Latest / A New Angle / How to stay you with Hilary Oliver

Transcript

How to stay you with Hilary Oliver · A New Angle

• 0:00
  [music]
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: This is A New Angle, conversations about how we're doing and where we're going.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, Justin Angle.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: This show is supported by the Headwaters Foundation,
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: First Security Bank, and the University of Montana College of Business.
• 0:22
  [music]
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: Hey folks, welcome back, and thanks for tuning in.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: Today, I am speaking with Hillary Oliver,
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: who recently published How to Stay You When Your Name Becomes Mom.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_02: I'm a mom,
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_02: and I'm also a writer,
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_02: and this is something important to me,
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_02: and just having people to witness me through that transition felt really powerful.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: This guided journal is designed to help new mothers reconnect with themselves.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: Hilary's writing has appeared in Outside,
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: National Geographic Adventure,
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: the American Alpine Journal, and many other prominent outlets.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: Hilary, thanks for joining me.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for having me.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: So tell us, where did you grow up and what did your parents do?
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_02: I hail from Colorado originally.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_02: And my dad was an attorney.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_02: He's retired now.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_02: And my mom took care of my sister and me in the home.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: So talk about your path into writing as a career.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_02: I think I, from a young age, always kind of knew I wanted to be a writer.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_02: I had a lot of other interests, but that was the through line to just about everything.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_02: I thought going into college that studying journalism would be the practical way to do that.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe you could study literature or be a teacher,
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_02: which I wasn't sure that was something I wanted to do.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_02: And oh, journalism, that's practical.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_02: I could have a job.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe even if someday I had a family, I can work from home and be a freelance writer.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_02: And the naivety was incredible with that.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_02: I did actually work in journalism for a little while.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_02: I was a magazine editor for a few years and then in 2008 with a crash got laid off
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_02: with a bunch of my coworkers and it took me a little while to find my way back
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_02: to writing professionally and wound up more in the outdoor industry
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_02: and doing instead of the journalism work.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_02: Doing more of copywriting and brand storytelling.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_02: And I still dabble in journalism and in magazines and essays and things like that for fun.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_02: But that's typically not what pays the bills for me anymore.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: We're here to talk about your book, How to Stay You When Your Name Becomes Mom.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: This is an amazing thing that you've created.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: Talk about the Genesis story.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: Why do this work?
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_02: It I was born because it was something that I felt like I could have benefited from.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_02: Very early on after my son was born, I was just super tired.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_02: Kind of emotionally strung out and I had picked up this journal that I had bought
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_02: to give to my – I bought these copies to give to my mom and dad
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_02: to record their stories for my grandson.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_02: And it was just kind of these like little specific things like how you grew up
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_02: or your favorite things, you know, the story of who they are.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_02: But I was like, I need one of these.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_02: For yourself.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_02: I need one of these for myself
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_02: because I don't even like – I just don't even feel like myself anymore.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_02: I feel like this – Milk machine in the body that I don't recognize.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_02: I can't wear any clothes that feel like me anymore.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_02: I was having a slow recovery physically and I couldn't do the things
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_02: that helped me feel like myself anymore.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_02: That was the genesis and just thinking I need to create something like this that is
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_02: a quick dip type resource.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_02: There were a lot of More detailed resources that can help moms in the transition
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_02: to motherhood,
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_02: but something that you could just pick up for a few seconds at a time each day
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_02: and just kind of be reminded of who you are and that you have a depth to yourself
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_02: that maybe you've forgotten in your super sleep deprived state.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_02: And also set intentions for the future of who you're going to continue to be
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_02: as you develop as a person.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: There's a concept in the front end of the book called matrescence
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: that I had not heard that word before.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: Talk about matrescence, what it is and what we know about it.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_02: It's a term,
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_02: I think it was coined first in the 70s,
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_02: but it's really picked up steam in popular conversation lately as the transition
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_02: to motherhood and basically like an equivalent would be adolescence.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_02: They say matrescence like adolescence and that we really have kind of given mothers
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_02: a short shrift in this Yeah.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_02: Moms tend to come to motherhood a little bit later in life these days in the US specifically.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_02: And so they have all these other roles that they've done there.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_02: They've been workers and they've had relationships and all these things that build
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_02: a sense of identity.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: And it seems like for mothers who professional careers,
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: the framing is often around how do you get back to work in that sense?
