Latest / Why Not Today? with Leslie Kane / The Why Not Today? Podcast - Season 2 - Episode 29 with Melanie Brooks, Author of "A Hard Silence"

Transcript

The Why Not Today? Podcast - Season 2 - Episode 29 with Melanie Brooks, Author of "A Hard Silence" · Why Not Today? with Leslie Kane

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome to the Why Not Today podcast. My name is Leslie Cain and I am the host.
• 0:06
  And this is a podcast that I started almost two years ago to celebrate people have been courageous and said, Why Not Today?
• 0:13
  I started this podcast in honor of my father, Patrick Cain, who often did say, Why Not Today?
• 0:18
  I am based in Reston, Virginia, a planned community right outside of Washington, DC.
• 0:22
  And I'm excited to have you as guests watching and listening today.
• 0:26
  And my guest today is Melanie Brooks. And it's been fun to see how this podcast is unfolding.
• 0:34
  And people are introducing me to people who are introducing me to people.
• 0:38
  I feel like I've got all these new friends as well as guests. And so Melanie, I always talk about how we met.
• 0:44
  So almost a month ago, I had Laura Carney on the podcast who talked about her father's list.
• 0:50
  And as we were talking, she's like, You have to talk to my friend Melanie.
• 0:53
  And I know you guys have a cool little connection story too.
• 0:57
  Yeah. And Melanie wrote two books. One is the first one is writing hard stories.
• 1:03
  And the second one is a hard silence. And so we're going to talk about both those today.
• 1:07
  And she was very gracious and sent me books. So I started reading them tonight.
• 1:11
  My nightstand has so many books that I'm in the middle of reading. It's like, I just wish I could read all day long.
• 1:17
  But yeah, obviously we can't. So Melanie, I'm excited to have you here to share about courage.
• 1:22
  And your book. So let's start with a little quick bio who Melanie is and a fun fact.
• 1:28
  Sure. Well, thank you so much for having me, Leslie. I, it was great to connect with you through Laura. And I'm glad that we get this chance to have this conversation today.
• 1:39
  So I am Melanie Brooks. I'm an author and college professor living in New Hampshire.
• 1:46
  I teach creative nonfiction in an MFA program in Massachusetts. MFA. I know you mentioned. Oh, I'm sorry. A Masters of Fine Arts program.
• 1:56
  Okay. So I teach in a graduate writing program there. And then I also teach professional writing at Northeastern University.
• 2:05
  And I've written these two books, writing hard stories and just published in September with my book, A Hard Silence. And so I am currently kind of in the middle of my book tour for that memoir and traveling all over the place.
• 2:24
  And fun fact about me is I am Canadian. I grew up in Canada and lived there until I went to college. And even though I have lived in the United States longer than I've lived in Canada, I've maintained my Canadian identity and my Canadian citizenship.
• 2:43
  And so that's a little about me. I have two kids. I have two college age kids and a chocolate lab and husband.
• 2:52
  And you're not her birthday today. So how fun is that 21 today. Yeah, wow, it's exciting. And you don't have that Canadian accent.
• 3:01
  Oh, you hear it on certain things. If I apologize to you and say I'm sorry, you'll hear it. Yeah. So it comes out a little bit here. And I'm sure if you're in Canada, it comes out a lot more probably. Yeah.
• 3:13
  I know when I've been, I mean, I live in Northern Virginia, not Southern Virginia, but when I'm in Southern Virginia, I went to college there. Some things start to come out or people you are around it sounds like.
• 3:25
  Yeah. Well, I'm excited about your book tour and hopefully we can get you and or Laura down here for something. I started a luncheon that we're debuting tomorrow.
• 3:36
  And that's wonderful sharing stories and trainings and that might be a fun thing to do and there's a used bookstore right next door so we might be able to.
• 3:45
  So I always start with what does courage mean to you Melanie.
• 3:50
  I think it took me a long time to kind of come up with a definition of courage and it's not simply my own. I mean I've read it other places, but I think courage is doing the hard thing, even if you're afraid, you know, and I, I used to think that courage was the absence of fear.
• 4:11
  But I think that I've kind of come to the place of recognizing that courage is really moving forward with whatever it is that you're doing that frightens you, but doing it anyway.
• 4:24
  Right.
