[SPEAKER_05]: Hello!
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm Allison Raskin.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm a writer, a relationship coach, and I like to drink water down beverages.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, I'm Gabe Dunne, I'm a writer by Convice sexual icon, wink, and I've been on T for three years.
[SPEAKER_01]: Woo!
[SPEAKER_01]: How's it feel?
[SPEAKER_01]: Good, it's funny because I remember thinking like, oh, nothing's going to change.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to be the one person for whom it doesn't work, blah, blah, blah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then it's like, oh, things have definitely changed.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I also, I...
[SPEAKER_01]: Don't do side by side.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I know a lot of trans people do before and afters and side by sides.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't, I just don't.
[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't make me cozy comfy.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I don't like to do it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I did one for myself to look at.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's wild.
[SPEAKER_01]: What has changed?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's really, it's really wild.
[SPEAKER_01]: I tried to do my using my old makeup.
[SPEAKER_01]: I tried to do my makeup one time a while ago because I thought, oh, let me see if I could still like recreate or something in the makeup.
[SPEAKER_01]: I look like a drag queen like it's so funny amazing like I was like, oh my god, it's
[SPEAKER_01]: it's like it was so interesting and like the face shape has changed all this kind of stuff, weight distribution.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've completely forgotten what it was like to have boobs all I know is it was annoying.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just, yeah, it feels like, oh, this has kind of always been the situation.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then when I look back on old pictures myself, I'm like, that's silly, but also look at her.
[SPEAKER_01]: I like don't feel anything bad about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, and I try to be like, is she better, does she look better than me?
[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't feel that she does.
[SPEAKER_01]: It just feels like different or that I look better now or whatever.
[SPEAKER_01]: It just feels like, oh yeah, that was old person.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is new person.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's wonderful though.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's how you want to feel.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I feel neutral.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I think some people are like, I was so miserable as a woman.
[SPEAKER_01]: And now I'm amazing and hot.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, both are fine.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, this one's good.
[SPEAKER_01]: I like this one right now.
[SPEAKER_01]: This one's this one's favorable to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then I like walk through the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I also like, it is very interesting because I don't sometimes I pass sometimes I don't.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it is very interesting to be
[SPEAKER_01]: The weird thing is to be regarded as cis in a way where people assume things about my childhood, which I know you've asked me about or talked to me about where people are like, oh, like a girl at my work was talking to me about getting cat called and like she and this other girl were talking to me about getting cat called.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they were like, yeah, you can never even like look, sometimes you don't even, if you just look at a guy, he'll come over and talk to you and stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, oh, I know it sucks.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I had to be like, she was like, yeah, because you can kind of just walk around and like look up and stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, yeah, no, women, you cannot, women cannot give a guy an inch.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's like a weird, I was like, I know.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I also, it's like a weird thing to be like, then I come off such an ally where I'm like, yeah, it's brutal for you guys.
[SPEAKER_04]: Do you feel like people not knowing that your trans like impacts like how close you can be to them?
[SPEAKER_04]: Definitely.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I know not everybody feels that way, but yeah, because you have to watch what you say around around them or you.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know why I said there's like people at my work.
[SPEAKER_01]: I felt so bad.
[SPEAKER_01]: This isn't there's like a girl at my work.
[SPEAKER_01]: She's quite young and she's married, but we like get along really well.
[SPEAKER_01]: And she was like, face timing with her mom.
[SPEAKER_01]: And she was like, this is my work, this is this, this is that, that she turned it to me and said, this is my only friend.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, it was like a little bit like, because she always says like, she's married and she's like, I don't have, I just moved here.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't have friends outside of work, whatever.
[SPEAKER_01]: But she told her mom, like, this is Gabe, he's my only friend.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then I felt like so much guilt that she doesn't know I'm trans, like suddenly I felt so guilty.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, I was like, so then I was like, I have to tell her, but then I hesitate.
[SPEAKER_01]: I like every time I feel like I want to and then it like stops in my throat.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know why.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's something to think about and examine perhaps because what if she feels like I was lying to her and she thinks that I was like her post friend or something?
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't make sense really, but.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you don't know everything there is to know about her.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what I'm saying, but I think people make
[SPEAKER_01]: way more assumptions about you.