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: The word work is kind of difficult in this sense because just the act of being
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: a mom is work in so many different dimensions.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: This idea of how do you actually get to be some,
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to say yourself again,
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: because you're always you,
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: but like it's a new version of you,
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: but you want to like Connect it to who you've been, I would suppose.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, it's a confusing time.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that part of it often gets overlooked in how society frames it.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_02: I think there's a lot of pressure to,
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_02: like you said,
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_02: get back to you,
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_02: which also kind of tends to neglect the fact that it is a big transition.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_02: And I think a lot of moms are surprised by unexpected feelings
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_02: and ways they change unexpectedly,
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_02: like moms who maybe thought they would want to go back to work right away and
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_02: then all of a sudden are like, Oh, actually, I'm not sure about this or vice versa.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_02: I really like there's a Jungian therapist who wrote a great book called,
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's called Motherhood Facing and Finding Yourself.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_02: She talks about matrescence being like a furnace or a crucible that burns off all
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_02: the dross around you.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_02: Distills you to your most distinct sense of self.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think maybe all those things about career and relationships and things like
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_02: that that are part of your identity, it really brings it back down to this core.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_02: And maybe the outside looks a little different,
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_02: but that's part of why I wanted to write this book is to help people understand.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: Are these things that moms talk about together?
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, what you're describing,
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: a memory I'm thinking of is that when we were trying to have children,
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: we experienced several miscarriages.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: And felt completely alone in that experience,
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: only to realize later that it is much more common than we thought it had been.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: But yet nobody had talked about that step in the process
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: that many aspiring families, women experience.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: Are some of the dynamics that you're talking about,
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: are they talked about among women and moms or potential moms?
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_02: There's still a taboo about being ambivalent about motherhood.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_02: I came late to motherhood and part of it was because of a fear of losing myself.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_02: I loved my life and I was really excited about things and I was a little afraid
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_02: that this would totally You know,
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: obliterate the life that I loved, you
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_02: know, and in some ways it did.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's part of why there's this taboo for talking about it
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_02: because you don't want to scare people off, you know?
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and there's pitfalls all over the place.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: The word should just comes to mind every step you take,
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: whether it's, oh,
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: I should want to go back to work or I shouldn't want to go back to work
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: or I should feel this way or shouldn't feel that way.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's, yeah, I can see how it becomes a thing that nobody talks about.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: Utility of a journal.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: Were you a journaler before you started this project?
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_02: Not as regularly.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_02: I'm actually a practical journaler,
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_02: which I credit my husband for getting me in this habit of
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_02: the literal what I did today.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_02: I think that keeps me in the regular.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not very good about diving into the feelings aspect,
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_02: but I think that just having a record of my life helps me Stay a little bit grounded
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_02: in it.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_02: And I honestly haven't been that much of a guided journal person
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_02: until I saw those journals that I had bought for my parents.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_02: Part of my aim with this book isn't even to ask people to write in it.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_02: My hope was literally to give something to moms when they feel overwhelmed
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_02: and would never Yeah.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_02: You as a person.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: Just so listeners get a frame.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a lot of these throughout the book,
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: but we'll give listeners sort of one from the beginning and one from the back.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: The first one I'd love to dig into is titled, It's Your Bio.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: And Hilary,
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: if you'd be willing to read the front matter of that,
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: then we can talk about the prompts afterward.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_02: If you've ever felt lost or like you've forgotten who you are, that's completely okay.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, it's a common feeling, though that doesn't make it any easier.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_02: So, and then,
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_02: It jumps into just the biographical questions.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_02: Like you said,
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_02: some of these just feel really simple and maybe even superficial,
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_02: but when you haven't slept in days and you don't feel like there was ever a life,
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_02: it can feel like you've never had a life before.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_02: Literally,
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_02: there are questions about what has made you proud in your past,
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_02: like accomplishments and things like that, that you are something other also.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_02: In addition to what you are now.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: You bring people to those higher order concepts with simple prompts like, where were you born?
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: Where did you live growing up?
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: Who did you live with?
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: These simple sort of biographical details.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: They sort of map onto the practical concept of journaling that you were talking about.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: But then I think that biographical process can conjure these deeper questions like,
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: oh yeah, who was I before?
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: And what does it feel like to remember that person?
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_02: And what do I bring to this moment now?
