00:05:51.600How I picture it. We are all nesting dolls, carrying the earlier iterations of ourselves inside.
00:05:58.740We carry the past inside us. We take ourselves, all of ourselves, wherever we go.
00:06:05.780Inside 40-something me is the woman I was in my 30s, the woman I was in my 20s, the teenager I was, the child I was.
00:06:14.540inside divorced me, married me, the me who loved my husband, the me who believed what we had was
00:06:22.760irrevocable and permanent, the me who believed in permanence. I still carry these versions of
00:06:29.280myself. It's a kind of reincarnation without death. All these different lives we get to live
00:06:36.100in this one body as ourselves. Maggie Smith is a poet, writer, educator, and teacher. She has
00:06:44.720published several books of poetry and prose, including Good Bones, you might know the title
00:06:51.180poem, and two recent bestsellers, Keep Moving and Goldenrod. Her memoir, You Could Make This Place
00:06:57.640Beautiful, is a New York Times bestseller. In her book, Keep Moving, which is a collection of essays
00:07:04.720and quotes that celebrate beauty on the other side of loss, she writes,
00:07:09.280when life held your hand in the flames, it taught you something about the kind of burning you can
00:07:14.880endure. You survived. Don't forget that. And don't diminish it. Keep moving. Here to talk to us about
00:07:23.880heartbreak and strength and finding joy is Maggie Smith. Let's get to the show.1.00
00:07:28.800so maggie welcome to the podcast where we really struggle to pass the bechdel test
00:07:38.320oh my gosh it's good to be here what did being a wife mean to you oh that's a big question
00:07:48.280you know i thought of myself as being like an integral part of a family unit so when i think
00:07:55.200about what it meant to be a wife, I think if I'm being honest, I would be roundabout thinking about
00:08:03.740what it means to be a mom because I was only a wife for a few years before I was a mom. And then
00:08:12.200that kind of took over more of my energy, I think, than being a quote unquote wife. So in my mind,
00:08:25.200being a wife is like being one, one fourth of my family. And so post divorce, I am now sort of one
00:08:33.920third of my family, which I guess is a, is like a power up in a way. If we want to think about it
00:08:42.180that way, as far as like family distribution, my role got a little bit larger, even as my family
00:08:48.200got a little bit smaller. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's so interesting how you tie being a wife
00:08:56.020together with being a mother. You know, those roles can be so complexly woven together that
00:09:04.260it's really hard to separate them. And I think that also causes a lot of like derision in
00:09:11.020relationships, right? Especially if you might be partnered with somebody who likes things a little
00:09:17.140bit more neat, tidy boxes, right? And I know a lot of women who really struggle with like,1.00
00:09:24.040when am I a wife? When am I a mother? When am I myself? How do you, well, I guess you can decide0.57
00:09:31.760at what point in your life you want to answer these questions, but how do you untangle those
00:09:35.140knots of identity? I think that that for me was one of the trickiest parts of getting divorced
00:09:45.020and becoming, becoming an American ex-wife. I guess I still have a title. It's just,
00:09:53.460it's like a, it's funny. Like when you are, when you are an ex-wife, your title automatically has
00:09:59.640negation in it. Right. So you're like named by what you're not. And so even in the memoir,0.88
00:10:06.920I refer to my ex-husband more as my children's father than I do as my ex-husband because
00:10:17.580I don't love the idea of like the negation part is so tricky isn't it and I think that's something
00:10:25.200I'm trying to kind of like parse through myself is not not trying to think of myself as like
00:10:32.100shaped around an absence. But like being whole on my own, like what does it mean to not be
00:10:40.120half of a couple, but to be whole as a single person? It's yeah, it's incredibly complex. And
00:10:50.480I think I didn't have enough time as a wife before having kids to really feel like I was secure and
00:10:58.040even knowing what that role was. And also I was in my late twenties and I don't even think I knew
00:11:03.160quite what life was yet at that stage apart from being married. And so I, I grew up in my marriage,
00:11:14.420which also complicates things, doesn't it? As opposed to like people who get married in their
00:11:19.440forties or maybe a little bit more gelled when they come together. And, and I think, you know,
00:11:25.600second and future marriages, I always hear stories about that. Like, it seems like people
00:11:31.760kind of know more who they are, what their priorities are, what their boundaries are,
00:11:36.480what realistic expectations might be in a relationship. But I think when you meet and
00:11:42.640fall in love and get married in your 20s, when you're still sort of an amorphous being,
00:11:49.200A lot of growing up happens and that can either happen together or you can find yourself like the tendrils of that plant tend to like snake in opposite directions at times.
00:12:02.940Yeah, I think one of the hardest things about being an American woman, wife or not, is that, you know, so much of society teaches us or encourages us to throw ourselves into other roles, mother, wife, so soon and so quickly that it is, you know, it's hard to say, well, who am I if I am not those things?
