Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - Gabrielle Hamilton on the Myths That Make a Family

00:00:00.000 Hey y'all, Jo here and you are listening to Under the Influence.

00:00:09.440 Today we're talking to one of my favorite writers. Someone whose work redefined for me

00:00:14.840 what a memoir could be. Gabrielle Hamilton is the James Beard award-winning chef behind Prune,

00:00:22.000 one of my all-time favorite restaurants in New York City, and she's also the author of Blood,

00:00:27.120 Bones and Butter. She has a new book out this week called Next of Kin, which I devoured when

00:00:33.240 I got my hands on it last week. This one isn't about food, at least not specifically. It's about

00:00:39.900 family, which in Gabrielle's life has been far more complicated than any recipe that she's ever

00:00:46.960 worked on. She grew up in a feral and charismatic household, which if you've read Blood, Bones and

00:00:53.440 butter, you're probably pretty familiar with. But over the years, that wild and magnetic family

00:00:58.880 splintered. Gabrielle chose to rewrite a lot of what she'd put on the page in Blood, Bones, and

00:01:05.100 Butter. Next of kin is a forensic investigation into the myths that we build about our families

00:01:10.940 and what happens when those myths stop holding up. It's a book about loyalty and estrangement,

00:01:16.940 but I gotta tell you, it is also funny. She is sharply hilarious, and you'll find yourself

00:01:25.360 laughing right along with her, even as you're about to cry a couple of times. I'm a little

00:01:31.820 fangirly in this interview. I know that. I do. But I think it's okay, because Gabrielle definitely

00:01:38.320 deserves it. Gabrielle Hamilton, I've been a massive fan for so long. Prune was the first

00:01:51.060 fancy restaurant that I went to when I moved to New York City in 2003. And it just it's kind

00:01:59.440 of remained in my mind is like the epitome of the kind of the kind of place that I wanted to be

00:02:04.160 And the kind of setting that I wanted for my life. And then I loved Blood, Bones and Butter. And this new book, Next of Kin, feels like just such a new, gorgeous chapter in your writing. I love your writing. But this feels so elevated, so much more. I don't know. It felt to me like you are coming into your own as a writer, even though everything you've written before is beautiful. But this is different.

00:02:33.700 this felt like so much bigger to me did it feel bigger to you that's incredible that you would

00:02:41.000 say that and i feel like i can just go home now a happy person so thank you great great that's what

00:02:47.000 we want everyone to do we want everyone just to be like drop the mic and be like here hold my whiskey

00:02:51.900 hold my beer bye i just cannot even believe you said that i'm really just wanting to reach through

00:02:59.100 this screen and give you the biggest gratitude hug right there. And I'm not a hugger or a

00:03:05.020 particularly grateful person. I'm teasing. But yes, yes, yes. I well, you know, I'm a I'm a

00:03:15.100 screwed up person with a really fucked up head. And so I have never known if I'm a writer or not. 0.99

00:03:19.840 And I've always felt so wondering. I guess I've had a lifelong wonder. Am I a writer?

00:03:27.980 am I a food writer am I a lady writer I have all this sort of um complex or hang up about being

00:03:36.480 some sort of hyphenated writer and so I guess you know if I follow my crazy mind like that I'm like

00:03:44.680 well I guess I have to write a novel or something if I'm ever going to prove to myself that I'm a

00:03:48.860 quote-unquote real writer and i i don't write novels yet yet so far i worked in the um in the

00:03:58.360 memoir genre and the first person essay but i bring everything i know about writing i have

00:04:06.660 studied the craft for decades scrupulously closely and so i tried to write this memoir with as much

00:04:15.820 you know novelistic skill set as i had so i very much appreciate what you what you've said it it

00:04:25.220 means a lot to me well and and you really you did it really i know that people say all the time

00:04:31.460 about non-fiction as if it's the highest compliment you can say about non-fiction oh it reads like a

00:04:36.740 novel as if non-fiction itself can't just read beautifully but it does in a lot of ways

00:04:42.380 read like a novel i know there's some novels that you find you can find too ponderous in a way i

00:04:49.120 don't know it's no oh there's a lot of novels you can find too ponderous in a way let's just say

00:04:53.600 there are um excellent practitioners in every form no matter the form and if we um are putting

00:05:01.660 down a format over another or i i'm not into that game i'm like a good novel a good memoir

00:05:08.140 a good blog post as far as I'm concerned the thing about storytelling and writing they are

00:05:14.800 two different you know there's something which I haven't been able to articulate so I'll just

00:05:19.800 be quiet just try yeah just let's let just like just like verbal diarrhea just let it out and

00:05:24.760 we'll get to something at some point storytelling has and in your writing you have to have a strong

00:05:31.520 gift for it I think of and then what happened and then what happened as if you're sitting

00:05:36.740 around the campfire or at the bar after work or at the dinner table let me tell you a story

00:05:43.360 but writing on the page for the reader that sort of intimate relationship

00:05:48.100 requires a kind of uh the thing i can't name but something about the writing has to be

00:05:56.140 added i think it has to touch your brain a little bit i think it has to just i think the words

00:06:02.460 it's hard to put into words uh but like that the words have to get off the page

00:06:08.340 like worm their way into your brain and make you feel things in a way that a story

