Playing Out All Your Trauma in the Fictional World with Kathleen Glasgow

Welcome to the shit show. Things are going to get weird. It's your fave villain, Kayla. And you're listening to Barely Famous.

All right, everyone. Today we have an author on the podcast, Miss Kathleen Glasgow. She's a New York Times and internationally best-selling author, renowned for her impactful young adult fiction. I actually started with Girl in Pieces, which was her debut novel. In Kathleen's book, she talks about mental health, grief, self discovery, and I absolutely love her storytelling. I've actually read three out of five books of hers. So I absolutely recommend going out and checking these books out. Before venturing into novel writing, she actually was a poet.

And I think that's really cool because people sleep on poetry. Anyway, welcome Kathleen Glasgow to Barely Famous Podcast. Thank you for making time for me. I'm so excited. You're like my teen mom, OG, my favorite one, like forever. And I can't tell you how happy I am for you that you are doing all this stuff and you're making it work. And also, I only have two kids and I feel like I don't know what I'm doing.

like it. And whenever I see you with your kids like, she's really got this together. Like, I think it's the highlights, real of social media, because I also don't have it figured out. I literally was panicking today because my son had a little field trip that I was going on. Yeah. And I was like, okay, first of all, what entrance do I go in? And then by the time I figured it out, I almost was like missing a start of it, but I thankfully needed it. And I was like, I don't know.

Who, why there's no handbook for this, but there's just not? There's not, there's not a man, there are manuals for parenting and there are not manuals for parenting and like all kids, all kids are different. It's the thing. Do you know what I mean? Like your one kid is not the same as like your other kid like at all. So you have to have like 12 different types of parenting just for like, you know, your kids and it's like, Oh my God.

By the time I got to my fourth child, I was like, wait, he completely threw me for a loop with the not sleeping and all of that. And so I was like, oh, wow, like I, even though I had three kids before him, I was starting over, right? Like you just are starting from scratch. Yeah. But I have to tell you that when I got to my reading journey,

Um, a couple of years ago, I started reading on planes and one of the books that I read was girl and pieces. That was the first book that I picked up. And I think I DM'd you on Instagram. I did. And I was like, this is everything to me because I also struggle with being the daughter of an addict. And so I think in that way, girl and pieces sort of tugged on my heartstrings a little bit. And, and it wasn't even because there was addiction in there, but it was when you, you'd be home.

Now that one I read on the plate the entire book cover to cover. I.

I don't know what it is. Cause I normally I wouldn't say I'm a YA girly, but there's something about your books that I relate so hard to and I cannot recommend them enough. So please, can you, will you talk about the inspiration behind girl and pieces? You'd be home now and make, um, how to make friends with the dark. Will you talk about the inspiration behind those folks? Oh yeah. Absolutely. So let's start with girl and pieces since that was the first one I read. These books are very well loved and this is

The first one that I read by Kathleen Glavsko was girl in pieces. Yay! First of all, I want to say it's really great that you said that you read on planes because a lot of times now that's where I get like my uninterrupted reading time is on planes and I like buy a book that I know absolutely that I'm gonna savor it on the plane for like that tire plane ride and you like you're sinking into a book

And were you not a big reader when you were growing up? I absolutely was not a reader. I mean, I would just read when I had to. And then in my.

Travels like on the plane and stuff. It was like I want to be productive I don't want to buy the Wi-Fi and be scrolling on my phone the same thing I do on the ground Yeah, so I started picking up books at airports and I started with some true crime, but then I believe it was Maybe Thailand or Texas some somewhere I picked up girl and pieces and I was like oh This is it and and this is what really just set me off on the reading journey

So I think like I was always a big reader, but I had this like time in my when I was a teen where I couldn't concentrate on reading a lot. And so I wasn't reading a lot. But then I found the books that sucked you in. And I always tell people and they're like, well, I don't really like to read whether they're a kid or an adult. They're like, I just I can't I don't really like it. And I tell them keep trying because

It doesn't matter. You can go through these times where you're like, I'm not reading. I don't know what to read, or I don't like it. But you're going to find that book, like you found books, right? And then you were in. Yeah. And now you'll keep trying, even if you pick up a book and you say, but you're still going to go try to pick up another one because once you find one that you really like, you can't stop. And so sometimes it takes years. And I tell other parents who's like, Oh, my kids aren't your graders. I don't want to do them. Like, they'll find it.