• 4:25
  And I'm sure writing books. I don't know you, you that's your background so that was probably not as scary as people keep telling me I need to write a book and that is really scary.
• 4:35
  Oh, it's terrifying as a Terry so whenever I get to that point. I may need to have your coaching and help.
• 4:42
  You know, it took me a long time to find the courage to start writing my books and to start writing my story and there's a lot of reasons why, you know, people hesitate to do that and it's vulnerable it feels like, you know, there's a lot of exposure involved there's the risk of failure, all of those things I.
• 5:01
  There's a writer named Ralph Fletcher, and he has a book called the courage to write, and he basically I'm summarizing his words but he says you know fear is with the writer from the first word to the last word fear never goes away.
• 5:17
  And you know, that's life.
• 5:19
  Right.
• 5:20
  Now we do everything.
• 5:23
  Or if you're living your life.
• 5:25
  You know, you do a lot of stuff scared. Right. And if you're not living your life you're living that comfortable that's scary to you know what, what are you missing out on and right, right.
• 5:36
  You know the whole why not today message is encouraging people to do the things that they're natural genius that thing that's in your heart and you just know that you're meant for that.
• 5:45
  And it's to do those things. And some people always say to some people people life is hard.
• 5:51
  Sometimes it's just getting out of bed. Yeah.
• 5:55
  Well I remember my therapist saying to me you know it takes courage to be vulnerable.
• 6:00
  Yeah, I remember thinking, I hate courage and I hate vulnerability so that's, you know, that makes it tough, but it does you know, being willing to show yourself to the world and whatever way you're doing that, you know, it takes a lot of courage.
• 6:15
  Yeah, and I was talking to somebody yesterday about Bernay Brown, do you follow her stuff. I do absolutely get the dare to lead book, which is up by love and it talks it's just intertwined courage and vulnerability they're both one without the other and vice versa.
• 6:30
  Yep. Exactly.
• 6:32
  The book that you just wrote a heart violence is about your dad and the silence there the memoir but to get to that you wrote the first book was it on purpose or was it one of those as I think who says the painter says is happy accident.
• 6:48
  It's sort of a happy accident so I began my own masters of fine arts program in 2013 with the intention of starting to dig into this story that has become the story in a hard silence and I'll just give a quick synopsis that you want to start with talking about a hard silence.
• 7:04
  I'll just give a quick synopsis of it just to for your listeners to know the context so in 1985. My father who was a surgeon himself had a heart attack at 42, and he underwent quadruple bypass surgery.
• 7:20
  Eight months after his surgery, it was found that the blood he'd been given during a blood transfusion was contaminated with HIV, and he had contracted HIV. And in 1985, the culture surrounding HIV AIDS was one of stigma misinformation fear, and many people who are found to be HIV
• 7:41
  positive were ostracized from their communities and lost their jobs and so my father anticipating that he would be dead within months because at that point, it was a certain death sentence.
• 7:53
  He anticipated that, you know, like most patients or patients he knew about he'd be dying soon, decided that for the duration of that time he would keep his illness a secret.
• 8:04
  But he ended up living for 10 more years. And from the time I was 13 until I was 23, we had to carry that silence and that secret around.
• 8:14
  And it was so he kept the secret but you guys knew your family.
• 8:18
  No, yes, yeah.
• 8:20
  So, that's a hard thing to hold as 13 is a hard age anyway.
• 8:25
  And pretty much through my most developmental years, I was, you know, kind of forced to not be able to be my real self, right, because I had to be hiding this.
• 8:36
  And you're afraid any minute now your dad could die. Exactly every second of every day.
• 8:41
  Did you live your life differently, knowing that, I mean, we're all going to die but we don't seem to acknowledge that very well in the United States.
• 8:51
  We live life differently as a family knowing, okay, this could be our last Christmas and this could be our last. Well, I mean, that's kind of how we lived all the time and there's a lot of pressure that lives in that.
• 9:02
  Yeah, when you're assuming that this is the last of everything is this last phone call is this the last holidays this the last birthday.
• 9:09
  So, I do believe, you know, that we made the most of all of those experiences but there was also kind of a residual pressure embedded in all of those experiences. And so, you know, the story is really like that's the backdrop of the story but it's really a story about
• 9:28
  interrogating silence and what is the cost of silence and so that was the book that I set out to start writing when I started my MFA program.
