your book is.

[5:17]absolutely right. That's absolutely right. And I think I appreciate you saying that because.

[5:23]Yeah, you don't have to know jayner in order to know the, you know, to enjoy the book. I would like to think it's really just reflecting on a quote in order to, you know, think through things in my own life.

[5:37]I mean, to be honest, I found the most interesting parts about you, not about Jane air and your interpretation of it, like your story was what was so powerful to me.

[5:46]And the fact that you're using the text in that way was also really powerful. So you have this line or not line about like how to, how to use a text right to your to make it sort of a sacred text.

[6:00]So you're going to read this little paragraph. So people even understand what you're talking about. You say, do this at home, pick up your favorite book or pick out something else you love, be it knitting or baseball and let it teach you how to get better at being a loving person in the world.

[6:14]If you want to do it with books like I did, it's easy. Just read the book over and over write down in a journal the sentences that speak to you, collect them and recite them, pray them, meditate on them, think about them.

[6:26]It's easy to do this. It's really just earnestly asking a text to change you and letting go of the control as to how it will change you.

[6:33]Some of you may and fairness think I'm reading too much into the words we find in Jane air to USA, maybe and join me anyway.

[6:39]Let's read too much because otherwise we risk reading too little and let's find the strange stuff.

[6:45]The strange stuff is the stuff of life, the beautiful unknown, the exciting, unforeseeable, the strange stuff may get you on your knees even when you really don't believe in getting on your knees.

[6:55]I love that Vanessa. I am obsessed with this paragraph and this whole approach. I feel like this is what I do anyway.

[7:03]This is what so many book lovers do and why they hold them as their talismans.

[7:09]I feel better. It's so ridiculous. But anyway, no, I mean, it's people talking to you from across time and from their most vulnerable points of view and they're really curated.

[7:25]You know, their best articulated thoughts. I mean, books are offerings right of really vulnerable things, a novel, a novel such an embarrassing thing right it's like here we're my daydreams in my imagination right it's so vulnerable and people are just offering them to us.

[7:46]And so I think of course they deeply touch us. And yeah, you know, there are studies that show that readers are more empathetic than other people.

[7:54]Obviously that is not a one to one ratio. There's many great readers who I'm sure are jerks.

[8:02]A lot of people who are not you who don't love reading who are I mean, I think it also depends what you're reading right I mean, yes, absolutely.

[8:09]But reading changes us. Yeah, and I think you can tell like it's also, you know, you look on someone's bookshelves and it tells you about somebody right when I just made that joke about people reading.

[8:22]Well, maybe they're reading like all these angry books and you know, anyway, I don't know where I was going.

[8:29]Yeah, and what you said about the Shima and the gas chambers. Oh my gosh, all your passages in the book about your family history and Auschwitz and how many what percent like survived and just oh my gosh, the part to me that like really resonated and that was different than so much else that's been written on this topic was sort of how you generations later are trying so hard to put yourself in that situation.

[8:58]Because I think I related because I do this all the time in like horrible events. What was it like? Like I want to be in it. And so you say that you like really go there. What was it like? What would it sound like? What would it feel like and like how that you essentially like re-experience it just in your mind like with active imagination and like then it's this generational trauma that that seeps through. Yeah, I mean, it's definitely a generational trauma. I also just think

[9:28]I mean, these types of things are still happening all over the world. And I think that with climate change we have events like this in our future. I mean, COVID was a version of this, right? We had people in hospitals dying and that was happening along racial and socioeconomic lines. So we allow for genocides all the time and I am not part of the solution, right? Like I am no better than that. But I definitely want to be ready.

[9:57]for when it happens in a way that I.

[10:00]can do something about more than I already do, right? The one piece of surviving thing that I

[10:07]have for my mom's mom is because a neighbor hit it. I have this like tiny sort of worthless

[10:13]jewelry box and like that obviously wasn't enough, but it was something, right? I just want to

[10:19]I want to be paying attention around me in like a very Timothy Snyder, right? Like fighting

[10:24]tyranny through, you know, just paying attention to the people around you and being loving

[10:30]to the people around you. Like the Holocaust wouldn't have been able to happen if if neighbors had

[10:36]defended their Jewish neighbors. But there's even that thing. He said how whenever people visited

[10:44]friend's houses, your family would say like, okay, well, they're a nice friend, but would they

[10:48]hide us? You know, that's such a, I mean, oh my gosh, the lens through a interviewing friendship.

