November 6, 2023 • 51 mins
How do we live in a world that’s at least half terrible, and that is a conservative estimate?
If you recognize that line, you already know Maggie Smith. This week on the show, we’re talking about writing, marriage, divorce, and why you didn’t need whatever happened to you in order to become who you’re meant to be: as Maggie says, “trauma does not give you a “glow up.””
If you’ve ever wanted to write the story of your life - including the messy, difficult parts like divorce, miscarriage, and the loss of identity - this episode is for you.
In this episode we cover:
- Why it’s ok if your story doesn’t have a happy ending (or even a happy middle)
- Do kids really need to learn about resilience?
- Does anything remain after devastating loss?
- What’s it like having your personal story out in the world for other people to talk about?
- Divorce, miscarriage, and why sometimes the lemonade isn’t worth the lemons
We're re-releasing some of our favorite episodes from the first 3 seasons of It’s OK that You’re Not OK.
Looking for a creative exploration of grief? Check out the best selling Writing Your Grief course here.
Related episodes:
Kate Bowler on the difference between transactional hope and functional hope
Aubrey Hirsch on the power of storytelling
David Ambroz on “A Place Called Home”
Follow our show on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok @refugeingrief and @itsokpod on TikTok. Visit refugeingrief.com for resources & courses
About our guest:
Maggie Smith is the award-winning author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful, Good Bones, The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison, Lamp of the Body, and the national bestsellers Goldenrod and Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change. She has been widely published, appearing in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Nation, The Best American Poetry, and more. You can follow her on social media @MaggieSmithPoet
About Megan:
Psychotherapist Megan Devine is one of today’s leading experts on grief, from life-altering losses to the everyday grief that we don’t call grief. Get the best-selling book on grief in over a decade, It’s Ok that You’re Not OK, wherever you get books. Find Megan @refugeingrief
Additional resources:
Get the best-selling Writing Your Grief course and join over 15,000 people who’ve explored their grie
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
One thing that would evaporate really quickly would be what
does not kill you makes you stronger? Right? Whoof gone right?
Because what if what does not kill you actually causes
you a lot of pain and anxiety and you have
to carry that around and find ways to endure it.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
This is it's okay that you're not okay, and I'm
your host, Megan Divine. This week, how do we live
in a world that's at least half terrible? If you
recognize that line, you know the special treat we have
in store. My guest is poet Maggie Smith. Maggie is
the author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful and
the poem from which my opening line comes Good Bones.
(00:45):
Today on the show, we're talking about writing and marriage
and divorce and why you did not need whatever has
happened to you in order to become who you're meant
to be, settle in friends. All of that and more
coming up right after this first break before we get started.
(01:08):
Two quick notes. One, this episode is an encore performance.
I am on break working on a giant new project,
so we're releasing a mix of our favorite episodes from
the first three seasons of the show. Some of these
conversations you might have missed in their original seasons, and
some shows just truly deserve multiple listens so that you
(01:29):
capture all of the goodness. Second note, while we cover
a lot of emotional, relational territory and our time here together,
this show is not a substitute for skilled support with
a license mental health provider, or for professional supervision related
to your work. Take what you learn here, take your
thoughts and your reflections out into your world and talk
about it. Hey, friends, I met Maggie Smith the same
(01:54):
way millions of other people did through her poem good Bones.
Now you probably I know this poem, but if you
need a reminder or a refresher, it begins Life is short.
Though I keep this from my children. Life is short,
and I've shortened mind in a thousand delicious ill advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill advised ways I keep from my children.
(02:18):
The world is at least fifty percent terrible, and that's
a conservative estimate. Though I keep this from my children,
I bet you recognize that just from the opening lines.
Right in this episode, you're going to learn the backstory
to that poem, good Bones, and why. As Maggie says,
it's a barometer of the grief in the world, a
(02:39):
sign that something terrible has happened, like when that poem
goes viral again, and how weird it is to have
professional success based largely on something that broke your heart.
Maggie and I also discuss her new book, You Could
Make This Place Beautiful, which details the dissolution of her
marriage and the creation are really like the resurrection of
(03:00):
herself as a writer. We get into so many things
in this conversation that made my writer heart deliriously happy.
I was a fan of Maggie Smith before this conversation,
and she means so much more to me having had
this chance to connect. So I hope you love this
episode and love Maggie. Be sure to let me know
(03:21):
what you think. And speaking of letting me know what
you think, please leave a review of the show wherever
you get podcasts. I haven't seen any new reviews lately,
and that is one great way to tell me how
this season's guests are affecting you. All Right, on with
the show with the stellar Maggie Smith. Okay, So, I
(03:42):
have been following you on social media and reading your
books and using lines of yours as starting places for
my own writing and also when I teach writing. So
I feel like I've known you for a long time
even though we just met. So I'm just this is
my way of saying, I'm ridiculously happy to be here
with you today. Ah.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Same.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
I want to address something right off the bat because
it is one of my absolute favorite things about you.
I feel like ninety nine percent of memoir writing is
like finding beauty inside terrible times, Like I grew so
much as a person. It was difficult, but I love
it and I hate that stuff. I kind of knew
this before I started reading You could make this place beautiful,
(04:25):
but I as I was reading it in a coffee shop,
I actually yelled various things, various variations of like Amon's
sister yay, absolutely out loud so many times in crowded
coffee shops. When you write your personal story, it does
not have to be about being worth it.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Yeah. I think we have a sort of cultural obsession
with before and after, like like the before and after
photo of the made over kitchen, the before and after
images of the haircut, the before and after of anything,
and same with same with storytelling. Right, It's like before
(05:05):
I was this and then I figured it all out,
and after I was this And so I feel like
the traditional narrative expectation of a memoir that that you
write out of a painful crisis in your life would
be like I was a caterpillar and then I wrote
this book and figured myself out, and then I emerged
at the end of the book a butterfly. But I
(05:29):
am still a caterpillar. I am just a more fully realized,
more self aware, more whole and boundaried caterpillar.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
One of the most popular memes on my own social
is like this picture of a chrysalis and it's like,
you know, standing outside the chrysalis shouting you're a butterfly
does not hasten anything. It just pisses off the goo
or something like that.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Oh yeah, because it's actually liquefied and so yeah, so
maybe I'm actually just the goo at this point. But
I do think we put a lot of pressure on
ourselves to metabolize experience in a way that makes us
quote better, as if just surviving it is not enough.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Yeah, there's that second half of the sentence of you
needed this because who you were before this happened wasn't good.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Enough, Oh gosh, you needed this. That is just that's
really something, isn't it. I mean, I write about this
in the book, the sort of idea of material, and
I have had this said to me. I have friends
who have written about pretty traumatic things who have had
this said to them, which is, at least you got
a book out of it, or at least this experience
(06:45):
wasn't wasted on someone who isn't a writer, an artist,
a filmmaker, you know, whatever you do that you make
things from your experience. And I've been thinking a lot
about that and how well mean I think that statement is,
but also how offensive I find offensive. And I was
(07:08):
thinking about it recently and thinking, actually, I don't think
of myself as I didn't get a book out of
my life imploding. I made a book out of my
life imploding. And it's a very just pretty subtle verb
shift there, but it feels a whole lot like a
(07:28):
verb shift I find helpful, which is, oh gosh, my
life imploded. Now I have to reimagine it. I have
to rebuild it, as opposed to oh my gosh, my
life imploded. Now I get to reimagine it. I get
to do something different, not that I wanted to, but
(07:49):
sometimes reframing it that way for myself is helpful. If
I see the little hidden gifts inside the disaster, it
doesn't make the disease as worth it necessarily, you know,
I don't. I don't think I needed this. I certainly
didn't need it as writing material. I could have written
a book about anything. You know, my kids didn't need this.
(08:11):
None of us needed this. We are not better or
stronger because of it, not in any way that makes
it worth it.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
No, this need to put a value, judgment, a transactional
value on what you do with what happens. Right, Like,
I love that you wrote. What did I not get
to write? Because this was what was mine to write?
I love that. Like Literally the night of my partner's funeral,
more than one person came up to me and said,
(08:39):
this is going to make you such a better therapist.
You're going to get to write.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
And also like, I'm angry on your behalf.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Thank you, thank you. So I got the like because
I was a writer before he died, and because I
was a therapist before he died, like those twin things
of this is going to make you so much better.
You're going to be such a gift to the world.
And I feel like, you know this is this is
related territory that you write so evocatively and so beautifully,
(09:08):
But what did you not get to write because this
was yours to write, and I just like, I love
that so much. You also said you mentioned your kids
in here, and you said I would rather they not
learn to be so resilient. I would rather they learn
more about security and safety and be a little less resilient.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Yeah, I don't want resilient children. If resilience is what
we call it when we put kids through things, yeah,
or you know, because of the laws in this country,
refuse to protect them adequately, and then we're supposed to
pat ourselves on the back because our kids are so
strong out of just sheer necessity. That's not a gift.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
I mean that resilience and it's not like that resilience
narrative is like what we push on everybody who is
experiencing something they should not be experiencing. But instead of
looking at that, I mean, right now now, I'm thinking
about the black maternal health crisis, right, and like how
much we raise black women for being resilient instead of
(10:09):
dealing with the fact that our systems put them in
harm's way for which they need to become more resilient
so it doesn't crush them. Like this whole resilience thing.