00:06:15.580 storytelling just can't always do how are we doing so far two supposed wordsmiths here

00:06:22.940 two supposed words not being able looking i'm like what does it do well it was funny you know

00:06:29.100 I saw you, uh, a couple of weeks ago in New York talking to Arielle Levy and that room was so

00:06:37.280 crowded and I was sitting on the stairs with your wife and heard you say something similar where you

00:06:43.360 were saying, you know, do I call myself a food writer or, or, or, or just a memoirist? And I

00:06:51.840 remember like whispering to Ashley, I was like, God, I'm like, if you can, you can write beautifully

00:06:58.260 about anything and you're a beautiful writer. And I was trying to put it into words then very

00:07:03.060 quietly because, you know, you guys were doing your thing. And I'm like, but, you know, your

00:07:08.800 food writing is gorgeous, but writing about your life is gorgeous. And you can be, I don't think

00:07:13.860 there's a, you're a hyphenate. You're just a gorgeous fucking writer. And you're writing 0.99

00:07:17.720 about a lot of different things. But I do think it's very easy to have these hangups. Well,

00:07:21.580 I'm not a novelist. Well, I just write about food or I just, you know, for me a long time,

00:07:26.300 it was like i just write about travel and and putting ourselves in those boxes when it's like

00:07:31.960 you're beautiful at stringing words together at stringing words together in ways that make

00:07:36.240 people feel things that make you think about things in a different way and see the world 0.97

00:07:40.480 in a different way and that makes you a great goddamn writer no matter what you're writing 0.90

00:07:45.240 about i i'm i'll come here every morning if this is how it's gonna go come on over yeah just i mean 0.97

00:07:51.840 actually hop in the car come on up to the catskills we'll do this over coffee oh you're

00:07:56.180 so kind thank you but you're and so in this book you're excavating your family's story which we'd

00:08:03.580 heard a lot about in blood bones and butter but this is on a whole new level and it took you it

00:08:11.920 was it was a long time coming it was i think you said it was 10 years right i think it did take 10

00:08:16.920 years to get through this book it's true it's a it's interesting to hear you call it a whole

00:08:22.520 another level if maybe i would call it a whole nother perspective and that level or perspective

00:08:31.600 is darker lower um the material is more profound in a way than the first book i would say that

00:08:42.000 blood bones and butter in as much as i understand my own approach was all about the

00:08:50.100 the romance and the magnificence and the beauty and really stellar experience of my childhood

00:09:01.820 with these, I would say, unique, bohemian, cultured, aesthetically gifted, talented parents,

00:09:12.280 Not only parents, but also my siblings, my rambunctious, clever, word-playing siblings.

00:09:23.160 So that book was all about that, the sort of glowing moon, front-facing side of things.

00:09:32.500 This book is about some other things that were going on.

00:09:36.880 Yeah. Yeah. The violences, some of the psychological violences, some of the physical violence, some of the rivalries, competitiveness.

00:09:50.820 so maybe that's what you're responding to that it's not as soft edged not as watercolor not as

00:10:04.540 romantic it's the material itself is darker there's death there's suicide death there's

00:10:12.100 loss upon loss upon loss, transgressions, trespasses of all kinds, that doesn't mean

00:10:21.440 you don't bring beauty to the page, for me at least. So I still found a way, or I hoped to have

00:10:28.540 found a way to write with as much care for the language and the evocation of the darkness as I

00:10:36.240 did of the moon. How's that? How are the words? That's right. The words are going good. The words

00:10:41.760 The words are doing what words are supposed to do.

00:10:44.060 Well, and also I do want to say a lot of darkness in this book, but at the same time, I did find myself laughing a lot and smiling a lot.

00:10:56.020 There's a wonderful humor in this book that, you know, you do feel like you're along for this ride with you, that you're along for this journey with you, and you enjoy being on it.

00:11:09.760 You did. I mean, I did. I laughed out loud at a lot of parts of this book because the dark parts are often, you know, you have to sometimes you have to have to have to laugh at these.

00:11:24.760 But also it felt very real. And I'm not saying that Blood, Bones and Butter did not feel real.

00:11:30.120 What I keep thinking and, you know, again, this is a word salad I'm throwing out there is that two things can be true at the same time. 0.84

00:11:39.020 when i think this about my own childhood which was fucked up in its own fucked up way uh but i'm

00:11:45.000 like there were parts that were wonderful and magnificent that i loved that were so filled 0.95

00:11:49.040 with joy and also darkness and shit and you could think about those two memories in a different way

00:11:55.040 on on different days and so yeah i think when i said next level i'm like it felt like you know 0.78

00:12:02.760 you're getting to see the two truths and then we all have have more than one truth to our lives

00:12:07.860 yes i think the the humor was very present early on humor is a huge factor in my family to be good

00:12:20.520 humor to be a good sport to have a sense of humor to not take yourself too seriously to not take

00:12:27.940 um your setbacks and hardships in the vernacular of my family like some kind of wuss or even a

00:12:38.760 harsher term but to be good-natured and to find humor and to not be a stick in the mud kind of

00:12:45.700 thing that is great great uh skill to learn to have and to to hold to to really have that in

00:12:55.300 your body to have a good sense of humor I don't think you can cultivate it so much I think some

00:12:59.460 of it is hereditary who knows about these things nature and nurture but we've always we were raised

00:13:05.740 to have a good sense of humor and we and I think everyone in the family really has one

00:13:09.360 yeah to enjoy laughter especially at the dark things sometimes especially at the most wickedness

00:13:17.040 that sense of humor uh i think turned out to be a shortcoming of mine as life showed more of its

00:13:29.780 vagaries and complexities and vicissitudes that if you're constantly ha ha ha through all of your

00:13:40.680 pain, suffering, things that you could rightfully mourn

00:13:45.100 that are yours to mourn, that can

00:13:48.860 dull you from some very important experience that you

00:13:53.140 would benefit living through.