[SPEAKER_01]: like, oh, what was I had a thing where I was talking to a customer because they had a dog that looked like my dog ahead when I was a kid named baby.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, oh my God, your dog looks just like my old dog.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like black labs are so sweet.
[SPEAKER_01]: And she was like, yeah, they're really sweet.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, I would put my like dance costumes and two, two's on her and stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: And she just let me do it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then I had a moment, I was like, oh, because why would a little boy have like two, two's in dance costumes?
[SPEAKER_04]: But in that way, right, you're not misrepresenting yourself.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, you're just not necessarily connecting the dots explicitly for people.
[SPEAKER_04]: But you're not being like my sister put on her tooth.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I have done, I have done my bar mitzvah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll say, oh, my bar mitzvah theme was.
[SPEAKER_01]: Is that lying and my lying?
[SPEAKER_04]: That's what I mean, it's obviously it's up to you.
[SPEAKER_04]: I just think, you know, if there are people where you feel like it's getting in the way of like how
[SPEAKER_01]: close the relationship is then it's worth examining yeah it is also so funny because like obviously the way gay people talk to each other like my one coworker at work who's the new one who's a gay guy I like came in from like lunch or something a little bit late and he was like
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, Miss Maam, look at her.
[SPEAKER_01]: She's late.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, he would be flipping out if you like you don't even mean he would be apologizing so hard that he does not need to be.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I was like, this is really funny.
[SPEAKER_01]: I tell you this.
[SPEAKER_01]: I thought some of your coworkers knew some do, but some don't.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I also is it's come all the way back around because everyone on my kickball team knows.
[SPEAKER_01]: And on the kickball team, everybody gives each other like girl names.
[SPEAKER_01]: So they'll be like, you know, like, men wella or Brianna for Brian or men wella for Mani or like, you know, like, Erica for Eric like it's like, it's like a gay guy thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: And for me, they've given me like a girl name, but it's not my dead name.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's like extremely funny to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, we've come all the way back around to like me having a female nickname.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is not my dead name at all.
[SPEAKER_04]: What is it?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just Gabriella, but it's just like, it's just funny that they didn't, they could have chosen, you know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_01]: And they just picked something that like, wasn't my dead name.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's very amusing.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, this is just between us a variety show filled with heartfelt advice.
[SPEAKER_01]: Ridiculous games and brutal honesty.
[SPEAKER_04]: We've got a great episode for everyone this week.
[SPEAKER_01]: This week we're going to be talking to Susie Hopkins and Hallie Bateman all about being a mother daughter duo that worked together.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, they've written two books together, which is quite the endeavor and something I wish I'd been able to do with my mom at some point.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: And later, we're going to be talking all about substact because now Gabe and I are both in the thick of it.
[SPEAKER_04]: It is an interesting social atmosphere or environment since it's own.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's a lot of weird stuff going on over there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Up next, we've got an exciting interview with our highly esteemed guest, Susie Hopkins, and Halley Bateman, stay tuned.
[SPEAKER_04]: Welcome back to Just Between Us.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's time for the juiciest, most scandalous, most controversial segment, no dollopop casting.
[SPEAKER_04]: Top questions.
[SPEAKER_01]: This week on the show, we have Susie Hopkins, a former newspaper reporter and magazine publisher.
[SPEAKER_01]: She is the co-author of the books.
[SPEAKER_01]: What to do when you get dumped and what to do when I'm gone with her daughter, writer and illustrator, Halley Bateman, who is a writer and illustrator, herself, whose work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times magazine, the owl, and many others.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hello.
[SPEAKER_04]: Hi guys.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for having us.
[SPEAKER_04]: This is very exciting for me.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's also obviously a little bittersweet because I lost my mom in September.
[SPEAKER_04]: And we had always, like, that always, but like, of recent times, my mom had been like, I don't know, like, maybe I could write a memoir about my life or something and I was like, why could help you?
[SPEAKER_04]: And we just like never, you know, got the time to do that.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so,
[SPEAKER_04]: The fact that you guys have done that not once, but twice is so special and meaningful, and I'm just so curious, like how the decision to actually write a full book together came about.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah well first I just want to say I'm so sorry and I love that your mom was thinking about that and I also feel really lucky that we've gotten it together to do this and the way the first book started our first book is called what to do and I'm gone and it started because when I was twenty three I was
[SPEAKER_05]: living at home for a little while and I'm really close with my mom and one night I was just laying awake, you know, Loki just fantasizing about losing all the people that I love and not fantasizing but just like playing the tape of okay my mom dies
[SPEAKER_05]: you know, what happens.