[10:53]So you wrote, they debate with these friends who just fed us accepted our flowers, laughed with us

[10:58]and hugged us goodbye, hide us from the Nazis. If the Nazis came to the streets of Los Angeles

[11:02]tomorrow, March 3rd, 1989, that's what it was at the time. And so you said, literally all four of my

[11:08]grandparents, Mintem and Auschwitz, my mom's parents met and Auschwitz. I met my partner on okay,

[11:13]give it. So for my parents, this question of who would hide us was not an academic one. They were

[11:18]trying to teach us. They were modeling for us that picking friends wasn't just about laughing around

[11:22]the table. It was a question of life or death. And it was a question of life or death for both

[11:27]parties. That is heavy stuff. One of my best friends, Matt Potts, he co-host Harry Potton,

[11:35]Sacred Tax with me. And he's really, I mean, a person who I talked to every day. The first time I

[11:42]left his family's house. I don't know how we ended up talking about it. But I, I brought this up

[11:50]that like, I'm always curious when I leave a house now, like, oh, would they save us? And he,

[11:55]I feel like we connected so strongly because he, he's half Japanese and spends a lot of his time

[12:02]studying the internment camps in the United States. And so he, he was like, I really struggle with it

[12:08]because he had three really little kids at the time. And he was like, I don't know if I would be able

[12:13]to bring that danger into my house. And then a couple days later, he was like, but I don't know if

[12:18]I would be able to model for my children that we say no to a friend. And a couple of these later,

[12:22]he was like, but man, that kind, you know, and watching him process that was so illuminating to me

[12:29]of how hard those decisions were for people at the time and how hard those decisions are for

[12:34]all of us all of the time. But yeah, right? Like in Houston, there was flooding and electricity

[12:41]you let your neighbors in for how long, right? Like these are live questions for all of us.

[12:46]Joel Osteen, right? Like had the biggest mega, has the biggest mega church in Texas. And during

[12:52]Hurricane Harvey closed the doors and locked them and did not let people in. And like that is

[12:59]criminal. And so I, yeah, I think it's important for all of us to think through these questions

[13:04]so that we let people in in times of crisis. Well, that is something that should be actively

[13:09]thought about. You know, it's like one of those things. It's a good, you know, yeah, it's something

[13:15]that like when emergencies happen. Although, I mean, with COVID, people are making those decisions

[13:21]all the time as well. Who are you going to quarantine with? And you know, all of that. And COVID

[13:26]was so strange because it was the opposite, right? It wasn't community outreach. It was the thing

[13:31]you can do is lock yourself up at home to stay safe, which I feel like psychologically was so hard

[13:36]for everyone. I feel like maybe I dreamt the whole thing. I'm like, did this for some days,

[13:41]I'm like, don't really happen. No, that couldn't have happened. It must be in my imagination.

[13:47]It was like a novel. It was, yeah. I don't know. Oh my gosh. So you wrote this book along the way,

[13:54]you've also discovering this, this like massive podcast following. So tell me about you started

[13:59]with Jane Eyre. He moved on to different texts. You went to Harry Potter and started putting your

[14:06]unique amazing lens on that book. And then tell me about turning that into a podcast and everything

[14:11]that's happened since with that. Yeah. So I started a Jane Eyre reading group and there were four

[14:17]women who came every week. And one week my friend Casper came and he was like, this is really

[14:24]amazing. What you're doing, we can sex with our texts sacred. You should do it with a book

[14:27]people actually want to read. And I was like, that's so mean. Everyone loves Jane Eyre. And he was

[14:33]like, no, everyone loves Harry Potter. And I was like, oh, that's smart. And instead of four people,

[14:37]like 80 people came. And really, it was just like we were doing this as part of a small community

[14:45]congregation in Cambridge, Massachusetts and affiliated with Harvard Divinity School. And so

[14:49]Sam Friedman from the New York Times came up to write an article about atheist in Divinity School.

[14:55]And so we got mentioned in it. And to your point earlier that this is what readers do,

[15:01]readers from all over the world wrote to us being like, I read Harry Harry Potter every year on

[15:07]the anniversary of my father's staff. I have a whole quote journal full of Harry Potter books.

