Brittany Means, HELL IF WE DON'T CHANGE OUR WAYS: A Memoir
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[1:08]How if we don't change our ways?
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[1:49]Brittany Beans is the author of Hell If We Don't Change Our Ways, a memoir.
[1:54]Brittany Means is a writer and editor living in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
[1:58]A graduate of Iowa's MFA nonfiction writing program.
[2:01]Brittany has received several awards for her work, including the Magdalena Award and the
[2:06]Grace Paley Fellowship.
[2:07]Her other talents include doing horror movie screams and baking ugly but delicious cakes.
[2:12]Hell If We Don't Change Our Ways is the zippy book released for October.
[2:16]I am obsessed with this book.
[2:18]We wanted an auction.
[2:20]I read it on a flight and could not believe how much I loved it.
[2:24]I was riveted.
[2:25]I can't believe everything Brittany's been through and the way that she writes about it.
[2:29]And it is just pure art.
[2:31]I hope you all love it as much as I do.
[2:33]Please go buy the book.
[2:35]You will love it.
[2:36]Give it to a friend.
[2:37]It's tough.
[2:38]It's beautiful.
[2:39]It's life.
[2:40]And it's just sensational, sensational literature.
[2:43]Welcome Brittany.
[2:44]Thank you so much for coming on mom.
[2:45]I'm starting to have time to read books to discuss.
[2:47]Hell If We Don't Change Our Ways, a memoir.
[2:49]Bye you.
[2:50]Thank you so much for having me here.
[2:53]So amazing to be here because I remember reading the submission for this book on my flight
[2:59]and just being like, this is the best book ever.
[3:01]Oh my gosh, we have to get this book and then fighting for it and getting it.
[3:05]So I feel like this was hard one and it came out of such a place of passion and enthusiasm
[3:11]from us to you.
[3:13]So here we are with it in a hardcover form since very exciting.
[3:16]I know, surreal.
[3:17]Yeah, surreal is a better word, which is why you're the good writer over here.
[3:22]So anyway, for people who don't know what Hell If We Don't Change Our Ways is about, can
[3:27]you tell them please?
[3:29]Yeah, of course.
[3:30]So Hell If We Don't Change Our Ways is my memoir about growing up homeless and vagrant with
[3:34]my mom.
[3:35]We lived in a car for a while.
[3:37]We were running from her abusive boyfriend.
[3:40]We stayed with my grandparents sometimes who were like southern Pentecostals and we stayed
[3:45]in shelters.
[3:46]Eventually I moved in with a foster family until I left for college.
[3:49]So it's kind of the arc of all the places we tried to go and how we both got out and
[3:57]processed what happened.
[3:58]So it can't be that easy just on an ordinary Monday afternoon to have to spill your
[4:03]life story repeatedly.
[4:04]Every time someone asks you what your book is about, to have to like go into the depths
[4:08]of things that you carried with you for so long.
[4:12]How public were you with new people you met, for example, with your whole backstory?
[4:18]I come from a long line of overshares so it doesn't bother me really.
[4:23]I think the only time I felt a little self-conscious about it is when it came up at work
[4:28]and someone was like, oh, I heard you had a novel published.
[4:31]I was like, kind of.
[4:33]And then yeah, the people you work with every day, you watch their faces slowly like,
[4:38]you, the person who sends us chicken pictures, they send pictures to everybody all the time.
[4:45]Yeah.
[4:46]It's just that thing where you have a pet and you love them so much that they're doing
[4:49]absolutely nothing, but you're still like, this is the most beautiful thing.
[4:54]Now, how many chickens do you have?
[4:56]I have five.
[4:57]Yeah.
[4:58]They have names.
[4:59]Yeah.
[5:00]I have a ludewing van beak toven, Johann Sebastian Bach, there's Brittany Jr. and Stephen
[5:07]Wing is our rooster.
[5:08]And then my, I named one after my brother, his name is Benjamin White.
[5:12]so we named her Hingeman Flight, but we call her Hingey.
[5:15]Oh my gosh.
[5:17]Yeah.
[5:18]That's really funny.
[5:19]I love it.
[5:20]Okay.
[5:21]Tell me about your whole writing career, essentially.
