Lissa Soep, OTHER PEOPLE'S WORDS: Friendship, Loss, and the Conversations That Never End
[0:02]Hi, I'm Zippy Owens, and I am the host of this podcast, Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[0:08]I am also a newly minted USA Today best-selling author of the novel, Blake, and created
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[0:26]or join the community at ZippyReaders.
[0:31]Lisa Soap is the author of other people's words, friendship loss, and the conversations that
[0:36]never end. Lisa is a senior editor for audio at Vox Media and special projects producer and senior
[0:42]scholar and residents at YR Media. She has a PhD from Stanford where she studied education,
[0:47]social theory, and linguistic anthropology with leading back-to-end scholars. She lives in San Francisco.
[0:53]Welcome, Lisa. Thank you so much for coming on Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss
[0:57]other people's words, friendship loss, and the conversations that never end. Thank you for
[1:03]having me and thrilled to be here. Oh, thrilled to have you. Can you tell listeners a little bit
[1:08]about this book? Why you wrote this book? The losses that inspired it. The intellectual
[1:14]thoughts that you wove throughout. Just tell me about the structure and all of it so people have
[1:21]a sense. Absolutely. Yes. So other people's words started when two friends of mine died
[1:29]around the same time about 10 years ago in very different ways. So Christine died slowly after a long
[1:38]and deceptive illness that did a lot of damage to her mind and to her relationships before she finally
[1:46]got a diagnosis and it ultimately ended her life. Johnny died suddenly all at once. He was swimming
[1:52]in a lake in Montana and a boat ran over him and he didn't survive. So the book is a story of these
[2:00]friendships. These loves and these losses. And it's really also a story about friendship itself as a
[2:06]great love in our lives that often doesn't get the same recognition as other intimacies that
[2:14]define us. And I know this is something that you have written and thought a lot about as well.
[2:18]And it's about what it feels like to have lost these friends for me. And then to have found them
[2:24]again and again through language. So the sort of shape shifting power of language in the face of
[2:32]loss is a through line in the book. And one of the things that sort of drove me to write it as I
[2:39]started to notice all the ways that I and others who were left behind by these two amazing people
[2:46]how we were using language to hold love once close even after they were gone in this particular way
[2:54]by by sort of experiencing and carrying their voices within our own. You know, the freezes,
[3:00]the intonations, the ways with words that sort of define the people we love, they don't go away
[3:06]when somebody's gone. Right. And one of the ways that they stay with us is we hold them in our own
[3:10]voices. And I started to notice that in myself. And I hope that the book is an invitation
[3:16]for readers to notice their own love and losses in their own uses of language and the people that
[3:22]are with them in their words. Right. Because our language is teeming with voices. You know, real voices
[3:29]imagine voices, remembered voices, present voices, voices we long for, maybe voices we wish
[3:35]weren't so palpable in our own language. And so when you start to notice that in a time of loss,
[3:42]to me, it gave me a kind of companionship and a through line to people whose conversations I
[3:48]wasn't ready to live without. And then you start noticing it in other ways too, right? Not only in
[3:54]loss. So it becomes a really expansive sort of like revelation for me. And therefore I hope that
[4:02]the readers will be able to see themselves in these stories and see their own stories and hear their
[4:07]own words in a different way. Wow. Well, you definitely accomplished all of that. I am so sorry
[4:14]for your losses. Can we talk about your friends for just a moment? Because you really
[4:19]introduced us to both of them. And Johnny, for instance, first of all, the way in which he died was
[4:24]so horrible that he was there basically at the lake because of his father-in-law's recent passing
[4:32]stepfather-in-law's recent passing and they were all gathered. And he just like grand, I mean,
[4:36]oh my gosh, his whole family right on the shore and how sudden it was. Anyway, so terrible. And you
[4:41]talk about how you as couples kind of grew up together and what he was like. And then the moment
[4:48]when his brother came to the memorial and he spoke the same way, which kind of gave me
[4:52]chills. So just paint a little picture of Johnny who in my head is like this, he used to have long
[4:58]red hair, right? Like, I'm trying to like conjure him myself, but just so other people get a visual.