00:12:29.400and then um you know a lot of I mean I think what what a break what tragedy what heartbreak gives
00:12:36.240you is a chance to say oh this is who I am like I've sloughed off you know whatever whatever like
00:12:42.640exoskeleton you know and now I am this like new cicada that metaphor is terrible with with buggy
00:12:50.940red eyes a horrifying creature i am a horrifying creature maggie
00:12:59.660listen i'm gonna well i had a writing mentor one time say metaphors are like wild horses
00:13:09.960sometimes you tame them and sometimes they tame you and yeah and sometimes they throw you
00:13:17.880sometimes they trample your head so I actually like the cicada I like the cicada metaphor you
00:13:25.880know someone asked me recently like how are you like are you now able to be yourself do you feel
00:13:32.300like a different person and and my my answer was like no not really I feel like myself and maybe
00:13:40.740I've I've been able to kind of reinstate or like excavate some pieces that were a little like not gone, but just a little quieter, like a little smaller in my life when I was married.
00:13:58.480but I'm not a different person than I was then. Like I, um, you know, a, a cicada is a cicada,
00:14:07.500no matter, no matter its freaky form. Did you just call me freaky? Um, I think I called us,
00:14:17.380us lately freaky. And I think that's accurate. I think it's accurate. I, um, you know, I think
00:14:22.420it's so wise what you said about like um identity through negation like the x being this um
00:14:31.060i struggled with the title because in my mind it had always been this funny thing while i was
00:14:37.180writing the book but then when it came to put it on the cover i was like is that going to be too
00:14:41.980negative you know is that again like is that it and then you know talking through it with my editor
00:14:48.000it was like well it's a reclamation right because because society has now said you are an ex this
00:14:54.880and there really isn't like I mean just much like with so many other terms in in American society
00:15:01.240it really doesn't have the same weight for men like you know I do like a man doesn't go out into
00:15:07.340the world and like define himself by being an ex-husband I mean he may be my ex-husband but
00:15:13.020like but when I go out into the world people see an ex-wife and that's like very different did you
00:15:20.540find yourself like navigating that identity because I found a lot of people were so weird with me like
00:15:27.460you know like I was gonna start like going out to the bars until 2 a.m and wearing bedazzled jeans
00:15:33.560or something and oh are you saying there's anything wrong with those yeah which I did do
00:15:39.340Which you clearly definitely did. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think and there's no right. I mean, the idea of the divorcee is also such a gendered concept. Like what happens to women? Are they like sad cat ladies post-divorce or are they girls gone wild? And it seems like those are our two options. And I was neither of those things.
00:16:05.240But it's, it's interesting too, because I think as an ex-wife, I'm, I'm sort of defined by negation, but as a wife and mom, I was defined by multiplying. Right. So it's like you are as a woman defined by the people around you present or not present.
00:16:23.980so your value is um who are you to others as opposed to who are you to yourself you know like
00:16:40.120daughter i'm so-and-so's sister um so i think so much of the way that we see ourselves and
00:16:47.280on our conditioned to see ourselves as in relation to other people so of course we think carefully
00:16:54.020about the x-ness of it because we've been pried apart from a like a big identity marker for us
00:17:03.080and it's and it's negative because like then it is you have erred right like you have fallen afoul
00:17:10.300of this narrative that you were supposed to you know i i have i'm one of eight kids i'm number
00:17:16.560were two of eight kids. So big sister energy. I left immediately for college, lived with a bunch
00:17:22.180of women. And then I was even an RA. So again, taking care of people, I immediately got married,
00:17:29.040had, I waited five years to have kids, you know, until we were like 20, 28, 27, 28, really old,
00:17:37.320really old. Um, I'm like horrified now when I know like 27 year olds who are like, I'm getting
00:17:45.280married and i'm like you can't do that you're just a baby no no sweetie yes no honey they're
00:17:51.820like ma'am we're friends um and oh and um and then you know so it was like when i got divorced i was
00:17:59.980like this is the first time i've ever been alone same and it was it was the scariest it was it was
00:18:08.080so scary and i had to like really face myself you know like face quiet time with myself
00:18:15.220Like I couldn't distract myself with like kids. I mean, I ended up adopting like a million pets, which was probably pathological. And it's fine. You know what? It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. It's not mental illness. It's fine.
00:18:28.860but uh yeah I had to face myself and then like through that you know that like empty space that
00:18:38.500were all those relationships that had like woven the cloth of my self-identity I now had to like
00:18:44.100patch some holes and it was one of the scariest things I've ever done and I and I feel that in
00:18:50.200your book um I feel that knitting together of self and really saying who am I in these moments
00:18:57.740when I am not wife and mother. Yeah. Who am I now? I have the same. I mean, I, I had not been
00:19:05.080single. You know, I was 41 years old and I thought, oh my gosh, I just got out of a almost
00:19:12.06019 year relationship, which was preceded by a, you know, four or five year relationship,
00:19:16.880which was preceded in high school by a two year relationship. So if I really wanted to
00:19:22.620like find my way back down the breadcrumb trail to when I was a standalone human being.
