Steph Catudal, EVERYTHING ALL AT ONCE: A Memoir
[0:02]Hi, I'm Zippy Owens, and you're listening to moms don't have time to read books.
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[1:03]The staff cut it all is the author of everything all at once and memoir.
[1:07]The memoir chronicles her discovery of the universality of grief and the redemptive power
[1:12]of love through her husband's 84 day lung cancer struggle while on life support.
[1:17]Jack's deposed against the experience of losing her father to lung cancer at the age of
[1:21]14, Steph explores both the rage and beauty of suffering, offering hope to anyone who
[1:26]is experienced love and loss.
[1:28]A trained interpersonal mediator, Steph has a master's degree in media, peace and conflict
[1:32]studies, and has worked as an assistant professor in media and peace building.
[1:37]Though she was born and raised in Montreal, Quebec, Steph is a beach nomad at heart and
[1:41]spent most of her pre-motherhood life traveling around Guatemala, Hawaii, Costa Rica, and
[1:46]Brazil.
[1:47]She currently lives with her husband three daughters and one fluffy Pramuranian.
[1:50]Welcome Steph.
[1:51]Thank you so much for coming on mom's don't have time to read books to discuss everything
[1:54]all at once.
[1:55]Thank you.
[1:56]Thanks so much for having me.
[1:57]Oh my gosh.
[1:59]I loved your book so much.
[2:02]I don't.
[2:03]I could just like have you on your and rave about it for having to tell listeners a little
[2:08]bit about your story and your whole journey to like writing this memoir and how you wrote
[2:15]about your dad at first and how you wrote it all together and and just how you created
[2:20]this amazing piece of work of art.
[2:26]Well, first of all, thank you so much.
[2:27]It's seriously such a nice compliment coming from you especially.
[2:32]This book is actually almost 10 years in the making, which is crazy.
[2:36]I started writing it in like 2014 and at the time I was pregnant with our second daughter
[2:42]Iris and at the time my goal was just to write the story of my adolescence losing my father
[2:48]to lung cancer when I was 14 years old.
[2:51]And I actually called the book.
[2:53]This is where I leave you.
[2:54]I finished it in 2019 and it was supposed to be symbolic of me leaving my grief behind.
[3:01]I know I kind of laugh at that because one of the hugest things I learned in the past few
[3:05]years from my husband being sick, which is also part of this memoir is that you never
[3:09]leave grief behind.
[3:11]And it becomes a part of you and it's a continuous journey and I wanted to weave that
[3:18]theme throughout the whole book.
[3:21]So my memoir jumps back and forth in time from my adolescence, which is the book I originally
[3:25]wrote.
[3:26]And then to the past few years when my husband was diagnosed with lung cancer, which is
[3:31]the same disease that took my father.
[3:33]Well, the way that you had us going along with you while you tried to figure out what
[3:39]was going on and a search for diagnosis and treatment and all that was just so harrowing.
[3:46]Like literally felt like we were right there with you in the rooms, like while you're
[3:52]experiencing it, tell me about using writing as a tool to get you through that time.
[3:58]Yeah, I wrote throughout my husband's illness and I also wrote throughout my father's
[4:03]illness.
[4:04]I think writing has always been my means of making sense of the world.
[4:08]I'm not a very verbally emotive person.
[4:10]I kind of have a wall up when you meet me in person.
[4:14]I often don't know how I feel about something until it comes out on the page.
[4:20]And it's almost like I'm out of my body and then I write something and I read it and
[4:24]I have this aha moment of that's exactly how I feel and, you know, call it association.
[4:31]I don't know what it is, but so when my husband ribs was in the hospital, he was in the
[4:35]hospital for 101 days during COVID.
[4:39]And so I was very isolated.
[4:41]I had to quarantine.
[4:42]I couldn't be with friends or with family really other than my mom and my mother-in-law.
[4:49]And so it was a really lonely time and writing was kind of my lifeline to the rest of
[4:53]the world.
[4:54]And so I started to write kind of in prose and poetry and I just started putting it on
[5:01]social media.
[5:02]In some way, I think it was a cry for help of, you know, just saying does anyone understand
[5:07]me as anyone there?
[5:09]And it really was met with a lot of love and acceptance.
[5:12]And I think a lot of people, although they weren't going through the same thing, it was
[5:16]a generally a feeling of loneliness.
[5:18]And I think that that's what kind of people related to and resonated with people.
[5:23]And so I wrote, yeah, throughout his illness.
[5:25]And then I started writing the actual memoir in the months after his remission.
[5:29]Oh my gosh.