I was talking with a guest earlier this season about
what we applaud as resilience is actually the imprint of trauma.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
Oh that's real. Actually, my daughter said, you know, when
she's fourteen, and she said, you know when people say
kids are old souls, it's because they've experienced trauma. And
I thought, that's right, Like when you have to grow
up fast, it's not a compliment that you can talk
like an adult or function like an adult. It's not
(10:46):
a compliment if you are eight and helping to raise
your three younger siblings because this country has no real support,
especially for single parents, but for working people period. Like,
that's not that's not a gift, That that's trauma.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Yeah, I wonder what would be different if we framed
it as that, Like how many words of support or
platitudes or condolences, Like how many of those phrases would
just evaporate if we understood that what we are celebrating
the things you create because this happened to you, Like
(11:28):
what a gift was hidden in that pain, Like if
we understood the mechanism that was actually happening, like so
so much of our our ideas, our vocabulary around caring
for each other would disappear in favor of something else.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
Yeah, one thing that would evaporate really quickly would be
what does not kill you makes you stronger?
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Right? Whoof gone?
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Right? Because what if what does not kill you actually
causes you a lot of pain and anxiety and you
have to carry that around and find ways to endure it.
I think you're absolutely right about that.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
So that whole we get impacted by the things that
happened to us, right, Like that which does not kill
you makes you stronger is such biological, relational, mental, emotional trash.
But there's a section in your book, and I'm totally
going to bring this back around, but there's a section
in your book about your miscarriages, and I think that
(12:30):
section encapsulates is such a gorgeous example of what you
just said about what doesn't kill us makes us stronger?
You talk about, you know, being pregnant with your son,
having lived through two miscarriages previously, you can't know what
you know?
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Yeah, it completely colored my experience of being pregnant with him,
because the entire time I just thought, at any minute,
this is going to end. It just gave me, and
it gave me not the kind of joyous, expectant, happy
pregnant experience I had with my daughter. It was a
(13:09):
very anxiety filled, cortisol soaked pregnancy experience because I just
kept waiting for the other shoe to drop until the
very very end. And that changes you.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
Yeah, we get changed by the things we experience, and
I think in this culture, we don't think we should
get changed by the things we experience unless the only
the only change that's acceptable is like stronger, bigger, better
than there, right, like this whole positive trajectory, which is
just not what life is.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
Yeah, you know, trauma does not give you a glow up.
That's that's the takeaway the TLDR. Trauma does not give
anyone a glow up.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
I love that. That's perfect. I feel like that's to
be tattooed somewhere or like that is a motivational that's
a sticker, thank you. That is a motivational poster that
I could get behind. Trauma does not give you a
glow up.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
You feel free. I gift that to you. Yeah, I
mean if the lemons to the lemons to lemonade thing.
You know, when I wrote keep Moving, someone really, in
a well meaning complimentary way, said, wow, you really took
those lemons and made lemonade. And then I think she
said and then added m F vodka to it, And
(14:27):
I laughed because I knew what she meant, right, I
knew what she meant, like she's she meant you took
straw and spun it into gold. You took something terrible
and made it into something that helped you and your
kids during a possible time. And yes, I mean that
is true, like there's there's no lie there. That is
absolutely true. But the other thing that is true is
(14:51):
that I didn't want that lemonade. I could have had
some other drink.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Right, we go back to that, what did you not
get to live? Because this is what you had to
live and the fact that you are a writer like
writers have to write. Yeah, right, Like this is how
we understand the world, This is how we metabolize what happens.
This is how we understand things. So it's not that
you get to write this because of what you lived.
(15:17):
It's that I am living this and words are how
I know to consume it or to be in it.
I'm speaking of words like I like word of phasia
right there. But yeah, does that feel accurate?
Speaker 1 (15:30):
Yeah? It does. I mean I don't often know what
I think or feel clearly until I've written it down
and then I'm like, oh, that's what it is. Somehow
my processing really works through my right hand and my
pen onto paper, which makes this a challenge, right I
have I'm thinking on the fly here, I'm not writing,
(15:51):
but yeah, I don't. I don't often know how I
feel about something, And for me, this particular book felt
like a large armoire parked in front of a doorway.
And it's not so much that I wanted to write
this book. It was the book I had to write
so I could write other books, almost like a clearing,
(16:14):
you know, like I had to move this giant piece
of furniture away from the doorway so I could go
through it. And I don't think I could have. I
could have just busied myself with other things while living
the experiences that I write about in this book without
(16:34):
processing them on paper.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
One of those things that I super love about you
is where I started write like your work is not
the typical transformation narrative, right where I learned some lessons
I grew as a person. Everything's good Now I can
look back and say thank you to it and be
grateful for like all of that stuff, the power in
(16:58):
your work, in your stories, in the way that you
speak about your life. For me, one of the one
of the big things is that you don't make lemonade,
is that you're able to traverse that both and yes,
and territory that people try to rush out of so
quickly or insist that we rush out of so quickly,
Like that both of these things can be true. That
(17:20):
I am so thankful for my family, for the person
I am, for the words that I say, and none
of this is awesome, Like this isn't anything that I wanted.
We just spent a whole bunch of time talking about,
Like this is not a transformation story. This is not
a thank you letter to my pain for teaching me
(17:40):
who I really wanted to be. Like all of this stuff,
And at the very same time, there's something very cool
about seeing the impact of your words and your story
and the way that you tell it, seeing the impact
on the world. So I want to I want to
take a scene from your new book, if I might,
where you describe watching a character on Madame Secretary read
(18:03):
your poem good Bones. I know you know what I'm
talking about here, but you knew your poem would be
in there, but you didn't know how or where. But
what you expected was really different from what happened. Can
you tell me about that. That's my favorite scene in
the whole book.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Yeah, I thought because good Bones traveled really via internet, right,
I mean, it was something that went viral online. So
all I knew was that it was going to be
in the episode. I had no idea who would say it.
I didn't know how it would appear. And I think
part of me expected, first of all, a woman to
(18:40):
be sharing it, because it is a poem spoken by
a mother's speaker. And I also expected it to be
read off of a phone or a computer screen, like oh, here,
look at this tweet, or here's something that is someone
sent me on Facebook. And so in the scene, a
male character, the chief of staff, opens wallet and pulls
(19:01):
out this piece of paper, and at that time, I
think I'm watching it, and I'd had a little champagne.
At that point, I think I'm watching it, and I'm thinking,
is this wait? Is this the scene? Every time someone moves,
I'm thinking, is this it? Is this?
Speaker 2 (19:16):
It?
Speaker 1 (19:17):
And he pulls this piece of paper out of his
wallet and unfolds it and says something like, you know,
this reminds me of this poem by Maggie Smith called
good Bones. And he reads the poem from this piece
of paper from his wallet, and it, I mean, I
just bald. I just absolutely cried, because first of all,
it was a man which I did not see coming.
(19:40):
Second of all, it was something that was not living
on a screen. It was something he'd thought to print
and cut small and carry with him, you know, like
a little talisman, the way I carry things that mean,
you know, like a little note from my son, or
an acre he might find, or something that was so
(20:02):
unexpected and so touching to me. I'm still not over it.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Yeah, yeah, Like there is an intensity there of like
knowing that your words, like this little pocket of your
life is carried around so intimately, like that your words
make survival for someone. Can we talk about that, because man,
(20:27):
it's intense.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
It is intense. I have such a strange relationship with
that poem. In general, it's kind of a disaster barometer,
kind of a grief barometer. Really, it's like the grief
bat signal on the internet, where if my social media
mentions ramp up really high, there's a good chance something
(20:53):
bad has happened in the world because people are sharing
my work as it's sort of like a sense of
community or solace or comfort or hope or here we
are again, particularly if it's that poem. And so for years,
every time people shared that, I would get this sort
(21:16):
of pit in my stomach and immediately go to some
news network to find out what it happened. Whereas if
I had written a poem that was celebrated and shared
widely when babies were born or people got married, or
you know, it would have given me a different feeling
when I saw it being shared widely. But when a
piece of work that you've made is shared, you know,
(21:41):
after every school shooting, it's hard to be happy about
expanding your readership via your own nation's refusal to enact
gun control, for example. And then now for people who
have read the memoir, you know that poem also had
(22:02):
an impact on my marriage, because my career sort of
like overnight, my readership just became much wider, and I
was asked to travel and do more things in a
really unexpected way, not in the way that you would
be able to plan for tenure, or plan for a promotion,
or you know, even plan for a second child. You know,
(22:24):
there are things that we can plan for in our
lives when we know a big change is coming, and
a poem going viral overnight is not one of them.
And the growing pains from that had a big impact
on my life. So I've had a weird relationship with
that poem for a long time, and I guess my
hope with the memoir is that there might be people
(22:48):
because the title you could Make this Place Beautiful is
from the poem, there might be people who find the
poem via this book and have a completely different relationship
with it that has nothing to do with grief in
that way. In some ways, titling the book the line
(23:09):
from that poem was a kind of reclamation for me
because I am proud of the poem. It's just a
hard thing to sort of have traveling in the world
with my name on it, given why it.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
Travels, I had not thought of that.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
It's a blessing. I do understand that people are sharing
it because it gives them a sense of hope and comfort.