[15:12]And when I'm sad, I read that my fall asleep to Jim Dale reading these books every night.

[15:17]Can I join your class? And this was in 2015. So we didn't have zoom the way that we do now.

[15:25]And also we were just like, something really intimate is happening here. We had people break up in

[15:30]small groups. So we basically just kept saying no to people and Matt Potts. And I was just talking

[15:36]about was like, you guys should do this as a podcast. And we were like, we don't know anything

[15:41]about podcasting. But it turns out that there was a first year at the Divinity School who was studying

[15:47]digital media as ministry. She went through depression. Her name is Ariana Madelman. She went

[15:53]through depression in the early in her, like as she graduated from college. And, you know,

[16:00]John Green and Hank Green's Nerdfighteria really got her through that time. And some of the

[16:05]Pemberley Digital Jane Austen reimagining. And so she came to Divinity School to study how

[16:11]those communities matter. So the three of us, Casper Ariana and I partnered up.

[16:16]And our goal was to have 300 listeners and just sort of to do proof of concept that even

[16:22]treat secular things as sacred. And we somehow ended up with 80,000 listeners. And it just became

[16:29]it became its own thing. And so yeah, then I didn't want to just be the Harry Potter company

[16:36]because Harry Potter is complicated and JK Rowling has really let her hateful transphobia

[16:43]paint those books. And so we're still treating Harry Potter as sacred and, you know, leaving JK

[16:48]Rowling at the door. But we also treat romance novels as sacred. And we have a podcast,

[16:54]the real question where we treat different Texas sacred every week. So we don't want Harry Potter

[17:00]to be the whole proof of concept. But it's been amazing. So we've been doing this for five years now.

[17:06]And we have 80 local groups who meet all over the world. We've won in Latvia and then

[17:12]won in each borough of New York City, who meet and do this every week treat Harry Potter's sacred

[17:18]and small communities, which is the best part of it to me that, you know, people are bringing each

[17:24]other soup and doing all the things that communities do. Wow. So amazing. The power of your idea

[17:32]and how it's taken off and changed people's lives. I mean, that's a mitzvah, right?

[17:38]Atheist or not, you know, I mean, it's like, I also thought it was so interesting your whole

[17:44]I'm Jewish and here are all the eight thousand ways that I'm Jewish. And yet I don't know that I

[17:48]believe in God. And that's also I have to hold that alongside all the rest, which is complicated.

[17:55]But yet you explain it, you know, very clearly and sort of hold that. And that's the lens through

[18:00]which we see everything you're doing. So I don't know. That's off to you.

[18:05]I do love being Jewish. We really do. We're having, God, I'm talking about them so much,

[18:11]we're having the Pots family around Sunday to do Hanukkah. My step daughters are now

[18:18]many under step daughters nine and last passover she turned to me and said, I'm a little bit

[18:22]Jewish, right? And I was like, yeah, you are. So we have a very Jewish household. But yeah, I just,

[18:31]I just really can't believe in the afterlife is always where it hits a wall for me. So I want to

[18:36]make paradise here on earth and not pay attention to the afterlife. I have all these lofty goals.

[18:43]I do not go around doing good deeds all the time. But these are the things I actually do.

[18:48]You just know this, you know, how many good deeds does one person have to do to be someone who does

[18:54]good deeds? I mean, you do want and that's, I mean, that's pretty good. Not every single thing,

[18:58]you know, you don't have to like do it on the way to Starbucks. But yeah, wait, I'm just like

[19:02]losing my train of thought, which I almost never do. But, but we're using like one second to go

[19:07]as I wanted to keep talking about it. We have my step daughter, your step daughter, who's my

[19:12]little, said, I'm a little bit Jewish. I don't know. I'm Jewish in an atheist. Oh, yeah, I wanted to know

[19:18]you said afterlife that you don't believe in the afterlife. So this is like, you don't have to

[19:22]answer this and it's none of my business. But like, do you believe in signs from people who have

[19:27]passed away? Like, do you believe that there are somehow or their souls linger or that there's

[19:33]nothing? So I believe in what's written in this song of songs that love is stronger than death.

[19:39]So I believe I never met my grandfather. He died 11 years before I was born. But my dad told me

[19:46]so many stories about him that my father's love for him turned into my love for him. And so I

[19:55]think his memory is a blessing in my life, even though I don't, I never met him.