[5:04]Yeah. One of the things that I say in the book is that a lot of people become larger in life
[5:09]after they're gone, but Johnny was kind of larger than life when he was still alive. He was
[5:14]beloved and first and foremost, well, by his family and by the person through whom I met him,
[5:21]Emily, his wife and his two children. And he had the most like far-flung crew of people who
[5:29]loved him because he was, he didn't sweat the usual sort of categories that many of us get caught
[5:36]up in when we're, especially when we're young and trying to figure out who we are. Johnny was every
[5:41]thing that he wanted to be. So sometimes that meant an anarchist who was climbing at the top of a
[5:47]crane when he was in college to protest. I think that one was around weapons, you know, outside of
[5:54]operation rescue, you know, fighting for women's reproductive rights with his long red hair and,
[6:00]you know, goofy sense of style. And then he got an MBA and, you know, worked in real estate.
[6:07]And, you know, he was kind of an icon of class with a huge heart, you know, a huge heart,
[6:13]like a sense of humor and fearlessness. But inside it was like just this warm, loving,
[6:21]expressive soul. And, you know, and that came through to his family members, to the way he was a
[6:30]parent and the way he was a partner to Emily and the way he was a friend to so many of us who
[6:36]continued to gather every year on his birthday. We get together at a restaurant in Oakland. And
[6:43]I think that's just an indication of who he collected around him. We're all such different people,
[6:49]but we all feel so close to Johnny's spirit and Johnny's memory. What was his birthday?
[6:56]When was his birthday? Oh, my God. You really asked me that. I always have to. I don't remember.
[7:01]Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. Don't worry. I don't even know why I asked you. So
[7:05]forget a random question. Okay. So then we go to Christine. And I'm so sorry for everything
[7:10]that happened there. And you obviously were such a source of solace for Emily and kids and
[7:15]everything. So Christine, you met as a student and a teacher. And you had like a little crush on
[7:21]her yourself. And like, you, you had the crush on mercy. That's right. That's right. I'm so sorry.
[7:29]That's absolutely right. You had the crush on mercy. Mercy was with Christine already.
[7:33]Anyway, was that sort of hard? Because then you and your husband ended up like befriending them so
[7:38]closely. And you were always kind of wondering what the alternate life would have been like,
[7:42]had you been the one who ended up with mercy? You know what? I mean, it's so interesting. No,
[7:48]it wasn't hard. It was just rich. Like, that's how I remember it. It was just a rich time in our lives.
[7:55]You know, so Mercy and I met in a grad school class. And she was across the room. And she was
[8:03]kind of like Johnny kind of like smart and fearless and said what was on her mind. And she just,
[8:10]you know, I was drawn to her curious about her. Found my way to sit next to her and start talking to
[8:17]her and hanging out outside of class. And you know, just the thing that happens when you kind of fall
[8:23]for somebody in all the various ways, you know, and that rush of when it starts to feel like we're
[8:30]going to become important to each other in some way. And you allow yourself, maybe especially
[8:34]when you're young, to kind of imagine all the different ways that that would go. And then pretty
[8:39]soon in my, as that was evolving with Mercy, she told me about Christine. And Christine was
[8:45]her partner, whom she'd met back at the school where they taught on the East Coast. Christine was
[8:49]20 years older than we were. And so she had this sort of mystery to her that like, who is this older
[8:56]woman? And what's it going to be like to spend time with her? And so we got together for the
[9:01]first time at this bar, the right spot in the mission was my birthday. I think is how it all started.