So there's that. I do get that, but it is
still hard, particularly to have your I mean, success feels
like a strange word, but to sort of like it's
like our having a hit radio song, right, to have
(23:49):
your hit radio song be taps, you know, something that
is shared because of shared collective grief.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Yeah, And it's it's interesting because like you just articulated
that in a way that through my whole career I
haven't quite put into words like how weird it is
to have such professional success because that success means that
(24:22):
people are in pain right when they reach for your words,
because the worst has happened. You know. One of the
things that that I will say sometimes to people is
I hope you never need me, right, because if this
work is settling into your heart, it's because your your
heart has need you see this, you're seeking it, And
(24:46):
it's it's a very it is a very strange profession.
It's really weird and glorious and wonderful because we know
that unsurvivable things happen. We know that people get sick,
and this country will always value guns over children, and
(25:06):
we just we know all of this stuff, and if
there is something that we can offer that lays down
beside that.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
Yeah, Oh I like the way you put that thank you.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
Yeah, you're welcome. We do weird work, I.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
Know, and I mean, in my caseites and largely unwittingly.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
Yeah, mine is on purpose. Yours was not on purpose.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Not at all. I mean just you know, Hey, I'm
a mom in Ohio. I wrote a poem thinking about
what it is to bring kids into a world that,
in my words, is at least half terrible a concern
and how do I And that's a conservative estimate and
getting you know, sometimes more conservative by the day, and
(25:49):
what is that like? And really not speaking for anyone
other than me, And so yeah, I'm very unwitting that
it is headed has had the life that it's had.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Yeah. Before we get back to my conversation with Maggie Smith,
I want to talk with you about writing, specifically writing
from something that broke your heart the way Maggie and
I have been discussing. Over the last eight years, more
(26:22):
than fifteen thousand people have used the writing prompts in
my Writing Your Grief course to explore not just their
grief but also their identities, their beliefs, their relationships with themselves.
Now I'm definitely biased because I created it, but I
do truly believe that this thirty day course will help
you inhabit your grief in a new way. It's not
going to fix anything, but writing does make things different.
(26:46):
This self guided Writing your Grief course is always available
wherever you are, whenever you're ready, whenever you're actually not ready,
but you want to explore things anyway, check it out.
Visit refuge ingrief dot com, backslash WYG. That's WYG the
initials for Writing your Grief, or just check the link
(27:06):
in the show notes. All right, back to my conversation
with the stellar Maggie Smith. It's interesting that you said,
you know, I'm a mom out here in the Midwest
talking about something very intimate. And one of the things
about writing intimate things on the public stage is that
you know, people think they know you because you've written
(27:26):
these pieces. I remember Cheryl straight saying when Wild came
out that people thought they knew her because of what
she wrote in that book, like they thought they were friends.
So we write these intimate things, but we are not intimates.
It's a strange thing. Right, have you found that like
while you're while you're becoming more and more visible, that like.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
Oh yes, yeah, my friends call me now the divorce Whisperer,
and I'll.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
Tell you it's to a whole lane of T shirts.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
I know, like where's my lifetime show?
Speaker 2 (27:59):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (27:59):
And I have to say, it doesn't feel like a burden.
It really kind of feels like a gift. And do
I respond always no, but I do respond a lot.
I mean, people will slide into my dms with stories
or saying this release you know, this book was my
divorce bible, or I give this book to everyone going
through the thing, or my situation is so much like
(28:22):
yours and I feel so seen, or my situation is
so different from yours, but the emotions you expressed are
so like mine, and I feel so seen. And to me,
that really is a gift. It doesn't feel like a
burden because what I go to books for and music, frankly,
(28:44):
and art and film is to sort of interpret my experience,
to sort of translate my own life vis a vis
these other people's made things. And so if people are
able to do that through my made things, it just
(29:07):
makes me feel like I'm part of some strange cycle
of experience, metabolize, make, experience metabolize make, And I'm taking
in things all the time. You know, there are books
that have saved me. There are records that have saved me.
I don't always slide into people's dms, but I definitely
(29:30):
have a lot of people out there that their work
has meant something critical to me has just sort of
floated down into my hands at just the right time.
So to be that for someone else when I know
what it feels like to be the receiver of that
gift is like really humbling.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
Yes, Yes, even after all of the years of doing
this work and all of the dms and all of
the comments, Like my assistant knows to save the really
like the really good ones or something that we haven't
seen before and collects them and sends them to me,
because there's just there is something about that knowing that
(30:10):
something I said or something I created is a life
raft for somebody else right now, matter like it mattered,
it changed something, it made something survivable, It set off
some chain of thoughts like that. You know, it's like
the great ping pong game of life with multiple balls
in a never ending arena, right like there were always
(30:32):
impacting each other and picking up things and carrying them,
knowing how impacted I've been just what you just said
like that, knowing how impact I've been by other people's
words and how much the right sentence can arrive and
change the world.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
Oh my gosh, it's everything. I have a post it
note that I can see from my desk that's on
my wall or on my office window. So what's beautiful
about it is that I can see like scene behind
it and it's my neighbor's magnolia trees. But it's realca
Let everything happened to you. Beauty and terror, just keep going.
(31:10):
No feeling is final. It lives on my window, It's
lived there for years. I see it every day and
it means something to me, and it means something different
to me every day, because some days are beauty days
and some days are terror days, and some days toggle
you know. But just yeah, I carry words around me,
(31:33):
you know, with me like a talisman all the time.
So to think that somebody might carry mine, what a gift.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
Yeah, it really is amazing. I love that there's a
social media post you did. You shared that somebody has
your words tattooed on their arm, and I feel like
I feel like there's like a rite of passage for
rat authors there, Like the first time you see your
work tattooed on somebody else's body, it's like, what just
happened here?
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Yeah? Book tours been wild. I've seen like three so
in the past ten days, and that is wild for me.
I mean just absolutely wild to have someone come up
into your signing line with your book title on their arm,
as someone whose arms are covered in tattoos, but not
(32:19):
the words of other people. I know, the amount of
thinking that goes into and weighing. You know, a post
it note on the window is one thing, but ink
on the skin is something else.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
Yeah, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
I love that real Quo quote too, and I'm not
even going to dissect it because there's so many different
ways we could go with that, but it makes me
think of, you know, no feeling as final. It also
points to there is a foundational bedrock of self that
is experiencing all the things that is unchanging. And something
(32:58):
that I love in this book is like finding yourself
is the through line, not finding yourself, not the act
of finding yourself, but that you, yourself are the through
line through all parts of your life.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
Yes, that's Honestly, as someone who is not a therapist,
I find writing like this. I'm often asked questions, particularly
by journalists, like what advice do you have for people
going through hard times? And I'm always like, I don't
feel qualified. I am not a social worker, i am
not a therapist. I'm a poet. I'm not sure you
(33:37):
want the advice of a poet on these large life matters.
But for me, the thing I tell my friends or
people who reach out to me or slide into my
DMS and they're saying they're going through it, you know,
whatever it is. It might be divorce or pregnancy, loss
or lost job, or you know, whatever the thing is.
(33:59):
My big I Guesst impulse is always to think, like
you you predated whatever this trouble is. And you are
talking to me from maybe inside it or maybe just
on the other side of it, but like you predated
this thing. Like imagine the history book timeline. There's a
(34:22):
dot for you that is the beginning of the timeline
in your life, and you're you're going to outlast whatever
this is, you know, and it is that continuity of self.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
It's continuity, and it's not stop feeling so many things
about what's happening right now because you survived this and
do you know what I mean?
Speaker 1 (34:40):
Like, it's not no, you don't feel all the feelings.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
Yeah, you never use that. You never use any of
your work, but you never use that you predated this experience.
You never use that as a like bypassing gloss over.
I remember, I remember, Oh my gosh, poor people. One
of Matt's uncles took me out to breakfast about maybe
two months after he died, and We're sitting there at
(35:06):
breakfast like I'm still a complete wreck and his partner
at the time, they're both therapists, right, And his partner
at the time looks at me and says, what did
you want to be when you were a kid? What
did you want to grow up to be? With that
like therapist head tilt? And I was like, excuse me,
And she was like.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
Maybe, tad tilt, maybe you get.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
To be something now that you didn't get to be before.
So who were you before you met Matt? Because I
bet that person would like a chance to live. And
I'm like, what the fuck? So when I hear people
other than you, people other than you talk about things
like yourself predated this experience, Like you are not talking
(35:48):
about the noneness of what you're experiencing right now, Like
you don't say that as a way to get over this,
but no, Like it's not a bypass, it's not a bypass.
I read that. I hear you as an excavation, Like
I'm talking a lot about myself here, which tells you
how much your work affects me and intersects with me.
But like when my partner died, I was completely obliterated,
(36:12):
completely obliterated, and it took a couple of years for
the core parts of me to resurface, and I just
remember being so thankful that that core self survived. I
have no idea how it did, but it did, and
being so thankful for that and so thankful for that
(36:32):
through line of self.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
I don't know if we talk enough about the sort
of identity hit or at least sort of identity shift
that loss inevitably, whatever kind of loss it is, you know,
whether it's pregnancy loss or in my case, the loss
of my marriage, but certainly any kind of loss, like
(36:58):
because one of the questions is like, well, who am
I now without this? Who am I now without this person?
Who am I now? What now? Right? Because what you
also lose is not the person. What you lose is
the future that you had imagined having poof.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
One of the gifts of writing through the worst, I
think is the sort of gift of being able to
contextualize in a way. You go to a country in
Europe and then you come back and you look at
a map and you think, oh, I was that close
to all these other places. I had no idea where
(37:43):
I was in relation to anywhere else. And the act
of sort of writing over years of your life and
thinking about things in this sort of big picture way,
in some way, I think, is an invitation to think
about how the different pieces of us are interconnected. I
was really thinking about the mother piece of me, and
(38:07):
the partner piece of me, and the writer piece of me,
but also others like who was I as a daughter?