00:13:56.760 The writing tone of this book

00:14:00.540 retains humor or even

00:14:04.820 regains, returns to humor, I would say, through having

00:14:09.000 finally felt all the feelings that aren't funny and mourned the very sad losses that I felt then

00:14:21.120 and only then is my humor I think genuine and not nervous so do you think it feels like less

00:14:29.360 of a crutch once you've gone through that and it unpacked all of that much less of a nervous tick

00:14:36.000 although you can still hear me during this interview sort of giggling once in a while

00:14:39.940 it's just nervous to be doing press or oh my god

00:14:43.800 yeah it's unnatural to be especially the amount of press that people have to do for a book

00:14:48.020 at this point the amount of kind of I don't know every time I have a book come out

00:14:51.960 I'm like it's time for the song and dance

00:14:54.340 because I'm like I'm a writer to be honest I'm not

00:14:59.500 I'm not a natural performer and I do it because I want people to read

00:15:04.160 the things that I've written. But I think it doesn't always come naturally to me. It can be

00:15:08.860 really hard. So, you know, give yourself grace through the next few weeks as you're doing it.

00:15:14.520 A little nervous giggling during the podcast is okay.

00:15:17.360 Totally fine. Totally fine. Yeah.

00:15:21.060 Okay, let's take a quick break here. And when we get back, I want to dive into

00:15:26.200 your relationship with your parents.

00:15:28.120 chew on this bold question from dentine gum is it ever okay to compliment a millennial

00:15:39.220 on their skinny jeans in 2026 dentine chew bold

00:15:47.940 and we're back i want to talk a little bit about your relationship with your parents

00:15:58.480 their marriage and you know the the mother-daughter the father-daughter relationship

00:16:03.820 and how it's shaped you as as both a a parent and a wife i think all the time about you know

00:16:12.140 how my childhood has completely shaped who I am as a mom. I mean, I think I've gone the complete

00:16:20.840 opposite way. I was essentially raised by feral wolves. And so I try my best not to be a feral

00:16:26.140 wolf. But how how did your relationship with your parents impact how you parent your own kids?

00:16:33.360 I know I was going to ask you that if you did the full. I did the full one, full 180, full 180.

00:16:38.620 Yeah. This was my negative role model, you thought. And I'll do it all differently by the time I come to have my own children. Yeah. I think I actually, well, I loved my childhood so much and believed in it so adamantly. I was a real, what do you say? Like I tithed to the church in a big way. I really bought the sermon and the homily. And I wouldn't say bought it.

00:17:05.520 I believe in a lot of the ways that we were raised and now some of the ways that we were raised that I still believe in there was a kind of family wide gestalt or proclivity toward straightforwardness, candor, honesty, straight shooting this kind of thing.

00:17:33.300 I really do believe in that.

00:17:36.820 I think it was extra sharp, extra brutal, perhaps ill-timed.

00:17:41.680 We didn't need such brutal honesty, especially as young children, while we were trying to form our own egos.

00:17:50.440 um and as a parent i think i've really pulled back on the family brand of brutality in any

00:18:05.720 way so i do like candor and honesty i'm not doing a good job here because i'm not sure how my

00:18:15.040 you're too worked out but i'll just say oh god none of us are sure our parenting is working out

00:18:19.940 on any given day okay i mean i just told you it's nearly freezing outside and my kids are outside

00:18:25.200 naked don't know what's gonna happen so maybe i am still a feral wolf like my parents just a

00:18:29.960 different a different version of it and i'll ask you a question about that if you don't mind because

00:18:34.760 i feel like the way you are talking right now is something that i used to do all the time but i was

00:18:40.340 a little bit self-charmed by. I knew that what I was admitting out loud to others as if it was my

00:18:47.520 bad parenthood was actually stuff that I was kind of proud of. It made me special or different. I was

00:18:53.840 like, oh, I'm not a helicopter mom. I'm a feral mom. My children are, they haven't eaten anything

00:18:59.280 but goldfish for the past three days. And I actually liked this part about myself because

00:19:03.880 I thought it set me apart from other mothers who were actually like getting Applegate Farms chicken

00:19:09.360 nuggets and doing better and doing better no totally totally I mean and yes yes yes and yes

00:19:16.900 I think is I'm not calling you out I'm just asking you can call no you should call me out

00:19:21.880 similar sort of um what is it like a willingness to admit things that you're actually not ashamed

00:19:29.300 of totally totally yeah well and I think for me too is more I mean part of my reporting

00:19:37.460 that I've been doing for the past couple of years has also been so much on motherhood,

00:19:43.300 on influencers and on this idea of like perfect motherhood and good motherhood. And what does

00:19:48.860 that mean? And so I often go to the other side of it too. I'm like, I'm just a normal mom.