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_02: And that I'm not passive.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_02: And I think sometimes when,
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_02: at least for me, having been an active person, it was a difficult shift.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_02: And I think for a lot of my friends who are also athletes
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_02: and have professional careers,
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_02: it can be difficult to go into the postpartum period where you can't move physically
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_02: as much.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_02: You can't Produce other kinds of work so much.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_02: You're really limited and it can feel really passive.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_02: And so just simply being reminded of yourself as an active agent
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_02: who has done these other things and has a sense of self.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_02: And even like there are a few chapters here that are really – they're focused
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_02: on like the physical part of maybe – How you present.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_02: What would you wear if you could wear anything?
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_02: Because you can't wear something that feels like you right now and
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_02: that might be hard because that's the way you present.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_02: Or maybe you're used to being a runner or playing a sport or something like that
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_02: and you can't do it right now.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_02: And it can feel like you're never going to do it again.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_02: And that's the hard moment.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_02: But being reminded, hey,
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_02: you will probably be able to do this again,
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_02: but just take a minute and sit with yourself and remember This is part of
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_02: who you are and it's not going to necessarily go away.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_02: It's just going to feel far away for a minute.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: What was your process to arrive at this is the narrative and framing and these are the prompts?
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_02: I read so many books about just the transition to motherhood.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_02: Not a lot of scientific journals necessarily,
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_02: but a few books that were really Formative were Matrescence by Lucy Jones
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_02: and Lisa Martiano, who's a Jungian therapist.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_02: She wrote Motherhood, Facing and Finding Yourself, which I highly recommend.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_02: And Mothershift, Reclaiming Motherhood as a Rite of Passage by Jesse Harreld.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_02: Those are two that I was influenced by a lot,
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_02: talking about just the journey of a person changing and staying in touch with
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_02: a sense of self.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_02: But then also,
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_02: there's a growing body of research about how mom's Brains are totally rewired in
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_02: the process of becoming a mother.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_02: And the more I read about that,
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_02: the more I don't go into a lot of detail about that here,
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_02: but just giving a chance for a person as they're going through that process
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_02: to come back to themselves a bit.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: We'll be back to my conversation with Hilary Oliver after this short break.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: A New Angle would not be possible without the generous support of
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: the Headwaters Foundation,
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: working side-by-side with Western Montanans to improve the health
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: of our communities.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: And you can't do that sort of work without access to capital and education.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: Two critical catalysts offered by First Security Bank and the University
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: of Montana College of Business.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, this is Colter Nuanes from ESPN Missoula, and you're listening to A New Angle.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome back to A New Angle.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: I'm speaking with Hillary Oliver about her new book on motherhood.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's such a huge value of this book in that you're able to sort
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: of bring this vast,
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know how many books you read, dozens,
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: and the academic journals and all that,
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: but you're able to bring it into consideration.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, because that's like,
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: if you're a new mom or a new dad or starting a new career,
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: you're in a pretty busy time of life.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: And if somebody hands you a book and says, oh yeah, you can get through it with this book.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, that's not very helpful.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: That's going to sit on my desk and gather dust as I sort of think about, man,
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: it would be nice to have the time to read this book about what it is I have to do.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_02: And I look back and I wonder how I actually read a lot of those.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_02: But I was kind of just felt desperate to find out what they had to say.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_02: And I was so curious.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_02: And I wanted to make something that was digestible in that way.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_02: Because yeah, you can't hand a new mom a chapter book.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_02: And these are great books.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_02: And if you have time, they're amazing resources.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_02: And I highly recommend them.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_02: But man,
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_02: if you're up all night nursing,
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_02: taking care of a newborn, it's just not the phase for that.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: Let's pick another one from the latter part of the book.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, it's the last prompt and it is titled Your Personal Manifesto.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: Can we do the same thing?
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: Would you read the little paragraph there and we can talk about some of the prompts?
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, this is kind of the bringing it all together.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_02: Now we put it all together in one place.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_02: By it, we mean you.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_02: All the parts of you,
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_02: your current identity and beliefs,
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_02: a personal manifesto,
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_02: Distills all your multifaceted aspects and intentions in one place.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_02: You can refer back to it when you need to recenter yourself
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_02: and remember what matters most to you.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: And you have this beautiful George Bernard Shaw quote on the opposite page.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_01: It says, life isn't about finding yourself.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: Life is about creating yourself.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I love the sort of the closing chapter being one that looks forward and sort
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: of integrates the All that you've not only worked on in the course of the book,
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: but sort of all that you've worked on in your life and how does that cast into
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: the future?