Who am I as a daughter? Who? What kind of
friend am I? And also how are all of these
things interconnected? I'm only one person? How do I integrate better?
Maybe going forward and sort of compartmentalize less.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
Yeah, Like this continual process of excavation and assessment is
the wrong word because it sounds really cerebral, but I
don't know what to work the right word.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
You know. I was talking to someone the other day
and she said, I think memoir in particular has two
essential components. And I was like, oh, no, there's a
recipe I was not aware of before writing mine. Damn. Here,
I am thinking. It's like when it's like when you
make cookies and they're like every cookie has two essential ingredients,
and you're sitting there thinking, I hope these cookies have
that those two ingredients. And she said self assessment and
(39:08):
societal interrogation.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
Ooh, and I.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
Said, oh good, I have both.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
You do.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
On accident again. All the best things happen when you
don't know you're doing it well.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
With those two requirements, I'm writing memoir all the time,
so that's good without actually writing one.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
I love this for.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
Me because we can't assess ourselves outside of our conditioning,
outside of what we're culturally rewarded for. Yeah, those two
things actually do travel together, and I think to get
honest about our lives, we have to look at both.
Nobody exists in isolation.
Speaker 2 (39:50):
And writing speaking this way, talking about this stuff, like
refusing that transformation tell all narrative thing in a meta
sort of way, like that is a social confrontation, a
social whatever that is because we're allowing we're allowing other
people to access their own questions about what are the
(40:13):
constructs that I grew up with? Do I have to
transform from this loss? Am I allowed to be both things? Right? And?
Am I allowed to ask these questions? And I feel
like the are I always listening to you on a
Kate Bowler's show?
Speaker 1 (40:28):
And I love her?
Speaker 2 (40:30):
Isn't she the best?
Speaker 1 (40:32):
I the best?
Speaker 2 (40:33):
Fricking love her three seasons into this podcast and her
episode is still our most listened to. I just adore her.
But anyway, she I can't remember which one of you
said it, but something like there are years that ask
questions and years that answer oh yes right, And you
were like, and then there are years that keep questioning
and won't stop questioning or whatever you said, and I
(40:54):
was just like that, this isn't this work that we
do of taking intimate personal experiences and showing our hand
in our way, right, like putting your hand into your pocket,
coming out with something and showing it to me in
its best form. It encourages people to ask questions about
(41:17):
their own lives.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
Yes, yes, it should be permission giving. Yeah, yeah, I
mean I think I think for me, the best writing,
the best art for me is permission giving, whether in
content or inform. Right, something about the way that someone
(41:40):
has disclosed something to me, or described something to me,
or built something for me to move around inside of
gives me permission either to make my own thing however
I see fit like, Oh, they took some risks, Now
I guess I can take some risks too, Or to
just say the thing I didn't think could be said.
(42:03):
I read so many books preparing to write this one,
in which usually a woman said something about her life
and herself that I thought, well, if she could say that,
I can certainly say what I want to say, you know,
and just talk back to the.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
Fear you might know this one who said this one?
That's something like what would happen if one woman told
the whole truth about her life? The world would break open?
I just butchered it. But do you know that?
Speaker 1 (42:32):
No, I've heard it. I don't know who said it.
Speaker 2 (42:35):
I'll look it up and make sure it's in the
show notes.
Speaker 1 (42:37):
But it's such a good when you look it up.
Will you say? And then Maggie remembered and put that
in the show notes.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
Yes, just lie, oh totally, I'll totally, I'll totally lie
about it. Or I remembered I quoted it correctly.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
I cited both of those quote correctly quoted and attributed.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
We really did. We did proper citation and props and respect.
We totally did. But it is that it is this
like I remember reading or receiving that line, you know,
thirty years ago when I was a young undergrad, right,
and like, what would happen if you told the whole
truth about your life? Or in what you just exactly
(43:16):
I was just going to say, like one sentence of
the truth, what would happen? And that is so much
in your work, that permission giving on so many different levels,
and we could seriously talk forever, but I want to
get into our very last question for today, for our
time together. Knowing what you know and living what you've lived,
(43:38):
and knowing that there is a whole life that we
don't get to live because of the lives that we have.
Throwing that in there, what does hope look like for
you today?
Speaker 1 (43:50):
Taking responsibility for my own life, That's what hope looks
like to me, I'm making better decisions for myself, asking better,
harder questions of myself. And one of the biggest things
for me, I think for years, I know, for years
(44:10):
I made a lot of decisions based on fear and
even what I would call like lowercase f fear, you know,
like what if they don't like me, what if they
judge me? Just silliness. Really, what I see now in
my mid forties is silliness. Really trying now to make
decisions from that core of what do I want? What
(44:36):
do I visualize for my life? What do I want
from my kids? How can I help get us there?
And if the fear voice starts to speak up, as
it often does, it gets so loud, like I don't
know why, of all the little voices inside me, the
fear voice is the loudest, such a yammorer. I'm just
(44:58):
really doing my best to talk back in action, you know,
to talk back in action.
Speaker 2 (45:06):
I love that your your working definition of hope right
now is fully within your power. Right It has nothing
to do with whether the world is beautiful in this
moment or not.
Speaker 1 (45:19):
Yeah, there's a lot I don't have control over, so
I don't want to leave. I don't want to sort
of conflate hope with any sense of luck. That makes
me nervous. So I'd like to think about what can
I do that is in my own power? Joy Harjoe
has written about writing as a form of sovereignty, and
(45:41):
I just sit with that. I guess you to look
on your face just sitting with that, like I want
to think more about sovereignty and less about chance. What
decisions can I make for myself, taking responsibility for myself
and my own happiness.
Speaker 2 (45:58):
Sovereignty and agency. Man, I that is what hope is
for me these days, is like what yeah, yeah, sovereignty
is where it is at all. Right, I am going
to carry around what you just said in my own pocket,
probably not printed because I don't know where my printer is,
but written out and stuck in my pocket. So I'm
(46:20):
going to be I'm going to be carrying your words
around with me in my pocket, and they're also in
my bag and on the nightstand.
Speaker 1 (46:29):
Well, I'm going to be carrying this conversation around with me.
Speaker 2 (46:33):
Excellent, I am so glad. Okay, we are going to
link to all of your books in the show notes,
but could you let people know where to find you
and anything else you would like them to know.
Speaker 1 (46:46):
I am findable as Maggie Smith Poet on the Internet,
which I lovingly call Al Gore's Internet.
Speaker 2 (46:57):
There's a subtweet for those of you who know what
you talking about.
Speaker 1 (47:03):
So yes, to not get confused with the Dame, right,
I get a fair amount of Downton Abbey and Harry
Potter fan mail that I do not deserve. So I'm
Maggie Smith Poet on Twitter and Instagram. I'm Maggie Smithpoet
dot com on the Internet. I'm on substack at for
dear life. That is my That is my substack. It
(47:25):
is how I hold on in this world for dear life,
and also how I like to think of myself as
living for this dear life. And yeah, that's pretty much
how I can be located.
Speaker 2 (47:37):
Excellent, all right, We will link to all of that
stuff in the show notes. I am so glad to
have you here in this world and in my life.
So glad. Okay, friends, stay tuned for your questions to
carry with you. We will be right back after this break,
in which I go weep a little bit with happiness
(47:58):
at this conversation. Be right back each week, I leave
you with some questions to carry with you until we
meet again. You know what, my favorite part of this
conversation was the part where Maggie and I talked about
what it's like to know that people are carrying your
(48:20):
words around with them like a talisman, something grounding and
nourishing in the face of whatever impossible thing you're living.
Maggie and I have this sort of random, obscure thing
in common. We've both received photos of people who had
our words tattooed on their bodies. Like Maggie was telling
(48:44):
me how she's received a lot of tattoos where people
have like, had you could make this place beautiful tattooed
on their flesh. It's just it's really powerful to connect
with someone whose words have been used in that way.
It just felt really special to me. All of this
conversation felt special to me. I was telling Maggie that
(49:06):
reading her work lit up a desire in me to
write more and to say more, which is a creative
spark that's felt kind of dormant in me for a
long time. That felt really hopeful. How about you, friends,
what's stuck with you from this conversation everybody's going to
take something different from the show, but I do hope
you found something to hold on to. If you want
(49:28):
to tell me how today's show felt for you, or
you have thoughts on what we covered, let me know.
Tag at Refuge and Grief on all the social platforms
so I can hear how this conversation affected you, and
please remember to leave a review. This season's guests are
truly next level, and reviews are a good way to
let me know how these guests are affecting you. Follow
(49:50):
the show at It's Okay Pod on TikTok and Refuge
and Grief everywhere else to see video clips from the show,
and use the hashtag It's Okay pod on all the
platforms so not only I can and find you, but
others can too. None of us are entirely okay, and
it's time we started talking about that together, right. It's
okay that you're not okay. You're in good company. That's
(50:14):
it for this week. Everybody, remember to subscribe to the show,
share it with the people you know. Coming up next week,
Rachel Cargole, I tell you this season's guests are stellar.