00:19:31.160I hadn't even gotten my driver's license yet, let alone lived in the world and paid bills and
00:19:39.680had, you know, any adult responsibilities. So I, I mean, again, okay, that's, uh, that,
00:19:47.880that took some some quick patching as you say who am I now like how do I do this by myself
00:19:54.720logistically financially emotionally I mean just the it felt in the beginning frankly pretty
00:20:03.820insurmountable like I really didn't know how to be in the world as the adult in my house
00:20:13.100and on the flip side of that it has been terrifying and also incredibly empowering
00:20:19.060to figure it out for myself that's I mean that's why I love when you wrote this as a story of a
00:20:26.760woman coming home to herself I think so many divorce narratives especially in movies which
00:20:34.100you know we love them but like they always involve like finding another man and you'll get a kick out
00:20:40.420of this but when I was trying to sell my book there was an editor who was like well just did
00:20:46.840did you uh did you find your happily ever after and I was like well yeah she goes oh no I mean
00:20:53.760like are you seeing somebody and I was like that's not the kind of book I want to write you know and
00:21:00.900but it was just so like offhand and I just realized you know and that's New York City
00:21:07.720it's not even iowa asking right so um i loved i love that you were very pointedly this is a story
00:21:16.360about finding my relationship with myself and uh tell us what have you found who is this woman who
00:21:23.000you've gotten to know who is this person who is this person who's like chainsawing tree limbs in
00:21:30.080the backyard of her home. Right? What? What is happening? Yeah, I had a day last week where I
00:21:38.840chainsawed some tree limbs in my backyard and made homemade banana bread. And my son was like,
00:21:45.860you can do it all. And I was like, that is exactly right. And I want you to pay attention to this
00:21:50.700boy child. Yes. Because this is what this is what I can do. So yeah, I mean, it's my happily ever
00:21:59.100after has really been more about learning to trust myself and take ownership for my life
00:22:09.280and not outsource it out of fear to other people. And so the biggest change I think I've made over
00:22:18.300the past few years is trying not to make decisions out of fear. And I think in my 20s, I made a ton
00:22:26.880of decisions out of fear. In my thirties, I was still making a lot of decisions out of fear.
00:22:32.540And I got to a point where I realized that was really not serving me. So I'm, um, I'm like scared,
00:22:41.140but doing it anyway now. Yes. I think, but I think like, there's so much about, uh, the world that
00:22:51.280wants us to be afraid right like there's you know like there's all those like dateline episodes and
00:22:58.060true crime podcasts this is kind of like a true crime podcast except we get away with it and then
00:23:03.820um but you know that's like really statistically designed to make us feel afraid and I think a lot
00:23:11.500about like how those narratives conspire and statistically we're going to be fine I mean
00:23:17.060statistically we're not really going to be murdered in fact statistically the people who
00:23:21.240are going to murder us might actually be the ones living inside our homes the call is coming from
00:23:26.660inside the house and that's that's the one yeah that's that's the scary one um but you know we
00:23:34.120focus so much on these external fields fears that it makes us you know so terrified of doing the
00:23:40.480brave things of doing the bold things of doing the scary things of doing the non-heteronormative
00:23:45.740things of, you know, breaking this life down and making it what we want, chainsawing it down and
00:23:52.280turning it into something else. And, um, yeah, I, I get the fear. I, I, I feel that all the time
00:23:59.600constantly. Yeah. And yet it's like, okay, I think it's, you know, yesterday was fine. Last
00:24:06.620week was fine. So probably based, if we're trusting the pattern, that's what my therapist
00:24:11.940always says, trust the pattern. If we're trusting the pattern, I'm going to continue to be nervous
00:24:16.660and it will continue to work out. Okay. And so I just have to be able to live with those two things
00:24:23.100simultaneously. And, and like, maybe that's the happily ever after is just learning. You could
00:24:28.920do it yourself and, and not needing to be rescued. Um, you know, and I think there's a lot,
00:24:36.460you know would my parents probably rather me be remarried I'm sure like you know to have someone
00:24:44.560quote take care of me to not be figuring out financially how to do how to raise two kids to
00:24:50.520not have you know this ancient house crumbling around me like the money pit I mean yes of course
00:24:58.620and yet like what's the compromise there like what is the the trade-off and I don't think that
00:25:07.400we should be trading our sort of like sense of wholeness and happiness and self for some
00:25:14.200frankly like not real sense of security because I had a sense of security for many years
00:25:24.120and life was completely upended anyway so you know i'm not to be hyper independent as a form
00:25:32.580of self-protection i don't want to go that route either and just say i'm an island and i'll never
00:25:36.960trust again and that way no one can hurt me i don't i don't believe in that either but i don't
00:25:42.880want to be sort of reaching out for others to fix my life i want to take ownership of it myself
00:25:53.240Yeah, that's so powerful, I think, to realize that, like, you can just be happy, that you do not have to wait to be happy, that you can just, you know, build the life you want now and not wait for that other thing, that other person to come along.