[SPEAKER_05]: And for the first time, really, I let the tape play past the moment of impact to fully kind of understanding the seemingly obvious concept that my life would continue.
[SPEAKER_05]: I don't think I'd ever really grasp that before.
[SPEAKER_05]: Oh, yeah, my life is going to stretch on, and she's not going to be there.
[SPEAKER_05]: And as a hardcore mama's girl, that's terrifying.
[SPEAKER_03]: We're going to take a quick break, but stick around.
[SPEAKER_05]: And we're back the next morning.
[SPEAKER_05]: I came to my mom and I was like, Mom, I have this idea.
[SPEAKER_05]: I want you to write me a book of instructions that begins the moment you die so that I never have to be without your advice.
[SPEAKER_05]: And thankfully, my mom was just like, sure, I'm on it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Got it.
[SPEAKER_05]: I heard.
[SPEAKER_05]: Let's go.
[SPEAKER_05]: And then mom, you can, you can share your perspective, but it was, it was a while before we, we actually, well, years went fine.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Halle was,
[SPEAKER_00]: Pestering me and I was swatting her like a fly all the time to make her stop and finally I went to visit her and we took a trip to Maine to a cabin where I envisioned kayaking.
[SPEAKER_00]: She brought her computer and said, now that I've got you here it's time to answer my questions.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that beginning to talk about those questions that she had, they were very universal.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as I began to answer them, and she's typing furiously, and this was going to be a little family project.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't going to be a book out in the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: But as she was talking, I've done a lot of interviews with older people in the course of my journalism career in much of what
[SPEAKER_00]: she wanted to know I saw from the life perspective a lot of older people I had interviewed so we put those questions and answers together and over the next I think three years proceeded to work on the book and I I had a magazine at the time and was very busy so we kept making carving out retreat time and it's where we really learned how to
[SPEAKER_00]: fight appropriately about the creative process and then complete the project.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it turned into a book in the world on the topic of losing your mom and moving forward, but also of course applies to other people that you love that you lose in life.
[SPEAKER_01]: How did you feel about your daughter coming to you and being like, hey, you're going to die?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, because of my journalism background, which was I was so used to writing from a way up there, like a global perspective on projects.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was just another project to me until about we were working on the manuscript was mostly done and we were hold up in a hotel room.
[SPEAKER_00]: Halley was doing her illustrative process and telling me the parts of my, you know, the pages of my words, she was going to throw out because we didn't need them anymore because it was going to be converted to illustration.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this was my training in what a graphic novel is, which I was a little unclear about.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there was a section about her having her first birthday after I was gone.
[SPEAKER_00]: And until then, I was the hardcore, yeah, it's just a project, no problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: And for some reason, that just hit me like a ton of bricks that, and then it became a much more emotional project that I myself would miss.
[SPEAKER_00]: her life and the flow of her life and the events and the people that she would become and know and experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I would miss all that all that and then it became very real to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was a great project, very emotional, but it allowed us to learn how to collaborate together.
[SPEAKER_00]: on something that was pretty intense.
[SPEAKER_00]: So after that, you'd think, you know, what could be more intense?
[SPEAKER_00]: And there was one more book that was more intense, but but it was our it was how we learned to work together.
[SPEAKER_05]: Well, and I will say that my coming to my mom with that idea.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's funny because it's, you know, it was my idea, but I felt safe enough to come to her with it because she A has like a very kind of
[SPEAKER_05]: journalistic value of just like truth telling and honesty, and both my parents are journalists, so I grew up around that, but also I think, mom, you really kind of nothing was like off the table to talk about, you kind of instilled that in us.
[SPEAKER_05]: So I always thought that was really cool that like
[SPEAKER_05]: I don't know that it just it feels like the book itself was like collaborative even from me coming to you with it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I grew up in a family where you just didn't talk about anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of bad stuff happened and it was dead silence.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was kind of silence around anything that was negative or bad.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's probably why I went into journalism and so I could talk about absolutely everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's what I wanted my kids to experience was a life in which they could
[SPEAKER_00]: Talk, speak freely.
[SPEAKER_04]: What was some of the most helpful advice that you got from her?