Follow the show on your favorite platforms so you do
not miss an episode. Want more on these topics. Look,
(50:36):
grief is everywhere. As my dad says, daily life is
full of everyday grief that we don't call grief. Learning
how to talk about all that without accidentally grief, gasolating
somebody or gaslighting yourself. That's an important skill for everybody.
Get help to have those conversations with trainings, professional resources,
and my best selling book, It's Okay that You're Not Okay,
(50:56):
plus the Guided Journal for Grief at Begandivine dot c
oh It's Okay that You're Not Okay. The podcast is
written and produced by me Megan Devine. Executive producer is
Amy Brown, co produced by Elizabeth Fosio, with logistical and
social media support from Micah, Post production and editing by
the ever patient Houston Tilly. And next week we have
(51:17):
a new intern to announce. So if you are one
of those people who listens all the way to the
closing credits, yay, you're the first to know that we
have a new addition to our team. As always, music
provided by Wave Crush and background noise provided by these
Sounds of Summer break happening in my neighborhood
One thing that would evaporate really quickly would be what
does not kill you makes you stronger? Right? Whoof gone right?
Because what if what does not kill you actually causes
you a lot of pain and anxiety and you have
to carry that around and find ways to endure it.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
This is it's okay that you're not okay, and I'm
your host, Megan Divine. This week, how do we live
in a world that's at least half terrible? If you
recognize that line, you know the special treat we have
in store. My guest is poet Maggie Smith. Maggie is
the author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful and
the poem from which my opening line comes Good Bones.
(00:45):
Today on the show, we're talking about writing and marriage
and divorce and why you did not need whatever has
happened to you in order to become who you're meant
to be, settle in friends. All of that and more
coming up right after this first break before we get started.
(01:08):
Two quick notes. One, this episode is an encore performance.
I am on break working on a giant new project,
so we're releasing a mix of our favorite episodes from
the first three seasons of the show. Some of these
conversations you might have missed in their original seasons, and
some shows just truly deserve multiple listens so that you
(01:29):
capture all of the goodness. Second note, while we cover
a lot of emotional, relational territory and our time here together,
this show is not a substitute for skilled support with
a license mental health provider, or for professional supervision related
to your work. Take what you learn here, take your
thoughts and your reflections out into your world and talk
about it. Hey, friends, I met Maggie Smith the same
(01:54):
way millions of other people did through her poem good Bones.
Now you probably I know this poem, but if you
need a reminder or a refresher, it begins Life is short.
Though I keep this from my children. Life is short,
and I've shortened mind in a thousand delicious ill advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill advised ways I keep from my children.
(02:18):
The world is at least fifty percent terrible, and that's
a conservative estimate. Though I keep this from my children,
I bet you recognize that just from the opening lines.
Right in this episode, you're going to learn the backstory
to that poem, good Bones, and why. As Maggie says,
it's a barometer of the grief in the world, a
(02:39):
sign that something terrible has happened, like when that poem
goes viral again, and how weird it is to have
professional success based largely on something that broke your heart.
Maggie and I also discuss her new book, You Could
Make This Place Beautiful, which details the dissolution of her
marriage and the creation are really like the resurrection of
(03:00):
herself as a writer. We get into so many things
in this conversation that made my writer heart deliriously happy.
I was a fan of Maggie Smith before this conversation,
and she means so much more to me having had
this chance to connect. So I hope you love this
episode and love Maggie. Be sure to let me know
(03:21):
what you think. And speaking of letting me know what
you think, please leave a review of the show wherever
you get podcasts. I haven't seen any new reviews lately,
and that is one great way to tell me how
this season's guests are affecting you. All Right, on with
the show with the stellar Maggie Smith. Okay, So, I
(03:42):
have been following you on social media and reading your
books and using lines of yours as starting places for
my own writing and also when I teach writing. So
I feel like I've known you for a long time
even though we just met. So I'm just this is
my way of saying, I'm ridiculously happy to be here
with you today. Ah.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Same.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
I want to address something right off the bat because
it is one of my absolute favorite things about you.
I feel like ninety nine percent of memoir writing is
like finding beauty inside terrible times, Like I grew so
much as a person. It was difficult, but I love
it and I hate that stuff. I kind of knew
this before I started reading You could make this place beautiful,
(04:25):
but I as I was reading it in a coffee shop,
I actually yelled various things, various variations of like Amon's
sister yay, absolutely out loud so many times in crowded
coffee shops. When you write your personal story, it does
not have to be about being worth it.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Yeah. I think we have a sort of cultural obsession
with before and after, like like the before and after
photo of the made over kitchen, the before and after
images of the haircut, the before and after of anything,
and same with same with storytelling. Right, It's like before
(05:05):
I was this and then I figured it all out,
and after I was this And so I feel like
the traditional narrative expectation of a memoir that that you
write out of a painful crisis in your life would
be like I was a caterpillar and then I wrote
this book and figured myself out, and then I emerged
at the end of the book a butterfly. But I
(05:29):
am still a caterpillar. I am just a more fully realized,
more self aware, more whole and boundaried caterpillar.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
One of the most popular memes on my own social
is like this picture of a chrysalis and it's like,
you know, standing outside the chrysalis shouting you're a butterfly
does not hasten anything. It just pisses off the goo
or something like that.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Oh yeah, because it's actually liquefied and so yeah, so
maybe I'm actually just the goo at this point. But
I do think we put a lot of pressure on
ourselves to metabolize experience in a way that makes us
quote better, as if just surviving it is not enough.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Yeah, there's that second half of the sentence of you
needed this because who you were before this happened wasn't good.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Enough, Oh gosh, you needed this. That is just that's
really something, isn't it. I mean, I write about this
in the book, the sort of idea of material, and
I have had this said to me. I have friends
who have written about pretty traumatic things who have had
this said to them, which is, at least you got
a book out of it, or at least this experience
(06:45):
wasn't wasted on someone who isn't a writer, an artist,
a filmmaker, you know, whatever you do that you make
things from your experience. And I've been thinking a lot
about that and how well mean I think that statement is,
but also how offensive I find offensive. And I was
(07:08):
thinking about it recently and thinking, actually, I don't think
of myself as I didn't get a book out of
my life imploding. I made a book out of my
life imploding. And it's a very just pretty subtle verb
shift there, but it feels a whole lot like a
(07:28):
verb shift I find helpful, which is, oh gosh, my
life imploded. Now I have to reimagine it. I have
to rebuild it, as opposed to oh my gosh, my
life imploded. Now I get to reimagine it. I get
to do something different, not that I wanted to, but
(07:49):
sometimes reframing it that way for myself is helpful. If
I see the little hidden gifts inside the disaster, it
doesn't make the disease as worth it necessarily, you know,
I don't. I don't think I needed this. I certainly
didn't need it as writing material. I could have written
a book about anything. You know, my kids didn't need this.
(08:11):
None of us needed this. We are not better or
stronger because of it, not in any way that makes
it worth it.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
No, this need to put a value, judgment, a transactional
value on what you do with what happens. Right, Like,
I love that you wrote. What did I not get
to write? Because this was what was mine to write?
I love that. Like Literally the night of my partner's funeral,
more than one person came up to me and said,
(08:39):
this is going to make you such a better therapist.
You're going to get to write.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
And also like, I'm angry on your behalf.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Thank you, thank you. So I got the like because
I was a writer before he died, and because I
was a therapist before he died, like those twin things
of this is going to make you so much better.
You're going to be such a gift to the world.
And I feel like, you know this is this is
related territory that you write so evocatively and so beautifully,
(09:08):
But what did you not get to write because this
was yours to write, and I just like, I love
that so much. You also said you mentioned your kids
in here, and you said I would rather they not
learn to be so resilient. I would rather they learn
more about security and safety and be a little less resilient.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Yeah, I don't want resilient children. If resilience is what
we call it when we put kids through things, yeah,
or you know, because of the laws in this country,
refuse to protect them adequately, and then we're supposed to
pat ourselves on the back because our kids are so
strong out of just sheer necessity. That's not a gift.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
I mean that resilience and it's not like that resilience
narrative is like what we push on everybody who is
experiencing something they should not be experiencing. But instead of
looking at that, I mean, right now now, I'm thinking
about the black maternal health crisis, right, and like how
much we raise black women for being resilient instead of
(10:09):
dealing with the fact that our systems put them in
harm's way for which they need to become more resilient
so it doesn't crush them. Like this whole resilience thing.
I was talking with a guest earlier this season about
what we applaud as resilience is actually the imprint of trauma.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
Oh that's real. Actually, my daughter said, you know, when
she's fourteen, and she said, you know when people say
kids are old souls, it's because they've experienced trauma. And
I thought, that's right, Like when you have to grow
up fast, it's not a compliment that you can talk
like an adult or function like an adult. It's not
(10:46):
a compliment if you are eight and helping to raise
your three younger siblings because this country has no real support,
especially for single parents, but for working people period. Like,
that's not that's not a gift, That that's trauma.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Yeah, I wonder what would be different if we framed
it as that, Like how many words of support or
platitudes or condolences, Like how many of those phrases would
just evaporate if we understood that what we are celebrating
the things you create because this happened to you, Like
(11:28):
what a gift was hidden in that pain, Like if
we understood the mechanism that was actually happening, like so
so much of our our ideas, our vocabulary around caring
for each other would disappear in favor of something else.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
Yeah, one thing that would evaporate really quickly would be
what does not kill you makes you stronger?