Just like, yeah, they will just keep encouraging them because I have, I have one who's a big reader and one who's not. And, but when she finds a book, she's like in it. Yeah. You just have to like keep trying. And for sure, because my kids also, they've always been great readers, you know, in school and with the, you know, AR or whatever the system is today. I don't even know what it is. Um, they,

they read when they have to, but then I think with how much I've been reading over the past like year and a half, they're into it. And I think also part of that is, you know, I talk about, you know, I'm in a book that I don't, I don't necessarily love, but I push through and then I pick up another one. And I think that piece alone has encouraged them to keep trying, especially my oldest son who is 14, he's going to be 15 next month, but

He, I got him a ton of books and he's like, I don't really vibe with these. And so he, he kind of gave up for a little while. But then I think he was like, all right, mom's still reading books and she doesn't, you know, necessarily like this one, but she still picked up one after. And so I think that has influenced, you know, him. I think what you're saying is, is so valid. Yeah, you just, you just keep trying, like, don't shame your kids for not being big readers or not being interested. Just keep like putting things in front of them or see what they're interested in. And, you know, just say one day you're going to find that book.

And then you're going to be, you're going to be like, you're going to be in it. And that's really, yeah, hook line and ticker. So girl in pieces, um, I started out as a poet and I was very happy doing that and being alone with my fingerless gloves and whatnot, like typing out my little poems and sending them off to literary magazines. And I liked the isolation that to me came with being a poet where you'd be quiet and really

you know, not too many people are going to read your poem. And that's great. And then one day when I was on a bus in my late 20s going to my job at the University of Minnesota, this girl sat down next to me and her sleeves were pushed up and she was about 15. And she had fresh scars on her arm. And like that, did you ever have like those moments in life where you

You see someone younger and it like kind of blows you apart because you're like, wait, that was me. And you really wish you could just tell them if you hold on, it's going to be okay. Yeah, right.

And that girl was me. I was like, that is what I was like at 15, like harming, in depression, drinking, doing drugs, doing anything I could to make myself disappear. And when she saw me looking, she pushed down like the sleeves of her.

Sure. And then she got off at the next stop. And I should have said something to her. Like I told you, I should have said it's going to be, it's going to be okay. Like, that's me. You and I are the same. We're in it together. We're a little army.

You know, no, not at all. Yeah. And I couldn't stop thinking about her. And I thought about her for like weeks and weeks. And I kept like, like all the things that I had pushed down in myself in order to get to where I was like at that moment in my life, seeing that girl made it all bubble to the surface.

And for years like in my writing classes and my friends, you know, they would see my scars and they're like, you should write about that. And I was like, oh, no, no, no, no one wants to hear about that. But I couldn't stop thinking about her. And I thought, you know, I'll write about it because that's what I do. And what I've always done when something is like difficult, like I write about it, I'm a big journaler. But it felt like it was really too big for like one poem.

Or even like three. And I thought, well, no one's going to read this anyway. And I don't know how to write a novel. But when you're a writer, it shouldn't really matter if you don't know how to do something. You just try. Like who really knows how to write a novel?

Like, I've learned now that every novel is different and every time I start writing a book, I don't know how to write that book until it tells me how to write it. And I just started writing. And I wrote for nine years. And there were 13 because no one was going to read it. It was just for me. Like, who was going to read a story about this girl who self harms, right? I didn't have intentions to know. No, no, no, it was only for me. And I was in a really

I was in a really great bubble writing it because it was really bringing out all these thoughts and feelings that I hadn't wanted to think about for a very long time. And during that process of drafting the book, which ended up having like 13 drafts total, first my sister died, which was five days after my first child was born, which is like a whole other thing. And then my mother died. And I didn't write for a year.

after my mother died, like I just could not, like I could not.