[5:31]You know, the contrast between ribs being this like ultra marathoner endurance athlete,
[5:37]and that's probably not the right word to describe, extreme athlete.
[5:40]And then, you know, what it's like for someone as strong and vibrant and just like a body
[5:49]conqueror, right?
[5:50]Like you've heard the human form to show that like nobody is protected.
[5:56]No matter how fast or hard you train or run or, you know, illness cannot, you can't escape
[6:03]it.
[6:05]Avoid any of the stuff, whether it's losing someone you love or being sick yourself
[6:10]or coping with it.
[6:11]I mean, I don't mean this is sound depressing.
[6:13]I mean, it like, it sounds like we are all sort of facing this together.
[6:18]And yet we have to go about our daily lives, pretending like this threat does not loom constantly.
[6:23]And then what do you do when the background noise sort of becomes the foreground.
[6:26]And that's all you can do.
[6:28]And like, this is the book that sort of shows like all of it coming to the fort.
[6:34]Well, it's a lesson I sadly learned in my youth too because my dad, you know, he wasn't
[6:38]at the level that my husband was at in terms of athletics, but he was super fit.
[6:43]He was a professional barefoot skier.
[6:46]He was, you know, he would ski like slalom ski in the winter.
[6:49]He was he run marathons and did trathlons too.
[6:52]And so I, and then of course he got sick with a non-smoking related lung cancer.
[6:58]And so it was a lesson I had learned in my youth.
[7:02]But I almost came to believe I think that grief has some kind of lifetime cap and that nothing
[7:08]bad would ever happen to me again because my father didn't take him for me.
[7:12]And then, you know, of course that narrative cracked wide open when my husband was diagnosed.
[7:16]And like you said, it's not to be depressing.
[7:19]But if anything, it kind of taught me just to appreciate exactly what I have right now.
[7:25]And I know it's done the same for my husband who can no longer race, you know, his whole
[7:30]career in life was built around running and movement.
[7:34]And now because of the scar tissue on his lungs, he, he can't run more than 30 seconds
[7:39]at a time without having to stop and walk.
[7:43]And instead of being bitter about that, he's just come to appreciate more just his ability
[7:48]to be alive and to be here with me and our kids and to be able to move at all because
[7:55]some people don't get that luxury at the end of a long illness.
[7:57]So it's really just brought this new gratitude, I think, to our lives.
[8:02]Oh my gosh.
[8:04]You had a moment in the book and I hate to like give things away, you know, I think I already
[8:09]did.
[8:10]So I've seen an early shift.
[8:12]I mean, I guess anybody who like Google's you or him would figure it out.
[8:17]But I actually had not Google do you or him and I didn't want to know why like intentionally
[8:22]like kept myself in the dark because I was like, oh my gosh, I don't know, I don't know
[8:25]if he's going to, oh my god, like what is going to happen?
[8:28]But you know, anyway, not to give things away, but you did have a moment when you thought
[8:33]you were going to lose him and you attribute like your past psychedelics use and you
[8:38]know, your openness to the universe at large and all of that to literally have the one
[8:43]of the most powerful reading moments I've had.
[8:46]So I can't imagine how powerful was real life right to have this sort of communication
[8:52]like soul to soul, where you basically drag him back, it was unbelievable.
[8:59]Like tell me more about that moment and do you think about that moment and was this like
[9:03]a life changing thing for you and what does it mean about the universe as a whole and
[9:07]like give me the meaning of life and that's oh my gosh, I wish I knew and the interesting
[9:14]thing about that chapter that you're referring to is that's the only chapter I wrote that
[9:19]in one sitting in again, it felt out of body, it felt as though I was, I mean not to
[9:25]sound woo, but like channeling something and it was the only chapter that the editors didn't
[9:31]touch.
[9:32]There was no edits to that entire chapter and I think it's not that it's perfectly written
[9:37]but I think you could feel the emotion that went not only behind the situation but behind
[9:44]the writing of it and reliving of it for me.
[9:48]Another interesting thing is when my husband woke up quote unquote woke up as one slowly
[9:52]does from a coma, it's not like in the movies where you just open your eyes in your
[9:56]wig, but he after a few weeks he had a similar, it's
[10:00]experience of him coming back. So he said that, you know, he was, I guess, sort of floating
[10:06]in nothingness and then kind of heard my voice and remembered that he had kids remembered
[10:13]that he had a life and kind of had to find his way back. And we hadn't talked about
[10:18]my side of the experience. And it kind of solidified. Because of course, I second guess
[10:23]myself. Did that really happen? Did we really communicate on this other dimension? And I still
[10:29]have to second guess it because I'm a natural skeptic. But hearing him, I have that experience.