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Right? Whoof gone?
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Right? Because what if what does not kill you actually
causes you a lot of pain and anxiety and you
have to carry that around and find ways to endure it.
I think you're absolutely right about that.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
So that whole we get impacted by the things that
happened to us, right, Like that which does not kill
you makes you stronger is such biological, relational, mental, emotional trash.
But there's a section in your book, and I'm totally
going to bring this back around, but there's a section
in your book about your miscarriages, and I think that
(12:30):
section encapsulates is such a gorgeous example of what you
just said about what doesn't kill us makes us stronger?
You talk about, you know, being pregnant with your son,
having lived through two miscarriages previously, you can't know what
you know?
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Yeah, it completely colored my experience of being pregnant with him,
because the entire time I just thought, at any minute,
this is going to end. It just gave me, and
it gave me not the kind of joyous, expectant, happy
pregnant experience I had with my daughter. It was a
(13:09):
very anxiety filled, cortisol soaked pregnancy experience because I just
kept waiting for the other shoe to drop until the
very very end. And that changes you.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
Yeah, we get changed by the things we experience, and
I think in this culture, we don't think we should
get changed by the things we experience unless the only
the only change that's acceptable is like stronger, bigger, better
than there, right, like this whole positive trajectory, which is
just not what life is.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
Yeah, you know, trauma does not give you a glow up.
That's that's the takeaway the TLDR. Trauma does not give
anyone a glow up.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
I love that. That's perfect. I feel like that's to
be tattooed somewhere or like that is a motivational that's
a sticker, thank you. That is a motivational poster that
I could get behind. Trauma does not give you a
glow up.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
You feel free. I gift that to you. Yeah, I
mean if the lemons to the lemons to lemonade thing.
You know, when I wrote keep Moving, someone really, in
a well meaning complimentary way, said, wow, you really took
those lemons and made lemonade. And then I think she
said and then added m F vodka to it, And
(14:27):
I laughed because I knew what she meant, right, I
knew what she meant, like she's she meant you took
straw and spun it into gold. You took something terrible
and made it into something that helped you and your
kids during a possible time. And yes, I mean that
is true, like there's there's no lie there. That is
absolutely true. But the other thing that is true is
(14:51):
that I didn't want that lemonade. I could have had
some other drink.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Right, we go back to that, what did you not
get to live? Because this is what you had to
live and the fact that you are a writer like
writers have to write. Yeah, right, Like this is how
we understand the world, This is how we metabolize what happens.
This is how we understand things. So it's not that
you get to write this because of what you lived.
(15:17):
It's that I am living this and words are how
I know to consume it or to be in it.
I'm speaking of words like I like word of phasia
right there. But yeah, does that feel accurate?
Speaker 1 (15:30):
Yeah? It does. I mean I don't often know what
I think or feel clearly until I've written it down
and then I'm like, oh, that's what it is. Somehow
my processing really works through my right hand and my
pen onto paper, which makes this a challenge, right I
have I'm thinking on the fly here, I'm not writing,
(15:51):
but yeah, I don't. I don't often know how I
feel about something, And for me, this particular book felt
like a large armoire parked in front of a doorway.
And it's not so much that I wanted to write
this book. It was the book I had to write
so I could write other books, almost like a clearing,
(16:14):
you know, like I had to move this giant piece
of furniture away from the doorway so I could go
through it. And I don't think I could have. I
could have just busied myself with other things while living
the experiences that I write about in this book without
(16:34):
processing them on paper.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
One of those things that I super love about you
is where I started write like your work is not
the typical transformation narrative, right where I learned some lessons
I grew as a person. Everything's good Now I can
look back and say thank you to it and be
grateful for like all of that stuff, the power in
(16:58):
your work, in your stories, in the way that you
speak about your life. For me, one of the one
of the big things is that you don't make lemonade,
is that you're able to traverse that both and yes,
and territory that people try to rush out of so
quickly or insist that we rush out of so quickly,
Like that both of these things can be true. That
(17:20):
I am so thankful for my family, for the person
I am, for the words that I say, and none
of this is awesome, Like this isn't anything that I wanted.
We just spent a whole bunch of time talking about,
Like this is not a transformation story. This is not
a thank you letter to my pain for teaching me
(17:40):
who I really wanted to be. Like all of this stuff,
And at the very same time, there's something very cool
about seeing the impact of your words and your story
and the way that you tell it, seeing the impact
on the world. So I want to I want to
take a scene from your new book, if I might,
where you describe watching a character on Madame Secretary read
(18:03):
your poem good Bones. I know you know what I'm
talking about here, but you knew your poem would be
in there, but you didn't know how or where. But
what you expected was really different from what happened. Can
you tell me about that. That's my favorite scene in
the whole book.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Yeah, I thought because good Bones traveled really via internet, right,
I mean, it was something that went viral online. So
all I knew was that it was going to be
in the episode. I had no idea who would say it.
I didn't know how it would appear. And I think
part of me expected, first of all, a woman to
(18:40):
be sharing it, because it is a poem spoken by
a mother's speaker. And I also expected it to be
read off of a phone or a computer screen, like oh, here,
look at this tweet, or here's something that is someone
sent me on Facebook. And so in the scene, a
male character, the chief of staff, opens wallet and pulls
(19:01):
out this piece of paper, and at that time, I
think I'm watching it, and I'd had a little champagne.
At that point, I think I'm watching it, and I'm thinking,
is this wait? Is this the scene? Every time someone moves,
I'm thinking, is this it? Is this?
Speaker 2 (19:16):
It?
Speaker 1 (19:17):
And he pulls this piece of paper out of his
wallet and unfolds it and says something like, you know,
this reminds me of this poem by Maggie Smith called
good Bones. And he reads the poem from this piece
of paper from his wallet, and it, I mean, I
just bald. I just absolutely cried, because first of all,
it was a man which I did not see coming.
(19:40):
Second of all, it was something that was not living
on a screen. It was something he'd thought to print
and cut small and carry with him, you know, like
a little talisman, the way I carry things that mean,
you know, like a little note from my son, or
an acre he might find, or something that was so
(20:02):
unexpected and so touching to me. I'm still not over it.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Yeah, yeah, Like there is an intensity there of like
knowing that your words, like this little pocket of your
life is carried around so intimately, like that your words
make survival for someone. Can we talk about that, because man,
(20:27):
it's intense.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
It is intense. I have such a strange relationship with
that poem. In general, it's kind of a disaster barometer,
kind of a grief barometer. Really, it's like the grief
bat signal on the internet, where if my social media
mentions ramp up really high, there's a good chance something
(20:53):
bad has happened in the world because people are sharing
my work as it's sort of like a sense of
community or solace or comfort or hope or here we
are again, particularly if it's that poem. And so for years,
every time people shared that, I would get this sort
(21:16):
of pit in my stomach and immediately go to some
news network to find out what it happened. Whereas if
I had written a poem that was celebrated and shared
widely when babies were born or people got married, or
you know, it would have given me a different feeling
when I saw it being shared widely. But when a
piece of work that you've made is shared, you know,
(21:41):
after every school shooting, it's hard to be happy about
expanding your readership via your own nation's refusal to enact
gun control, for example. And then now for people who
have read the memoir, you know that poem also had
(22:02):
an impact on my marriage, because my career sort of
like overnight, my readership just became much wider, and I
was asked to travel and do more things in a
really unexpected way, not in the way that you would
be able to plan for tenure, or plan for a promotion,
or you know, even plan for a second child. You know,
(22:24):
there are things that we can plan for in our
lives when we know a big change is coming, and
a poem going viral overnight is not one of them.
And the growing pains from that had a big impact
on my life. So I've had a weird relationship with
that poem for a long time, and I guess my
hope with the memoir is that there might be people
(22:48):
because the title you could Make this Place Beautiful is
from the poem, there might be people who find the
poem via this book and have a completely different relationship
with it that has nothing to do with grief in
that way. In some ways, titling the book the line
(23:09):
from that poem was a kind of reclamation for me
because I am proud of the poem. It's just a
hard thing to sort of have traveling in the world
with my name on it, given why it.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
Travels, I had not thought of that.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
It's a blessing. I do understand that people are sharing
it because it gives them a sense of hope and comfort.
So there's that. I do get that, but it is
still hard, particularly to have your I mean, success feels
like a strange word, but to sort of like it's
like our having a hit radio song, right, to have
(23:49):
your hit radio song be taps, you know, something that
is shared because of shared collective grief.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Yeah, And it's it's interesting because like you just articulated
that in a way that through my whole career I
haven't quite put into words like how weird it is
to have such professional success because that success means that
(24:22):
people are in pain right when they reach for your words,
because the worst has happened. You know. One of the
things that that I will say sometimes to people is
I hope you never need me, right, because if this
work is settling into your heart, it's because your your
heart has need you see this, you're seeking it, And
(24:46):
it's it's a very it is a very strange profession.