00:19:55.100 I'm just a, you know, kind of like crazy mom. I'm messy all the time, which has maybe even become

00:20:01.240 like my forward facing brand, if you want. Like, so yeah, no, you're, you're, you're not wrong

00:20:08.000 about that at all. With that said, I also, it is, I think it is something that I'm, I'm pretty

00:20:14.080 proud of that. I'm like, you know, I'm re my, my thing is that with these guys,

00:20:20.640 I'm trying to raise them in a way that I don't lose myself, but I'm a more present mom

00:20:29.460 than my mother was, than my parents were. But I'm also like, I want to be

00:20:36.120 successful in my own right. I want to be a writer. I want time alone. And so if that means they're

00:20:43.120 outside doing whatever it is they're doing right now, I feel good about that. I feel proud about

00:20:48.060 that. But you're right. I get so because I also think it's it's kind of a something women often

00:20:53.440 tend to do is that we get self-deprecating about the things that we're actually proud of.

00:20:58.060 Yeah. I had to take a look at my kids along the way and see if it was working, whatever I was doing. And I had to give up a lot of my self-satisfaction with my contrarianism and my difference.

00:21:19.920 and I could see that some things that I was doing

00:21:23.940 and the way it was going weren't working

00:21:25.860 and that I was just too attached to the way I had been parented

00:21:30.360 and the way it made us different and special in a way. 0.97

00:21:34.460 I was like, I just don't need to be fucking special, frankly. 0.90

00:21:37.340 I don't need to be different. 0.95

00:21:38.500 If anything, it would be really great

00:21:40.120 if I could have my kids feel more joined

00:21:43.520 and connected to their society.

00:21:46.900 How did you have to change to do that for them?

00:21:52.360 Let me just do the best I can to answer you.

00:21:55.860 I'm not certain I know all of these things.

00:21:58.180 How does change happen?

00:22:00.180 But I'll tell you that I was, when my first brother died, suddenly I was pregnant.

00:22:10.740 I was just about to have my first child.

00:22:12.320 I went to this luncheon that my father threw as a kind of memorial for my deceased brother.

00:22:24.300 And as we were leaving that lunch, my father, in his typical fashion, clearing the table, getting up, the luncheon's about to end, people are straggling at the very last bits.

00:22:37.560 And he said, well, if you have to lose one, at least it's the one you liked least.

00:22:44.320 And I heard that and I kind of giggled and I felt this strange mix of, wow, my dad is

00:22:56.760 a special, unique man.

00:22:59.940 That is a remarkable honesty. While at the same time having this tiny little baby of my own in the Moses basket at my feet at this lunch and the same in the same brain at the same time, I thought, old man, I have to get away from you.

00:23:21.440 so i don't need that kind of candor any longer in my life that is not going to be and so i wouldn't

00:23:29.100 even say i was aware of it at the time except for this tiny little thought like i'm just going to

00:23:34.780 pick up my kid we're going to drive back to new york now and i think i'm going to do this a little

00:23:39.220 differently myself going forward i had to read that passage a couple times to be honest um and

00:23:47.820 read his line a couple times and then what you said about giggling and also that that made you

00:23:57.140 think okay maybe maybe you're a person I can't be around right now it was I mean there were a lot of

00:24:02.820 powerful passages in the book but for me that one really hit yeah for me too it's um you know I tried

00:24:11.900 to understand him maybe he was grieving himself and had no ability to say so but at that point

00:24:19.140 I was what 40 39 something like that or 38 you'd also just had a baby like literally just had a

00:24:26.840 baby and a lifetime of that kind of candor and that kind of special fathering I thought you know

00:24:33.400 that has its place and I've learned a lot I really appreciated it it has guided me well

00:24:38.980 and this is not going to work for me as I try and develop my own brand of parenting not that I got

00:24:46.380 it down with the first kid nor the second or in the first five minutes of the revelation I think

00:24:52.020 that's another thing to say quite clearly it takes a long time to unlearn your your habits and to

00:24:59.620 break yourself of them or to adjust them to to the right calibration that you want so

00:25:06.680 So I think I still enjoyed some of my inherited characteristics while I was parenting until then when my oldest brother killed himself about 10 years later.

00:25:24.160 In that point, I have two children and I am living pretty, pretty faithful to the church of the Hamilton upbringing at that point still, even though I've curtailed my honesties and things like that.

00:25:35.900 But when Jeff died and my dad left the message and that sort of as if the fates had just arrived, well, that's over, he said about Jeffrey having killed himself.

00:25:47.020 And I was like, it is bad, weirdly.

00:25:52.180 And that is when I really sat up in bed, so to speak, as if in the dead of night with a bolt of, there is a very, very dangerous intruder in my house, my body and mind being the house, and I must go get this person out of the house immediately to protect my own children.

00:26:17.040 And that is when I really sat up and took tremendous stock of my parenting, my lifestyle, my own adherence to bohemianism and alternativism and scandal and lively, colorful stories to be able to tell at dinner parties about my own wild life.

