''Love Lessons in the Purest Form'' with guest Cristina Nehring

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
The following is a paid podcast.iHeartRadio's hosting of this podcast constitutes neither an
endorsement of the products offered or theideas expressed. Welcome to Becoming the Journey.
This show will be a series ofconversations that will inspire listeners along their
life's journey. This show's mission isto cultivate a community of mentorship by sharing

(00:21):
our experiences in our life's journey.Nobody's journey is a straight line, So
no matter where you are in yours, this show is for you. Meet
Grace Loverray, Hi listeners, andthanks for tuning in to Becoming the Journey
on WOR seven ten I Heart Radio. Today's show is about and I had

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to really think about this because myguest has got so many parts to her
and so I'm just going to sayit's about love lessons in the purest form.
A little bio would be She isa Paris based but California born author.

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She studied at the subone if Isaid there correctly, Stanford and UCLA,
where she has a PhD in literature. Her first book, A Vindication
of Love, Reclaiming Romance for thetwenty first Century, appeared on the cover
of New York Times Book Review intwo thousand and nine. She has written

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articles for Hoppers, The Atlantic,Conte Neast, Traveler, O and L
magazines, as well as NYT,London Review Books, and The Wall Street
Journal. I've read some of thearticles. I've gone back. Today,
though, we're going to talk moreabout her latest book, which is called

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The Child Who Never Spoke twenty threeand a half Lessons in Fragility. Welcome
Christina. It's Christina Nahring. I'mjust going to say the book is about
your very delightful disabled daughter who hasdown syndrome, who those twenty three and
a half lessons will learned. WelcomeChristina. So the first thing I've wanted

(02:15):
thank you for having me. Ah, You're more than welcome. I am.
You are my new hero. Iam totally in awe of the way
you write and for my audience,I must tell you, Christina's writing is
both ethereal visceral, and your wordsare visual. I am just, I

(02:36):
am just. You are such anamazing writer. But let's talk a little
bit about your daughter. Let's goright there. So her name is.
I'm very touched by what you're saying, especially because your audience will soon find
out that I'm a much lesser publicspeaker than I am a public writer,

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and and that's fine. I don'tI think there are a lot of authors
that are probably better page writers thanthan speakers, and that's that's fine,
because reading I love to read.I've read, miss, I've just actually
enjoyed your articles. Some of themare amazing, and we're going to touch

(03:21):
on that. But right now,your daughter, who you've named, you're
a d C. Am I correctin pronouncing that you read Euridicy? Okay,
so that name is from Greek mythology. She was the wife of Orpheus,
and I know that her dad isGreek. But was there was there

(03:46):
a better meaning behind you calling heryou read DC? Actually yes or no?
And from time I was fourteen yearsold, my favorite name in the
world was you were to see.I had a girlfriend in junior high school

(04:10):
whose name was urd See. Shewas the only person who I ever knew
whose name was ur de See,and I thought it was just a beautiful
name. And even though, asI say in the book, I never
expected or intended to have a child, I thought, if by some incredible

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fluke, I have a daughter,I will call her Eurtice, and then
by some incredible fluke, I notonly had a daughter, but I had
a daughter by a Greek man,and so it seemed to me entirely plausible,
and it seemed to me to makesense that I would call her since

(04:57):
you were to see, is aGreek name, her father is Greek,
and it was my favorite name inthe first place. So so again,
which is pronounced in different ways indifferent languages. In Greek, it's pronounced
every ki in Greek, in Fan, French, sight, it's pronounced it's

(05:24):
pronounced a different way in every language. But I love all the pronunciations.
So so getting back to the Greekmythology part of it, and this is
going to be my leading Orpheus wasvery much in love with your deceay,
and he called it love at firstsight. So I want to go back

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to a time you sort of wasa rebel in your younger days. Maybe
still now, I don't know,but you were, and in your book
in the in the beginning of thebook, you were very clear and to
the point I never wanted children.I had contempt for people who passed the
baton. It was like an activeresignation for you. And you didn't you