[10:34]It just kind of reminds me that there's life is so much bigger than the empirical and what's
[10:39]before us. And that's probably another one of the most important lessons I learned in the last few
[10:45]years is to be open to everything and the possibility of everything. Because I don't think I would
[10:51]ever entertain the idea of even a spiritual world before before his illness. And now I'm
[10:57]open to all of it, which is a beautiful thing. So you are also dealing with your daughters
[11:05]and your life and like managing them, managing them, post all of this happening. How do you feel like
[11:14]do you have some sort of PTSD? And how did you protect your girls from your own stuff as you
[11:22]went through everything? I guess those are kind of two separate questions. But it's a really
[11:28]commonly asked question. People ask me, how did you do it with your kids? And I didn't do it
[11:34]the right. I don't think there's a right way to do it. I think that when we're grieving ourselves and
[11:39]we're in tragedy ourselves, we're just doing the best that we can to survive. And then when you put
[11:46]the weight of our children on top of that, it's basically an impossible task. But
[11:51]I was able to recognize the, I guess I call it a gift that I had of having been in my children
[11:58]shoes before with a sick father. And if anything, it almost made me grateful for having been through
[12:05]something like that because it allowed me, I think an empathy that a lot of parents don't happen
[12:10]when they're reading their kids through, you know, apparent illness. And so I was able to almost
[12:16]heal from my father's passing by kind of garnering a new meaning and attributing a new meaning
[12:23]to it. But I did, I broke down. I was, I cried in front of my kids. I was scared in front of my
[12:29]kids. I just kind of offered them all of the human emotion that I was going through. And who knows,
[12:36]maybe in 10 years they'll blame me for scarring them. I don't know. But I also had my mom and
[12:42]my mother-in-law with me. They lived with me for the whole nine months of his treatment. And so
[12:47]I, I didn't do it alone. You know, I, I definitely could not have done that alone because I was at
[12:53]the hospital pretty much all day with him and they were home doing the online school. They were
[12:58]doing the quarantine with them. And so it truly was, you know, like a community rallied around me
[13:04]and our family at that time. Well, almost at the exact same time that you were dealing with us,
[13:12]my husband's mom did have COVID and got so much damage to her lungs. And she was on a ventilator.
[13:19]And then we did have to airlift her and she was on an ECMO. But it ultimately didn't work.
[13:24]But like you, with the whole, like you have to advocate, you have to do this. Like I had people in
[13:29]my life who I barely knew who came out from like, you know, I knew them. But like the fact that
[13:35]these people took like center stage and the narrative of that particular tiny slice of life is like
[13:40]bizarre. But okay, thank you. That's a random woman I met on one vacation three years ago with my
[13:44]son who was like, you have to like stop what you're doing. And if you don't make these calls or
[13:50]you don't fight and do all this stuff, this is it, you know. And then you said like in the book,
[13:56]like, was I up for that? Like, am I, can I, can I even do that? Like that responsibility is so heavy?
[14:03]Is it really coming down on my ability to make some phone calls that I felt that same sort of,
[14:08]you know, not to put myself in your ship. But just this one particular slice of it, like,
[14:13]if I don't ask in a nice enough voice, if I don't make the right calls, like that's
[14:17]the difference here. And then it did end up working. But it's like, what if I had done that sooner?
[14:22]Like, I don't know. I always feel all this responsibility because like, if it's my responsibility to
[14:27]save doesn't it mean that the whole responsibility would fall on me? Yeah. Yeah. It's oh,
[14:35]yes, I know exactly what you mean. And well, it's also, you don't hear many people who can relate
[14:40]over ECMO. So that alone is pretty wild that you have that experience. But yeah, the responsibility
[14:44]of it, especially when you feel like you're drowning just in your own fear and, you know, and sadness.
[14:50]And then on top of that, you now have to step up to this assertive role, which is in my nature.
[14:55]I'm a very kind of passive, quiet person. And so, but it was kind of a wake up call when
[15:00]of his nurses basically called me and said, if you don't, if you're not his voice now that
[15:05]he's sedated, now that he's in the coma, no one is going to fight for him. We're in the midst
[15:11]of a pandemic. You know, they're not taking extra time to care for patients that don't appear
[15:16]to have a chance of survival because at the time it didn't look like he did. And she said,
[15:20]if you don't speak for him, he's going to die here. And that was, that was the turning point for me
[15:27]am I going to let my kind of passivity be the reason he dies? And because I think I would have
[15:35]had she not given me that wake up call, you know, and so glad that I did. And on the other side of
[15:41]that, you have the responsibility of knowing that all the things that they're being put through,
[15:45]all the things that my husband was being put through, you know, surgeries and medication and chemo,
[15:50]all while he was completely unaware of his diagnosis. He went, he went into sedation, not knowing
[15:55]he had cancer. And so I was making all of these calls on his behalf, not knowing if I was just
[16:02]torturing him and not knowing if he was going to survive. And so that responsibility compounded,
[16:07]but I think I also knew that he would have said, do whatever you can, you know, to keep me here.