00:26:40.020 I was like, I don't know if I'm allowed to swear on here.

00:26:42.580 Oh, you can swear. Swear all you want.

00:26:43.760 yeah but fuck that and fuck you gabrielle that is enough 1.00

00:26:51.320 and then really started to get my shit together how long ago was that just before they left the 1.00

00:26:59.060 house for empty nest i think i i'm teasing i i think i got it together when they were 0.92

00:27:04.180 entering is it called middle school anymore no what's the i don't know i don't know what i don't

00:27:10.580 know what to go I'm not there yet middle school-ish yeah yeah just in time to to actually

00:27:18.080 do tremendous repair with my with my own people yeah I mean I reading the book I kept thinking

00:27:26.280 about those moments the ones that you're talking about where you had the realizations about your

00:27:32.100 parents where you're like I don't I don't think I I don't think I can or should be doing this with

00:27:37.880 you anymore and you you do you're you successfully remove remove both of them from your life at

00:27:46.200 separate times um you know the the opening of the book and i'm not going to spoil anything in the

00:27:52.000 book for anyone but the opening for me also is someone who has been fact-checked by the new

00:27:56.660 yorker before uh when it it hit because your mom has been fact-checked about something that you

00:28:03.560 wrote something you wrote about food um a detail that feels like maybe it doesn't even need to be

00:28:07.960 fact-checked but the new yorker and the times love a fact checker and thank god for that because no

00:28:12.860 one else fact checks anyone anymore uh and she reaches out but for the first time at that point

00:28:19.340 you hadn't talked to her in about 15 years right yeah she essentially a 30-year estrangement right

00:28:26.060 with with 36 hours in between yeah yeah um and but and you had had you had the wherewithal with

00:28:35.720 your mom twice to walk away to say no no i'm not i can't do this that did hit with me because you

00:28:43.360 know like i said my relationship with my mom was complicated and she wasn't a great mom she's an

00:28:48.660 awesome grandma she's an amazing grandmother and so we have a relationship now she lives down the

00:28:55.840 straight from me she's with my children it's not a mother-daughter relationship per se but like 0.90

00:29:02.080 those kids fucking love her and she's back in my life but we didn't really spend time together for 0.95

00:29:08.160 10 years so what was it like for you to then be back with your mother after 30 years i know i think 0.99

00:29:18.760 a lot of people actually do this i'm learning that they a lot of people cut their parents off

00:29:25.000 i think the only difference if any difference with me is that i just did it for a solid 30

00:29:33.400 it was a really long time like that was a long jack one a lot of people hang up the phone and

00:29:38.940 like i'm not talking to my mother and they give it a week or a month or a year you know there's

00:29:44.120 whatever i think we all have these riffs with our parents and we cut them off in a way just to

00:29:49.740 to self-preserve i did it as a young person uh i think in my it must have been in my 20s

00:29:58.880 early 20s and uh it was not dramatic in any way it was surprisingly

00:30:05.340 quiet where i just understood we were having one phone call of out of hundreds that i'd had in the

00:30:15.600 past in which she, as is her character, absolutely dismissed me with the whatever it was I was trying

00:30:26.560 to say. I can't even really remember. Honestly, it doesn't matter. It was so typical of her to

00:30:33.140 be like, oh, no, no, Gabrielle. No, Gabrielle. That's not how it is. And there I am, what, 23 or

00:30:40.480 for trying to establish myself as I had already done as a nine-year-old, as an 11-year-old.

00:30:45.880 I'd like to play baseball, not take ballet. I think I'd like to be a vegetarian. I feel sad.

00:30:51.400 Whatever the things are as you're moving through these very important developmental stages of your

00:30:56.180 life, trying to self-identify, to have this huge figure in your life look at you with rolled eyes

00:31:04.860 and ridicule you or just simply say no it's quite deleterious to your health I must say

00:31:12.780 so by the time I was 24 and I heard her do this on some casual topic nothing important

00:31:17.860 no Gabri you'll you'll think differently when you get older I it was almost exuberant in my I was

00:31:25.640 like mom holy shit I can't even believe this but I'm gonna hang up the phone now and I'm never 0.92

00:31:31.680 going to talk to you again. And I'm I had no idea this was going to happen today, but it did. And 0.99

00:31:35.720 I'll see you. And I did. I just hung up the phone and walked away and I never went back. I just saw

00:31:42.140 clearly on it was a gift in a way to see, ah, she will never know me. She will never have the

00:31:51.420 capacity to know me or to allow me to become or be whoever I'm going to become or be. So that was

00:31:59.980 quite a gift I must say to I had no regret or no remorse when I did see her again 15 years later

00:32:06.800 because my brother died and because I had a baby and I thought oh maybe my child wants a relationship

00:32:13.220 with his grandmother maybe I shouldn't be intervening here I went to see her again

00:32:20.000 here's what that was also 15 years I mean you really you stuck with this for a long time

00:32:26.760 and you know here's what's the sad part for me is 15 years later really nothing had changed

00:32:36.240 and i saw there was no opportunity yet again for any kind of evolution in our relationship she had

00:32:44.360 not only remained the same but perhaps calcified even further into her stance and it just actually

00:32:51.740 felt kind of deadly it felt dead-endly deadly that kind of um there's this is a there's nowhere