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you didn't have you didn't feel motherly, you didn't want to feel motherly.
There was no such thing as eagerfor an excuse to incarcerate their wives in
the nursery. Fantastic writing, bythe way, And so I wrote that
you did. And so here youare, this nomad, adventurer, romantic

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night owling writer as you called yourself, and with no intention of ever having
children, but not only not havingchildren, but being so totally against even
why people have children. And youyou are now seeing a gentleman four years
younger that in and of itself hewas kind of a rogue. And you

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accidentally got pregnant. And so duringyour pregnancy did you what were your thoughts?
I would love to know what yourthoughts were during your pregnancy. And
I can read a passage from yourbook that really threw me, but I
want to hear from you, like, what were your thoughts when you were

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pregnant? How did you feel aboutthat? Wow? I have to admit
that my first thought was, oh, no, I have to get an
abortion right now. That was myfirst thought because I a didn't want a
child be my relationship with my Greekgod and he was. He was something

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of a Greek god. He wasa very good looking, very eloquent,
young Greek man was teetering. Itwas not it was not doing so well,
and so I in particular didn't wantto have a child with him.

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But then flew off to Los Angeles, which is where I was born,
to talk to my friends, myparents, my dear and dear people,
and to ask their advice. Whatshould I do? What should I do?
I'm pregnant, and they almost uniformlytold me, get unpregnant. You

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can't do this. These are notthe right circumstances, This is not the
right relationship. You can't go throughwith this pregnancy. And somehow, I
mean I don't want to overanalyze myself, but the contrarian in me uh appeared,

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and I thought, what the hell? These people are all telling me
that my child doesn't deserve it becauseI have a complicated relationship with a with
a relatively poor Greek man, andfor that reason, they're all advocating abortion.

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And I might say that the clockwas picking during this full time.
I mean, I was already eightweeks, nine weeks, ten weeks pregnant,
and then I saw a therapist whotold told me that she really thought

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I should get an abortion, andthat it would take me at least sixty
therapy sessions to get over having gottenan abortion. And this is something I
respected. This was someone I lookedup to, actually, and I somehow
thought, what bad I'm not allowedto curse on the show. What the

(10:28):
hell? What the hell? IfI have to work so hard to not
have a life, maybe I shouldwork hard to have a life. Maybe
I should kind of play the cardsthat I've been dealt. I had girlfriends

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at the time who very much wantedchildren, who had tried to get pregnant,
who had not always managed to getpreg man. And here I was.
I had never tried to get pregnant, but I was pregnant, and
I thought, maybe there's maybe there'ssome higher sense in all this, and

(11:13):
maybe I will go ahead and havethis child despite everybody's disapprobation. So I'm
going to yeah, I'm going toelaborate a little bit. I'm going to
read a passage from your book,because I think this is amazing. So

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you say in the book, perhapsit was partly rebellion that made me keep
the child. To hell with it? I thought, if I'm going to
have to work a lot to nothave a child, I might as well
work a lot to have one.The six breastfeedings a day suddenly no longer
seemed that daunting. They seemed almosttempting compared to the sixty seconds of therapy

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I was presumably facing. If Iaboorded, if I was going to work
like hell to get over a death, I might as well and might as
well work like hell to make alife. And so I thought that was
so beautiful. Beautifully said uh,and so you did you? You carried?
Uh? Did you carry full term? Yes? I did, Yes,

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And so there there comes now whereyou've You've delivered a beautiful baby girl,
And who I had no idea wouldhave a disability. Because irresponsible I
was, and non pregnancy centered asI was, I never had a had

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the various tests that you're supposed tohave to discover your children if you're if
your child has a disability. Idon't know what I would have done if
I had found out that my childhad a disability. But it turns out
I didn't. So I carried mychild to term. Her father joined me

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in Paris, where I had beenliving before before I met. I met
him in grief, and immediately uponbirth, it was obvious to all the
doctors and nurses there that she hadDown syndrome. I think, in fact,

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that I was the only person whodidn't realize she had Down syndrome.
I just thought she looked kind ofstrange. I mean, she was kind
of purple, but that was becauseshe wasn't getting enough oxygen. She had

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a very round head, kind ofplanted on her shoulders, like a pumpkin
that you put on a on aon a on a on a on a
plate, and it was it wasan odd experience. But I didn't.