[SPEAKER_05]: for those who haven't read it, the book is split into days since the last.
[SPEAKER_05]: So it's kind of walking you through your life and really kind of pointing out how grief is it's a lifelong thing that you live with that accompanies you.
[SPEAKER_05]: And honestly, the more that it's now been
[SPEAKER_05]: how many eight years since the book came out and I'm still feel like I'm learning from it.
[SPEAKER_05]: The thing that I'm even still learning that's a really core message of the book is that I am begging my mom for all these answers and thinking that, you know, me asking her that to make the book was really me thinking that like I couldn't go on without her guidance that I couldn't function and the book is is
[SPEAKER_05]: really like you have these answers.
[SPEAKER_05]: You have the relationship that we had and your love for me and my love for you is not something that just disappears when I'm gone.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's something that you can embody and that it companies you in different ways.
[SPEAKER_00]: You carry your mom with you and I lost my mom about twenty years ago and even the process of talking about the book
[SPEAKER_00]: brings back memories that make it feel like, you know, she's gone, however, she's integrated in a way that is deep and can come back at, you know, all these moments when you experience something you used to do together, you go to a place and eventually the grief becomes more integrated and isn't as fierce and difficult to handle.
[SPEAKER_05]: And I do like to always say, the book is funnier than it sounds.
[SPEAKER_05]: It sounds so loud.
[SPEAKER_05]: There's a lot of dark, dark laughter and, you know, just it's a tough subject, but I think in both of our books, there's like a very important levity there because you have to laugh.
[SPEAKER_05]: I think it seems like you guys are good at that anyway.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, not a dark humor.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I mean, one of the most helpful pieces of advice I've gotten from people that have lost a parent is that you continue to have a relationship with them, that the relationship doesn't just remain stagnant from when they died, but that, like, as you grow and change, like, your understanding of them, like, obviously as I'm getting ready to become a mother, like, I'm sure that that will unlock some deeper relationship that I have with my mom, even though she's not technically here.
[SPEAKER_04]: And like I think it's so brutal, the part about that I'm going to change and that she won't get to see him, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: And that's so wild because you she saw everything every moment, every every big moment, every small moment, every day and then to go from like her not being there to observe any
[SPEAKER_00]: And as the person who celebrates, you probably the most of anybody on the planet, unless you're lucky, you know, if you're moms.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I remember thinking, I started a magazine in my late forties, and I remember thinking at some point, just having this moment when I go, no, nobody really, my mom would be really excited about this.
[SPEAKER_00]: She'd be really proud of me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And at that, you know, at that age wanting
[SPEAKER_00]: that feeling of somebody just saying, oh, you're just, you're just, uh, really doing, you're just really knocking it out of the park.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm so proud of what you did.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's that feeling.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like I don't have anyone that like consumes all of my content anymore.
[SPEAKER_04]: And like to be fair, there's a lot of content.
[SPEAKER_05]: But I relate, I relate.
[SPEAKER_04]: She would listen to every podcast.
[SPEAKER_04]: She would read everything.
[SPEAKER_04]: She'd watch every video and like, you know, I have a wonderful husband, but he's not listening to my podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some mom, it's a mom thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, nobody else can can be that.
[SPEAKER_05]: And yeah, that's, I mean, I feel like that's kind of the reason I
[SPEAKER_05]: turned to my mom who had a lot of experience with like loss and in the areas of grief and stuff to be like, how on earth do you survive?
[SPEAKER_05]: Like, how do you, how do you keep
[SPEAKER_05]: going on.
[SPEAKER_05]: And yeah, I feel weirdly the book, you know, the book's been out for a long time.
[SPEAKER_05]: And even after it came out, I would be like, Mom, I'm still scared.
[SPEAKER_05]: And only more recently, and maybe this has to do with me becoming a mom as well.
[SPEAKER_05]: I had twins a little over a year ago.
[SPEAKER_05]: Only more recently was I kind of like, oh, even just kind of thinking about like my mom that she wouldn't want me to not
[SPEAKER_05]: go to just, oh my god, I'm just paralyzed now and I can't, that she wouldn't, that you wouldn't want that mom.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, well, that's part of the book.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, imagining if you said to the person that left that you loved, um, do you want me to weep endlessly and crawl into a corner and and curl up and just essentially die for all intents and purposes in terms of not really living my life and
[SPEAKER_00]: You probably know what that person would say.