• 9:38
  And you just go back your dad passed away 10 years after his diagnosed when did anybody find out he had AIDS. So my mom and dad actually published a book six months before my dad died.
• 9:50
  So it was known before that that that was what he was suffering.
• 9:56
  Yeah. So but you know they published that book in 1995 I had already got married, I'd moved away. And so even though they experienced kind of this relief of being seen being known the outpouring of support that came from that.
• 10:11
  I was disconnected from it because I was away. And so I kind of held on to the rules of secrecy and silence for almost 20 more years after that and that's, you know, kind of fast forward to starting that MFA program.
• 10:26
  And I kind of thought, you know, I know what I'm going to sit down to write I know this story. But when I started writing and kind of peeling back the layers of that, those memories of that experience and going back to examining that 13 year old girl that 15 year old girl
• 10:45
  and and seeing kind of what she was facing. I was really caught off guard by kind of the psychological trauma of that experience and looking at that and I had moments where I would literally be sitting in front of my laptop thinking if I type one more word I'm just going to disintegrate.
• 11:03
  You know, that's how that's how emotionally taxing that felt for me. And I started wondering, you know, first of all, why does anybody do this like what am I doing here.
• 11:13
  Right. And then I started thinking about all the books I was reading as part of this program I was reading a lot of memoirs, and I had chosen specifically memoirs about trauma and loss and grief.
• 11:25
  And I kept thinking, you know, why would any of these writers have done this. And so I had to do a project for my third semester of my MFA and it was different from my creative thesis which was the memoir I was working on.
• 11:38
  And it had to be a little bit more of kind of an analytical piece of writing and I thought well maybe I could write an article about the psychological journey of writing hard stories and I started reaching out to some of these writers whose books I've read and asking them if they would answer a few
• 11:57
  questions for me, but when it ended up happening was and I thought to myself you know maybe I'll get a few answers and I can write this article have a few good quotes in there.
• 12:05
  But what ended up happening was not only did they answer me, they invited me to their homes they invited me to come and have dinner with them they invited me to, you know, to be in their environment and we had these beautiful conversations.
• 12:22
  And I realized like I couldn't just kind of limit these experiences to just a little sound bite in an article so I started writing them up as profiles, you know, kind of profiles of these interviews and I had a mentor in my program who every time I would send her one of these profiles
• 12:39
  she'd say you know you're writing a book. And I, you know I was saying like no I'm not I'm just doing this for myself, you know this is helping me. And so, by the end of that program, I had about 10 of the what eventually became 18 interviews and writing hard stories.
• 12:57
  And I realized that, you know, the wisdom and insight that these writers were sharing with me was wisdom and insight I couldn't really keep to myself that if somebody had handed me a book like mine.
• 13:10
  When I started my MFA program, it would have been a dramatically different feeling I wouldn't have felt so kind of alone in my emotional turmoil I wouldn't have felt like it was so unusual for me to feel that way.
• 13:24
  So back to your question of was it a happy accident, it really was because it started out as a very selfish endeavor, and it started out just for me, you know, and it turned into something bigger.
• 13:36
  But that was going through that process of talking to those writers and writing that book is what led me to be able to finish my current book.
• 13:46
  And I know we talked about this before we came on, and going through grief is hard and it's lonely. And it's helpful to have somebody there to share that's been.
• 13:59
  I know when my dad passed away. It was an aha moment for me that I had known friends even like my best friend had lost her dad in high school which I didn't know her then.
• 14:08
  But in college she lost her stepfather, her mother passed away and I never got like you're like, Oh, you'll be happy again and everything's okay and it's been time.
• 14:17
  You know, all the cliche sayings, until you lose somebody don't realize the pain and the whole and how just, you know, a normal day becomes not a good day.
• 14:28
  And so it's kind of a club you can't be in until you're in it. Yeah, it's a club you know, you have seen things it's like, you know, if you don't get it be happy.
• 14:40
  And these writers really became kind of those companions for me in the grief but in, you know, kind of just the, the process of revisiting trauma and of trying to figure out how do you put it on the page and make it accessible to other people.