[9:07]And you know, I mean, I just believe friendships operate on lots of different levels and relationships,
[9:13]you know, things are spoken on on the spoken and intimacy's, you know, operate on lots of levels
[9:19]and not everything has to be set out loud. And I just, I feel like that's how we get close to each
[9:25]other. And so like I talked about the shape shifting power of language. I guess there's a shape
[9:30]shifting reality to our relationships too. So once I met Christine and I truthfully, I mean, I remember
[9:36]this feeling kind of be held the love that they had and how real and deep it was and how like
[9:44]kind of like out of my league, I was projecting myself in any way in that world because there was
[9:50]so much between them. And there was so much between me and my husband too, you know, it's like
[9:55]he wasn't my husband at the time. He's my boyfriend. It just rearranged itself in a very
[10:00]As I said, like a meaningful way, you know,
[10:02]I'm sure there were complications,
[10:04]but there was also discoveries of closeness.
[10:06]And we all became like a,
[10:09]the way that sometimes can happen.
[10:10]We, and Christine talked about this when she married us.
[10:13]You know, we were two couples
[10:14]that could rearrange ourselves
[10:16]in every possible combination.
[10:18]We, there was always something that connected us,
[10:20]which is part of what made it so devastating
[10:23]for all of us when the initially the relationship
[10:27]between Mercy and Christine started to fall apart.
[10:31]And we had to experience that loss
[10:34]before we experienced the loss of when Christine
[10:38]actually has to wait.
[10:39]And I feel like in both of these situations,
[10:41]it's like, you know, a table with four legs
[10:43]and one of them has been kicked out.
[10:46]And you all go toppling in both situations
[10:49]because it was such a, part of such a strong,
[10:52]you know, quadrupled thing at the, you know what I mean?
[10:56]And you know what I do.
[10:57]You're thoughts about language too.
[10:58]I mean, it got me thinking about how,
[11:01]as soon as somebody passes away,
[11:03]like the first thing I do is try to like get a record
[11:06]of what I have, right?
[11:07]How many handwritten cards do I have a voicemail?
[11:11]What are the emails?
[11:13]Like what is the record of the words
[11:15]that we've exchanged over time?
[11:17]And it's like, there's that instinct to preserve
[11:21]whatever you can.
[11:22]And often words are what is left the longest.
[11:25]So speak to that for a minute.
[11:27]Yeah, no, I'm so glad you're bringing that up.
[11:30]And because you asked about the kind of intellectual
[11:32]through line in the book and I didn't mention
[11:35]there's actually sort of a presiding spirit
[11:38]over this philosopher of language,
[11:41]Mikhail Bakteen, whom I studied actually with mercy
[11:44]in graduate school.
[11:45]Like we kind of met Bakteen together,
[11:47]but Bakteen was by that point dead.
[11:49]He died in 1975, he's a Russian philosopher of language.
[11:53]If you were like in college or grad school
[11:55]at a particular time in the US around in the 90s,
[12:00]when you were studying humanities or literature
[12:02]or even social science, you might have stumbled across
[12:05]some of Bakteen's ideas.
[12:06]He was kind of having a heyday at that time.
[12:09]And when I encountered his ideas about language,
[12:13]at the even at the time before he had experienced these losses,
[12:17]I knew there was something in his ideas
[12:19]that for me hit very close to home.
[12:21]It was more than just this kind of academic exercise.
[12:24]And it came down to this line that I ended up kind of listing
[12:30]for the title of the books.
[12:31]So Bakteen had this idea that our speech is filled
[12:34]to overflowing with other people's words.
[12:36]This idea that dialogue, yes, it exists
[12:39]in the conversation you and I are having between us.
[12:42]But what Bakteen would say is dialogue
[12:44]actually exists inside my own voice.
[12:47]Inside your voice, inside everybody's voice,
[12:49]there's this rippling of conversation
[12:52]that is happening in how our words,
[12:55]how we received our words,
[12:57]because we didn't get them from a dictionary, right?
[12:59]We got them from our relationships
[13:01]from what's been said before.