00:26:10.820I have a lot of younger female friends who are like, should I buy, you know, we live, well, you live in Ohio.
00:26:40.820just do it. And things will click into place. I mean, I think so many of the decisions I made
00:26:45.020in my twenties were also really based on what everyone else was doing. Like, well, all my
00:26:51.920friends are moving in with their boyfriends. I guess that's what you do. Well, like all my
00:26:57.640friends are getting engaged. Well, I know I want to get married and have kids someday. So I guess
00:27:02.360that's what you do. Well, now we're married. So like, I'm not getting any younger. We should have
00:27:07.460kids. And I think one of the most sort of freeing parts of being divorced in my 40s is that I've
00:27:16.400already done all of the things that the culture wants me to do. Right. So I don't actually have
00:27:23.660there's no there's no timeline that I need to live on now. I don't have to be like watching
00:27:28.780my other 40 something divorced friends and thinking like, well, you know, we could just
00:27:34.660live our lives because we've already, we've already, I already drank the Kool-Aid. I already
00:27:39.560did all the things and some of them worked out beautifully and others didn't. And now I can just
00:27:47.260kind of make it up as I go without a blueprint that, that someone's handed me.
00:27:55.700I was married for almost 22 years. And in that time, what I learned about my spouse was that
00:28:04.020he did not like to agree. Let's paint the door red or let's install a garden on the side of the
00:28:12.180house or whatever. Like he couldn't bring himself to agree that maybe my idea was also what he was
00:28:16.800thinking to begin with. There was a lot of anger. I learned how to not provoke those outbursts.
00:28:24.680I learned how to be quiet, both literally and figuratively. I learned how to whisk my kids away
00:28:31.940for a few hours if I felt like that needed to happen. It wasn't physically abusive,
00:28:38.220but it was very oppressive. When you live like that, you learn how to quiet yourself. You learn
00:28:43.880how to stop wanting things. And what I felt like was that I had put myself into a tiny box
00:28:50.440and hidden it away in the attic somewhere. So when I finally decided after almost 22 years to leave
00:28:58.340that environment, I thankfully remembered to bring the box with me. It took me a little while to
00:29:04.380realize that I didn't have to be quiet anymore. I didn't have to censor myself. I didn't have to
00:29:10.880worry about those outbursts. And I opened the box and I was delighted to find out that I'm the same
00:29:18.000person that I was when I was 25. I might be a little slower, but I still love the things I love.
00:29:25.660and now I don't have to run anybody, run any of my ideas by anybody. If I want to paint my
00:29:30.700bathroom murder red, I'm going to do it. And it's been the very best thing that I've done for myself
00:29:35.940in my adult life. Even before I read your book, I had a friend texting me pictures of passages.
00:29:47.580um and um and i think you know what passage i'm going to read you um and this is the one that i
00:29:55.940keep seeing shared everywhere you wrote the best things to happen to me individually were the worst
00:30:03.820things to happen to my marriage and then this but the best things remain um tell me why do you think
00:30:13.220this phrase is such a personal gut punch to so many women? I mean, for me personally, I think
00:30:21.900I think we grow as individuals at the same time that we're trying to grow in couples and in
00:30:29.260families. And sometimes the things that happen to us personally upset the balance in the whole,
00:30:37.600Right. So as an individual, my writing career sort of gaining traction was a really beautiful thing that I feel like I worked many, many years to sort of stumble and sort of luck into in lots of ways.
00:30:56.520And then also having kids was something I always wanted to do. And they are like the loves of my
00:31:04.680life, hands down, period. Not sure they'd say the same about me. I'm cool with that. I'm their mom.
00:31:10.440It's fine. It can go one way. It does not need to be a two-way street. That's fine. But I think
00:31:17.320when I look back at the real pressure points in my marriage, and maybe I'm not alone in this
00:31:24.440because if people are sharing this, I'm not alone in this, but the things that brought me the most
00:31:29.600personal fulfillment were also the things that caused the most tension in my family and in my
00:31:38.880marriage, in part because they took my attention and my time and they were places that I invested
00:31:47.400heavily. And there are still places that I invest heavily. It's just that now I can invest heavily
00:31:55.660without guilt. Yeah, I think, you know, I think for so many of the people who I've had conversations
00:32:03.960with about that line, you know, either married or not married, they all say that, you know, like
00:32:10.620that having like these passions and these ambitions become limiting for relationships,
00:32:16.680that there's no space for their their dreams in these relationships even in some of the best0.89
00:32:25.520relationships and you know that is played out statistically um you know women who are bread
00:32:32.420winners are there's one study from australia that's like women who are bread winners are like
00:32:38.16030 percent more likely to be victims of domestic violence you know women who out earn their
00:32:43.420husbands are more, and this is heterosexual partners, you know, are more likely to get
00:32:49.240divorced and that there is just this real inability for women to say like, yes, I want
00:32:55.820this relationship and I want to like, and it's important to me, but also, you know,
00:33:36.240If only this was a two parent household, then we'd have a great solution to that.