• 14:55
  Why do you do that, you know, so they really kind of became that support network for me. Yeah, that's awesome and I can just envision sitting on a couch in somebody's house and it's a very welcoming, it's called a club, but that you are open and you're there to help people and once you
• 15:13
  experience that you can kind of get it and notice people.
• 15:17
  Right. And the way that Laura, Laura Carney and I met was that she had found my book writing hard stories when she was in the midst of writing her book my father's list.
• 15:29
  And she said to me I was just with her this past weekend and she said that she would write a chapter of her book, and then reward herself with reading a chapter of that book and wow and she said it kind of was the book that helped her get through the
• 15:42
  journey of her which is exactly what I had hoped. Yeah, by putting, you know, the writer. I think I haven't read the whole thing yet, but I think it's also even if you don't want to write a book, but just to be able to help you get through the grief.
• 15:58
  Right.
• 15:59
  And that's one of the, you know, one of the things I, you know, I said in the, in kind of that introduction to the book was that it isn't just for writers, you know, it's writers who are looking for looking for books that might give them companionship because one of that one of the
• 16:15
  books that book does is introduces you to all these wonderful writers and all of their amazing books. But it's also for people who might be feeling alone in their own trauma in their own grief in their own hard story. And it's hopefully a companion to them to recognize that you know they
• 16:31
  aren't alone.
• 16:32
  Right.
• 16:33
  Yeah, I can't wait to dig in and read the whole book. And so wasn't it with you meeting Laura that did she reach out to you and you not get back or
• 16:43
  well so she had reached out to me and I think she reached out to me on more than one platform and I know that at one point I did respond to her, but when I saw when her book came out in, and I was looking at that I had the opportunity to create a panel for the Boston
• 17:05
  panel, which was this past October, and I wanted to do a panel on grief. And so I asked her to be one of the panel members. And in the process I found this direct message that she had sent to me on Instagram that that I hadn't answered and I remember reaching out to
• 17:22
  her and saying like I can't believe that I didn't answer this message. And, you know, and to her, it wasn't like an offense that I hadn't answered the message she was saying like it meant a lot to her that I reached out to her on the merit of her
• 17:37
  book, not because I necessarily knew her well.
• 17:41
  Right. Yeah.
• 17:43
  Interesting connections and you know, yeah we communicate a million different ways. Right.
• 17:47
  And I was like, I'm not going to read those things and it's not intentional. Yeah. And now when I saw her posting things on social and I just reached out. I didn't think she'd ever respond and she did I'm like, Yay.
• 17:57
  Right.
• 17:58
  And talking to her I feel like, and with you that I have two new friends like you guys were an astral this weekend. And I was had a lot of FOMO going on I'm like, I wish I'd like to meet you guys.
• 18:08
  And I think that writing does right it connects us with people far and wide and it gives us the opportunity to kind of sharing stories together because, you know, a good book doesn't just tell one person's story it tells a story that resonates kind of at a universal
• 18:24
  human level.
• 18:25
  And I, you know, memoir particularly does that and so, you know, even though my circumstances are different, you know, I'm sure the grief and the pages of a hard silence will resonate with your grief will resonate with other people's grief.
• 18:41
  Yeah.
• 18:42
  And, you know, having this podcast has been such a blessing for me the people I've been able to connect with and hear stories and make those friendships and really dig deep I was thinking about that this morning and preparing for this.
• 18:55
  I'm like people listen to the podcast but I get so much more because I'm doing the podcast.
• 19:00
  I'm getting to know the guests even more and I mean just all the blessings of all the amazing people I've been in front of just absolutely I mean those things matter I think about you know every writer that I talked to for writing hard stories I've stayed connected with you know, I've had the
• 19:16
  book that came out in 2017 and you know, my books to my book, my memoir was published in September of 2023, and I've done maybe nine or 10 events where writers from that book have been, you know, part of the event with me in celebrating my book so it's just amazing kind of the
• 19:37
  way those connections happen.
• 19:39
  You know, you can maintain them and it's really lovely. Well it's been a nice evolution of the podcast that people are referring other people to me, kind of like old commercial you tell a friend and they tell you.
• 19:51
  So I'm going to say, now it's a requirement that when I interview somebody you have to give refer somebody else that you think would be amazing on the.
• 19:58
  That's a great idea.