[5:24]I know you went to Iowa, but when, how old were you, and I'll call it a career, even
[5:29]if you're like five years old or something, but when did you write your first anything
[5:33]and what was it?
[5:34]Hmm.
[5:35]I remember writing, we wrote poems in elementary school.
[5:38]I think I might have been in the first or second grade, and I was just really, like
[5:44]my mom wrote poetry and she used to read it to me and my grandma told stories and wrote
[5:49]little stories.
[5:50]So I already kind of had that background and I really liked that things could rhyme.
[5:55]And I think the first thing ever wrote was something like, I don't have a dad and that
[6:00]makes me sad, which I really wasn't sad about.
[6:03]I just liked that it could rhyme and I showed it to my grandma and she cried because that
[6:08]was something that really bothered her is that I grew up without a father.
[6:12]And I felt bad for making my grandma cry, but I was also like, words are powerful.
[6:17]You can make your grandma cry with them.
[6:19]So yeah, I started writing poetry and I mostly wrote poetry until college.
[6:24]Wow.
[6:25]It eventually got a little bit better than I don't have a dad and that makes me sad.
[6:30]But you know, there's a lot of truth in that.
[6:33]I mean, short to the point, simple.
[6:35]Yeah.
[6:37]That's nice.
[6:38]Exactly.
[6:39]So then you transition from poetry to prose, how come I had a creative writing class in
[6:45]high school that teacher named Kenneth Barrett and I share his name because he was the
[6:50]first teacher to pull me aside and tell me like, you're a good at writing.
[6:56]You should keep writing.
[6:57]And it was like a revelation for me because I didn't really think I was good at anything
[7:02]in particular, like I was good at spelling tests, but that's not the same as being good
[7:07]at writing.
[7:08]And so I started doing more poetry and then he assigned like, tell us a story about your
[7:14]life or write a short story.
[7:17]And that's when I really started branching out and doing more of that stuff and doing it
[7:20]more on purpose because before that it was just something I did.
[7:24]And then the idea that it was something I could do and be good at was like, well, now I
[7:28]want to write so much.
[7:30]Yeah, just keep doing this over and over again.
[7:34]Wow.
[7:35]So then you decided just take me through your whole life story.
[7:39]So I know what happened in high school.
[7:42]I mean, we follow along with everything that happened to you in the book, but not necessarily
[7:46]everything you were the output from you and where you were thinking about writing itself.
[7:51]So then what happened?
[7:52]Well, I went to Ball State and originally I studied social work.
[7:56]I wanted to be in child protective services just because I dealt with them so much as a kid.
[8:02]And I had this idea like, if I did it, I would do it differently.
[8:06]But then in my first year I learned a lot about the limitations on social work and just
[8:13]how broken the system is and I met quite a few social workers who came and visited classes
[8:18]and they were all like so tired and talking about like empathy fatigue and compassion
[8:24]fatigue.
[8:25]I just, I really didn't want to lose what made me want to go into social work and around
[8:31]the same time, I was going to do a creative writing minor and I had a class with Jill
[8:36]Chrisman who was an amazing memoir called Dark Room.
[8:40]Two more books I believe one just came out recently, but she also took me aside after
[8:44]an essay and she was like, Britney, you're a writer.
[8:47]She said it was like a capital W was like, I'm not just good at it, but I'm also a writer.
[8:55]So then yeah, I got out of social work and I moved over to creative writing and yeah,
[9:02]I started taking all of the creative writing classes.
[9:04]I took a novel writing class, the nonfiction class, the poetry, they added like a film
[9:10]and screenwriting minor and I did that.
[9:12]I just wanted as much writing as I could get.
[9:15]Wow.
[9:16]So then the fact that you have this book is sort of no surprise to you.
[9:22]It's still a surprise, like it's right in front of me and sometimes I look at it and
[9:26]I do a double take.
[9:27]I'm like, a book me.
[9:29]Oh, it is such a good book though.
[9:32]It's so stunningly beautiful and you can really tell the poetry background, tell that
[9:38]you have a poetry background because the sentences themselves are just beautiful.
[9:42]Like the way you talk about anything and even how some chapters are shorter than others
[9:46]and the way that it all sort of like aligns on the page and all of this.
[9:51]Maybe I should read.
[9:52]Can I read like a little something from it just to show people how amazing you are?