And then one morning I went back to the draft and I realized that what was wrong with the book, which was called at that point, the tender kit was that I still wasn't talking about what I should be talking about. And I had given Charlie in those drafts a supportive family and a supportive best friend and everything that happened with Riley. It happened before the events that started the draft.

And in that moment was like my mother gone and my sister gone. I was an open wound.

And I felt orphaned and alone in the world. And I realized that was how I felt when I was 15, even though my mother had been like really helpful and supportive and loving to me when I was going through these things. And I realized I needed to make Charlie that orphaned and alone. And I needed to make her an open wound because if anyone did read it, any kids, if they ever read this book, that was how they felt.

Like they had no one. Yeah, especially at that age. I feel like

I mean, depression doesn't look the same for everyone, but you can't be, both can be true. You can have an incredible family and supportive parents and still have to be depressed. Like that is so good. Real and valid and so many people can relate to that. I mean, I look at my mom's story, you know, my own mom and I'm like, you have the most incredible family. How did it, how did you turn out like this? You know what I mean? So I think that that is so valid.

Yeah, you can. You just feel utterly alone. Even if you have people who are saying, I want to help you, let's get you some therapy. What's going on? For kids, especially, it's very hard to articulate.

what is happening inside them that I think especially is causing them to self-harm. They don't know how to say it and they don't want to tell their parents because then there are disappointment to their parents because then their parents are worried about them. So now they've caused a problem or some parents truthfully are not going to be supportive and what they're going to say is

What are you doing to yourself? What is going on? They're not going to say, why are you doing this? And the most important thing is when someone is struggling something, you need to ask them, not like, why are you doing this? What's wrong with you? You have to ask them, what happened to you?

That's the thing. You have to get to the very core like what happened to you because something happened and you have to give kids and people, especially the place to say what happened without judgment. And sometimes like a book is that thing. And then it gives you a language because you see yourself in that experience in the book and you say, Oh my God, someone understands. And sometimes that gives you the language to tell someone like,

this is me, this is me, and that can be the thing that helps you hold on. And so with Girl in Peace is when I finally, that's how the book that you're reading today, like when I started that draft a year after my mother died, and I took everything away from Charlie and I made her utterly alone, that's the book that you're reading today.

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What was the turning point for you when you were like, okay, I'm gonna publish this?

So I had a really fun and supportive boss, Julie Schumacher, who's also a novelist, and you should read her books because she's the funniest person I know. They're just hysterical. And she said, what are you doing? You've been working on this thing, and what is happening? Nothing is happening. What's going on? Can I read it? And I was like, OK, here's like 20 pages. And she's like, you know, OK.

You should go to a writing conference and you should, like, take a workshop. Then you should get some feedback. And I was like, well, okay. Well...

All right, so I went to a writing workshop, the Taos Writers Workshop in New Mexico. And I had this great workshop with these people and the teacher there, Antonio Nelson was really, they were supportive, but while it was there, I paid the $50 or whatever, so you could have a 20-minute conference with a literary agent.

And the agent would have read like your 20 pages and then said, oh, I think this is really greater. This is what you need to work on and whatnot. But I ended up getting signed by that agent. And I didn't know anything about like what it means to sign with the literary agent for a novel because I was a poet and no one cares about us. They just find you right there or did the conversation from the 20 minute conference.

kind of get carried into the next step. It got carried into the next step. Okay. And it was emails. And I was with that agent for three years. And I was continuing to revise the book. But, and this sometimes happens. Like the agent was really supportive and nice, but also wanted, I think, to move the book in a different direction than I wasn't comfortable with, like more of

an adult book and maybe sort of a thriller type of book and to amp up some aspects of the book that I was not comfortable with like the sexual aspects.

And we eventually, you know, my boss again, Julie said, wait, you've been with this agent for three years. What is going on? Is your book being sent out? What is happening? And I was like, no. And she's like, I think it's OK. And I didn't know this at the time. And I would tell writers this now. So you don't have to stay with an agent for your entire career. Like some people, they move to different agents because maybe you want to write fantasy, but your current agent is like, I don't, I don't do fantasy, right? Right.