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I didn't. I had no ideathat she had a genetic anomaly. For
all I knew, you know,all newborns looked that way. And then
over the next several days, manytests were done, oxygen was administered,

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My little girl was put into theintensive care unit, and I breast fed
her six times a day at least, which is what I had dreaded like
crazy when I was a single,nomadic, adventuress young woman. And they

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finally told me, guess what shehas Down syndrome? That is, she
summoned. They summoned both her herfather, who was in Paris though practically
not visiting me at all in thehospital, staying in my little studio apartments

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and and smoking and and doing nothingto help me. And he appeared and
they gave us the news. Theytold us, well, the good news
is that your daughter, in factdoesn't have a heart anomaly, which they

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were afraid of at first, andshe's gonna be able to get oxygen in
the future. But the bad newsis she's got Down syndrome. And this
this is not America, this isthis is a fairly old school French hospital.

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And there was one doctor who actuallyshe wasn't in French, she was
Russian, as you know if you'veread the book. And she burst into
tears and said she was just sosorry. She you know, knew I

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was an intellectual and it would beit was so terrible that I had a
child with Down syndrome, that shewould always be the person who would be
pointed out in the streets and laughedat. I mean, she apparently hadn't
gotten a lot of training and bedsidemanner in any case. By that point,

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weirdly enough, I had already fallenin love with my daughter. I
had seen her in her little glasscase in the ICU, and she had
been so gentle, and she lookedat me with such alert eyes, and

(17:32):
I just had begun to love herto pieces already. And so when they
delivered this piece of presumably catastrophic newsto me, I kind of shrugged.
I said, okay, so whatso she's got down to them, So

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she's going to be different from otherchildren. I didn't expect a child at
all. So you know, youyou actually you actually all right, I'll
deal with that. You actually callit her normalcy, and you also refer
to her as your warrior girl.But like Orpheus, love at first sight,

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I think, And that's that's justso amazing to me, because that
maternal instinct. Would you call thatmaternal instinct? Would you have called it
that? That instant emotions? That'sa really hard question, because in fact,
at first I thought maternal instinct wasnonsense, and I thought that after

(18:45):
you was born, because I didn'timmediately fall in love with her. I
thought this was a strange looking creature, this purple Buddha, who didn't look
at all like I would have imagineda daughter of mine. I'm kind of

(19:15):
tall and long, limbs, andher father is tall and long limb and
very slender. I would have imaginedthis sort of long limbs, fender child's
that I got a I got alittle pumpkin. And so it's just I
actually wrote in my diary of theday that maternal instinct was nonsense, that

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I didn't feel any maternal instinct towardsthis this child at all. But this
changed radically in the next forty eighthours. And I don't know if it's
instinct, or if it's the peculiarloveliness is my daughter, or what it

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is that seeing her in that littleglass case in the intensive care unit,
looking up at me trustingly and alertly, I just thought she was the sweetest

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thing on earth, and I completelyfell in love with her. I don't
know if it's maternal instinct. Idon't know what it is, but it
was strong. I just I justdid a one hundred and eighty Greek turn

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and I just came to love thischild when she was three days old.
Right, So curious question, andI mean, I don't think there's a
said answer that you're going to beable to give me. But if you
had gone through all the tests thatwomen go through today and you had discovered

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that she would have a disability,would you have thought differently? Would would
you have done things differently? Knowingknowing I should put it two ways,
not knowing what you know now,and knowing what you know now, would
you have thought differently? And AndI know that the statistics are a little

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bit mind boggling because it says asmall minority of Down syndrome victims ever live
independently. Some go into state institutionsor live with their parents until death.
Death is admittedly, and dementia comeswell before death. They show signs of

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Alzheimers before forty I mean the statisticsare mind boggling. And so I mean
would you have changed your mind inany way? Would you have felt?
And I, in all honesty,if I had had all those statistics,

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in addition to my general desire notto have a child, I I would
probably have had an abortion. SoI am in no way judgmental of people
who who who have abortions. No, not would have done as much.