[13:03]And then everything that we add through our own speech
[13:06]is just blowing out into the world for others to pick up.
[13:10]And use, so when you talk about cherishing
[13:13]what's left behind in the voices of the writing
[13:17]or the emails or the text messages of people who are gone,
[13:20]Bakteen was just a window for me
[13:23]into sort of understanding and listening
[13:26]for those vibrations, right?
[13:28]So that when I pick up a letter,
[13:30]and the thing is Christine in particular
[13:32]was just constantly writing.
[13:35]She was old fashioned in that way.
[13:37]So when Long Bayat has one most of us had converted
[13:40]to digital, she and Mercy both would just write us
[13:44]and written letters.
[13:45]So every drawer in my house, you know, still I'll open a drawer
[13:48]and there's a postcard from Christine.
[13:50]So there are just like kind of relics and artifacts
[13:54]of her handwriting and then when she did finally move
[13:58]to emails and text messages and just some of the ways
[14:02]as her illness came over her writing changed
[14:06]in ways that could be quite devastating.
[14:09]And also Christine was a poet and loved poetry
[14:13]and there was also poetry in this new voice
[14:16]that I encountered full of, you know, lines of periods
[14:20]and exclamation points and question marks
[14:23]and just a fragmented kind of way of finding language
[14:28]and just holding on to language for dear life
[14:30]is what it kind of felt like towards the end for Christine.
[14:33]And so all of that material is kind of the story
[14:37]of her life, our friendship, her will,
[14:40]to keep connecting, keep expressing,
[14:43]keep really loving Mercy and loving at all.
[14:47]And it was, so it's powerful to be able to hold on
[14:50]to and live with those elements that are left behind.
[14:53]Did you see the movie still Alice with Julianne Moore?
[14:56]Yes.
[14:57]I think about that all the time,
[14:58]how at the end as a linguistics professor,
[15:00]all that was left was the word love and how she just,
[15:04]oh my gosh, it was like just so I just,
[15:07]I can never stop thinking about it.
[15:08]And then you're like, yeah, sorry, no,
[15:11]I just thought on that,
[15:12]it's just interesting that you bring that up
[15:14]because, I mean, this is, yeah,
[15:17]on the flight home from, I think it was after,
[15:19]yeah, after visiting Christine, I watched that movie.
[15:22]And the, I don't know if you remember the song
[15:25]that it ends with, is this song originally by Lyle Lovett
[15:29]called If I Had a Boat.
[15:30]And it turns out that that song was really meaningful
[15:33]to Mercy and Christine.
[15:34]And so at Christine's memorial service,
[15:37]there was a formal memorial service at school
[15:39]where Christine and Mercy taught.
[15:42]And then Mercy had people at her house afterwards
[15:45]and there was a bonfire.
[15:47]And one of Christine's students was a member of the Fuji's.
[15:52]And he came to the Bonforti's name
[15:54]and he came to the memorial service
[15:57]and we're all sitting around this song fire.
[15:59]And he takes out his guitar and he's saying that song.
[16:03]And it was just this layering, right?
[16:05]I mean, that's part of what these stories that are out
[16:08]in the world that aren't even our own stories
[16:10]like that movie, right?
[16:11]Layer into our stories and become part of how we live
[16:15]with loss and repair, you know, repair
[16:18]and feel close to the people we're missing.
[16:21]Oh my gosh.
[16:22]Well, I mentioned at the beginning
[16:24]that I've already recommended your book to a bunch of people,
[16:26]which is true because this notion of conversation
[16:30]even with those that have passed away is so interesting.
[16:33]And you open the book with this own booth in Tokyo
[16:37]where you can communicate.
[16:38]You just open this wind, you call it like a wind tunnel
[16:42]isn't to wind something, wind channel, I don't know.
[16:44]And that you can talk to, you just get the spirits in
[16:48]and you can talk to the people who you've lost
[16:51]and this girlfriend of mine said that after her mother
[16:54]had died, she actually feels almost closer to her
[16:56]that she was so anxious about it for so long.