It just happens. Like you evolve and your relationship with your agent evolves. So I parted ways with that agent and everything was very amicable. And so I went, I went on the internet and I looked up literary agents based on the books that I liked because everyone thanks their agents in the acknowledgments. And I thought, well, if they liked that book, they might like mine because it's similar.

And you send it to them and you send like a little excerpt and you describe your book. And I got mostly rejections. Some people never responded at all. Some people responded with this book is a beautiful book. No one is going to publish this book. They're not going to think this is a suitable subject matter. I don't know where I would place this like teen or adult.

I can't. Writing is beautiful. I'm sorry. I wish you the best of luck. And then I got this really great email from Julie Stevenson, who is my agent now. And it was really long. And she had notes in the email about small changes she wanted to make to the book.

But she also wrote about the book and how she felt reading the book and she got the book. She understood the book and we talked on the phone and we got along right away because I really like people who have kind of a dark sense of humor.

And I thought, well, this is the person. And she was the champion for the book. And she had a plan, and she knew who to send it to. And she had a timeline, and we worked on it for, I think, maybe two months. And then she sent it out. And then a week later, we had multiple offers. And some of them were, they were from adult editors, and some were from YA editors. And I ended up going with Krista Marino at Delacorte, because again, when I talked to her on the phone,

She got the book. Right. Like other editors had said, we're gonna, we would probably edit out some of these more graphic descriptions of self harm. And I was like, I think those have to be in there because I think that the, if anyone reads this book in there, this is happening to them. They, they need to see those hearts. They need to know that like the person who's writing it understands and gets it.

And then, you know, the rest is history and I'm still with Krista and Julie to this day because they, they both like, they get it and they understand the types of books that I write. Yeah. And they're incredibly funny and encouraging. So, you know, my, my story is kind of, I was very lucky. I was really, I was really lucky with that first look. And I was, I was very lucky when it came out.

that so many people responded to it because I did not expect like that response at all that so many kids would be reading that book and that I mean it was published in 2016 and we're in 2024 now and the book has always done well and resonated with people and it's really kind of amazing like I can't believe it.

Well, I was about to say, I think what resonates with adults and young adults, right? Like, I don't think why it doesn't necessarily put you in the YA box. I know it's a considered a YA book, even, you know, the series, but I, I think I read girl and pieces when I was 29 or 30. And I still very much resonate with it. Um, I don't think I read these in order because I read girl and pieces, then you'd be home now and then how to make friends with the dark or does it matter?

It doesn't matter because they're all standalones, like they're all separate stories like characters don't appear in one book and then another one. And a lot of adults do, they read my books and I think it's because they went through those same things when they were younger and they didn't have anyone to talk to about it and they didn't have any books like that when they were teens. And so the books resonate with them because they're working through their stuff.

And like I said, you know, you can work through stuff while you're reading a book. And I always hope that the story is good. I don't start any book with a message or anything. I just start a book because I'm interested in thinking about how that character would deal with that thing. And people, you know, they're like, well, is Charlie Davis a story and girl in pieces your story. And it is not my story.

I could start with a kernel of something real that happened to me, like with girl in pieces, self-harm and depression. But, you know, I'm a writer, so other things take over, and I'm not interested in putting my story on the page. I'd rather do it through fiction. And so I tell people, I gave Charlie Davis to my scars, and I gave her my thoughts and feelings about self-harm and depression and what it's like to feel alone in the world.

And so when you finally published Girl in Pieces, did you have the goal to write more books at that point? Or what was the plan?

My, after I turned in the draft of, um, I signed a two book deal with girl and pieces. Okay. My editor had said to me on the phone before the contract, she said, do you think you could write another book? And I was like, sure, I guess I'll give it a shot. I guess I'll try again. All right. I'll try to write another novel. And so I did have a two book contract. And so the second book was actually how to make friends with the dark.

