Zibby's Book Club Pick!! Genevieve Kingston, DID I EVER TELL YOU?: A Memoir
[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.
[0:14]I've created a whole community of book lovers around this podcast, a publishing company,
[0:19]reading retreats, a bookstore, and more. Learn more at zippymedia.com or follow
[0:24]me on social at zippyowans or join the community at zippyreaders.
[0:29]Daniev Kingston is the author of Did I Ever Tell You? A Memoir. This is my Zippy's book club pick.
[0:38]So, join Zippy's book club, and you can hear Genevieve, and she goes by Gwen, by the way.
[0:43]Gwen and I may talk about the book, and you can watch our in-person podcast and all the rest.
[0:50]So, please sign up on Zippy's book club, which you can find on bookclubs.com and just search
[0:57]Zippy's book club. Anyway, back to Gwen. Genevieve Kingston holds B.A.'s theater in linguistics
[1:02]from UC Berkeley and an MFA in acting, from Brown University Trinity Repertory Theater.
[1:08]She is the author of four plays, and three one X. In May 2021, her essay,
[1:12]she put her unspent love in a cardboard box, appeared in The New York Times' modern love column.
[1:18]Did I Ever Tell You? It's her first book. She lives with her partner in Brooklyn, New York,
[1:22]and FYI, that essay from The New York Times is so good, and I cry every time I read it.
[1:28]Welcome, Genevieve. Thank you so much for coming on mom's don't have time to read books,
[1:32]to discuss. Did I Ever Tell You? A Memoir, which is my Zippy's book club pick because I really,
[1:39]really love it, and it's so good, and you're a great writer. And the story is so moving,
[1:43]and it's really awesome. So congrats. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. It's my pleasure,
[1:48]and you go by Gwen, right? I do. I answer to everything, but yes, most people call me Gwen.
[1:53]Okay. I mean, I could make up some names. Are you up anything? Any of you? All right. So Susan,
[1:58]right? Yes. Yes, it'd be. Okay. Well, we've just survived. You watching me try to set this
[2:04]something up, but thank you for your, your infinite patience, which you have very
[2:08]a calming presence, and that was very lovely. So thank you for that. I am honored and excited to be
[2:13]here. Okay. Did I Ever Tell You? Tell, now you have to actually tell me.
[2:18]Tell, do you? Yeah. Okay. So did I ever tell you is the story of how I lost my mother when I was
[2:24]11, but continued to find her again and again at all these critical moments throughout my life.
[2:29]So before she died, my mom put together a cardboard chest and in it, she packed gifts and letters
[2:34]for every one of my birthdays until I turned 30 and four things like getting my driver's license
[2:40]and graduating high school and getting engaged and married and having my first child. And so
[2:45]in all of these letters, she sort of set down one side of a conversation that would continue for
[2:51]decades after her death. And for me, writing the book in a lot of ways was like, it was me
[2:56]setting down my side of that same conversation, answering back right and back to here. Here's what's
[3:00]happened since you've been gone. And so it's a book that's about, it's about family and memory
[3:05]and love and loss. But think more than anything to me, it's about how we can hold and honor our
[3:10]parents' legacies while still carving our own paths forward in the future and finding out how
[3:15]who we are and who we are meant to be. First of all, I'm so sorry that you lost your mom at 11.
[3:21]And it sounds like from the book, she ended up not that this is any sort of consolation,
[3:25]but she was able to live far longer than they expected, which is wonderful. You also knew that
[3:31]she was working on this project, which is another wrinkle to it, that she had all this stuff on
[3:37]the dining room table and you knew that she was working on the box for you, which you would then
[3:41]be opening, which is such a almost bizarre realization, right? That like you in the future were
[3:47]going to read what she's writing now, but you're not going to read it now and tell us about
[3:51]just how that felt at the time watching your history sort of be made in front of you.
[3:57]Yeah, I found it actually challenging at the time. There's a weird way in which I almost felt
[4:02]jealous of my future self, that that was the version of me that she was spending this precious
[4:07]time on was this like future hypothetical me when the real me was right there. And I think
[4:11]that that's a real preoccupation when terminal illness is in a home. There's so much for
[4:16]occupation with like, how should this time be spent? Right? It feels so urgent to figure out the
[4:20]right way to spend the time. And I think that, you know, at the time, I didn't quite understand
[4:25]what this would come to mean to me. And it's as I've gotten older, the fact the way that this
[4:30]has stayed with me, the way that this conversation, this relationship has been able to continue.