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I'm pretty sure, knowing what Iknow now, however, different absolutely reverse
is true. My daughter is adelight, And all these statistics are constantly
changing. I might say When Iwas born in nineteen seventy, the average

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lifespan of a person with Down centerwas eight years. Now it's something like
fifty nine years, and I hopethat in the future it will be a
lot better than that. And childrenwith Down syndrome are also very different,

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just like all children. Some area little bit lazier, I'm a little
bit more active. My child happensto be incredibly active, and so I
have a hard time imagining sort oflazing into Alzheimer's in the foreseeable future.

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I mean, she's only fifteen,so we're or far off from that.
But right knowing what I know now, I would have done exactly what I
did, which is have that childand adore her and give her every opportunity

(24:29):
in the world and travel with her. And by that, for that matter,
you evoked earlier that I used tobe adventurous and nomadic. I still
am adventurous and nomadic. I'm justadventurous and nomadic with a child, and
she has become adventurous and nomadic.I don't know, I don't know who

(24:52):
influenced too here, but she isjust the gamest girl in the world.
From the time she was she wasa small incance I put her to I
was a travel writer. I stillam a travel writer, but I did

(25:14):
more travel writing than than I donow. I would put her to sleep
in a dressing for in a hotelroom that I was staying. I would
just put put a blanket into adrawer and she would. She would go
to sleep in the drawer. Andto this day, I take her with

(25:37):
me everywhere, to Slovenia, toGreece, to Italy, to Tunisia,
to Morocco. And the only thingshe wants is she has a special animal
she loves, which is kind ofstrange and coincidental. It's a unicorn,

(26:02):
so it's also kind of a specialanimal. She's not actually that into her
bears and her bunnies and her herother animals, but she's crazy nuts about
her unicorn. And so wherever wego, whatever, with whoever we go.

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I have a tight boyfriend in LosAngeles who's Visn't he assume anyway,
we're going to go to the southof France, but we're going to take
Eurydices unicorn, and she can beanywhere, she can sleep, anywhere,

(26:47):
she can make a happy life anywhere, as long as she has her unicorn,
how she throws her little pudgy armsaround him every night. And then

(27:07):
it doesn't matter if she's sleeping ina sock drawer or if she's sleeping on
a proper bed. Right she's she'shappy. Right before, before I go
further on, I have a question. So I'm talking with my guest,
Christina Neighboring on my favorite radio station, w R seven, and we're talking

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about her book The Child Never Spoketwenty three and a half Lessons in Fragility.
So has has your deca Never Spoken? How do you communicate? Well?
I admit the title is slightly overstated, but only slightly. My daughter

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speaks a little bit. She saysyou, then I love you In French,
she says, she has a fewkeywords in the languages to which she's
been exposed, which has been French, English and fat German, because my

(28:14):
parents are German, and so II speak to her a little bit of
German. And she does have ahandful of words and a handful of sentences,
but not a lot. And shenonetheless manages to express her wishes pretty

(28:45):
incredibly clearly. She grabs you bythe hand, she takes you to whatever
she is interested in, and shepoints and she says, dena denna.
I say, okay, you're tosay so you want the chocolate you could
use, or or you you wantthe you you want the iPad, or

(29:08):
you want what the picture of yourof your boyfriend in school. She's pretty
astonishingly clear about what she what shewants and what she what she what she

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thinks, which feels even though she'sprimarily non verbal. So I would imagine
that it could not have all beeneasy, and the words I said,
I can imagine it. It hasnot all been easy. Okay, you

(29:55):
know, just the mere fact thatused the word fragility. Uh So,
tell us a little bit about yourjourney getting used to having a down syndrome
child, and then we're going totouch a little bit on how she's taught

(30:15):
you those lessons, you know,like what kind of lessons you know?
A child with a disability, Okay, and we will call it a disability
has has can teach us, canteach us absolutely. The first question was