[16:59]But she feels her around her all the time now
[17:01]and that she still has conversations with her,
[17:03]even though it sounds very like woo woo,
[17:05]but she feels this like warmth and, you know,
[17:09]sense of being taken care of and in conversation with her mother
[17:13]who's already passed away.
[17:14]So anyway, I recommended her your book.
[17:17]So much yet, that image is from,
[17:20]so Mickey Meek is a radio journalist
[17:23]and told the story of the wind telephone
[17:26]on this American life.
[17:27]I recommended to anybody to listen to that piece,
[17:31]which is where I first learned about the wind telephone
[17:33]and it was established by a man who actually had lost a cousin
[17:38]and was not ready for those conversations
[17:40]with his cousin to end.
[17:41]So he got a hold of old-fashioned phone booth
[17:45]with a, you know, big black Broadway phone in it
[17:48]and he set it up in his garden.
[17:50]He lived on the coast of Japan
[17:51]and like I see farming town and then a tsunami hit in 2011
[17:56]and suddenly people who were grieving love once they'd lost
[18:01]started coming to his wind telephone.
[18:04]And the other thing that started to happen as years went by
[18:06]is people will wind telephones in other places.
[18:10]So when the go ship fire happened in Oakland,
[18:13]California, I don't know if people are familiar
[18:15]with a terrible fire that killed many young artists in Oakland,
[18:19]there was a wind telephone built there.
[18:21]So people are using that image
[18:23]to do exactly what you're describing
[18:25]and what your friend has found,
[18:27]which is we need vessels, places where,
[18:30]whether it's in our own imaginations or in actual buildings
[18:34]or spaces where we allow ourselves
[18:37]those kind of magical realist conversations
[18:40]and allow those voices to blow
[18:43]and to hear who we need to hear from
[18:44]and to say what we need to say.
[18:46]Absolutely.
[18:47]I feel like I need a wind telephone.
[18:49]Yeah, like we all need a wind telephone.
[18:51]We all, we all, we all.
[18:53]You have such a beautiful quote in here.
[18:55]Although this might be from Stegner,
[18:57]but I'm not sure you said there it was.
[18:59]There it is.
[19:00]The place we're during the best of our lives,
[19:02]friendship had its home and happiness.
[19:04]It's headquarters.
[19:05]That is Stegner.
[19:06]That is Stegner.
[19:07]But look, other people's words, right?
[19:09]I mean, that's the thing about writing this book.
[19:11]It's all very meta, right?
[19:13]Because like this, even the act of citation
[19:15]becomes like something to think about, right?
[19:18]I love that.
[19:19]I love that idea of happiness.
[19:20]I think headquarters.
[19:22]Gorgeous.
[19:22]Do you feel more, I mean, that sounds so hokey.
[19:25]Do you feel it piece?
[19:26]But let me ask you to different way.
[19:28]What did writing the book do for you emotionally?
[19:31]You know, the process of writing this book
[19:34]was on like any kind of creative process
[19:37]I've ever had before.
[19:39]I mean, partly because like I've written academic work
[19:42]and then I work.
[19:43]I also work in audio, you know,
[19:46]I make a lot of radio and podcasts.
[19:48]So there are two very different ways of telling stories.
[19:51]And this was singular in my life.
[19:52]I had not ever done anything so personal.
[19:55]There's a kind of like devotion in it
[19:58]because I feel devoted.
[20:00]not only to the memories of Christine and Johnny,
[20:03]but to mercy and to Emily and to their families
[20:07]and to the great love and loss
[20:10]that I experienced in witness in those who were closest
[20:14]to these figures in my life and in their lives.
[20:18]So it felt like a practice.
[20:21]I can't really explain.