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_02: And I think giving a sense of action and autonomy maybe,
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if autonomy is the right word, but empowerment.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_02: And it can be easy when you're spending a lot of time caring for another human
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_02: to forget that you need to take care of yourself and that this is still your life.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I've heard it said that Your motherhood is about the mother.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_02: Mothering is about the kids.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_02: And if you forget that your motherhood is something that is you,
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_02: you can get into neglecting your own life.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_02: And then it is important that you set some intentions and that have a sense
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_02: of ownership of your life as a mom.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: So this next series of questions,
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: I will just preface by saying that I in no way want to equate fatherhood
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: to motherhood in any way.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: But I think there are some shared experiences as parents,
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: particularly as our children get older.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: Your son is four and my daughters are 14 and 16.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: And there,
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know where I heard this quote,
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: but it basically says, there's a journey from father to friend.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: I get a little teary just saying that.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel like this conception that you've created here has a built-in sequel.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: And that is the...
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: How to stay mom when your kids need you less.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know if you've quite gotten to that stage where Jay is just
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: a little bit more self-sufficient and take care of some of those more salient,
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: immediate, relentless needs that infants and toddlers have.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: But once they start pulling back and solving their own problems and taking care
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_01: of their needs, and now like socially, my kids want nothing to do with me ever.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's a hard phase too because you're sort of remembering your role as a parent,
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: but also you're in touch with like, oh, well, what's this next thing?
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: Because yeah, I got some bandwidth that I didn't have before that I need to adapt to.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_02: I sent this to a dear friend in Colorado whose kids are a bit older and she is going
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_02: through that.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_02: They're not as old as yours,
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_02: but she's going through that like Kind of who am I now
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_02: that my kids don't need me quite as much and this role feels different.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_02: And I hope that this can be helpful throughout different phases like that
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_02: because I've heard also it said that postpartum is forever.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_02: It's a transition that keeps going.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_02: So I hope that it can help throughout that
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_02: because you're always figuring out your next sense of self and
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_02: the next I am deeply indebted to my writer friends here in town.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_02: I have a wonderful group.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_02: That there are a lot of moms in the group and a lot of them put some serious thought
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_02: into these and worked through some of the prompts and read through the book
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_02: and gave me feedback.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I am so grateful for that because I would have been terrified to put this out in
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_02: the world in a vacuum without that.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_02: And to be honest,
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_02: that group,
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_02: I think the support,
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think this would have ever become a book without that support.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_02: Literally just people believing like,
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_02: yeah, you are a writer and it comes back to that, like who you are as a person.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_02: I'm a mom.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm also a writer, and this is something important to me.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_02: And just having people to witness me through that transition felt really powerful.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: One of the other aspects about the book
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: that I found particularly compelling are these IRL in real life vignettes.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: You have several sprinkled in throughout the book,
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: Katie in Montana, Adina in New York, Devin in Texas.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: Talk about those sections where you sort of take a character and bring the idea of
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: that section to life through their experience.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_02: I think what you said before about finding out after you've gone through maybe
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_02: a fertility journey and finding out, oh, all these other people went through this.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_02: I kind of had a similar feeling with a fellow mom
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_02: who I was like maybe six months postpartum or so was like,
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_02: wait, you had this experience too?
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_02: And nobody ever told you this.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_02: And so I reached out, put some feelers out on social media and kind of asked around a bit.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_02: Ask for people willing to tell kind of their journey to motherhood
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_02: and their journey, their postpartum journey.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_02: I kind of tried to capture a different aspect,
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_02: like their relationship to their physical body,
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_02: their relationship to their work life,
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_02: their relationship to their partner,
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_02: different aspects like that, or a sport or a hobby and things like that.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_02: And trying to pull back that curtain a little bit of the things that you,
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_02: before you have kids,
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_02: you might be a little worried about,
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_02: but to get that real talk from Somebody who's been there and done it and some
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_02: of them are pretty vulnerable and pretty raw.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_02: But I think the idea is to help people feel less alone in those times
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_02: when maybe you don't have a community that is talking about it
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_02: and you might feel like, wait, other people are dealing with this?
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_02: Other people think this?
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: The value of case studies,
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: examples,
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: just knowing that there's another human that's experienced
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: the thing I'm experiencing that is so valuable.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: I think that situated amid these self-oriented journal prompts is really powerful.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: What are you working on next?