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what was it couldn't have all beeneasy? I mean there had to be
some difficult moments. There were,There were absolutely very difficult moments, and
some of the most difficult moments actuallydidn't even have to do with Down syndrome.
Some of them had to do withwith with with I don't even remember

(31:06):
the word of English now in coliccolic. She had a terrible bat of
colic for about six months in whichshe screamed all the time, and I
almost went bananas. I mean Iwas a single mother at that point,

(31:29):
her father had returned to Greece,and I was on my own my French
neighbors who were very supportive, butnonetheless I continued to be a friend a
single mother, and that was avery hard time. I I nearly lost

(31:53):
my mind. And then there was, as if you've looked at the book,
you know as well, an evenharder time where in addition to having
Down syndrome, she contracted leukemia cancerchildhood cancer, which is more common among

(32:16):
children with Down syndrome than among thegeneral population. Really, I did not
know that, and I think youtalk about that in your Little Peace Coal
Journey to the Edge of the Lightabout the yes, yes, journal,
the edge of the Light. Thelight based all about her leukemia, right,

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So how did you handle that?Is she in remission? Absolutely,
she is not only remission. Sheis considered to be cured because they it
takes the doctor's five years to declarea remission. M hm. And over

(33:07):
five years you're declared cured. Andit has now been over much over five
years. You realised a contracted leukemiacancer when she was one year old,
so she'd just gotten over the colicand I was just starting to become sane

(33:29):
again. And then and then therewas a routine test at her school which
revealed that she it's a very longstory, but I'll be believiate it,
that she had leukemia. And atfirst my primary care physician, her primary

(33:55):
care physician, said that's not possible. This job does not have leukemia.
She has too much energy. Shedoesn't act like a child and has leukemia.
Leukemic children are are are are passive, They're tired, they're FEFTI,
they're they're They're not like your child. Your child is is full of energy.

(34:20):
She's an energizer rabbit. My doctorwas wrong. You readily has leukemia.
And did she understand I will terriblejourney for the first For the first

(34:43):
six months or so after her diagnosis, she wasn't hospitalized continually. She simply
got plate lit uh transfusions every week, which took many hours. We went

(35:05):
to the hospital every week, gotplatelet transfusions, and went back home and
repeated the same thing the following me. However, at the same time we
were having tests, awful, awful, prehistoric seeming tests, bone marrow tests.

(35:27):
I mean, they're horrible. Theythey basically anesthetized you and and chop
into into your backbone. It's it'sit seems brutal. It seems it seems
something from a different age. Butthey didn't antiquate. It's antiquated, but

(35:52):
it's it's necessary exactly exactly. Yeah, it seems utterly antiquated. It seems
it seems barbaric. How's that word? Barbaric? Barbaric? Barbaric? Thank
you, thank you, right,it seems barbaric. But they needed to

(36:20):
do these tests in order to findout what the percentage of her bukinic cells
were, and in the beginning theywere quite low. And they said,
you know, children down syndrome arevery weird. Sometimes they have all kinds
of blood anomalies which go away ontheir own. So we don't want to

(36:49):
start chemotherapy or operate on her untilwe know which way this is really going,
and so they continue these barbaric pastsuntil lo and Behold. A year
later, when she was about ayear and a half, she turned out

(37:12):
to have ninety percent leuchemic cells inher blood, and at that point she
had to be hospitalized instantly, andshe was, and she remained in hospital
for nine months, eight and ahalf months. Wow with No with No

(37:43):
wouldnt rakes because her immune system wasbasically exploded by the by the by the
chemo, and she had no immunesystem at all, and if somebody coughed

(38:04):
in front of her, it couldkill her. So she wasn't allowed out
of the hospital, and she continuedfor eight and a half months in the
hospital, a cycle after cycle.I was wither the whole time. I

(38:24):
I managed to stay her night andday. Basically I stayed with her on
a kind of a little armchair bedat night and in the day. I

(38:46):
was with her the whole day tryingto entertain her, except that I had
friends and family who came and helpedand gave me, you know, an
hour off here, an hour offthe hour where I would sort of wash