[4:36]I mean, it's just the greatest gift I can imagine receiving. And a gift that keeps on giving,
[4:41]right? Like, I'm still not to the end of all of these packages. And so she was able to see this
[4:45]bigger picture that I just couldn't conceive of. And you had in your article two, you mentioned how
[4:51]some of like, are you going to get married or maybe not? Because you're happy with your partner.
[4:56]Are you still not married? I'm still not married. Okay. So, and what about maybe you won't have a
[5:00]kid? Like, should you open them up? Like, when you kind of like cheated on a little bit, right?
[5:04]So, should you, how do you feel about the lingering letters? And how do you make yourself wait?
[5:11]Yeah. Well, so how I feel about them, I'm part of me is grateful that there's still sort of
[5:16]something left. But no, I think a big impulse for writing this book was when I was 31, I had opened
[5:21]all of the birthday gifts and what was left was engagement, marriage, baby. I was trying to figure
[5:25]out if those were things that I wanted for my future. It was, there was a particular, a particular
[5:31]intensity to it because of this experience because of the box. But I think that that's an age
[5:35]when a lot of people are thinking, asking themselves those questions and seeking guidance and advice
[5:40]either directly from their parents or the example of their parents or maybe they don't want to
[5:44]talk to their parents about it. But I think these were really a common experience. For me,
[5:48]I felt like to answer those questions, I needed to go back through all of my mom's letters and
[5:53]all of the things that she had taught me about the kind of woman that she was and the kind of
[5:57]of woman that I wanted to be. And that's really sort of where the inspiration came from. People often
[6:01]ask me how I managed to wait and not open everything at once because, you know, I was a 12 year old
[6:06]girl with a box full of presents in her bedroom for like many years. And what I always say is like,
[6:10]I grew up reading fairy tales. Like, I know what happened if you don't. You know, the rules of
[6:17]something that is clearly that I mean, the, the box is the closest thing to real magic that I can
[6:21]really imagine. And so it's like you just, you just don't, you know, you follow the fairy tale rules
[6:27]and it just seems logical. Oh my gosh, wait, talk for a minute about growing up in your love of
[6:32]reading. We were just chatting about them. Oh, yeah. I, yes, books were always hugely, hugely
[6:36]important to me. And actually the way I engaged with them a lot was, it was audio books because I
[6:41]was the kid who like, you could not read to me enough before bed. Like, I was one more, one more,
[6:46]one more, one more, you know, and then, you know, I couldn't sleep, you know, I, so they would, my
[6:49]parents that when I couldn't possibly read to me anymore would put an audio tape on. And I just
[6:54]hearing a story was the most comforting thing in the whole world to me. And I had the great
[6:58]pleasure of recording the audio book for this book, which was an incredible experience because
[7:03]I've just, they've given me so, so much over the years. So talk about you're acting,
[7:09]you're love of acting as well and how, I mean, I feel like there's this whole sort of storytelling
[7:15]other world escape this thing going on here. Yeah. I've always told stories. I've always been
[7:20]interested in, and in how stories can actively shape and change our lives. But I think for me,
[7:26]the way I found my way into acting was that I was dealing with these big feelings and these big
[7:33]experiences that a lot of my friends, you know, who are the same ages. Me just, there wasn't,
[7:40]they didn't know how to have those conversations with me or like how to engage with that. And I
[7:44]didn't know how to have those conversations with them. And I had wonderful friends, but I didn't,
[7:48]they didn't seem like there was a place in my day to day life for these big, big feelings of
[7:52]loss. And, and so being, inviting myself in an acting class, if it's like vivid memory of the
[7:58]first time I did this monologue, of course I can't remember what it was, but I remember speaking
[8:03]the words and starting to cry and looking up and seeing that everyone else in the room was also
[8:07]crying. And that we, I was able through someone else's words to create an environment where we
[8:14]could share emotion together. And we could hold that space together in a way that I hadn't figured
[8:21]out how to do in real life. And I was like, this is, again, the word magic, this is magic. And
[8:26]so I've always acted and then I became a playwright and, and then no, no, my first book, which is
[8:32]a whole other dream. Oh my gosh. So is that how you met Samantha Hyde? So you have her comment as well?