• 20:00
  So let's talk about the hard side of hard silence so lots of courage in there, you know you kind of told the beginning story but yeah, you know what are some of the other courage stories within that or courage stories that you have from the other authors what I would I would say particularly
• 20:16
  you know for me, the courage was not about exposing, you know my dad's illness because that was already there that that that wasn't the reason for the book, but the courage came and kind of stepping away from the kind of family story of that experience which
• 20:34
  actually was my parents book, you know that kind of was considered the official story for the longest time, and really figuring out what's my story with you have sibling.
• 20:44
  I have three brothers. Okay, yeah.
• 20:47
  You know I found being from a big family on one of six that we all have a different story of our childhood. Absolutely.
• 20:55
  Right. And I mean one of the big things with memoir is to recognize that it's not your job to try to tell everybody's story. It's your job to tell your story within that experience right so one of the writers I talked to for writing hard stories his name is Andre abuse the third and he said you know you don't have to
• 21:15
  tell your family story, Melanie you just have to tell your story of being in that family. So really the question that I had to be courageous about was asking, you know, what happened to me when HIV happened to my dad, right and, and to actually unpack that took a lot of kind of psychological
• 21:36
  thinking. I ironically started therapy at the same time that I started my masters of fine arts program, and I didn't do it on purpose I wasn't actually starting therapy for the reason of looking into this story in fact that wasn't even on my radar.
• 21:51
  But what ended up happening was doing doing the writing and the therapeutic processing at the same time, really became a way for me to open up what was happening to me. Right, you know, so kind of the courage to, to start looking at this story and therapy, and then to start looking at
• 22:09
  this story on the page, you know those two things kind of it took a lot, you know for me to kind of get to that place and then when I decided to publish it that I was going to put both of those things out there, you know I write a lot about my therapy experience in this book, and I put that out
• 22:26
  there and I reveal a lot about, you know, kind of my own intimate vulnerability and sadness and grief and loss that a lot of people didn't know about. And so I think, you know, it's always frightening to kind of think you're putting something out there, when people have an
• 22:44
  impression of who you are, right, and now I'm showing them a different piece of me. Right. And, and I was doing that with everybody, not just friends, not just strangers but with my own family. And so that was certainly, certainly kind of a courage piece.
• 22:58
  And I think that opens up a bigger trust in a stronger relationship.
• 23:03
  I think so.
• 23:04
  Yeah, it's really easy to reveal you and that's one thing I keep saying this podcast is doing it's a story behind the story. Right well and I think people recognize when a writer isn't being honest on the page I think they can sense it, you know.
• 23:18
  And I had to be honest I had to, and sometimes that honesty meant, you know, talking about feelings in connection to others that weren't easy to talk about, you know, and, and so I wanted to be very careful and very intentional, but at the same time I had to create
• 23:36
  honesty in, in the way I presented it.
• 23:40
  Right.
• 23:42
  Yeah, so much courage and sharing that story and let me ask, are you, where are you in the birth order.
• 23:47
  I am third third okay so middle child. Yeah, all boys the only girl so I'm sure lots of dynamics around that.
• 23:55
  Sure, there certainly are and I mean, you know we, we come from a family where achievement was, you know, kind of at the, at the height of our, of course, your dad was a surgeon surgeon.
• 24:08
  He went to college when he was 15, you know he was a brilliant, brilliant man and, and I also think that some of that pressure, you know, his knowing that he wasn't going to be around to kind of see our lives reach places of success.
• 24:24
  We all kind of lived under that pressure of achievement and so we are all high achievers, you know, and so that dynamic with my brothers, it can be hard to because we all have strong personalities we all have, you know, opinions and thoughts that we want to include and so, you know,
• 24:45
  navigating that has been, has been a challenge of its own but it's you know I don't think it's unique to my family at all. No, every family has interesting their own dynamics so how was your book received from your family.
• 24:59
  Right and they were very supportive of the writing process, they were very supportive of me taking this journey, knowing that it was a healing journey for me. I think it's difficult for them to have the book out in the world in some ways just just because you know it's, it's a story that is my story but it's also part of their stories right and so
• 25:21
  they did help them heal at all. We haven't talked a lot about that at this stage but it's early, you know the only came out in September and I think you know their healing process has not come through writing but they have found other ways to process and heal from from the
• 25:38
  experience and you know I respect the paths that they have taken and I think they respect my path as well. I also am very understanding of the fact that, no matter how good my intentions are, it can always be difficult to be represented through somebody else's perspective, and to have your have pieces of
• 25:59
  experience represented through somebody else's experience, the lenses, you know, perspective. And so I'm, I am recognizing that, you know, I have to allow them to have whatever feelings they have about it, because, you know, I put my feelings out there and expected people to respect them and I have to
• 26:18
  respect theirs as well.