It's really weird and glorious and wonderful because we know
that unsurvivable things happen. We know that people get sick,
and this country will always value guns over children, and
(25:06):
we just we know all of this stuff, and if
there is something that we can offer that lays down
beside that.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
Yeah, Oh I like the way you put that thank you.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
Yeah, you're welcome. We do weird work, I.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
Know, and I mean, in my caseites and largely unwittingly.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
Yeah, mine is on purpose. Yours was not on purpose.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Not at all. I mean just you know, Hey, I'm
a mom in Ohio. I wrote a poem thinking about
what it is to bring kids into a world that,
in my words, is at least half terrible a concern
and how do I And that's a conservative estimate and
getting you know, sometimes more conservative by the day, and
(25:49):
what is that like? And really not speaking for anyone
other than me, And so yeah, I'm very unwitting that
it is headed has had the life that it's had.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Yeah. Before we get back to my conversation with Maggie Smith,
I want to talk with you about writing, specifically writing
from something that broke your heart the way Maggie and
I have been discussing. Over the last eight years, more
(26:22):
than fifteen thousand people have used the writing prompts in
my Writing Your Grief course to explore not just their
grief but also their identities, their beliefs, their relationships with themselves.
Now I'm definitely biased because I created it, but I
do truly believe that this thirty day course will help
you inhabit your grief in a new way. It's not
going to fix anything, but writing does make things different.
(26:46):
This self guided Writing your Grief course is always available
wherever you are, whenever you're ready, whenever you're actually not ready,
but you want to explore things anyway, check it out.
Visit refuge ingrief dot com, backslash WYG. That's WYG the
initials for Writing your Grief, or just check the link
(27:06):
in the show notes. All right, back to my conversation
with the stellar Maggie Smith. It's interesting that you said,
you know, I'm a mom out here in the Midwest
talking about something very intimate. And one of the things
about writing intimate things on the public stage is that
you know, people think they know you because you've written
(27:26):
these pieces. I remember Cheryl straight saying when Wild came
out that people thought they knew her because of what
she wrote in that book, like they thought they were friends.
So we write these intimate things, but we are not intimates.
It's a strange thing. Right, have you found that like
while you're while you're becoming more and more visible, that like.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
Oh yes, yeah, my friends call me now the divorce Whisperer,
and I'll.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
Tell you it's to a whole lane of T shirts.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
I know, like where's my lifetime show?
Speaker 2 (27:59):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (27:59):
And I have to say, it doesn't feel like a burden.
It really kind of feels like a gift. And do
I respond always no, but I do respond a lot.
I mean, people will slide into my dms with stories
or saying this release you know, this book was my
divorce bible, or I give this book to everyone going
through the thing, or my situation is so much like
(28:22):
yours and I feel so seen, or my situation is
so different from yours, but the emotions you expressed are
so like mine, and I feel so seen. And to me,
that really is a gift. It doesn't feel like a
burden because what I go to books for and music, frankly,
(28:44):
and art and film is to sort of interpret my experience,
to sort of translate my own life vis a vis
these other people's made things. And so if people are
able to do that through my made things, it just
(29:07):
makes me feel like I'm part of some strange cycle
of experience, metabolize, make, experience metabolize make, And I'm taking
in things all the time. You know, there are books
that have saved me. There are records that have saved me.
I don't always slide into people's dms, but I definitely
(29:30):
have a lot of people out there that their work
has meant something critical to me has just sort of
floated down into my hands at just the right time.
So to be that for someone else when I know
what it feels like to be the receiver of that
gift is like really humbling.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
Yes, Yes, even after all of the years of doing
this work and all of the dms and all of
the comments, Like my assistant knows to save the really
like the really good ones or something that we haven't
seen before and collects them and sends them to me,
because there's just there is something about that knowing that
(30:10):
something I said or something I created is a life
raft for somebody else right now, matter like it mattered,
it changed something, it made something survivable, It set off
some chain of thoughts like that. You know, it's like
the great ping pong game of life with multiple balls
in a never ending arena, right like there were always
(30:32):
impacting each other and picking up things and carrying them,
knowing how impacted I've been just what you just said
like that, knowing how impact I've been by other people's
words and how much the right sentence can arrive and
change the world.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
Oh my gosh, it's everything. I have a post it
note that I can see from my desk that's on
my wall or on my office window. So what's beautiful
about it is that I can see like scene behind
it and it's my neighbor's magnolia trees. But it's realca
Let everything happened to you. Beauty and terror, just keep going.
(31:10):
No feeling is final. It lives on my window, It's
lived there for years. I see it every day and
it means something to me, and it means something different
to me every day, because some days are beauty days
and some days are terror days, and some days toggle
you know. But just yeah, I carry words around me,
(31:33):
you know, with me like a talisman all the time.
So to think that somebody might carry mine, what a gift.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
Yeah, it really is amazing. I love that there's a
social media post you did. You shared that somebody has
your words tattooed on their arm, and I feel like
I feel like there's like a rite of passage for
rat authors there, Like the first time you see your
work tattooed on somebody else's body, it's like, what just
happened here?
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Yeah? Book tours been wild. I've seen like three so
in the past ten days, and that is wild for me.
I mean just absolutely wild to have someone come up
into your signing line with your book title on their arm,
as someone whose arms are covered in tattoos, but not
(32:19):
the words of other people. I know, the amount of
thinking that goes into and weighing. You know, a post
it note on the window is one thing, but ink
on the skin is something else.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
Yeah, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
I love that real Quo quote too, and I'm not
even going to dissect it because there's so many different
ways we could go with that, but it makes me
think of, you know, no feeling as final. It also
points to there is a foundational bedrock of self that
is experiencing all the things that is unchanging. And something
(32:58):
that I love in this book is like finding yourself
is the through line, not finding yourself, not the act
of finding yourself, but that you, yourself are the through
line through all parts of your life.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
Yes, that's Honestly, as someone who is not a therapist,
I find writing like this. I'm often asked questions, particularly
by journalists, like what advice do you have for people
going through hard times? And I'm always like, I don't
feel qualified. I am not a social worker, i am
not a therapist. I'm a poet. I'm not sure you
(33:37):
want the advice of a poet on these large life matters.
But for me, the thing I tell my friends or
people who reach out to me or slide into my
DMS and they're saying they're going through it, you know,
whatever it is. It might be divorce or pregnancy, loss
or lost job, or you know, whatever the thing is.
(33:59):
My big I Guesst impulse is always to think, like
you you predated whatever this trouble is. And you are
talking to me from maybe inside it or maybe just
on the other side of it, but like you predated
this thing. Like imagine the history book timeline. There's a
(34:22):
dot for you that is the beginning of the timeline
in your life, and you're you're going to outlast whatever
this is, you know, and it is that continuity of self.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
It's continuity, and it's not stop feeling so many things
about what's happening right now because you survived this and
do you know what I mean?
Speaker 1 (34:40):
Like, it's not no, you don't feel all the feelings.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
Yeah, you never use that. You never use any of
your work, but you never use that you predated this experience.
You never use that as a like bypassing gloss over.
I remember, I remember, Oh my gosh, poor people. One
of Matt's uncles took me out to breakfast about maybe
two months after he died, and We're sitting there at
(35:06):
breakfast like I'm still a complete wreck and his partner
at the time, they're both therapists, right, And his partner
at the time looks at me and says, what did
you want to be when you were a kid? What
did you want to grow up to be? With that
like therapist head tilt? And I was like, excuse me,
And she was like.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
Maybe, tad tilt, maybe you get.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
To be something now that you didn't get to be before.
So who were you before you met Matt? Because I
bet that person would like a chance to live. And
I'm like, what the fuck? So when I hear people
other than you, people other than you talk about things
like yourself predated this experience, Like you are not talking
(35:48):
about the noneness of what you're experiencing right now, Like
you don't say that as a way to get over this,
but no, Like it's not a bypass, it's not a bypass.
I read that. I hear you as an excavation, Like
I'm talking a lot about myself here, which tells you
how much your work affects me and intersects with me.
But like when my partner died, I was completely obliterated,
(36:12):
completely obliterated, and it took a couple of years for
the core parts of me to resurface, and I just
remember being so thankful that that core self survived. I
have no idea how it did, but it did, and
being so thankful for that and so thankful for that
(36:32):
through line of self.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
I don't know if we talk enough about the sort
of identity hit or at least sort of identity shift
that loss inevitably, whatever kind of loss it is, you know,
whether it's pregnancy loss or in my case, the loss
of my marriage, but certainly any kind of loss, like
(36:58):
because one of the questions is like, well, who am
I now without this? Who am I now without this person?
Who am I now? What now? Right? Because what you
also lose is not the person. What you lose is
the future that you had imagined having poof.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
One of the gifts of writing through the worst, I
think is the sort of gift of being able to
contextualize in a way. You go to a country in
Europe and then you come back and you look at
a map and you think, oh, I was that close
to all these other places. I had no idea where
(37:43):
I was in relation to anywhere else. And the act
of sort of writing over years of your life and
thinking about things in this sort of big picture way,
in some way, I think, is an invitation to think
about how the different pieces of us are interconnected. I
was really thinking about the mother piece of me, and
(38:07):
the partner piece of me, and the writer piece of me,
but also others like who was I as a daughter?
Who am I as a daughter? Who? What kind of
friend am I? And also how are all of these
things interconnected? I'm only one person? How do I integrate better?
Maybe going forward and sort of compartmentalize less.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
Yeah, Like this continual process of excavation and assessment is
the wrong word because it sounds really cerebral, but I
don't know what to work the right word.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
You know. I was talking to someone the other day
and she said, I think memoir in particular has two
essential components. And I was like, oh, no, there's a
recipe I was not aware of before writing mine. Damn. Here,
I am thinking. It's like when it's like when you
make cookies and they're like every cookie has two essential ingredients,
and you're sitting there thinking, I hope these cookies have
that those two ingredients. And she said self assessment and
(39:08):
societal interrogation.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
Ooh, and I.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
Said, oh good, I have both.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
You do.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
On accident again. All the best things happen when you
don't know you're doing it well.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
With those two requirements, I'm writing memoir all the time,
so that's good without actually writing one.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
I love this for.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
Me because we can't assess ourselves outside of our conditioning,
outside of what we're culturally rewarded for. Yeah, those two
things actually do travel together, and I think to get
honest about our lives, we have to look at both.