[8:37]Yes, absolutely. Yeah. We went to UC Berkeley together in the theater department there.
[8:41]Oh my gosh. So Samantha Hyde was in my husband Kyle's movie Wildflower and I'm going to
[8:46]know her well through that and different precedents and stuff. And she's great. Yeah, she's
[8:49]great. She's so funny. From actor to playwright, talk about that. Yeah. So I think that writing
[8:56]has always been my way that I make sense of my experiences. And the first play that I wrote
[9:02]was after something that happened that is in the book and I won't, I won't spoil it because it
[9:06]happens quite deep into the book. But I went through another big emotional tumultuous event in my
[9:12]life about 10 years after my mom died. I was in college and I was really struggling to make
[9:18]sense of it. Yeah. And so I wrote a pretty autobiographical play where I was studying with this
[9:25]amazing playwright, Phil Konga Tonda at UC Berkeley and I wrote this, this play that was, you know,
[9:30]just trying to put language around something that there is no language for. And I was interested
[9:38]in that in the limits of language, in the unreliability of memory. And I found that to be such
[9:43]a satisfying experience to be able to put that down, to be able to put other people into those
[9:48]roles and ask them to show, to tell my story back to me in some ways. That was, it was very healing.
[9:54]It was very cathartic. So then I knew I wanted to do more of that. And so when it came time to go
[9:58]to graduate school.
[10:00]I chose to go to Brown Flash Trinity Wrap because they're one of the only MFA acting programs
[10:06]of that caliber that allow and encourage actors to take playwriting classes. So I was able
[10:10]to take playwriting all three years with this wonderful playwright called Deborah Salem Smith
[10:14]and I was able to develop that craft alongside my acting, which was great.
[10:17]Wow. I mean it's a lot. Like you've gone through a lot and you've gone through some slowly
[10:23]and some more suddenly. Like you've had to deal with surprise and also preparation and when bad
[10:29]things happen, like not that either one is easy, but that you've had to go through sort of
[10:34]the spectrum of this at a very young age. People say, you know, post-traumatic growth is like such
[10:40]a thing. How do you feel about that? Like do you believe like you've gone through so much? Right?
[10:46]Do you have that sort of sensitivity to everything? I would argue, yes, having read your book,
[10:50]you know, you pick up everything, but talk to me about that whole concept and what you think about
[10:56]I certainly do believe that because I know that yeah, in the wake of this sort of yeah,
[11:03]later tragic event in my life that I, this extraordinary thing happened for me, which is my whole
[11:08]childhood was really ruled by a deep, deep homesickness and fear of leaving home because
[11:14]because I was always afraid that my mother would die. I knew that would happen at some point
[11:19]and I was afraid of missing out on time with her or that if I went away from home that she might
[11:23]die while I was gone. So I was preoccupied so deeply with place and proximity to people I loved and
[11:29]so afraid to go anywhere or do anything, you know, and it was really a limiting factor on my life.
[11:35]Like I couldn't I couldn't figure out how to go to college. I couldn't for a long time. I couldn't
[11:38]even spend the night at a friend's house. And in the wake of the second big tragedy in my life,
[11:43]I was miraculously freed from those anxieties and those fears in a way that I never could have
[11:49]anticipated or expected. And I certainly don't think it was worth it. But, but so I know that
[11:55]post traumatic growth can really be a thing that just happens. It's not, I didn't choose my reaction,
[12:01]right? It just, it happened. So yeah, I don't, I don't believe that everything happens for a
[12:06]reason, but I do believe that there are hidden opportunities within all events, even the most tragic
[12:15]and so where do you look for love and comfort? In books a lot of the time. No, I mean, I have a
[12:22]wonderful network of friends and a wonderful partner and so much community. But yeah, there are
[12:28]times when what I need is to lose myself and someone else's story and just read something that
[12:33]reminds me of all of the good stuff, you know, the love and the humor. And so books have always
[12:38]been very, very helpful to me at the lowest points. Are there books that are touchstones that you
[12:43]read repeatedly? Or are there any that sort of rise up to the top of the list? Yeah, absolutely,
[12:48]lately, I've been reading a lot of memoirs, finding sort of filling in my knowledge of that landscape.
[12:53]I think I have read slash listened to Truth and Beauty by Ann Patchit like seven or eight
[12:58]times. So good. And of course reading an conversation without a biography of a face. And I just
[13:03]that friendship, that story of female friendship, which is a place that I've always found a great
[13:07]deal of stability and love in my life is that's that's that's that's the one that pops to mine.