[16:13]And, you know, we're fortunate enough to have had it work, but I know it doesn't for a lot of
[16:17]people. So again, I have to remind myself that we're just extremely lucky, you know, to be where
[16:22]we are, you know, when he was going through all the additional chemos and you're like, I was,
[16:28]I'm like, how is this, how can he be okay? And, you know, oh my gosh, that I like went on such a deep dive
[16:35]and watched like every single thing that was ever posted on both of your Instagram.
[16:39]Because I'm like, I'm like a stalker basically. I'm like, see everything. How are they? And then
[16:46]the video that he posted with like some of those images, like, especially the one like looking down
[16:50]at his legs. Yeah. I just keep like replaying it. It's so sad, but it's amazing, but it's so sad.
[16:58]Because he lost, yeah, he lost 75 pounds. He was, and I don't know if that to an athlete who was
[17:04]already very like has 2% body fat. He went down to 95 pounds in a six foot one. And, you know,
[17:12]just the mirror fact that he continued moving when he was that skinny, I think it really just
[17:19]attributes to his, he's just such an incredible human. And that's, I mean, he wouldn't say that's
[17:25]why he's here. He hates the hero narratives. You know, he doesn't, he says that it's all the
[17:28]doctors. It's all the community that saved him. But I was there. I watched him fight, you know,
[17:33]day after day. And yeah, I see both sides of it. But. And the way you talked about the doctors too
[17:39]is so moving how they really took a personal like vested interest in him and tried everything.
[17:45]I mean, that is so important. Yeah. And I don't even think I did that reading it back,
[17:49]I wish I had gone into more detail about just what they did. They really put their
[17:54]reputations on the line. The so many of their colleagues were telling them, don't accept this
[17:59]patient right now. He's going to die. And then that's on your hands and it's the middle of the
[18:03]pandemic. Why would you take this patient? And they, there was two in particular that just said,
[18:10]if anyone could do it, it's him. And we want to give him a chance. And I actually met one of
[18:16]the doctors again at one of my book events in Phoenix. He showed up. And a few actually, a few of
[18:21]the people from my book that I had written about showed up without me knowing that they were
[18:24]going to be there. And they met ribs awake for the first time, which was surreal. It's
[18:29]sound, you know, some of the nurses that had cared for him never got to see him awake, which is
[18:35]kind of, you know, strange. And it was just emotional. They're really super heroes for sure.
[18:43]You also take us through a lot of your own coming of age, if you will. And you mentioned,
[18:48]you mentioned your tattoos in the book. But then I was like, oh, really a lot of tattoos here.
[18:54]Well, I didn't have that many. When I went to BYU, you know, I went to the Mormon LDS school,
[19:00]I only had a few visible tattoos at that time. So I was kind of easier to
[19:04]to hide them. I don't know if they would have accepted me with these hands in your tattoos.
[19:09]Tell me about the tattoo journey. And when, when did you get them all? And what's the story there?
[19:13]I started, so I got my first tattoo when I was 15 actually. I was visiting my sister in California,
[19:19]and there was this little tent, at least tattoo. This guy with a tattoo gun was like $20 tattoos. And
[19:25]I was like, sure. So that was my first tattoo. And then I got several more after my father passed away.