00:32:59.880 to go here and I almost experienced it as the loss or death of a parent at the time I remember

00:33:06.040 driving away I couldn't have named it at the time but I just noticed I was like yawning the whole

00:33:11.900 way back to New York which I think is a real heavy sighing and yawning is a kind of grief

00:33:18.100 respond apparently um so i didn't miss her seeing her again after 30 years

00:33:29.040 was effortless it was effortless and a non-issue not because things had changed

00:33:41.540 necessarily but because i had thoroughly thoroughly thoroughly done my work i believe

00:33:46.600 in the intervening years, recognizing that she would not be ever available for the kinds of

00:33:54.820 accountability I would have liked, the kind of, oh, babe, I'm sorry that happened, and I apologize,

00:34:02.200 like nothing like that would ever be forthcoming from this woman. You have to do that work 0.98

00:34:10.520 elsewhere and make your process with someone else or on your own with some help etc but

00:34:18.140 at your own peril if you don't do it if you're waiting for the deathbed moment with your parent

00:34:23.560 who was never available during their lifetime not that I'm here to give advice but I highly

00:34:28.200 recommend that you get to work elsewhere with some proxy helpful person obviously helps if

00:34:36.620 you're in a therapist's office where no one can hear you whining and complain you happen to be

00:34:42.320 embarrassed about having sadnesses if you like to find everything funny for example right if you

00:34:49.880 like to giggle you know at the at the at the awkward funeral comment um yeah yeah good to do

00:34:55.900 that stuff in a closed room where no one can see you and they know right will betray yeah just just

00:35:02.740 interior just the therapist just the therapist that's right okay let's take one more quick break

00:35:09.860 we'll be right back

00:35:11.460 hungry now

00:35:19.000 now what about now whenever it hits you wherever you are grab an oh henry bar to satisfy your

00:35:31.280 hunger. With its delicious combination of big, crunchy, salty peanuts covered in creamy caramel

00:35:37.080 and chewy fudge with a chocolatey coating. Swing by a gas station and get an O'Henry today.

00:35:43.220 O'Henry, O'Henry.

00:35:49.940 Was blood, bones, and butter a processing in any way of the childhood? Or was it only after

00:35:57.480 it was published that you're like oh shit I have more work to do 0.86

00:36:01.660 the writing as process is a complicated topic that I am not sure I have my elevator 0.98

00:36:14.280 pitch about but I like to joke or I am self-charmed I'm aware when I talk about how

00:36:24.880 difficult writing is and how much I bristle when people ask me whether writing a memoir is 0.96

00:36:32.860 cathartic oh interesting I really prickle about that I'm like are you fucking kidding writing is

00:36:40.480 hard it's work I'm not in my journal you know I get very um combative and uh defensive I like that 0.74

00:36:50.360 yeah very defensive like you are mistaking two things when i'm writing a memoir i'm at work 0.80

00:36:56.080 bitches and i'm working and this is hard work i'm not catharting into my journal i'm not at the 0.89

00:37:03.880 doctor's office crying into my kleenex now having well also but no one would say that about a novel 0.97

00:37:11.900 they're like exactly exactly precisely now when i'm less defensive

00:37:18.140 uh-huh you admitted to you for this prickly part of my personality it's also not untrue

00:37:26.260 organizing your thoughts

00:37:30.460 onto the page both the sort of ugly early draft

00:37:39.160 and then the polished for public consumption work

00:37:46.580 has a genuine, soothing, calming, relaxing psychological effect. 1.00

00:37:57.640 Yeah, after you do all of the work and bust your ass 0.99

00:38:01.720 and break your soul while writing. 0.99

00:38:04.520 Because writing is work, writing is labor,

00:38:06.680 And I find that that part of it gets dismissed a lot generally. And I have people say to me a lot, they're like, it must just be so charming and lovely to be able to do what you do. Your kids must just like run around your feet while you're writing.

00:38:23.880 And I'm like, I have full time child care that I pay a lot of money for because it is work. 0.99

00:38:28.060 I'm working every day and it is kicking my ass on most days. 0.92

00:38:32.600 And but I do think that certain lifestyles, people are like, it just must be it's a hobby, right? 0.97

00:38:38.940 It's less of a job and more of a hobby.

00:38:42.040 It's really remarkable.

00:38:43.040 I happen to work in two fields in cooking restaurant life, you know, and writing, both of which apparently no one understands what it takes to do them.

00:38:56.440 And I'm really not here to complain.

00:38:58.240 I could not love more my two jobs.

00:39:00.800 But they are very funny fields in which everyone themselves feels competent and entitled pretty much like, oh, my God, my husband's a chef.

00:39:12.880 I hear this all the time when I'm in the restaurant and I stop at table seven to say

00:39:16.280 hello. And the woman's like, oh, my God, my husband's a chef. And I get excited. I turn

00:39:20.240 to the husband like, oh, my God, where do you work? And she's like, no, no, no, no.