[20:21]It was like I just felt like called to do it a lot
[20:25]as opposed to assigned or required
[20:28]like, and I, and truthfully,
[20:30]it took a long time to get a home for this book.
[20:33]And it's so grateful forever and ever to speak on growl
[20:37]and to Tina van at my agent
[20:38]because it was not an easy book to kind of land somewhere.
[20:42]And so I experienced a lot of, you know, rejection
[20:45]and like uncertainty, like is this thing ever going to go
[20:49]out into the world?
[20:50]And I felt a lot of responsibility
[20:51]because Marcia and Emily and others
[20:53]had been so generous and trusting with me
[20:56]to allow me to tell the story this way
[20:58]and to share their stories.
[20:59]So I felt like, oh my God, what if it doesn't happen?
[21:03]But all the while I just kept thinking, you know what?
[21:06]If this is the manuscript that is like printed out
[21:09]in my desk door when I die and never landed anywhere
[21:13]and it's still, I'm still,
[21:15]I will not regret a minute that I've been working on it.
[21:17]I really felt that way, you know.
[21:19]Like of course I'm sure I would have like shattered
[21:21]and like taken to my back and never decided.
[21:24]And I did a couple times, but I still,
[21:29]I don't know, like it was a window and an opening
[21:32]to like think about all the things I wanted to think about
[21:35]and feel the things I wanted to feel
[21:37]and find language that would do justice
[21:41]to like the real stuff of life.
[21:43]Like that's what, not to sound self-important
[21:45]that maybe does, but that's kind of what it does.
[21:48]That's what I'm about like to write it.
[21:49]It doesn't sound self-important
[21:50]and part of why you wanted to publish this
[21:52]for other people.
[21:53]So there you go.
[21:54]Yeah.
[21:55]Yeah.
[21:56]And how has he experienced with speech like grow?
[21:57]And by the way, I love the stuff they publish.
[21:59]So, oh my God, it's so good, it's so good.
[22:02]It's so good.
[22:03]And you know, I've written academic books before.
[22:06]So I've worked with university presses.
[22:08]And then as I said,
[22:09]I've done a ton of like radio and podcasting
[22:11]with youth radio, why I'm media,
[22:13]but I had never done a book like this
[22:15]with a real, you know, trade press anymore.
[22:18]No, I don't know what to compare it to,
[22:21]but people have said to me like,
[22:23]you have no idea.
[22:24]Like it's not usually like this.
[22:26]I mean, they just take such care.
[22:28]They have taken such care with this book
[22:31]and supporting me in the process
[22:34]and really, yeah,
[22:36]I think they very intentionally,
[22:37]the reason they set up shop the way they did is
[22:40]so that they wouldn't be just churning, you know?
[22:44]Yeah.
[22:44]Like really put focus on the books
[22:46]that they were getting behind.
[22:48]And I really, I really, that felt bad.
[22:50]Amazing.
[22:52]Are you thinking of writing anything else now that you're?
[22:55]Oh, all right, you know, I mean,
[22:59]I do have some ideas.
[23:00]I mean, one of the things before I get to,
[23:02]I do have a little idea like in the back of my head
[23:05]that started actually as maybe a podcast idea.
[23:08]I'm like a narrative podcast idea,
[23:10]but thinking about, you know,
[23:12]what that might evolve into before I get there,
[23:14]though interestingly, you know,
[23:15]I'm working on the audio book for her other people's words,
[23:19]which is itself a really, you know,
[23:21]a creative process for me because I work in audio.
[23:24]And I'm so, so interested in how we tell stories
[23:28]across different media in particular as more and more
[23:32]people experience books through the year.
[23:34]And I've heard that from my friends who are writers
[23:36]that it used to be when they would go on tour
[23:38]and everybody would come and tell them
[23:40]about what it was like to read the book.
[23:42]And now very often the conversation is when I listen
[23:45]to your book, like it's changed, you know,
[23:47]like in authors have to, you know,
[23:50]relate to their audio books differently.