[20:00]And I would like to keep telling, you know, my stepdaughter's

[20:03]those stories so that his memories are blessing in their lives.

[20:06]But I don't believe, I just believe that that love

[20:11]in those memories keep us buoyed.

[20:14]I don't believe that there's sort of a conversation happening.

[20:19]I also believe that sometimes people's deaths

[20:22]is our mercy in our lives.

[20:25]My grandfather, my mom's dad, who I was incredibly

[20:29]close to and spoke to several times a week

[20:32]and visited constantly.

[20:35]His death has created a lot of freedom

[20:39]as far as he was very controlling with our extended family.

[20:43]And as much as I miss him and his memories

[20:46]are so many blessings in my life.

[20:49]Because he's dead, I no longer have

[20:51]to talk to certain really abusive people, right?

[20:54]Like, so I just think both are true, right?

[20:57]Death is so material that it's just so complicated.

[21:04]But yes, I absolutely believe that love is stronger

[21:07]than death, that we can love people, past death,

[21:10]and that their love can keep working on us

[21:12]even once they're dead.

[21:14]I like that their love can keep working on us.

[21:17]That's nice.

[21:18]You wrote really openly about your depression in the book

[21:21]and times when you were a bad bound

[21:25]and the gift of Zolaft and all of it.

[21:29]How are you managing that today?

[21:31]Mostly really well.

[21:32]I have been on the same three medications

[21:35]for 15 years now.

[21:38]I was depressed at the age of five.

[21:41]I had childhood depression.

[21:42]And this is me like post-diagnosing myself,

[21:46]which I don't think we should do to each other,

[21:48]but I feel fine doing to myself.

[21:50]I mean, just like the moment I remember

[21:53]is the first time I got a homework assignment

[21:55]in kindergarten, my thought was,

[21:58]this is the beginning of the end, now my work is all,

[22:01]my life is all work in turmoil.

[22:03]I mean, just like everything was received by me as negative

[22:08]and a lot of negative self-talk and all those things.

[22:12]And at 23, it got so bad that I really,

[22:19]I wasn't functioning, I lost 50 pounds

[22:22]and it was unable to go to work

[22:26]and live a functioning life.

[22:28]And so God bless my mom.

[22:30]I called her and I was living in St. Louis, Missouri

[22:33]and I'm from Los Angeles and I called my mom

[22:36]and I said I need you to fly here and drive home with me

[22:38]because I had a car in St. Louis and we drove back to LA

[22:42]and my mom who was working full time

[22:44]just figured out ways to lie to her bosses

[22:47]and drive me around until we found a psychiatrist.

[22:50]And this man saved my life.

[22:52]I mean, he came out and I told him I sometimes

[22:54]and he said I have good news and bad news.

[22:56]The bad news is that I find you very boring,

[22:59]but the good news is and that's because you're textbook

[23:02]and take these pills.

[23:04]And so yeah, I say like I can still feel despair and depression

[23:09]but I'm able to function through it now

[23:12]or I'm able to rust through it or go on a walk through it.

[23:16]But it's no longer ruining friendships.

[23:21]I was really anxious about going on medication.

[23:23]I, you know, I was always really creative

[23:25]and I felt like it might kill something in me.

[23:29]And I called my best friend Kim

[23:32]and I said I'm really struggling with this decision

[23:34]and she said, oh, it's not your decision.

[23:36]It's my decision.

[23:37]When you're depressed, you're a really bad friend

[23:39]and I can't count on you.

[23:41]So I need you to take these meds and I was like, okay.

[23:44]And like that was just it to me.

[23:46]I was like, I want to be a good friend to Kim.

[23:49]So, wow.

[23:50]Is she still blessed in her?

[23:52]Is she still?

[23:53]Oh, yeah, she's, yeah.

[23:54]Amazing.

[23:55]Yeah, we've been best friends since we were five.

[23:57]So she's, she's my soulmate.

[24:00]Oh, my partner is great, but she's my soulmate.

[24:04]Oh, that's beautiful.

[24:06]Oh my gosh, very lucky.

[24:08]Well, thank you to Kim.

[24:09]What are you working on now?

[24:11]Are you working on another book?

[24:13]Yes.

[24:14]Yes.

[24:15]Yes.

[24:15]I am working on a romance novel and that was very fun.