[9:57]Well, here, I'm just going to read this because.
[10:00]It's an example of one of these sort of intermezzo sort of little pieces in between some of the other sections.
[10:07]It's placed to remembers it no more.
[10:09]I end 67 stretches diagonally across Indiana, like a seatbelt.
[10:14]All that time I spent thinking it would take us far away.
[10:16]And it turns out it doesn't even leave the state.
[10:19]It was never an escape route.
[10:20]Years later, I must have been around 10 years old.
[10:22]My mother would tell me she tried to walk in front of a car on that road.
[10:26]They wouldn't hit me, she told me they just kept going.
[10:28]It made me so angry.
[10:30]What can I say?
[10:31]I pictured her lurching out into the headlights.
[10:33]The sharps were close enough to blow her hair back.
[10:36]Her teeth bared, growling at the receding taillights.
[10:39]I'm glad you didn't get hit, I said.
[10:41]A necessary thing to say.
[10:43]Heart felt limp as the dailed bouquet of wildflowers
[10:46]I'd once picked for her and left on the dashboard.
[10:49]I mean, you have told us so much in what?
[10:53]Five, maybe 15 lines of text.
[10:56]This tells you so much about your relationship, what she's like,
[11:00]what you're like, what the setting is, what the scene is.
[11:03]I mean, it's really astounding when you think about it.
[11:06]Thank you.
[11:07]You're welcome.
[11:08]Now, it takes a lot to do that and evoke a whole tone.
[11:11]And you know, you can't help it root for you no matter which piece
[11:15]of this book you look at.
[11:16]I mean, it's amazing.
[11:18]Limp is a dailed bouquet that you gave up, which is like,
[11:21]I'm just seeing that whole thing.
[11:23]In terms of how you structured the book and the smaller sections,
[11:27]the longer sections, the deep dive, the reflections on memory itself.
[11:31]Tell me a little more about that and how you decided to attack this project.
[11:36]Yeah, well, when I started, I started with the memories and events
[11:41]that were like replaying in my head all the time mostly for catharsis,
[11:46]I think, but also they were the ones with the most details.
[11:48]So like Ben's kidnapping and, you know, living with Mark and certain times
[11:56]when we lived at the barn, they were just so vivid in my head.
[11:59]And I thought about them constantly.
[12:01]And I was always trying to frame them for myself.
[12:03]And so I think writing those down was important for me.
[12:07]Like in part, just it felt like I was putting it down.
[12:10]Like I didn't have to carry it all the time, which actually worked,
[12:13]which was surprising.
[12:16]And then I kind of built out from there to try to do all the scaffolding,
[12:20]like connect the memories.
[12:22]And then I knew I wanted to have reflections, like present day reflections in part
[12:27]because it was important for me to show that I was like younger
[12:32]and it was going through something.
[12:33]I wanted to capture how it felt and what I thought about it.
[12:36]I also wanted to be able to step away and say like,
[12:40]this is what I know now.
[12:41]And here's how I've changed and grown and learned to appreciate myself
[12:47]and other people and that kind of thing.
[12:49]And it ended up kind of replicating the way I think,
[12:52]which is just very full of loops and digressions.
[12:57]Yeah, the root goldberg machine comparison that I use in there
[13:00]is really how my mind works.
[13:01]It's just a bunch of stuff leading to other stuff, which I know is how everybody thinks
[13:06]I just like to think the mind is really fast and weird.
[13:09]Yeah, I wanted also to give people short breaks because I know it's heavy content
[13:15]if someone's reading and reading and it's just like suffering and reflection
[13:20]that can be really hard.
[13:22]And I wanted to have little landing pads where I can say like,
[13:25]you're here with me.
[13:26]I'm okay.
[13:27]It's going to be hard again, but just for this little moment, we get to be okay in the present.
[13:32]Yeah.
[13:33]There was one part of your story when you say something to the reader.
[13:37]Like, I know you might want to put the book down and just like not face this anymore,
[13:44]but I don't have that luxury.
[13:45]You said it a lot better.
[13:46]And that was so powerful to make your like, I couldn't just put this aside.
[13:50]This is my life.
[13:51]Anyway, as someone who read it and just like had my hand over my heart,
[13:55]and I did have to like put it down just to like take a deep breath and dive back in a few times
[14:00]because your story is so.