00:33:41.800It is. And I and one of the things I find frustrating about it is I think that a lot of what what men say they want when they're dating is ultimately not what they want when they're married and raising kids.
00:33:59.320So all of these like successful, ambitious, maybe out, you know, in the public eye, women then sort of quote unquote settle down. And there seems to be some expectation that that will not continue when you kind of knew what you were getting into all along.
00:34:23.240I find that really problematic. It's very concerning. Isn't it concerning? Because I don't think that that that does not that's not a two way street. I don't think that many women date up like a professional man who maybe travels for work. And then as soon as they get married, expect him to quit his job or stop doing what he's doing.
00:34:48.880I think there is an expectation that whatever the professional life was before will continue and likely ramp up as the person grows and is promoted.
00:35:00.580And these are the expectations that we have.0.80
00:35:03.220And because of, well, this country, that's not the expectation for women.1.00
00:35:10.860It's sort of like, so now you're going to like, what, work part time or scale back because you're going to be raising kids?1.00
00:35:16.980Yes. And Eve Rodsky had this really good fair play. Everybody should read it. It's a wonderful book and I think a little alarming. But, you know, she had this thing where an article she wrote that I quote in my book where she's saying that, like, even if women are like doctors, they still think their job is more flexible.
00:35:41.780If they're lawyers, they say, Oh, my job's more flexible. It literally like women are always0.95
00:35:47.180defining their jobs as more flexible for their family, no matter what they do. So it's not like,0.91
00:35:54.060so there's this idea, Oh, well, women maybe like take more flexible jobs, because that's what they1.00
00:35:58.740want. It's like, no, it's this mentality, actually, like you could have the most demanding, you know,0.99
00:36:04.580heart surgery career ever, and that you that you're still just like, Oh, well, I guess I'm
00:36:11.060on call, you know, so I guess I better, you know, do, do this. And, um, you know, I met you right
00:36:18.020as your career was just like shooting, the beautiful shooting star and, and was, and am
00:36:24.920still so excited for you. But it's always like shocking to me that somebody would not be excited
00:36:31.360about that. You know, that you can love somebody and see them achieving all their dreams and be
00:36:35.940like, okay, a little less. And I think this happens with friendships too. Like if your best
00:36:40.980friend does what you do for a living, and then one of you gets the book deal and the other one
00:36:46.320doesn't, or one of you gets the tenure track job and the other one doesn't. I mean, we see this,
00:36:50.380I think, play out in other relationships other than marriages too. And I would like to believe
00:36:56.800that I'm the kind of person who could be wholly happy and excited for my people when good things
00:37:05.440happen, even if it inconveniences me personally, you know, even if it means like, okay, now we've
00:37:12.600got to put our heads together because I'm not going to be, you're not going to be around. So
00:37:16.320I'm going to have to like pick up the slack. I would hope that if the rules were reversed,
00:37:21.120I would have been really excited and all in. And yet I have no idea because it didn't happen
00:37:29.160that way and so I I want to believe that I would be I would have handled it differently but who
00:37:36.440knows you know and I was in a situation where we weren't even in competing careers right you know
00:37:42.000so I I think it's I think sometimes that's an easy fallback but I think it's there regardless
00:37:49.200although I did date a writer one time who and while I was working on a piece and I was telling
00:37:56.680and like what I was getting per word and he was like oh do you really think you're worth that
00:38:00.960you have got to be kidding me no literally was just like you think you're worth that I was like
00:38:10.620yeah I'm worth more I'm actually worth more I'm yeah being underpaid yeah it was like a dollar
00:38:16.56050 a word I was like no I deserve actually two or three dollars oh why why Liz why
00:38:26.100why no but i just wanted i want to stew in this outrage for a moment no okay fine more questions
00:38:34.520fine yeah no yeah but i let's just a moment of silence get the room tone and the room tone is
00:38:41.980just rage it's just hot like wow it's really hot it's just like wow he can like our producer can
00:38:47.640hear crackling static yeah it's just middle-aged lady rage like the crackling through our homes
00:39:03.060I think, and so, okay, one of the things I love about your book, there are times when you say, I will not be talking about these things, but you acknowledge that they're there, but then just place them on a page.