And then you'd be, you'd be home now is after that. Okay. So I did read them out of publishing order, but yeah. Um, can we, can we talk about the inspo behind how to make friends with the dark? So how to, yes.

Did you cry while you were reading it? I cried while I read all three of them. I just have it. I have not got to read the glass girl yet. So I want to talk about that today too. But I haven't gotten to this one yet. And also love the straight edges. Absolutely. I know it's target. It's book of the year and they gave me straight edges and this ombre cover. And it's so pretty. It has the strength stuff inside. It's so beautiful.

And I feel I'm so excited that like target named it a book of the year because I personally have spent a lot of time in Target Wandering the aisles leaping softly, you know drinking the Starbucks and enjoying myself and checking out the end cap specials and I'm like Target is finally recognizing my deep devotion to them That's how I feel about that. So thank you target. I feel I feel seen

It's really like all of my time has paid off. So yeah, we'll talk about Glass Girl too, but I want.

Because basically, from what I'm hearing from you is that you were inspired sort of unintentionally for girl and pieces, right? And so I think that you get signed and you publish this and they're like, hey, do you think you can write a second one? It's like, if you didn't have intentions of publishing it in the first place and it was sort of the inspiration behind it was a divine intervention, really, you know, this sort of aligned for you to produce this novel, how do you then

come up with another idea for how to make friends with the dark. Well, if we rewind a little, my mother and my sister have passed away. And my sister died five days after my son was born. And I didn't really have time

to fully sit with that because I was trying to take care of this baby. And you know, like with your first child, I don't know how to take care of a baby. And there are some like aspects of my life where no one told me, how do you take care of a baby? Or how do you be like a good, attentive, loving parent? So I was like, I had to do that, right? And then

you know, then my mother died and then I felt utterly alone. And I, you don't, like grief never leaves you. It's always there. It's a, when it came time to write the second book, I thought, I'm going to write about grief because I'm really thinking about it right now. And it's really, it's like, I miss these people and I miss like what our lives

could have been like if we were all together again. And I thought, I'm going to write about that because even though I'm an adult now, and I lost them both as adults, I have some tools to manage my grief as much as it can be managed. But what if that had happened to me when I was a teenager? Like, what if like Tiger says in the book, the one person who could help me through this would be my mother?

But she's dead. What then? What happens to you, especially when it's tiger? Was it happens to tiger? Her father, she's never known, is in prison. Where does she go? What happens to you? When you have like no one and you've lost the one person?

And I really wanted to talk about grief from the aspect of a teenager who's like, in it. And so I, I wrote that book. And it was very, it was, I would, for me, I would say that's the saddest book that I wrote. Because I, like grief, we don't really talk about grief a lot. People tell you, or you'll heal.

And you'll get past this. But to a kid, that's absolutely the worst thing that could happen to you. Like you don't get over it. You can't get past it. And you are not going to heal. You're just going to.

paper over your wound for a little bit and try to get through every day, but everything is going to be a reminder. Your first day is like junior year, your mother's not there. Your first like date, your mother's not there. If you go to college, your mother's not like those people will never be there. And so you can't get beyond that feeling of being without them, like forever. And I wanted to talk especially about those emotional issues, but also

talk a little bit about what it's like for kids in the foster care system and what happens to them and how they can get bounced around. And I wanted those kids to have a voice, so I gave Tiger all these kids that she meets like Badius and Leonard and all the other kids that she meets in foster care. And I didn't realize until after I finished the book in like the first few drafts that in the character of her half sister, I was really

like trying to bring my own sister back. Because that character has some of the same beautiful, like kind, loving and freewheeling traits that my sister had. Like I lived with my sister for a little bit when I was a teen, when things were not going well for me. And it was very much like, you know, we're just having hohos for dinner tonight.