• 26:19
  Right. So true.
• 26:21
  So many good nuggets encourage and, as I said I can't wait to read the books.
• 26:26
  So, so how would you encourage somebody else to be courageous so write a book tell your story go to therapy. I mean there's so many things to expose the secret I mean there's so many courageous things you've done in this journey.
• 26:41
  Yeah.
• 26:42
  And how would you encourage somebody else.
• 26:44
  One of the things that I have talked a lot about on this book tour is the fact that, you know, by not speaking by keeping silent about my pain about my suffering about what my family went through what I went through by keeping that silence that shrouded in silence.
• 27:04
  I was doing damage to myself I was hurting myself right and you know it takes courage to start kind of looking at that stuff that you've packed away, but the process of doing that.
• 27:18
  It changes the way you see that right and so I, you know I talked to my students a lot about the fact that, you know, maybe you're just going to write to understand it for yourself, right.
• 27:29
  So, maybe you're just going to go to therapy to process your experience for yourself, but taking that step to do that is kind of your first step to move forward from whatever is kind of holding you back, you know and that's, that's kind of why I hit that you know you ask the question in this
• 27:47
  podcast the why not today right, and it wasn't so much like me saying, why not today. It was like, if I don't do it today. I'm not going to be able to keep living my life right I have to look back at that.
• 28:03
  I have to pay attention to it. I have to give it the time and processing that it needs. And so, it's really about taking that first step, you know you don't have to do it all at once.
• 28:17
  It doesn't have to be, you know you don't have to say to yourself I'm going to sit down today and write a book, one of the best gifts that I had was a mentor in my first semester of my MFA.
• 28:27
  And it worked as we were paired with a faculty mentor who was a writer and they kind of guided us through some of the that early writing and he said to me, you know Melanie, don't think book, don't even think anything big, just write what feels important to you right now and so
• 28:46
  I think it was a great permission to just really just zoom in on little moments and little time periods, and that was very helpful for me so I think it's, you know, courage doesn't have to come in one giant dose, right.
• 28:59
  It comes with little increments and it moves us just a little bit further forward.
• 29:05
  So, you know, you can't just go five seconds of courage. Right. Exactly. No, if you follow Mel Robbins at all. Yes, yeah, and her five second rule like just out of bed and go five four three two one and just do the thing and I taught water aerobics for years and always tell people in class I'm like
• 29:23
  you're getting up in the morning especially it's cold. You have to put a bathing suit on getting a cold pool. You know, think about not the start not doing it but think about when you put your head on the pillow at night.
• 29:36
  How will you feel if you did. And how will you feel if you didn't right, you do it, you go in the morning you do it you're like feel great all day I accomplish that I did hard thing.
• 29:45
  But if you don't all day long you're agonizing and thinking it's, there's a good book from Brian tracing called eat that frog. Right. And it talks about just do that scary yucky thing first.
• 29:57
  You know, and you know, even, even, you know, all along the way of this journey for me. There's been these steps of courage right like, first it's, you know, starting to get this story down on this page, then it's starting to show it to people, then it's you know thinking about wanting to publish it and then it's having to take the courage to send it to publishers and recognizing
• 30:18
  the rejection involved in right, you know, and, and continuing to move forward in the face of rejection, and then finally getting it published and realizing people are actually going to be reading it and now I have to talk about it and will I be okay talking about it
• 30:32
  right, you know, all you're doing your book tours. Right, right, you know, and, and, you know, this was something I didn't speak about for, you know, almost 30 years so to finally be speaking about it, you know, there's courage involved in that too.
• 30:47
  And I can see in watching your face the joy and the pride and just that you know you're doing the right thing.