[13:13]I think I've probably read that book the most in the last few years. Well, yeah, it's so good.
[13:17]Amazing. Who do you hope this book reaches the most? I hope that one group is I hope that
[13:25]people who have have the experience of being a child of a terminally ill parent see themselves,
[13:32]you know, see a version of their experience reflected in this story. It's something that
[13:36]for one reason or another, I haven't seen depicted a whole lot in literature. And I know we're
[13:40]out there. We told her no term in a real parents because I've been in the support groups,
[13:44]but I haven't it's it's a story that I struggled to find and one where there is an
[13:48]magical ending where the parent gets better, you know, and yeah, we see that story a lot,
[13:52]but what it is actually the day to day of it. And then yeah, any family going through
[13:58]the impossible impossible journey of loss, a young family that is living in the shadow of
[14:05]looming or a recent or a not so recent loss. I hope that there's some comfort, some hope,
[14:11]or just some threat of shared experience that that this book can offer. And it's not a roadmap,
[14:16]it's not this is not the way to handle terminal illness or grief. This is one way that one family
[14:22]coped with our impossible situation. Did you see the movie, our friend with Jason Siegel? No,
[14:28]you should see that it was not to just keep plugging projects and friends and family,
[14:32]because my brother produces me. It was based on a long form essay somewhere that they adapted,
[14:38]but it's about a mother who is terminally ill and she has kids and I mean, maybe you don't want to
[14:44]watch the movie. So depressing, you know, maybe it's too close to home, but the friend comes in to
[14:48]really help out as the husband is dealing with the loss. And it's actually quite uplifting
[14:55]because you see all the love and how it can it will be there even after you go. And it actually
[15:01]is a scene where the mom is writing notes to her kids. So I don't know. I think if you feel like
[15:07]crying. Yeah, I love to watch that. And I do, you know, I think that sounds familiar with this
[15:12]thing of, oh, I'm worried that it might be too sad. I think people have that fear with this book.
[15:16]They worry it's going to be too sad. I'm not going to want it. And I just, I had such a joyful
[15:20]experience writing it that I really hope and believe that that translates to the page that it's
[15:25]actually a joyful book. And you know, a hopeful book at its core. It's a book about everyone
[15:31]doing a really good job in a really tough set of circumstances. Like I think this is a book about
[15:35]people at their best. People behave so well in my story, which is, you know, remarkable. It's such a gift.
[15:42]Well, I feel like it's also a celebration of your mom. Yeah. Right. I mean, this is about a life.
[15:47]It's not just about the death. It's not the end of the life. Right. It's about her life and who she was
[15:52]and things that she was able to do and pull off and things that she continues to do now by,
[15:57]you know, having you take her story and just keep it going. Yeah. I often joke that my first
[16:02]draft of this book was my mom was cool the end by one Kingston. Like because I do, I do think
[16:07]that what she did was extraordinary. And I think she was an extraordinary person. And I know
[16:11]I believe that if she had lived longer that she would have had another chapter, another act to her
[16:18]life. And I don't know how she would have chosen to spend her time that I feel like it would have
[16:21]been really cool to watch what she would have done with the last part of her life. And my hope is
[16:25]is that this is one way of getting to give her that other, that final act sharing her with other
[16:30]people. Describe till everybody more about her. So my mom, her name was Christina Myard. And
[16:36]she was a fiercely intelligent, kind of formidable person. She was a real rebel as a kid in high
[16:44]school, which I was absolutely not. She didn't graduate high school instead. She like went backpacking
[16:48]her out. She went on an archaeological expedition in Europe, like followed like a boyfriend there,
[16:54]skipped out instead of going to her high school graduation. And then somehow ended up like going to
[17:01]business school and becoming an entrepreneur. And like she had all of these interesting chapters to
[17:05]her life. She was always interested in public service. She's founded a nonprofit in her 20s called
[17:10]Gray Bears that still exists in Santa Cruz that provides free produce to senior citizens who are
[17:16]struggling financially. So she had all of these different interests and all of these different
[17:20]things. She was a challenging person. She was had some hard edges and high standards. And I think
[17:27]that my brother and I got the softest sides of her. We got her, her, her softness, her love, her