[24:21]And then the other book I'm working on,

[24:23]I'm working on a proposal for treating women's memoirs as sacred.

[24:27]I think women save each other all the time

[24:31]with your conversations like this, right?

[24:33]And through podcasts like yours and through talking

[24:37]about how devastating that miscarriage was

[24:40]or how hard menopause was.

[24:41]And those conversations for whatever reason

[24:44]are relegated outside of mainstream conversation.

[24:48]And so women's memoirs that were like women whispering

[24:53]to each other.

[24:54]And I wanna look really closely at that

[24:56]and see what it is that women are saying to one another.

[24:59]Cause I think it's pretty exceptional

[25:01]what we're saying to one another.

[25:03]And so I wanna treat those voices as sacred.

[25:06]Well, I love that idea.

[25:08]I am a huge fan of memoir.

[25:10]I'm like huge obsessed.

[25:12]I feel like books have gotten me through specifically

[25:16]those types, but also fiction.

[25:18]Like everything in life, there are the people.

[25:20]And I feel like that's like in part

[25:22]why I've built this whole thing is I'm so grateful.

[25:25]I'm just so grateful to the books,

[25:27]to the people behind the books, it's such a gift.

[25:31]Anyway, what advice would you have for aspiring authors?

[25:34]Oh, I mean, I got so lucky

[25:37]because I only got a book deal

[25:39]because my podcast had an audience.

[25:41]The thing I will say is I know writers

[25:44]really, really who blind wrote query letters to agents

[25:49]and have gotten book deals.

[25:51]So I would say write something you're proud of

[25:54]and then write to a million agents

[25:57]until someone sees your brilliance.

[25:59]It is not as opaque and impossible a process

[26:03]as it might seem from the outside.

[26:07]Google how to write a good query letter, right?

[26:10]But all the information is out there.

[26:12]And I just, I really do think it's doable.

[26:14]And I hate that the publishing industry makes itself look

[26:17]like an ivory tower.

[26:20]It's not, it's more porous than it seems.

[26:22]So go for it, I think is my advice.

[26:27]I started my own publishing company.

[26:28]I don't know if it's called Zippy, but I do.

[26:30]And I'm trying to, I'm knocked down this tower

[26:34]and, you know, I don't know.

[26:37]Well, Zippy, I wrote write like your website

[26:41]just had such a wonderful invitation of like,

[26:42]do you think that Zippy might like one of your books?

[26:46]And I was just like, okay, I'm gonna fill up this form, right?

[26:49]And so you and I are talking because absolutely

[26:51]because you're knocking down that ivory tower.

[26:54]I just blind wrote you.

[26:56]I know, but I started reading your book.

[26:58]It was like so great.

[26:59]I don't know.

[27:00]I feel like yours is an example of a book that like,

[27:03]I don't know, it just should be a much bigger book.

[27:05]That's all.

[27:06]It's so good.

[27:07]It's so good.

[27:08]And my mom agrees.

[27:10]I'm serious.

[27:10]You're a great writer.

[27:11]And you're, you have such an amazing sort of soul

[27:16]and desire to help.

[27:17]And it's great.

[27:19]I'm really glad we connected.

[27:20]So thank you likewise.

[27:23]Okay.

[27:23]Well, it was great to meet you.

[27:25]Where are you guys by the way?

[27:26]So you and where are you?

[27:28]I'm in Boston, but I'm, you're in, I'm in New York.

[27:32]I'm in, I'm, I'm, no, I'm not in Brooklyn,

[27:35]but I'm in the place that I'm there all the time.

[27:38]So Lauren Sandler is my co-host.

[27:42]I know that your best friend is Joanna Rakeoff.

[27:45]Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

[27:46]So it's, we're only a few degrees removed,

[27:49]but she's my co-host on hot and bothered.

[27:52]And there a lot for that.

[27:54]Well, let's make sure we meet up at some point.

[27:58]Yeah, I'll email you next time.

[28:00]I'm in the city.

[28:01]Please do.

[28:01]Okay.

[28:02]All right, Vanessa.

[28:03]Okay, bye.

[28:06]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time

[28:08]to Read Books.

[28:09]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zibbowens

[28:12]and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.

[28:14]Also sign up for my newsletter at zibbowens.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 at Textures Sound

[28:24]for the Sound Editing.

[28:25]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions

[28:27]for providing this fantastic intro and now trim music.