[SPEAKER_00]: My mom was very pragmatic.
[SPEAKER_00]: And she would have scoffed at that and just said, it get over it and move on.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's kind of what, and because what to do when I'm gone, my mom's voices in that book.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I really didn't see it until over the years I look at it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I go, that's the continuity of
[SPEAKER_00]: your mom through you through the next generation because that voice somehow carries there's a through line there and you know you may see it in the look of your child you certainly see it in behaviors and voices that carry through so it's my sister recently told me that after gosh it's been twenty some years and
[SPEAKER_00]: She says, oh, yeah, I talked to mom sometimes by sisters and her mid seventies.
[SPEAKER_00]: What do mean you talk to mom?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because she's now she's into some spiritual realm.
[SPEAKER_00]: I go, oh, yeah, I have conversations with her and.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so she has an active relationship like much more active than I expected.
[SPEAKER_00]: It really threw me and now I get what she means is that my mom carries on with her.
[SPEAKER_00]: as a distinctive voice that is just with you and you're just able to integrate it over time in a way that feels, you know, less, less rough.
[SPEAKER_03]: We're going to take a quick break, but stick around.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we're back.
[SPEAKER_04]: I just remember like when my mom was dying.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't remember it that well, but like her just like apologizing to me that this was like happening to me.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know that like I think she just understood like at a fucking sucks to lose your mom when you're this young and that she was like still viewing it from a point of like what it would be like for me rather than like from her point for you which sucks even more you know to die that young and it's just like such a test of interest like her whole approach to life and motherhood yeah
[SPEAKER_00]: So you had that unconditional love, it sounds like.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh yeah, take time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Consuming all your content?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: And they're not all winners.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'll tell you that.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it doesn't matter.
[SPEAKER_04]: She was also often my first editor.
[SPEAKER_04]: She edited it almost all my stuff.
[SPEAKER_05]: Oh, my mom's my editor.
[SPEAKER_05]: Oh, my god, Alice.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's wild.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: And she would always be yelling at me because I would always use wear and when and correctly.
[SPEAKER_04]: And she'd be like, come on.
[SPEAKER_04]: I do wear and when I get in trouble.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then I was always spelling things the British way.
[SPEAKER_04]: I was feeling judgment with the e-gallelog trouble for that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: That'd be a crime.
[SPEAKER_04]: I like your mom.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: I spelled great with an e-for while the trouble for that.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, my classic crimes that I was committing.
[SPEAKER_04]: And now I try really hard not to do it.
[SPEAKER_04]: But I love to shift gears a bit into your second book, which is a very different thing for you guys to have to navigate as a mother daughter.
[SPEAKER_04]: Do you know, can you share a little about the backstory of that one?
[SPEAKER_00]: The second book is called What To Do When You Get Dumped.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's a book that when we were preparing to release the first book, my husband
[SPEAKER_00]: As I was getting ready to go to work one day, I said, hey, I need to talk to you and what he wanted to say was that he had fallen in love with his girlfriend from thirty years earlier.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is a woman who sort of, I had seen at the edges of the marriage over the years and however, apparently it's went into, I'm in, I want to pursue a relationship with this woman and I'm out of here.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he was by that evening, he was gone and we were two days from my retirement and joining him in retirement and going on a long plan trip.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the third year thing just dissolved in, I was suffice it to say not in good shape.
[SPEAKER_00]: emotionally and it went on for a long time so I did all the things you're supposed to do which is sign up for counseling and get whatever medication might work and walk ten thousand miles every day so you don't plunge into deeper depression.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think it's ten thousand steps, but I like the idea because it's never a fix it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I was getting better a little bit
[SPEAKER_00]: better year in second year, a little bit better.
[SPEAKER_00]: But by the third year, I go away a little bit better.
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought I'd have maybe beyond a new life by now.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was not pretty.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wasn't doing that well.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so Hallie bought me a terrible reading.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the terror we I had started I've been thinking about writing about the experience because I couldn't find anything in the literature that I needed which was any kind of note of encouragement that I was going to make it through this.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I was the kind of heartbroken where I just wasn't able to move forward after having done.