00:39:17.420how what was that process like and how did you negotiate the taboos and the truth and
00:39:25.240why did you want to do it yeah I mean I sort of had to write this book so that I could write
00:39:32.300other books I mean I really if you would ask me 10 years ago are you ever going to write a memoir
00:39:37.560I would have told you no and probably five years ago I also would have told you no and likely three
00:39:42.760years ago, I would have told you no. And then I got to a point where I was living this experience,
00:39:50.040just absolutely steeped in it every day from the minute I woke up at 3.30 a.m. because I'm an
00:39:57.840insomniac until the minute I went to bed. And I thought, how do I write other things when this
00:40:04.860is the material that life is handing me right now? Like, I just don't know how to set all of this
00:40:11.480aside and write something else. My brain didn't want to do that. And so it kind of felt like this
00:40:17.220giant armoire, like blocking a doorway. And in order to move the thing out of the way, I had to
00:40:23.700write the book. And yes, I was scared to do it. I was scared. I was scared of getting in trouble.
00:40:30.100I was scared of being judged. I was scared of being called a blabbermouth. I was scared of
00:40:36.200being called a bad mom. I was scared of writing in a genre that is not my home genre and sort of
00:40:44.840making it up as a poet and doing it in a sort of idiosyncratic way that maybe people wouldn't
00:40:52.440attach to formally and structurally. And yet I still felt like I had to do it. And so I just
00:41:01.520sort of found my way little by little writing these vignettes because I'm a poet it made sense
00:41:07.800for me to write small and that also gave me courage because instead of tackling it as some
00:41:13.460giant you know 300 page project I was like oh I'll tell this story I'll share this image I'll
00:41:21.380think about it in this way I'll talk directly to the reader to create the sense of intimacy
00:41:26.880because if I'm going to be this vulnerable in the stories that I'm telling I want the telling
00:41:34.640itself to be intimate you know like I want to be able to think of the reader as a human being and
00:41:41.380not as some like faceless crowd that I'm handing all of my life to because I'm not sure I could
00:41:49.300have done it that way. And so the way that I wrote the book sort of enabled me to write and
00:41:59.320publish the book, it gave me the courage to do it. And I knew, I knew because really, I've had
00:42:06.420to do so much boundary work over the past few years, just in life, forget on the page, just in
00:42:12.800life, that I wanted to enact that in this book and not be coy about it, but acknowledge to the
00:42:23.260reader because I respect the reader's intelligence. Like, look, you came to this book probably
00:42:27.980expecting X, Y, and Z, and I'm going to give you X and like half of Y. And that's it. And it's not
00:42:36.180because i'm trying to be difficult it's because this is not a novel it's my life and i i need to
00:42:43.940i need you as a human being to understand that i'm only able to offer you what i'm comfortable
00:42:50.100with and what i think you need to know and then there's going to be some things that i reserve
00:42:55.840for myself or that i allow my kids to reserve for themselves because it's not my story to tell
00:43:04.040Yeah, I think that, you know, as female writers who write about ourselves and our lives, even if, I mean, you're a poet, so a lot of, I think a lot of people's interpretations of poetry is like, this is everything, when it could be like a persona, you know, but it doesn't matter.
00:43:26.180Even if we were, like, writing sci-fi novels, people would still be like, oh, is that you?
00:43:31.260Is that, you know, is that alien, is that giant Martian cicada you?
00:43:36.620And you're like, yeah, how do you know?
00:43:40.220There's a lot of, like, and it goes two ways because I appreciate an audience that cares, and I appreciate it when people care, and I appreciate that people feel invested in me and in my work.
00:43:52.240But there are some times when I am like, oh, that is, we have crossed a line and I can't give all of myself on the page, right? Because I have to keep some for myself. And I think there is that, there's that expectation, again, of women that we just like cut our veins open and bleed for everybody in our relationships and our, you know, our romantic relationships with our children.
00:44:19.980And that even as writers, we can't escape that, you know, expectation that people will just like take everything from us unless we stop, unless we say, hey, no, like I need to retain some of my own blood to keep my own heart beating.
00:44:36.200Yeah, I actually I don't want to have to transfuse myself for this.
00:44:38.900Thank you. Yeah. And honestly, there's not really a way to win, because if you if you give everything, because that's what you think people want, you will be criticized for telling too much.
00:44:51.060Oh, yes. And if you hold things back, you will be criticized for not giving enough of the story.
