Thursday: Sharing Our Voices

When I planned my weekly editorial calendar for this version of my blog (my first blog, believe it or not, was back in 1999; I called it “The Reading Writer”), I thought that these Thursday posts would be all about mental wellness and community.

I hope they will be about that, much of the time, but since I’ve only been posting here for a few weeks I don’t yet have a lot of stories to share from other people. (NB: If you’d like to share your story with me, please head to my Contact page. I’d love to hear from you.) So I hope you won’t mind if I use this space today to talk a bit about my own new-ish journey in sharing my voice with the world.

Yesterday I was a guest on a wonderful podcast called The Book Cougars. Chris Wolak and Emily Fine, who are based in Connecticut, asked me some of the best questions about Life B that I’ve had so far. They had both read my memoir carefully, responded to it in their own ways, yet conducted the interview as co-hosts with great rapport and collaboration. It was a joy to experience.

What surprised me is that I rose to the occasion. This shouldn’t surprise me, as I’ve conducted so many interviews with authors and seen things from the other side. . . but there you go. This is the first time I’ve truly been on the other side, the author side, and it is definitely different. Not in negative way, either.

At one point, Emily asked me a question — and I responded with an answer I’d never given before and never even thought before, let alone formulated. I had to take a moment and say so. I felt such gratitude to Emily and to the universe for leading me to that answer, which was about the feminist aspect of my book (I’m not giving it out yet in case it forms part of the podcast to come!).

Sharing out stories, you see, isn’t just about getting other people to listen or to understand. It’s about each of us learning more about our own narratives as others respond to them.