[14:02]I mean, the stuff you've been through is is really astounding that you had to go through it and amazing that you are who you are.
[14:12]And you know, I don't know what you attribute that to genetics or just you or resilience or what, but what do you think it is?
[14:22]It's really hard to say. I think sometimes I feel complicated because like I really wanted to get out of the environment I was in.
[14:32]And I wanted things to be better.
[14:34]And I wanted to stop being scared all the time and unsure of what was coming next, which to a certain extent is just part of life.
[14:42]But sometimes I I've thought like, you know, I worked really hard.
[14:47]I like, yeah, I worked really hard to like get through school and get into college and like build savings for myself and move and those kinds of things.
[14:57]But at the same time, there are a lot of people I love who are still in those environments and and dealing daily with that level of like fear and insecurity and just struggling.
[15:09]And I know that they wanted out as badly as I do. And for that reason, I don't think that there's any kind of like special thing about me.
[15:18]I think it's just a series of circumstances and good timing and, you know, having them there holding me up and supporting me.
[15:28]Even as they made the same mistakes they made. Yeah, it's kind of an impossible question to answer that.
[15:34]Like, how do you feel good about getting out of something that so many people you love are still in or have died from or still dealing with the trauma of every day.
[15:46]Sorry for an impossible question, but I loved it.
[15:49]Good question. I mean, none of us really knows how we all turned out the way we did right it's only conjecture right maybe because of this maybe because of that maybe in spite of this or in spite of that.
[16:02]And it's all just a mishmash but I don't know.
[16:06]I think it's interesting to think about. There was a book called American daughter. I don't know if you read that. And the author like went on to have a career and this mad and some of her brothers like just couldn't you know they had mental illness and you know she's like it was so random.
[16:23]Like it could have not been me, you know, it's just the same thing hits a family and it sort of lands in different ways on different people and that dictates the rest of your life.
[16:33]Yeah, I don't mean to belabor this point, but anyway.
[16:37]No, it's interesting and so hard not to just sit in and ask it over and over.
[16:43]Yeah, when you were writing the book, did you look to mentors or other people who had written books about sort of childhood trauma or all of this, like who inspired you if anybody.
[16:54]Yeah, I definitely had a book or a bookshelf. It's just, I think I've put them all back with the other books. So I think it's hard to remember which ones exactly.
[17:06]Kia Seleiman's heavy was definitely when I went back to Jill Crisman's dark room in the dream house by Carmen Marie Machado and then some psychology books. So like the body keeps the score.
[17:20]I think it's called it's, it didn't start with you. And why does he do that by Lundy paying craft.
[17:27]Yeah, I had a bunch of books that I went back to all the time, like how do you deal with that. And of course, the glass castle.
[17:35]How do you deal with writing about people you love who you have really complex relationships with who may have hurt you may have harmed other people you love.
[17:45]exactly how do you start a scene even how do you get out of the scene. Yeah, I have almost used those books to dust. They're all creased and folded over and have peanut butter spills in them because if you I am.
[18:05]Well, I think you have taken something that has been quote unquote done writing about childhood, writing about trauma, writing about coming through things describing really painful, really painful narrative and all of that.
[18:20]And yet I feel that you've done this in a unique way. And even the form itself, the form that it took the way that it's told the different perspectives. I don't know. I think it's really original and unique and amazing.
[18:36]You talked about talking about family and being sympathetic to people who may still be hurting other people and how do you wrestle with both sides of the coin right when you love someone.
[18:49]How do you deal with the mistakes perhaps or the the poor decisions, but also maintain that sense of, you know, unending love.
[19:00]and how do you then put it into words that other people can pick up and get exactly what you mean talk a little bit about, you know, having to write your brother and your mother in particular as characters.
[19:11]Right that their characters in the scenes and that yet they're also people that you probably, you know, you put the book down and then call or something. So how does that work.
[19:21]Yeah, I think this is a thing that everyone decides for themselves and there's no like good way to get answer.
[19:29]Personally, for me writing the book helped me understand my mom better in part because we we can't really communicate very well like a really phone or in person.
[19:40]She just has memory issues and, you know, disconnect from reality. So just reflecting on some of the stuff we went through things that I, you know, thought about every day and ruminated on, but actually writing them and really asking myself like how did she get through that.