(39:06):
out this antiseptic environment and and andhave a have a cappuccino. Before I
prepaired to see my daughter, butnobody wanted to spend a lot of time
there. It was kind of ahorrible atmosphere. And so I was there

(39:29):
most of the time for eight anda half months. So she overcame,
and she did overcome it. Andand part of the dedication of it,
yes, So so one of thededication in the in your book is uh,
it is if her cry has shortenedmy workday, her smile is giving
me an eternity of joy. Sotell us tell us the joy. Tell

(39:53):
us one or two lessons or threelessons that you learned that from someone who
never wanted to be a mother,never wanted to have children. What you
know, what are some of thoselessons that that that you can share with
us that would give I don't wantto use the word hope to other people,

(40:15):
but maybe help them to live thatkind of life with a child that
has a disability. First of all, I just feel like I owe it
to you're the seat to say thatshe has an extraordinarily beautiful temperament. The

(40:38):
nurses a hospital that we were atwould say that they would come into our
our room, not because they hadto, not because they had to give
her a blood test or they hadto renew her her chemo treatment. But
because they wanted their quote happy fix, because you're in the seat, was

(41:04):
so very happy. She would givehigh fives from the nurse. She would
giggle and tickle them. She hadextraordinarily she had and she has an extraordinarily
beautiful temperaments. So in one sense, I got lucky. But it's not

(41:29):
just luck. The second question wasso so yeah, like right, I
know that you've she has taught youand and so, but I think,
if I'm reading this right, youyou have learned yourself not to victimize yourself,

(41:54):
but to become part of what isher normal. And I think isn't
that the inspiring part of it,that that you know you you didn't see
yourself as oh poor me, Yousaw yourself as I was given this.

(42:15):
And and someone when someone wrote recently, well, when they read the book,
they said, I think when youdid journey to the edge of the
light, I said, sometimes badluck is the new good luck. And
the realization of your worst fears Ithink is an and and the realization of
your worst fears may be the greatestgift you can receive. And so I

(42:37):
think and correct me if I'm wrongthat those twenty three and a half lessons
were really each a gift, agift to you from your dece because I
don't think children know their disability,and so they just no, they don't,

(42:58):
and so they're just who they are. They're true to themselves, they
who they are. And if you, as a parent, are willing to
accept that and just love that part, doesn't it make it easier. Yes,
yes it does. And it reallyturns out that I have learned so

(43:21):
much more or I've tried to learn. I've tried to learn, and I
feel like the world can learn somuch more from Euridice. Then I at
least was able to learn from allof the philosophers and authors who I studied

(43:43):
when I was doing my teach youthe FOBN at Stanford, And she really
talk so much. She every oneof those twenty three and a half chapters
that I into which I divided mybook book is a little yet with a
little kind of life lessons to putit, to put it clumsily, something

(44:12):
that you really taught me. Shetaught me to stop waiting my turn to
just to just go for what Iwanted immediately to not think the future was
going to be easier than the past, to stop waiting in line, to
stop playing that. What does thatmake chapter? Right? Can you explain

(44:35):
that just a little bit stop waitingyour turn or waiting in life? What
is? Can you explain that alittle bit more simple? I actually don't
have a perfect recollection of that chapter, but it's it's it is all about
not waiting for the future to cometo you and for to be easier than

(45:00):
the past, to jump on yourfirst opportunity and to it's to seize it
and to do what you want rightaway, not to not to wait for

(45:21):
the perfect opportunity which will probably nevercome. So it's sort of it's sort
of well here's here's maybe my spinon it. So it's I truly believe
that the only thing the past cando for us is to teach us we
learned from the past and what thefuture can can bring to us. Thinking

(45:46):
about the future is not to repeatsome of the things in the past,
but to bring it all to thepresent and live that perfect life. Not
perfect, but live that life inthe present. Do the best, be
the best, we are the bestwe can in the present. And you're
right don't go for that, don'tlook for something to come to you.