[SPEAKER_00]: you know a couple different careers and and always been a mover for I was a forward mover my whole life and suddenly I wasn't able to to find a direction so the terror reader said without knowing as writer said well thank you should write a memoirs a pathway to healing
[SPEAKER_00]: And because I'd already been thinking about this writing about getting dumped because of how my severe reaction to being dumped in my lack of recovery.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I began to write about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was in this like difficult middle period in the book.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you see the book for readers, it's three parts.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the beginning when you get dumped.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the model, which is the messy middle when you're trying to find any direction, which was the longest part of the book.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then there's the beginning, which is the beginning of your new life as you start to recreate a life.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not, it's written directly to the reader as sort of a note of encouragement, which I was in the process of finding by trying everything I could think of to pull out of this.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then, I spent a year writing that, and then Halle and I got together and began to work on the graphic novel creation from the manuscript.
[SPEAKER_01]: had it you find out that this had happened.
[SPEAKER_05]: So I think it was twenty seventeen and I was living in LA at the time and you know my parents like like I was that had been together for thirty years and I knew they had their ups and downs but it also came as a total surprise to me I remember that day I was leaving a yoga class and
[SPEAKER_05]: I called my mom just because like, I feel like if I'm like walking somewhere, I'll just be like, what's up?
[SPEAKER_05]: Like, you know, like you do and she was really upset and I was like, what's going on and she was like, call your dad.
[SPEAKER_05]: And so I called my dad and he told me what had happened and I was just completely shocked because it was it was really
[SPEAKER_05]: It's not like it was out of nowhere, meaning like of course, you know, marriages, relationships have have ups and downs and whatever, but it was really out of nowhere, especially for like my dad's personality.
[SPEAKER_05]: Like he's like a very sweet mild mannered guy and it was it was just really destabilizing and shocking for a whole family.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, my brothers and I
[SPEAKER_05]: really quickly we were all really close and we were like we're not taking sides like this is just we're just going to be there you know be there for mom and this is not a thing where we're going to like rip the family apart more it's just you know trying to make the best of a bad situation and then yeah in the coming years like kind of slowly
[SPEAKER_05]: and kind of remade our relationship with my dad and then really just tried to be there to support my mom and when she shared that like when the you know the terror I gave her the terror reading because I knew she had a book in her but it wasn't
[SPEAKER_05]: It just, I'm just a pusher.
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm like, how could we say any shoes here from someone else?
[SPEAKER_04]: And you paid the Tara reader to tell her that?
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I slipped her a little.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I didn't even think about, oh, that would be so bad.
[SPEAKER_00]: You didn't do that, did you?
[SPEAKER_05]: No, I did.
[SPEAKER_05]: I, I just knew that it didn't even matter what book it was.
[SPEAKER_05]: She had like thirty book ideas.
[SPEAKER_05]: I was like, Mom, just to pick one.
[SPEAKER_05]: So once once she, she shared that she wanted to work on that book, I was just completely unboarded partially because, you know, A, I wanted to, to help my mom tell her story and do another book together.
[SPEAKER_05]: Also, I had my own interest in
[SPEAKER_05]: kind of doing a post-mortem or an exploration of like, what, you know, our...
[SPEAKER_05]: lives really got exploded my mom's life really got exploded and there was something really appealing about getting together to put the pieces together and make some make something out of it because it was just destruction and so I think that it was really appealing I was like very game for it because you know as an artist and a writer like what better thing to do than to like make something out of this
[SPEAKER_05]: shitty circumstance.
[SPEAKER_05]: And if the idea was like that there could be a silver lining of like, well, at least me and my mom are working on this book and at least were, you know, speaking to this like really specific type of grief that's kind of under.
[SPEAKER_05]: Like, I feel like the book is really validating of heartbreak as like a, that it, it's, it's bad.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's under disgust for sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I couldn't find, I went on these sad like internet forums.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was looking for something that I could take in that would help me feel better.
[SPEAKER_00]: or tell me that I would make it through and I just just that there's there's a lot more now but at the time there I just didn't see it and I felt like I had been pretty cavalier to people who I knew who'd gotten divorced you just go like
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you'll find somebody else.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no big deal.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then when it happened to me, especially with the kind of the sense of betrayal aspect of it, I just thought, well, I had no idea that this level of feeling existed and what what do people do?
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of people, you know, you're supposed to suck it up and not be in just go find somebody else or do something else and move on and pretty quickly would be good.
[SPEAKER_00]: So your friends don't have to hear about it anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm glad you made him tell her.