• 30:56
  Well I know because I know how I'm feeling right now, you know, back to I can see that what would I say to other people, right, that the person I am today so I started this project with this book in 2013 so it's been a decade long process to get to this place,
• 31:13
  you know, and the person I was 10 years ago is a very different person than I am today, and I like this person so much better, and I'm so much more comfortable in my own skin, you know, and it's because I took that step to start writing this story it's because I persevered through this story,
• 31:33
  and it's because I'm realizing and talking to people and sitting here and talking to you that being honest, being authentic, being myself is the best feeling I could possibly have asked for.
• 31:47
  Yeah, so agree I know when Laura and I talked, she even said something after the episode that she shared things and open up things that she hadn't really talked about before.
• 31:57
  And in our interview and I hope that this is feels like a safe place although it's every the podcast will be everywhere but my guest to feel like this is a conversation between two friends and absolutely you know and how many people are, we never know who we're
• 32:12
  touching and who is listening to this and whose life we could make a difference that one person that is just and not a good place could be listening to this.
• 32:21
  And that's, you know, that was one of the biggest reasons that I wrote my book, you know, I, it wasn't because I hoped that, you know, it would end up on the New York Times bestseller list it wasn't because I wanted to sell a million copies.
• 32:35
  It was because I hoped that somebody who might be struggling in silence, somebody who's feeling alone will read my book and feel a little bit less alone that I can open space for people to maybe lean in with their stories as I share my story.
• 32:55
  And that's my ultimate goal with this book and it's been amazing on this book tour that, you know, at every event, somebody comes up to me and says you know thank you for sharing your story, it makes me think that maybe I can share my story and then they tell me some pieces of
• 33:11
  story, you know, and that's a beautiful kind of connection to me. I know that that's what I've heard the feedback of people listening to people stories on the podcast, right, right, courage and people to give them hope and permission to say me to.
• 33:26
  Well right and you know and you're giving that encouragement, you know why not today find a little piece of courage today to do that thing that you're scared that you're scared of.
• 33:35
  And we all do it scared we just have to do right now because we rarely regret the things that we do things that do.
• 33:43
  There's another writer named Pat Schneider and she says that fear is the friend of the writer, you know and I think we could say that in terms of fears the friend of all of us because it tells us that there's something ahead of us.
• 33:55
  That's important.
• 33:56
  That's worth doing for us to find, you know,
• 33:59
  There's no fear and sitting on the couch and watching a TV show.
• 34:02
  Exactly. Exactly. You know, there's no fear and and doing the comfortable. Exactly.
• 34:08
  I love that fear is a fear is a friend is the friend of a writer. Okay, remember that it's the fear is the friend of whatever. Yeah. Yeah.
• 34:18
  Love that. So what is the best way for people to find you Melanie.
• 34:22
  They can contact me through my website Melanie Brooks calm.
• 34:26
  Okay, you know I have an Instagram, Facebook, Twitter.
• 34:30
  And I will share all that with the show notes here. Yeah, absolutely. And then I'm excited that you are going to be in North Virginia to George Mason for.
• 34:41
  Yep. Yeah, but George Mason has a visiting writer series and so on March 14.
• 34:48
  And I'm going to be there and there's a public reading that evening so look all of my events are on my events page of my website so you can find out information about all of those things there back in Asheville and and yes we're hoping so the event that Laura Carney and I were supposed to have this weekend got canceled from snow so we're going to go
• 35:10
  back and we're going to we're going to do a redo of that event. Good. Well I will definitely catch up to you hopefully here and maybe have you as a guest for my lunch in one day.
• 35:19
  I can actually think perfect. Yeah.
• 35:22
  So well thank you for being my guests and thank you for everybody that listens and watches the why not today podcast. Remember, I have swag to encourage you to say why not today so whether it's a cup or t shirt what's that thing that can be in front of you.
• 35:36
  I actually have coffee cups now and I have a friend of mine that got one, and he often posts on Facebook, a picture of him on his coffee cup like what a better way to start your day than with that encouragement to say why not today.
• 35:49
  So you can find the why not today podcast at why not a podcast calm. I just started a new Facebook group. It's a why not today community. So I'm going to do some fun things so if you're listening or watching make sure you join that.
• 36:02
  I'm going to do some giveaways and all kinds of fun things around that. So again Melanie thank you for being our guest. Thank you Leslie has been great. Love your story and remember, just say why not today.
• 36:14
  Thank you.