(46:09):
You have to make things happen.And that, I think is that is
that nomad adventurer kind of in you. And it's it's definitely in your writing.
And so imagine, imagine having allof that hardship because and I will

(46:32):
call it hardship in your life andmaking it something beautiful. I mean,
shouldn't we all be doing that?Yeah? Yeah, Which is why I
think that you really see has alot to say, not only to as

(46:57):
a disabled people or the families andfriends of disabled people, but I think
she has a lot to say tothe world. She has She has so
many messages to impart that are byno means to the handicapped community. Though

(47:23):
I have the greatest respect for thehandicap and the greatest solidarity for the handicapped
community. But my book is notabout handicap. It's kind of a school
of life for the book. Youknow, allow the author, the British

(47:45):
author aland the Putaud, came upwith this school of life idioms, and
I think it's actually kind of appropriatefor for my little book about your innency.

(48:06):
She has a lot to impart tothe world in general, not only
to disabled people, not only tothe families or the friends of disabled people,
but to the world. She she'sa guru, she and she teaches

(48:30):
you how to make the most outof life and love. And the best
part is your voice, not justthrough the book, but doing something like
this interview, which I will tellmy listeners is difficult for you because you've
made it very clear you don't allright, well, but you write spectacularly

(48:55):
and you do. But but youare her voice, and I think she
knows that, and I think andyou're also the voice of parents who And
again I I don't judge anyone.Everyone has to make a choice in their

(49:16):
life to how they want to liveit. But from someone who is so
adamant about being a parent and amother and raising your daughter on your own,
no less, to fall in loveso innocently and so purely with this

(49:40):
special person is just I mean,it's amazing and it inspires me truly.
You know. You hear many parentscomplain, oh so and so do this,
and my child that? Am Ithis? Am I that? And
then you read something like the Childwho Never Spoke? And you got to

(50:02):
ask yourself, what am I complaining? About so I hope you will always
continue to be her voice without withouta doubt. I think you what you
know touches me to the quick.Yep, Nope, absolutely. I would
be a little remiss though, tonot mention some means I have read,

(50:29):
and one of them is a Vindicationof Love Reclaiming Romance for the twenty first
century. I was. I thoughtit was the most incredible, I truly
did. It's just the perfect language, and how you refer to women submissive

(50:52):
women, and how men are portrayeddifferently in their writings and their behavior and
how they're how they're seen differently thanif a woman did that, And so
anyone that wants to read something fascinatingplease also read a Vindication of Love,

(51:15):
and then some of your articles,your articles on love and love and loss,
and then against the Currents, soI read Let's Shut Up about Sex,
and then the Death of Ethos.You're just amazing. I mean,
your writing is so clean and soI mean it's visual, your words are

(51:37):
visual, and and I know thatyour DC is as as much as you
know that you're lucky, I thinkshe's just just as lucky. I think
somebody gave you that gift because theyknew that you could handle it. Do
you see vasillis at all her dad? No, not at all. That

(52:01):
relationship while I don't want to gamutbecause it was beautiful time that I have
no contact with her father whatever,and he doesn't support us, he doesn't
call us, he doesn't he's nocontact at all. Christina, our time
is up. It's been amazing.I thank everyone for listening to this episode

(52:27):
of Becoming the Journey. Keep tuningin to WR seven ten iHeartRadio and follow
us on Instagram at Becoming the Journey, and please go out and buy the
book The Child Who Never Spoke twentythree and a half Lessons in Fragility.
Thank you, Christina, love it, Thank you. Yes, gotta read

(52:50):
her articals. They're amazing. Ido have a website if you want to.
If somebody wants to take a lookat my articles, Yeah, that
would be great. Dot christinanearing dotnet Christina, start without an inch.
I will put that on the episode, so everyone have the number of my

(53:12):
articles perfect? Yeah, okay,I all right. I would love it
if you all would all spot mybook perfect. Bye bye. You have
been listening to Becoming the Journey.Hosted by Grace Lavere. Tune in weekly
to hear more conversations that will inspirelisteners along their life's journey. The proceeding
was a paid podcast. iHeartRadio's hostingof this podcast constitutes neither an endorsement of

(53:37):
the products offered or the ideas expressed