00:39:25.560 I mean, a chef at home, like at our dinner party. Anyway, that kind of access to I have

00:39:32.740 a recipe and I cook at home and therefore I have access to this sort of world of chef,

00:39:41.520 of restaurant of cooking etc same thing with writing you meet a lot of people are like oh

00:39:46.180 my god i have a story boy do i have a story and and i think you know having a story and writing

00:39:51.800 one are two very different projects and um but because we all type or we all have language and

00:40:00.040 we can put words onto a page technically we think we're doing the same thing not to get too 0.75

00:40:05.400 cunty about it the way you can be a little cunty about it though because i get pretty 0.80

00:40:11.060 cunty about it a lot i know when i when i got married 10 years ago and moved from new york 0.92

00:40:17.680 where you know i'd had a long journalism career to san francisco and i would tell people

00:40:22.480 that i was a writer or that i was a journalist and everyone in san francisco was like me too

00:40:28.180 and i'm like oh my gosh like cool like what what are you ready right and it's always like almost

00:40:32.420 always some like tech bro and he's like I got a blog and I'm like oh okay oh all right yeah yeah

00:40:39.740 and he's like he's like yeah he's like so did you just publish your book on your own and I'm like 0.70

00:40:42.740 and I would get prickly and kind of cunty about it I'm like no like they're they're they're you 0.85

00:40:49.560 know books and I wrote for newspapers and magazines and I don't know and maybe none of that matters 0.99

00:40:55.780 maybe I was just being a cunt but like again it's like not seeing the work and all of the shit that 0.96

00:41:00.120 goes into it and when the creation i talk to farmers um a lot like female farmers and they 0.99

00:41:07.420 tell me the same thing that they get asked they're like oh so are your kids just with you while you're

00:41:13.040 like you know picking your vegetables and and no they're tomato fields yeah exactly they're like no

00:41:20.320 they're in daycare all day like your kids are because this is my job i know and i think you

00:41:28.360 know i teach writing and i talk about this in the classroom all the time i ask we had we have an

00:41:37.160 exercise that i do each semester where i say let's pretend we're hiring a pediatric oncologist tell

00:41:44.580 me some of the qualities and skill sets that you will be demanding you've just brought your two

00:41:50.420 year old in there's some blood in the diaper uh you know to borrow a lori moore scenario out of

00:41:56.660 um, her book and just say, now, what do you want out of that pediatric oncologist? And the demands 0.90

00:42:02.280 of the students in that room are exacting and demanding, and they want a perfection,

00:42:09.880 a professionalism set. And I say, please, let's, let's place an ad now for a writer.

00:42:14.820 And what do you want out of your writing? I don't know. It could be creative or as long as

00:42:18.780 it's sort of entertained, that kind of thing. So that it just reminds, it's so interesting to me

00:42:22.580 that um we would never allow ourselves to be like yeah i think i'll go to opera singing school

00:42:28.020 because i'm just going to be an i want to be an opera singer like you know that there's a

00:42:31.520 technicality that you could never achieve same pediatric i'm going to be a pilot tomorrow

00:42:36.320 yeah right i'm always curious why um but also you know so anyway i don't want to get too deep into

00:42:43.560 the mud of this um chip on my shoulder but it is very interesting how uh this work feels very

00:42:54.720 accessible to all people and so I don't find the work particularly easy or cathartic or um

00:43:03.920 salad breezy etc until and let's be clear I feel the same way both in my cooking world and in my

00:43:10.420 writing life until something starts to come together. When you get to that stage of the work

00:43:18.360 where you have a real draft, something that you can just tinker with, it's almost like having 0.88

00:43:23.680 a hot truck in the garage that you get to like fuck around with and like, oh, I think I'm going

00:43:29.280 to put mud flaps on it or, oh, you know, this is the color paint it should have. When you really 0.93

00:43:34.780 start to that's a really fun part of writing where you are tuning her up getting up where

00:43:43.820 it wants to be getting it as true true true are your sentences true are you lying still are you

00:43:52.800 posing posturing when you get to that phase of the writing where you're not and you know that

00:43:59.040 your words are true and real that's a very fun part it's uh similar to cooking like it's not

00:44:07.520 all drudgery of course there's some drudgery but i love some of the drudgery i love some of the

00:44:11.920 drudgery getting i think the creating is really there and not to say there's not joy in the

00:44:17.220 creating i just i started a new novel a couple weeks ago and then three days ago like had the

00:44:24.680 epiphany of what who one of the characters was and I was like oh fuck this is amazing wow like

00:44:31.540 this just this just opened up so much cool shit for me uh but now I'm back to you know the hard 0.96

00:44:37.860 work of doing that like there's the moments throughout where you're like it's just I'm 0.79

00:44:43.020 waking up in the morning I'm writing it's hard work and it might look like I'm just

00:44:47.640 fucking around on the computer but um I feel so terrible making the right um who ascribing this 0.52

00:44:59.220 to but is it Ann Patchett or is it Annie Dillard I know it's one of the or is it or is it Ann Lamott 0.97

00:45:03.940 or is it no this one's not Lamott but I think it where who said who describes like what their novel

00:45:09.220 looks like in the morning while they're walking around the garden having their morning cup of

00:45:12.700 coffee and there it's it's a butterfly and it's the most beautiful butterfly and it's fluttering

00:45:18.980 and they see the the flights and the gorgeousness and the dappled sunlight and then they get to

00:45:25.100 their typewriter later and by the end of the day that epiphany that's made you feel so

00:45:30.800 brilliant is the you know sort of dried husk of some you're a grub you're just a grub like

00:45:41.020 wheedling it around in the dirt.