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_02: Ooh.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_02: We talked about the writing world changing with AI in other conversations.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_02: And I've seen some of my work maybe shift a little bit with that.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_02: And so, I mean, I will always be a writer and I will always be working on some projects.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_02: And I have a lot of personal projects always kind of on the back burner.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_02: But I also kind of have a low-key dream about doing more drought-tolerant,
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_02: climate-change-resistant gardening.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_02: Love the idea of alongside writing doing something a little bit more tangible
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_02: and something that can make a change on a physical and tangible level.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_01: How are you grappling with the future of writing as careers?
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you travel in a circle of a lot of folks that are being touched by
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: and other forces and business models and all this other stuff associated
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_01: with writing broadly,
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: whether it's journalism,
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: writing novels,
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: technical writing,
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: or writing ad copy, whatever it is, as being disrupted, for lack of a better word.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: How do you kind of feel about some of that?
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_02: I waver between feeling really scared sometimes about it.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_02: And I think
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_02: my perspective now is that it still really needs some smart humans to,
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_02: A, make products really good enough for other smart humans.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_02: I still believe there's going to be a real need for intelligent,
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_02: thoughtful writers no matter what going forward.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_02: But things are definitely going to look different.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: Hilary, tell us about the last time you changed your mind.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_02: I've been really challenged lately thinking about aging and my perspective of myself
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_02: and my body as I'm aging.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_02: And I find it really easy to have platitudes about,
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_02: we should think that aging is important and beautiful.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_02: And I think I've really been working to change my mind personally
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_02: about how I really do feel about
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_02: The beauty of aging and the importance of elders and how we as a culture tend
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_02: to really value youth and beauty and beauty being youth.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_02: And I think I'm really actually,
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know that I have changed my mind,
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_02: but I'm working on changing my mind, my personal mind about actually valuing age.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I feel like I...
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: In some ways I'm accepting age and aging and in other ways I'm fighting like hell against it.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a part of me that likes that fight because I think that fight keeps me healthy.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I look at other folks my age and social comparison is a dangerous thing,
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: but it's also motivating.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was Steve Martin on the 50th anniversary of Saturday Night Live
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: in his monologue said,
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: Saturday Night Live is now old enough to die of natural causes.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that of myself being 52,
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, okay,
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: I got to be on it because the things that get people are now,
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: they're going to get me eventually.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think that, yeah,
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_01: there's both the sort of accepting what is,
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: but also the I got to hang on as long as I can to what I have
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: because it could be gone at any moment.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, 100%.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_02: And I think there's two different aspects there.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_02: There's health and then there's becoming an elder.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_02: And accepting that because there's health and then there's the beauty
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_02: that we associate with youth.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_02: And I think those are two different things.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_02: Our society has kind of conflated these things where the value,
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_02: you can't have wrinkles or you can't have loose, saggy skin or something.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_02: And I think holding on to the health that you're talking about
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_02: and wellness is super important and Mental health and all that,
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_02: but also being willing to say,
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_02: actually,
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_02: these people who do look older,
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_02: that is a beautiful thing and not fighting that aspect,
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_02: settling into this as something where you're not just fighting that aspect.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_02: It's really easy for me to say,
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_02: But to actually change the way I think in my body and my reactions is a whole different thing.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I don't think anybody likes their hair falling out and going gray.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's just not something that you're like stoked about in the morning.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Hillary,
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: it's been great to catch up and learn more about all the thinking and research
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_01: and experience that went into this book, How to Stay You When Your Name Becomes Mom.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: Congratulations and thank you for making such an important contribution
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_01: to help people navigate this bewildering time of matrescence.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's the word, right?
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_02: Matrescence, yes.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for being here.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks so much for having me.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_02: I hope it's helpful to some folks.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for listening to A New Angle.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: If you like what we do and want to support us directly,
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: please consider a subscription at anewanglepodcast.com.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: A New Angle is recorded at Studio 49, a generous gift from UM alums Michelle and Lauren Hansen.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: Our presenting sponsor is the Headwaters Foundation,
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_01: working side-by-side with Western Montanans to improve the health
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: of our communities.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_01: We are also supported by First Security Bank and the University of Montana College
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: of Business, with additional help from CED, Drum Coffee, and Montana Public Radio.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_01: Keely Larson is our producer.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: John Brownell, Jeff Ament, and John Wicks made our music.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks a lot, and we'll see you next time.