Nobody exists in isolation.
Speaker 2 (39:50):
And writing speaking this way, talking about this stuff, like
refusing that transformation tell all narrative thing in a meta
sort of way, like that is a social confrontation, a
social whatever that is because we're allowing we're allowing other
people to access their own questions about what are the
(40:13):
constructs that I grew up with? Do I have to
transform from this loss? Am I allowed to be both things? Right? And?
Am I allowed to ask these questions? And I feel
like the are I always listening to you on a
Kate Bowler's show?
Speaker 1 (40:28):
And I love her?
Speaker 2 (40:30):
Isn't she the best?
Speaker 1 (40:32):
I the best?
Speaker 2 (40:33):
Fricking love her three seasons into this podcast and her
episode is still our most listened to. I just adore her.
But anyway, she I can't remember which one of you
said it, but something like there are years that ask
questions and years that answer oh yes right, And you
were like, and then there are years that keep questioning
and won't stop questioning or whatever you said, and I
(40:54):
was just like that, this isn't this work that we
do of taking intimate personal experiences and showing our hand
in our way, right, like putting your hand into your pocket,
coming out with something and showing it to me in
its best form. It encourages people to ask questions about
(41:17):
their own lives.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
Yes, yes, it should be permission giving. Yeah, yeah, I
mean I think I think for me, the best writing,
the best art for me is permission giving, whether in
content or inform. Right, something about the way that someone
(41:40):
has disclosed something to me, or described something to me,
or built something for me to move around inside of
gives me permission either to make my own thing however
I see fit like, Oh, they took some risks, Now
I guess I can take some risks too, Or to
just say the thing I didn't think could be said.
(42:03):
I read so many books preparing to write this one,
in which usually a woman said something about her life
and herself that I thought, well, if she could say that,
I can certainly say what I want to say, you know,
and just talk back to the.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
Fear you might know this one who said this one?
That's something like what would happen if one woman told
the whole truth about her life? The world would break open?
I just butchered it. But do you know that?
Speaker 1 (42:32):
No, I've heard it. I don't know who said it.
Speaker 2 (42:35):
I'll look it up and make sure it's in the
show notes.
Speaker 1 (42:37):
But it's such a good when you look it up.
Will you say? And then Maggie remembered and put that
in the show notes.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
Yes, just lie, oh totally, I'll totally, I'll totally lie
about it. Or I remembered I quoted it correctly.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
I cited both of those quote correctly quoted and attributed.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
We really did. We did proper citation and props and respect.
We totally did. But it is that it is this
like I remember reading or receiving that line, you know,
thirty years ago when I was a young undergrad, right,
and like, what would happen if you told the whole
truth about your life? Or in what you just exactly
(43:16):
I was just going to say, like one sentence of
the truth, what would happen? And that is so much
in your work, that permission giving on so many different levels,
and we could seriously talk forever, but I want to
get into our very last question for today, for our
time together. Knowing what you know and living what you've lived,
(43:38):
and knowing that there is a whole life that we
don't get to live because of the lives that we have.
Throwing that in there, what does hope look like for
you today?
Speaker 1 (43:50):
Taking responsibility for my own life, That's what hope looks
like to me, I'm making better decisions for myself, asking better,
harder questions of myself. And one of the biggest things
for me, I think for years, I know, for years
(44:10):
I made a lot of decisions based on fear and
even what I would call like lowercase f fear, you know,
like what if they don't like me, what if they
judge me? Just silliness. Really, what I see now in
my mid forties is silliness. Really trying now to make
decisions from that core of what do I want? What
(44:36):
do I visualize for my life? What do I want
from my kids? How can I help get us there?
And if the fear voice starts to speak up, as
it often does, it gets so loud, like I don't
know why, of all the little voices inside me, the
fear voice is the loudest, such a yammorer. I'm just
(44:58):
really doing my best to talk back in action, you know,
to talk back in action.
Speaker 2 (45:06):
I love that your your working definition of hope right
now is fully within your power. Right It has nothing
to do with whether the world is beautiful in this
moment or not.
Speaker 1 (45:19):
Yeah, there's a lot I don't have control over, so
I don't want to leave. I don't want to sort
of conflate hope with any sense of luck. That makes
me nervous. So I'd like to think about what can
I do that is in my own power? Joy Harjoe
has written about writing as a form of sovereignty, and
(45:41):
I just sit with that. I guess you to look
on your face just sitting with that, like I want
to think more about sovereignty and less about chance. What
decisions can I make for myself, taking responsibility for myself
and my own happiness.
Speaker 2 (45:58):
Sovereignty and agency. Man, I that is what hope is
for me these days, is like what yeah, yeah, sovereignty
is where it is at all. Right, I am going
to carry around what you just said in my own pocket,
probably not printed because I don't know where my printer is,
but written out and stuck in my pocket. So I'm
(46:20):
going to be I'm going to be carrying your words
around with me in my pocket, and they're also in
my bag and on the nightstand.
Speaker 1 (46:29):
Well, I'm going to be carrying this conversation around with me.
Speaker 2 (46:33):
Excellent, I am so glad. Okay, we are going to
link to all of your books in the show notes,
but could you let people know where to find you
and anything else you would like them to know.
Speaker 1 (46:46):
I am findable as Maggie Smith Poet on the Internet,
which I lovingly call Al Gore's Internet.
Speaker 2 (46:57):
There's a subtweet for those of you who know what
you talking about.
Speaker 1 (47:03):
So yes, to not get confused with the Dame, right,
I get a fair amount of Downton Abbey and Harry
Potter fan mail that I do not deserve. So I'm
Maggie Smith Poet on Twitter and Instagram. I'm Maggie Smithpoet
dot com on the Internet. I'm on substack at for
dear life. That is my That is my substack. It
(47:25):
is how I hold on in this world for dear life,
and also how I like to think of myself as
living for this dear life. And yeah, that's pretty much
how I can be located.
Speaker 2 (47:37):
Excellent, all right, We will link to all of that
stuff in the show notes. I am so glad to
have you here in this world and in my life.
So glad. Okay, friends, stay tuned for your questions to
carry with you. We will be right back after this break,
in which I go weep a little bit with happiness
(47:58):
at this conversation. Be right back each week, I leave
you with some questions to carry with you until we
meet again. You know what, my favorite part of this
conversation was the part where Maggie and I talked about
what it's like to know that people are carrying your
(48:20):
words around with them like a talisman, something grounding and
nourishing in the face of whatever impossible thing you're living.
Maggie and I have this sort of random, obscure thing
in common. We've both received photos of people who had
our words tattooed on their bodies. Like Maggie was telling
(48:44):
me how she's received a lot of tattoos where people
have like, had you could make this place beautiful tattooed
on their flesh. It's just it's really powerful to connect
with someone whose words have been used in that way.
It just felt really special to me. All of this
conversation felt special to me. I was telling Maggie that
(49:06):
reading her work lit up a desire in me to
write more and to say more, which is a creative
spark that's felt kind of dormant in me for a
long time. That felt really hopeful. How about you, friends,
what's stuck with you from this conversation everybody's going to
take something different from the show, but I do hope
you found something to hold on to. If you want
(49:28):
to tell me how today's show felt for you, or
you have thoughts on what we covered, let me know.
Tag at Refuge and Grief on all the social platforms
so I can hear how this conversation affected you, and
please remember to leave a review. This season's guests are
truly next level, and reviews are a good way to
let me know how these guests are affecting you. Follow
(49:50):
the show at It's Okay Pod on TikTok and Refuge
and Grief everywhere else to see video clips from the show,
and use the hashtag It's Okay pod on all the
platforms so not only I can and find you, but
others can too. None of us are entirely okay, and
it's time we started talking about that together, right. It's
okay that you're not okay. You're in good company. That's
(50:14):
it for this week. Everybody, remember to subscribe to the show,
share it with the people you know. Coming up next week,
Rachel Cargole, I tell you this season's guests are stellar.
Follow the show on your favorite platforms so you do
not miss an episode. Want more on these topics. Look,
(50:36):
grief is everywhere. As my dad says, daily life is
full of everyday grief that we don't call grief. Learning
how to talk about all that without accidentally grief, gasolating
somebody or gaslighting yourself. That's an important skill for everybody.
Get help to have those conversations with trainings, professional resources,
and my best selling book, It's Okay that You're Not Okay,
(50:56):
plus the Guided Journal for Grief at Begandivine dot c
oh It's Okay that You're Not Okay. The podcast is
written and produced by me Megan Devine. Executive producer is
Amy Brown, co produced by Elizabeth Fosio, with logistical and
social media support from Micah, Post production and editing by
the ever patient Houston Tilly. And next week we have
(51:17):
a new intern to announce. So if you are one
of those people who listens all the way to the
closing credits, yay, you're the first to know that we
have a new addition to our team. As always, music
provided by Wave Crush and background noise provided by these
Sounds of Summer break happening in my neighborhood
Host
Megan Devine
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