[19:59]She was.
[20:00]in her early 20s, living in a car with a little kid who she probably felt a lot of feelings about
[20:08]just because of my conception and not having money and all of the things that already come
[20:14]with raising children, which to me seems like an impossible thing. So yeah, learning to understand
[20:20]like the full extent of what she was going through helped me appreciate like if even half the things
[20:27]that happened to her happened to me and continued to happen. And I was raising a kid and dealt
[20:33]with like, I don't know, the after effects of a long life of drug use and trauma. And there is a
[20:42]version of me where I could make just as many mistakes I could treat people the way she treated me.
[20:48]And I think learning to understand her and appreciate what she went through also helps me think
[20:55]like everyone's capable of harming people and giving into your most defensive and reactive instincts.
[21:04]And if I don't want to become that, if I don't want to, you know, give into the part of my brain
[21:12]sometimes it's like everyone's going to leave you. So you better leave first or any number of those
[21:18]kinds of thoughts that I really do have to appreciate like what was it like for the people who
[21:23]harmed me to get to the point where they made those choices and how do I not make those choices?
[21:30]Yeah, I don't know if I answered your question. It doesn't even matter.
[21:33]I don't even know. I don't even remember what I asked, but I love what you had to say.
[21:36]I mean, I just feel like you are the most empathetic person to do it seriously. I mean, that is
[21:44]the epitome of empathetic right there putting yourself in their shoes, even though you could
[21:49]so easily take a different text and feel a lot of different feelings. It's amazing. Really wonderful
[21:55]Q. Tell me about what you're working on now. Are you working on more poetry? Has that made it come
[22:02]back? Short stories, essays? Are you writing anything else for us? Yeah, I wrote my, there's like a
[22:11]publication day essay that I'm pretty excited about. I wrote about horror movies, which is
[22:16]one of my favorite topics. And yeah, poetry has made kind of a comeback when I was working on the
[22:22]book. I was so in the mind of prose that I didn't really write a lot of poetry. But yeah, I lately
[22:28]have been getting back into it and I've written some stuff that I'm like, wow, I like writing poetry.
[22:37]I can't believe I stopped doing this for so long. And then yeah, I'm working on hopefully my second
[22:43]book, which is about, yeah, she's hard to say it concisely. But if I really had to sum it up,
[22:49]it's about how mental health and physical health combine and manifest in religious settings.
[22:56]Yeah, that could be its own holes in call. That was another concise answer though. That was good.
[23:05]Thank you. What advice do you have for aspiring authors?
[23:09]I always, I always say take care of yourself because I think writing is so magical. And when
[23:17]when you love writing, it just feels natural. Like that's how I process things. Sometimes even
[23:23]as I'm having a conversation, I think about how I would be formatting the dialogue or adding in
[23:30]details from the room and that kind of thing. I love writing. I also think that like anything
[23:36]too much of it or doing it. I don't know, doing it wrong. It's hard to quantify how doing it wrong
[23:42]means anything. But I think it's important to check in with yourself and and say like,
[23:49]how is it affecting me to be writing this right now? And is it okay that I'm feeling this? Do I
[23:54]need to sit with this? Or am I sitting in it too long and do I need a break from it?
[23:58]Yeah, I think I would tell writers just check in with yourself. Like feel free to get lost in the
[24:04]words because that's such a wonderful thing to do. It's also no one to step back out and be in your
[24:11]body and ask yourself questions and just make sure that you're okay because writing is part of
[24:16]being a person. But it's also good to think I'm a person before I'm a writer or maybe not. I don't know.
[24:22]Well, what's clear is that you are definitely a writer with the capital W.
[24:31]I hope that you run into your teachers and send them the bug and show them what happened and that
[24:37]you get everything that you want out of taking this book on tour and being around readers and
[24:44]using your using your craft for good. Thank you. Welcome. All right, well congrats Brittany.
[24:50]So excited. Thank you so much. Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms. Don't have time to read
[24:56]books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zebi Owens and at Moms. Don't have time to read books.
[25:02]Also sign up for my newsletter at zebiowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of
[25:07]authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound for the
[25:12]Sound Editing. And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and
[25:17]now trim music.