[23:51]So for me, as somebody who's always thinking about that
[23:54]in my regular life to really imagine how can I represent
[24:01]in audio the change in Christine's words
[24:05]when so much of it is like typographical
[24:07]and you see on the page, but how do you hear it?
[24:10]You know, we're thinking about Johnny's voice
[24:12]and Johnny's voicemails to Emily, you know,
[24:15]that's one of the other things that are left behind,
[24:18]you know, that come alive on the page
[24:20]and how do you hear those things?
[24:23]So that's a creative project that is kind of extension
[24:26]of other people's words, but still feels in some ways
[24:29]like its own project that lies ahead.
[24:31]Oh, I love that.
[24:32]Well, that's gonna be great.
[24:33]Yeah, I recorded audio books for my past books
[24:37]and my memoir, but now I have this novel coming out
[24:39]and someone else is doing it.
[24:40]And I'm like, are you sure you don't want me to do it?
[24:42]Like you have any advice that I'm a narrator,
[24:45]but you know, at least I kind of know the voices
[24:48]in my head of who these people are,
[24:50]even though I created them.
[24:51]But anyway, any advice, when I did my audio book
[24:54]for my children's book, which is only like 10 pages,
[24:56]it's like ridiculous that there even is an audio book,
[25:00]but I had a cold and I had like really bad allergies.
[25:03]I always am all congested.
[25:04]Anyway, they made me like put my face
[25:07]in a pot of hot water, like between every take.
[25:11]I was just like, how has my life come to this?
[25:14]That I'm like, my children's book
[25:16]and my face in a bowl of water and anyway.
[25:18]So I would say, you know, try not to be sick
[25:21]and bring some coffee shops or something, I don't know.
[25:23]Okay, good advice.
[25:25]Maybe we can sketch, I'm thinking maybe reschedule
[25:28]if I've no doubt.
[25:30]Yeah, I'm super impressed.
[25:31]Okay, quickly parting advice for aspiring authors.
[25:34]Oh my God.
[25:36]Okay, let me think.
[25:37]Be in community and that's what I have
[25:40]a beloved friend, Nicole Fleetwood,
[25:42]who's a genius writer and we've kind of held each other
[25:46]through the process of sort of navigating in and out of,
[25:49]we met in grad school and in and out of like academic
[25:52]and then other ways of telling stories.
[25:54]And when I hit a point with other people's words
[25:56]where I was feeling a little at sea,
[25:58]she was like, do a workshop, get with other people,
[26:02]find, you know, you need community engaging with this work.
[26:05]And I always had that in other ways,
[26:07]but it's like taking moments of being really intentional
[26:10]about that.
[26:11]I have writing incredible writing groups
[26:13]that this would not exist without,
[26:14]but I guess there are times where instead of going
[26:17]into the isolation of moments of feeling like
[26:20]you don't know what you're doing,
[26:21]see if you can like reach out and find others
[26:25]who are kind of honest journey in their own ways
[26:28]and can help shore up what you need to do to keep going.
[26:32]I love that.
[26:33]Well, congratulations on changing,
[26:36]exchanging a few words with me about other people's words.
[26:40]Good luck with the audio book.
[26:41]Congrats on the lunch.
[26:43]Thank you for your writing on friendship and loss.
[26:45]And, you know, I've been moved by what you've said about
[26:49]and written about your friendship
[26:51]and having to flip with it over all these years,
[26:54]now that she's gone.
[26:55]So I appreciate that we are in,
[26:58]we're together in trying to make sense of
[27:01]in those friendships and losses.
[27:03]Maybe they're all hanging out together now.
[27:06]He's larger than life characters.
[27:08]Yeah.
[27:09]All right.
[27:10]Thanks, Lissa.
[27:11]Great to meet you.
[27:11]You too.
[27:13]Okay.
[27:13]Have a great day.
[27:14]Thanks for listening to Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books.
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