[17:33]warmth and a way that a lot of people I think didn't. So yeah, she was a complex challenging,
[17:38]interesting woman. And my huge gratitude to her with this project is that she really allowed us
[17:45]to know her as a person and not just as our mom. I mean, we were too young to have those
[17:51]conversations when she was alive. And so she offered us the gift of if we wanted to know more about
[17:55]her that was there. And it was more than just the box. It was asking friends to of hers to be
[18:01]resources. There's this great experience where I reached out to when I was writing the book, I reached
[18:05]out to that old boyfriend of hers who she went to Europe with. And I never met him. And within
[18:11]hours, he emailed me back saying, oh yeah, like your mom said before she died, if you ever came
[18:16]asking, I should tell you anything you want it to know. So the gift of not just, you know, trying to
[18:22]show us not trying to remain this perfect image of some angelic, you know, mother figure, but saying
[18:27]like, no, if you want to know me, you can know all of it, the darkness and the challenging stuff and
[18:32]the rough edges. How do people, other people who know her, I know the book hasn't even come out,
[18:37]but it will have been by the time this airs. Have you shown it to other people in her orbit,
[18:41]friends, family, everybody? Yeah. Yeah, I know it was really important to me to do that because
[18:47]again, this community, her siblings, her friends, people who lived through this story with us
[18:53]have been such an enormous support for me and my family through this whole journey. And those
[18:58]relationships are so important to me. And so I really hope that this book would feel joyful to everyone
[19:05]and not feel intrusive or, you know, anything. So I was trying to be very transparent with everyone
[19:11]throughout the process and everyone has just been so supportive and excited.
[19:14]Was there anything you had to take out? Like, did you show any early drafts to anybody? I showed,
[19:18]I showed early drafts to a lot of folks and yeah, no one had no one masked me to. Oh, my brother.
[19:23]So my brother's my favorite person. Like, you know, my partner, my favorite people were very,
[19:27]very close. I sent it to him. He was sort of the most important person that I wanted, you know,
[19:32]because he's in so much of this story. And I think his note was like, he was like, I would like
[19:36]the record to show that I also had to take piano lessons. It was like his one note was like,
[19:41]wasn't just you. Like, okay, great. I'll put that in there. It's so funny. It's funny.
[19:46]The things that people find the most important to, I don't know. I really was joking, but it's pretty funny.
[19:53]Oh my gosh. What projects do you want to accomplish? Like, when you think about the next 10 years or
[19:58]something?
[20:00]Oh, great question.
[20:00]Well, I'm working on another play right now.
[20:02]So going back to my theater roots,
[20:03]I miss being in rehearsal room so much.
[20:06]So I'm very excited for that.
[20:07]I would love to write another book one day
[20:09]when I'm not, when it's not my first book.
[20:10]I would love to write a book
[20:11]when I'm not learning how to write a book
[20:13]while I'm writing it.
[20:14]Yeah, though I'm sure it will be, you know,
[20:16]it's own unique challenge.
[20:17]But yeah, I think those are,
[20:18]those are the two things I would like to do.
[20:20]I'd like to keep developing my craft, basically.
[20:23]And how was it writing this book
[20:24]and teaching yourself as you went?
[20:26]Oh my gosh, it was incredible.
[20:28]I mean, I just, I tried to read every wonderful memoir
[20:31]that I could get my hands on,
[20:32]that people would recommend to me.
[20:34]I felt like I spent years kind of like,
[20:35]it's like I was still,
[20:36]and I was, a wall of books was moving.
[20:38]I was trying to absorb trying to educate myself.
[20:42]And then, and then just,
[20:44]I mean, it's just ours in the chair,
[20:46]just spending the time I actually loved it.
[20:48]I felt so purposeful.
[20:50]And so certain that this was what I was meant
[20:52]to be doing at this particular moment in my life.
[20:56]That's a blessing.
[20:57]It is. It's very cool and rare to have that feeling.
[21:00]Did you have a deadline?
[21:01]Like I know you sold,
[21:02]well, talk about selling it to modern love, the essay.
[21:05]That's also a huge deal.
[21:06]Yeah.
[21:07]Oh, thank you.
[21:07]Yeah, I started working on the book first.
[21:10]I was feeling around in the dark,
[21:13]thinking this might be a book length project.
[21:16]And then I really almost as an exercise for myself,
[21:19]I was taking some writing classes
[21:20]and as like an exercise,
[21:21]I wrote what became this essay,
[21:24]which was the kind of the miniature version of the story,
[21:27]the beginning, middle, and what is the scope?