00:45:43.320 Yeah.

00:45:43.780 Infligantly tacked it to the page

00:45:46.260 and it's now a terrible dry husk

00:45:48.540 of what had been so beautiful that morning.

00:45:50.100 So you're bound to have those afternoons

00:45:53.720 following those mornings.

00:45:56.160 Yeah.

00:45:56.580 Every single time.

00:45:58.060 Every single time.

00:45:58.980 It's work.

00:46:00.340 Yeah, it's labor.

00:46:01.860 And then also you get to do

00:46:03.340 what you're about to do this week

00:46:05.240 is go out and share it with the world

00:46:07.960 and see what happens,

00:46:09.420 which i think it's terrifying it's always terrifying for me every time every time a book

00:46:14.160 comes out uh but also great like also realizing i'm like people are reading the things that i wrote

00:46:20.140 and that's fucking amazing yeah i don't know about the terror i try to um as much as possible

00:46:27.780 before anything is public be pretty clear on what's gonna work and where i might get creamed 0.95

00:46:37.840 to receive all of it it's been a very um long

00:46:44.100 exercise to self-assess and in an accurate way i i i found myself burning out and fatiguing

00:46:55.400 on that sort of oh i'm really good this is really good and then the next day like oh god this is 0.74

00:47:02.060 such a piece of shit and for me that ended up being so exhausting and also not accurate either 0.97

00:47:07.080 pull. It's almost a sort of bipolar experience. And I I'm not I'm like, this is not real. This 1.00

00:47:13.680 is obviously both feelings are inflated by something. And I thought, can I just take an

00:47:18.560 honest sort of on the ground level assessment of the work so that I don't have to have such

00:47:27.020 elation nor such deflation? Just something. I mean, in the same way, when I work at the restaurant,

00:47:32.680 I do this all the time the plate comes in front of me I'm not waiting for the customer to give me

00:47:37.860 praise nor to send it back because it's over salted etc so I'm trying to look at the plate

00:47:43.240 and objectively I'm like oh I overcooked this one or oh this is pretty spot on and you know

00:47:50.300 you'll take a taste like oh that's quite tasty so if you could do the if I can do the same thing

00:47:54.440 with the writing by the time I go out as I guess I'm starting next week hopefully there won't be

00:48:00.160 so much terror um and also not so much like oh my god thank you so much oh god no yeah i know

00:48:08.360 i know i know all the things all the things we do yeah yeah exactly exactly well and this is this is

00:48:14.920 this is my last question uh the book was originally called kind regards right um but now it's next of

00:48:22.720 kin and i kept yeah i kept thinking about kind regards though because i knew that i knew that

00:48:28.840 before i read it and i do love that title i really do meet you what is kind regards is kind regards

00:48:36.880 is a is a parting salutation right say i care about you or something i send you only goodness

00:48:46.320 and warm thoughts and i may know you or not know you but i'm saying i hold you in in esteem i think

00:48:54.440 that's what the i hold you in esteem yeah i hold you in esteem your humanity that is why i was

00:49:02.320 originally thinking about titling this book kind regards i had to you know there's a lot of um

00:49:10.220 in some ways i had i was litigating or prosecuting my family while writing this book and it was a

00:49:20.040 sort of dead end or a book I didn't want to read. And I eventually, through the work of

00:49:26.200 all my work, all the work that I do, I came to actually have nothing but kind regard and

00:49:33.640 full respectful estimation for all of the people who appear in the book and all of the ways life

00:49:39.940 went, whether it was good or bad or not. And so I achieved kind regard, but I ended up titling it

00:49:46.940 next of kin it's more vivid and more accurate for the book that i wrote also also a great title i

00:49:55.880 just that's what i kept thinking of as i was like is she going to achieve kind regards is that where

00:50:01.800 we're going and and what is that going to mean at the end of the book i wouldn't have thought it had

00:50:06.400 i not had i not heard you heard you speak before i read the book but it was it was very interesting

00:50:10.780 to have that in my head as i was reading you know i could write another book you could you as well

00:50:17.800 you should and you could yep this is a book about this material but it's not to say that i couldn't

00:50:23.380 come at this very same material in another whole other way um and then we have kind regards exactly

00:50:31.000 exactly um well this thank you thank you for being here this has been a gorgeous

00:50:35.440 way to spend 50 minutes of my morning and um i'm just put some clothes on those kids come on

00:50:41.960 yeah i'm kidding i'm kidding yeah i will i will it's cold out there it's cold out there

00:50:46.860 although although although again as you said i'm very self-charmed by that i'm like the adjective

00:50:52.240 self-charmed is now like bringing me a lot of joy so um i'm gonna i'm gonna use it use it today

00:50:58.380 somewhere along along my path yeah um well thank you thank you so much for being here um this is

00:51:04.000 wonderful and I'm so excited for Next of Kin to be in people's hands this week. I really appreciate

00:51:09.800 this. It's nice of you to have me and I love meeting you. Thank you. I love meeting you.

00:51:34.000 Thank you.

Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - October 16, 2025

Gabrielle Hamilton on the Myths That Make a Family

Episode Stats

Transcript