On Balance: An Interview with Rachel Werner

This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.

This podcast interview with writer, educator, blogger, and health advocate Rachel Werner is a special one, featuring a special conversation between her and her daughter, Phoebe, as they reach across time and generation and experience to have a conversation and connect on a deeper level. I love the support they show for one another’s goals and artistic ambitions. I love the generosity that swells between question and answer, as they describe one another: resilient, wise, tenacious. It’s the kind of conversation I wish all mothers and daughters could have with one another, as they discuss lessons learned, relationships, hopes and dreams, the most beautiful places to visit. We used the “Parents are Humans” cards to help facilitate this conversation. These cards are bilingual, with my version containing English on one side and Tagalog on the other (I used these with my own maternal grandmother bridge the language barrier and tell the stories that shaped her and our family). This is part of my budding project to document the small & supposedly “mundane” conversations, as well as ones that circle bigger topics, in the hopes of creating a more nuanced view of what care, community, and home can look like.

Rachel’s home is nestled in a quiet neighborhood in St. Paul. She shows me around her home, from the plants stretching upward in the corners to her office in the back, where she writes and creates. Both her and her daughter find their own ways to grow roots in this place. One of our traditions includes trying new vegan or NA spots, from Marigold on Lyndale to Zen Room Cava Lounge in St. Paul to puppy yoga in North Loop. We talk about balancing the shadow work with the bright moments. How we have to dig deep into the trench of emotion and memories and find a way to reveal the hidden self. How to approach this shadow work this without undoing yourself altogether & falling prey to the trench.

I think about this a lot in my own work, as I reflect upon my experience with cancer as a young adult, and how much unlearning and undoing has come with my healing over the past eight years. When asked in graduate school, “How did you change with the cancer?” I didn’t know how to respond to that question. Since then, I’ve set out to answer that question (and completed + revised a book that answers this question with another question: who am I?). In order to understand the rippling effects of illness & trauma, I needed to map my own origins & early stories first. That’s where Mumu & other mythical creatures, the ancestral specters of my family and culture, come in & help me to weave a story that crosses generation, geography, the body, and the persistent ties of home.

Writing a book is no easy feat, and I’m really excited about some things in the works for my memoir! I will keep ya’ll posted about how this progresses!!! Nothing is finalized and there’s still so much work to do, but I think it’s important to celebrate the milestones as we go & that we’re one step closer to publication. I was also accepted to the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop this summer, and I can’t wait to generate new work. Back by popular demand, I’m teaching Experimentation with Hybrid Memoir via Zoom for adults on August 9 with the Loft, as well as teaching a few classes for the youths at 826MSP this summer and drop-in teen writing at Walker Art Center in the fall. Let’s get these stories percolating! Onward!!!

I’m currently reading a page-a-day (okay a chapter-a-day) from