[21:29]What are its boundaries?
[21:31]What is it?
[21:32]What is the central dramatic question?
[21:34]And that became this essay that then I was able
[21:37]to publish in modern love,
[21:39]which was so wonderful because suddenly my inbox
[21:42]was filled with all of these messages from folks
[21:44]who had gone through,
[21:46]sometimes something similar,
[21:47]sometimes something quite different,
[21:48]but people of all different ages,
[21:51]genders, backgrounds,
[21:53]seemed to be able to see something of their experience in it
[21:56]and then share that experience back with me,
[21:58]which was such an honor and a gift.
[21:59]So that was so, so meaningful to me.
[22:02]And then through that piece,
[22:05]I was able to find my way to my wonderful agent,
[22:07]Branny Bloom, with the book group.
[22:08]Yeah, she's amazing.
[22:10]And then she helped me to put together a book proposal
[22:13]and we were able to sell the book on proposal
[22:15]to Mary Sue Ritchie books.
[22:16]And so yeah, so I did have a deadline.
[22:19]I had basically from that moment on,
[22:21]I had about about a year to write it.
[22:24]And deadlines are very helpful.
[22:26]I agree very much.
[22:27]But no, but I had begun that process already
[22:30]and found my rhythm and my writing routine
[22:33]and I would have written it even if no one had wanted to buy it.
[22:36]You know, I had to write it.
[22:37]That's great.
[22:38]Oh my gosh.
[22:39]Do you have advice for aspiring memoirists?
[22:42]Mm.
[22:43]I think it's about that,
[22:44]what is that one burning story that you must tell?
[22:47]And kind of, as I just said,
[22:49]that you must write whether or not anyone else
[22:52]wants to buy it or wants to read it,
[22:54]you have to write it.
[22:55]And then you will hope that it's of use
[22:58]or that it makes someone feel less alone.
[23:02]Even if that's just one reader,
[23:03]there's probably some one person out there
[23:04]who needs to read it, you know, who might help.
[23:07]Do you have one gift that you wish your mom had left you?
[23:11]Like is there something you're hoping to open
[23:13]or you some piece of advice, some event that happened
[23:18]that you're like, oh, definitely I had a letter for this.
[23:19]Oh, I think there were times like that
[23:22]throughout my life, things that she couldn't have anticipated
[23:25]that were challenging where I thought,
[23:27]oh gosh, I wish I could find out what she would have said
[23:29]about this because of course she couldn't have
[23:31]to spade everything in the box, you know, isn't, you know,
[23:36]magical and can't compensate for her loss.
[23:40]But no, now I feel like the gift was the whole experience
[23:45]of the box knowing that deeply
[23:48]and that consistently that you have been loved
[23:50]and thought of and that someone has cared that deeply
[23:55]about you and your path through the world.
[23:57]I think that that certainty like that is the gift.
[24:00]And so now when things come up, of course I would love
[24:03]to talk to her, but that, yeah, such a gift
[24:05]to have been that deeply cared for.
[24:09]So if there's somebody out there struggling and sick
[24:13]and trying to figure out what to do about their kids
[24:15]should they take on this project.
[24:17]I think it's such a personal individual decision.
[24:20]I think that everyone, there is no one right way to die.
[24:23]And if they take one thing from the book,
[24:26]it would be my belief that honesty and communication
[24:30]and families and with children about death and illness
[24:33]are so important and it's so much better to be open
[24:37]than to try to protect the kids by hiding things from them.
[24:41]I do believe that, but I don't think there's any one right path
[24:45]through that.
[24:46]It's just everyone has to figure out how to walk it
[24:48]and hopefully you have the kind of extraordinary communities
[24:51]around you that I did to help, but there's no one right way.
[24:56]Well, I think your book itself is now another gift
[24:59]for everybody else.
[25:00]I know there are a lot of motherless people out there,
[25:03]daughters and sons and everybody,
[25:06]whether it was a slow illness or a sudden or, you know,
[25:09]and having your mom's love and the fierce conviction
[25:15]of how much we've had to love our kids
[25:18]and will for all of eternity.
[25:20]It's just such a blessing.
[25:24]So thank you.
[25:27]Thanks for listening to Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[25:30]If you love it, please leave a review and follow us
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