[19:32]It was my way of kind of having some kind of catharsis and some kind of pain, being a little bit
[19:39]constructive, at least it was art, you know, I think. And then I tried to kind of go back into,
[19:44]I tried to go back to Mormonism for a few years. So I stopped getting tattoos after I met my
[19:49]husband after we got married. I tried to be, you know, a good obedient member of the church for a
[19:55]while. And then I realized again that didn't resonate with me. And so then I started
[20:00]to get tattoos and what the first one that I actually got in my adult years was a quote from my dad
[20:04]that he wrote me a letter before he passed away. And so I have that a couple of his hand,
[20:09]I noticed it's actually a handwriting quote on me. And and now my new thing is I'm just going to
[20:14]jokes tattooed on me. So I have like inside jokes from my friends and I'm just kind of putting the
[20:19]script between the images. So once you have this many, it doesn't really matter what you get
[20:24]anymore. Now it's just like you might as well as like a blackboard. Just yeah, exactly like an
[20:29]outdated reference, I guess. So you've shared so profoundly your whole life story,
[20:38]your love for your husband, like the intimacy of your relationship, your love for your girls,
[20:42]it becomes a bestseller which is amazing. Now where do you go from here? Like where is
[20:48]happily ever after? Is there such a thing? Like how do you just like take out the garbage and move
[20:54]on with the day to day stuff? Well, that's what I'm asking myself now. Okay, so you reach that
[21:00]you have this lifelong goal, which for me was writing a memoir and having it reach the New York Times
[21:05]bestseller list. That's always been the pinnacle, you know, of my career. And I did it. So now
[21:11]what is it all downhill from here? I don't know. Well, I think it I think this happened at the
[21:15]perfect time in my life because I feel as though the rest of my life hasn't changed and it's
[21:21]going to continue to remain the same. Like I'm still just a mom. I had my kids home for the summer.
[21:27]We're running around and you know, I'm glad that my life hasn't changed other than, you know,
[21:33]the podcast and the interviews. And I think had the book come up a few years ago. I might have
[21:38]been more susceptible to either, you know, the criticism or the praise of it. And it might have
[21:43]changed the way I see myself. But I feel like, you know, I'm still me. I'm still awkward and weird
[21:50]mom and wife. But what I would love to do is I really want to write a novel. I feel I feel like
[21:57]I've done enough of the memoir. I people know way too much about my life, the intimate details of my
[22:03]mind. And I would love, I'm trying to have accurate and several chapters of taking a character
[22:10]from my memoir and then creating a story around this particular character. And so that's what
[22:17]so it would stay within the whole, you know, probably like medical kind of realm. Because that's
[22:21]what is close to my heart now and trying to humanize, I think the medical staff, but in a fiction
[22:29]and fictitious way. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I tried that by the way. I wrote a memoir. It came out. And then I
[22:38]was like, oh, but I've been working for 20 years to do that. Like now what's my next goal to you?
[22:43]Anyway, it's different. It's felt very, very different to me. This type of writing. And
[22:53]far less, I mean, obviously it's far less personal. But yeah, if people don't like it, it's not
[22:58]going to be the same as people who like memoir, which is basically like, you know, here is my
[23:04]lifeblood on this page. That means you don't like me. You know, I mean, oh, I do know you mean,
[23:09]believe me every, you know, the night before my book came out, I had this kind of purge. It
[23:13]was like trying and laughing. And I think I just realized for the first time that people were
[23:18]going to have an opinion on not only my writing, which, you know, is subjective, but on my life and
[23:24]about the decisions I had made and the way that I had dealt with difficult things. And it's a
[23:29]really terrifying thing to put yourself out there like that. And then you have no control over
[23:35]the way that people receive it. So yeah, I don't know if I'm going to do it again. Well, if there's
[23:43]anything I can do to help like spread the word. If you want to come do an event at my bookstore,
[23:48]you want to teach a class. Where's it be classes on memoir writing or writing your way through
[23:53]from. I don't know. Just let me know. Open door. Yeah. No, thank you. Are you an elite? You're
[23:59]not in LA, but your books are open in LA. Is that right? I'm in LA now. Oh, if I will be
[24:04]when this comes out. But I over the summer, I can spend a couple of weeks out here, but I have my
[24:08]kids. And so when they're out there. But I'm here in and out. But yeah, my book stores here.
[24:13]Oh, cool. It's so cool. I'm going to stop by. I'm going to be out there in a couple weeks for another
[24:16]podcast. So maybe I'll come. It's open, right? The books. Yeah. Yeah. We can talk after. But yeah,
[24:22]we can, you can do it even in an even just assigning of stuff that you want to do a whole event.
[24:27]But I would love that. Thank you. Well, thank you again. This book, I mean, as a reading
[24:34]experience is everything I personally look for, where you think you feel, you connect,
[24:40]you cry, you laugh. I mean, it was just like, it was so good as an actual, just the book journey
[24:46]itself. And then like the feeling that I had towards you, you know, after you finish, it's like,
[24:54]thank you. Thank you so much. That really is truly an honor. Thank you.
[24:59]Well, enjoy the summer running around with the kids and all the rest. And yeah, go back with the novel.
[25:05]Thank you. All right. We'll see you. So nice to meet you. Bye. Bye.
[25:11]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to
[25:16]follow me on Instagram at zebi Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Also sign
[25:21]up for my newsletter at zebi Owens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors
[25:25]on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the Sound Editing.
[25:31]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.