00:44:57.800if you're angry you will be criticized for being angry if you are not angry enough
00:45:05.980this has happened to me you will be criticized for not being angry enough
00:45:10.700um so i just i kind of feel if you're sad you're pitiful if you're not sad you're cold
00:45:18.280there there's not really an acceptable way to feel off or on the page and to sort of present
00:45:25.420to self, I think. And part of what I wanted to do in this book was sort of open up a conversation
00:45:31.240with the reader. And not to shame the reader, like, why do you want to know this much about
00:45:36.860my life? But to sort of self-interrogate and invite the reader to self-interrogate a little
00:45:42.100bit too. Like, why would you want to know this about my life? You don't know me. Like, why this
00:45:50.960expectation of sort of asymmetrical giving which frankly is a problem for women anyway and I think
00:45:57.480one thing about divorce was learning how for me how to shut off that spigot you know um it was as
00:46:05.100my marriage was crumbling when I shut down my mom blog because I was like I can't be honest
00:46:09.500you know and and I didn't at that time I didn't want to be you know we were in marriage therapy
00:46:14.020and there was a lot that was going on that was frankly nobody else's business and um and but I
00:46:20.500was like I cannot be an honest writer and write about my life and without talking about these
00:46:26.900things so I'm just turning it off I'm turning this figure off and um and and I think a lot of
00:46:33.100and and I've learned too like how to walk out of rooms I don't want to be in like it's not just
00:46:38.820about writing and building boundaries it's like being a person and building boundaries being like
00:46:43.780I actually don't want to be here I have maybe I have said yes to writing this article but now
00:46:48.880that we're in it I feel very uncomfortable with the edits and so I would like to say respectfully
00:46:54.400let's just walk away you know um so many the power of refusal is truly a gift yeah that's that
00:47:03.480boundary setting piece I mean I I found and I'll be curious to see sort of like how how this has
00:47:11.400gone for you and how it will continue to go for you but I found the beginning of book tour for
00:47:18.460the memoir to be absolutely excruciating. I think the first 48 hours were some of the hardest
00:47:26.160hours like I had in years, frankly, and not until I learned to go into a bookstore, a venue and say,
00:47:38.700I'm going to be setting boundaries. So during Q&A, you're not going to ask me if my ex-husband
00:47:45.400has read this book and what he thinks you're not going to ask me if I asked his permission to write
00:47:50.740it you're not going to ask me how my kids are doing or how they feel about it you're not going
00:47:55.500to ask me these questions because I'm not going to answer them and being able to sort of like
00:48:01.160you know and like with good humor I mean I wasn't rude about it but being able to like
00:48:05.620in the beginning during those conversations kind of set boundaries with the audience and just say
00:48:11.480I'm here. Like ask me craft questions, ask me questions about like working up the courage to
00:48:16.100do the thing or, or what this feels like for me, but I want to keep the answers grounded in my
00:48:21.820own experience. And I will not be speaking on behalf of others at all or divulging anything
00:48:28.560else about my family. And once I found out that I can just do that, like I'm allowed to do that,
00:48:35.960it got so much better and easier and lighter and more relaxed because I felt like I was no longer
00:48:42.980at the mercy of others I felt like I was in control of the situation I mean how often have
00:48:50.680women not just female writers but been in situations where people are asking just the
00:48:56.020most insanely personal questions of us and and we feel compelled to answer because we don't want to
00:49:04.140be rude rude yeah what they're asking is for us to like flay ourselves you know on this altar of
00:49:12.800conversation and and and we can say no like we do not have to offer ourselves up you know over and
00:49:22.100over and over again for this ritual bloodletting and men do not have the same experience you know
00:49:28.760No, people are not asking. I mean, I think men get many more craft and sort of like professional development questions than than women do. And and and I think there's there is also like questions that women are asked, that questions that women writers are asked that are really judgments in the form of questions.0.96
00:49:54.760questions? Who's watching your children? Who's got the kids? Who are the kids? How much
00:50:00.840consideration did you give them before writing about X, Y, or Z? Oh, yeah, did you think about
00:50:05.800the children? I'm like, what? Oh, oh, I have kids? No, I didn't think about them at all. I don't,
00:50:10.940who, who are they now? Do you have photos? Because I don't remember who they are. Just,
00:50:16.440it's so condescending. And really the, the subtext of all of those questions is,
00:50:21.980i think you should have done this differently i think you should have handled this differently
00:50:27.300but i'm not i'm not going to offer that as i'm not going to offer it as judgment because i don't
00:50:31.680have the bravery to do that so i'm going to couch it as a question to ask you to justify
00:50:38.020your decision making around this we're gonna have another moment of silence for some rage
00:50:43.140crackle crackle crackle another little rage silence just so i can pull myself together
00:50:50.080I, um, one of my favorite responses when, you know, I'm out reporting or something and people
00:50:55.920are like, where are your children? You know, and I'm like, oh, I locked him in the basement.
00:51:00.880They're in the trunk. Yeah, I locked him in the trunk. Maggie, you're writing this as you're
00:51:08.400negotiating your new sense of self. So what did that look like on the page and in your thought
00:51:12.980processes? I mean, I think that's part of the form of the book reflects the fact that I'm writing it
00:51:19.500from the sort of mess in the middle and not from a place of, you know, the book I think would sound,
00:51:26.960feel and look remarkably different if written in 10 or 15 or 20 years from a place of looking back
00:51:35.760on this time in my life and having a different kind of bird's eye view on the sort of bigger
00:51:42.120picture. And maybe there's value to that. Like maybe I'll write a different book in 20 years
00:51:47.820looking back on this time in my life. And that will be a different experience. But for me,
00:51:53.940I, you know, they say, write the book that you need. I wasn't seeing books about this kind of
00:52:01.280experience written from inside the experience. I wasn't seeing books written about this experience
00:52:08.800that didn't end with a remarriage or, or just with a lot of like sadness, frankly, at the end,
00:52:17.300like feeling unresolved. And so I wanted to kind of lean into it and write it from the middle
00:52:24.160because I think there's value in capturing this kind of experience. Now, could I have written
00:52:31.460this book from the middle and not published it just to have it for myself? I suppose I could have,
00:52:38.820but when I finished it, I thought, actually, no, this is a book that I would have liked to read
00:52:45.260if it had been written by someone else, I think it would have helped me feel less alone
00:52:50.280in my own experience. Yes. I hear from so many women who want to talk about their lives and
00:53:00.160want to share and want to hear other stories. But again, it's so fraught to say these things,
00:53:07.700especially with the other narratives still walking around, you know, out there able to
00:53:14.380contradict you on Facebook and then cause a mess you know it's really it's really difficult and I
00:53:20.620resonate so much with that when I was going through my divorce I mean there's a lot of like
00:53:24.180divorce memoirs right and there are also a lot of like how-to books like how to get your life
00:53:31.160back you know how to find a man again how not to be the sad divorce yes I interviewed a woman who
00:53:38.060runs like a you know like a wealthy you know wealth for uh single women kind of a thing and0.91
00:53:46.400i'm not gonna name it uh but she was like nobody likes a sad sex so like don't like revel in your
00:53:53.800misery but i was like all my conversations with my friends are us talking about these realities
00:54:01.440Right. Are us like are us kicking over the log of the heterosexual relationship and saying this is the truth of my life.
00:54:09.880And I just wish more people would be like that. But, you know, like you said, when a woman does, it's like you're being negative.0.89
00:54:16.120It's hard. It's hard. I mean, I and it what makes it worth it for me is getting emails and, you know, cards and letters sent care of my local bookstore and DMs where someone will say this was the most accurate depiction of what this experience felt like.1.00
00:54:39.240Like even if the details of my life were different, but this accurately reflected what it felt like, that kind of, you know, treading over the same territory and kind of all of that, the sort of like waves of grief that you feel and the sort of like the chewing the cud of your experience and not being able to let things go.
00:55:05.080that I think I don't think I could have written that experience so faithfully in 20 years because
00:55:11.940I wouldn't it wouldn't be fresh enough psychologically in my mind for me to be
00:55:17.300able to access that and I needed to do it in a moment um and I'm so glad you did all right
00:55:27.260you also write when you lose someone you love you start to look for new ways to understand the world
00:55:33.740Maggie, tell us what new ways are you seeing and understanding the world now?
00:55:39.540Well, you know, the thing is, I get to sort of see through my own eyes now without having to see through anyone else's in a way.
00:55:50.340Right. So like having a kind of singular vision for your life.
00:55:55.040Now, of course, the kids are not in the trunk of the car or locked in the basement.
00:55:59.100So I'm, I'm, I'm still, you know, really also seeing through their eyes and processing alongside them and, and raising them up. So it's not quite a singular vision. It's a singular vision with children. But it's, it's that being able to make decisions for myself without permission or apology. That's the new way of being in the world.
00:56:25.220Is it always comfortable? No. Is it sometimes terrifying? Yes. Do I have any idea what my life will look like in four years? I don't actually. But what I realized is I didn't, I didn't 10 years ago either. I mean, I didn't see any of the things coming that happened.
00:56:43.660And so that kind of illusion of security and safety that my marriage gave me, that kind of veil being lifted, I think allows me to see things a little bit more, more clearly for myself now. That's the sort of new understanding for me.
00:57:01.460yeah that illusion that marriage is somehow stability or you is is so or or you're less
00:57:11.860lonely or all those things it's just that's the thing that I think of all the time when I'm at
00:57:17.580you know in a moment where I'm like oh well you know I'm like I was never more lonely than I was
00:57:23.680in a marriage my marriage you know because there's nothing more lonely than sitting next
00:57:29.660to the person who's supposed to love you most in the world and having them not have a single thing
00:57:34.280to say to you and that's a deep loneliness it's a it's a heartache loneliness that you can't and
00:57:42.220you can't even talk about it's so hard to talk about when you're there um and and then to come
00:57:49.280out of that and to say yeah loneliness is maybe just a part of the human existence and and whatever
00:57:55.520you know whatever stability we have can just be gone in a minute listen if we learn one thing
00:58:00.120from 2020 we should all learn that we're all gonna die immediately so just be happy now
00:58:05.940and read maggie smith's book immediately don't wait you could die tomorrow so buy it now
00:58:12.300this american ex-wife is a podcast created by me liz lens and zachary oran smith the male
00:58:21.860mustache of power who must always keep an eye on us unruly women if you liked what you heard you
00:58:28.920can buy my book this american ex-wife which will be published on february 20th 2024 pre-orders
00:58:35.860really help determine the success of a book and you can pre-order the book through your local
00:58:41.180bookstore bookshop.org or wherever books are sold listen if you don't want a copy i'm sure you know0.89