That tiger's like, wait, that's not a real. That's not a dinner. It's like, yes, it is. And we're just going to watch TV. You know, and I gave her some of those things. And then I did realize after I finished that, I'm like, am I trying to bring my sister, we see back somehow? Am I trying to immortalize her? And I think that I did in a good way. And I feel

really proud of that. Well, it's going to say, I think that you were able to use those little kernels for, you know, something really powerful. And I think that's incredible that you were able to incorporate her in that way. Um, how did the publisher, when you went to your publisher with the draft of this, what, how did that go? Oh, she was all, she was like great with that. There was a moment early on where I turned in this draft, um, that

Because when girl and pieces came out, I was really kind of...

overwhelmed by the reaction to it. And a lot of people loved it. But everyone's saying, Oh my God, this book is so sad. And this book is so traumatic. And it's like I lived with self harm. And I've lived with a lot of other things in my life that are really sad and traumatic.

They seem normal to me. Do you know what I mean? You just get used to them. You're like, this is how my life was. And so I developed a self-defense mechanism, which a lot of people do. And this is why I love my recovery group, because everyone has a very dark sense of humor about the things that they've gone through. And you can joke about it with each other.

I was very overwhelmed by that and I was like, if people think this is so sad, maybe I should not write such a sad book. So I had turned in this draft of how to make friends with the dark to my editor and she was like, okay, great.

I'm going to read through this." And then she went on this month-long vacation. And while she was gone, I was like, you know, maybe I should rewrite this and I should make it funnier because grief can be really funny when you think about it, like, oh my God, you're dead. What happened? What is happening to me? And I rewrote it so that I thought it was funnier. And then when she came back and read that draft, she said,

Kathleen, what are you, what is going on? What happened? No, no, no, no, no. The other draft, that's the one. That's what you do. That's what I love about you. That's what people are going to love about this book is that you get to it. You're a dark writer. That's who you are. And I needed to hear that, that everything was going to be kind of dark and sad from that moment on, whatever book that I wrote. And I was like, okay.

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I think that there is, you know, there's a place for dark humor, right? And making it funny. I think there's a place for that. And maybe in the future, you could publish that for again. But I will say, as a reader, and in my experience with like my own memoirs, people seem to resonate with the pain more than

you know, some of the happy stuff. If you, um, you know, I wrote a happier memoir after my really deep dark one and people didn't resonate with that same way. They resonated with the pain and the darkness. That's, I mean, because I think it's what we were talking about is that they need somebody else to say it. That's what they're going to you for because then in that they see some hope for themselves because then they'd look at you and they say, wait, you got, you got,

through this or you're working through it. And I see you actively every day, like on videos, like working through these things that have happened to you. And I want to do that. And so I feel like that gives them some sense of like, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. And they're like, they tell you, like, of course you're funny, but could you go back to that other thing? And it's like, okay, I will do that. I'm like, no problem. And I think that's okay. And I needed to be told that by my editor. I really did.

And it that I like for me, I'm very proud of having written that book. It it's it's yeah, but it's it's like I have a very complicated relationship to it because I don't know that I could ever read that book like again. Because it is really sad. And it just makes, I mean, my mother didn't live to see me publish any books.

And every, you know, people will always say, oh, she would be so proud of you. And my first thought is yes. And my second thought is because I know my mother, she would say, didn't have to be so sad. But maybe that's just the sign that you.

You needed to finish the book and close sort of that chapter. You got a lot of grief. Like you said, grief is carried with you forever, but maybe some, some parts of the grief were able to be healed in some ways by putting it in the book and, and sort of being like closing it and being done with it. Obviously, you know, like you said, you still carry the grief, but some, some pieces of it could be left in the book. Yes. Exactly.

Yeah. So I'm just like, I'm playing out all my trauma in the fictional world for everyone. And yeah, that's the way it works. And you know, that's partly, it probably comes from a little bit of like my background and poetry where I'm used to like talking about emotional things in a narrative.

way. So up to this point with the publishing of your second book, are you still writing poetry or have you sort of maybe taken a break from poetry and now you're just focusing on the books or were you also doing poetry at this time?

No, I had, I had jumped head on into the pool of novel writing and I wasn't doing poetry. And after how to make friends with the dark, I really missed writing poetry. So when I started writing, you'd be home now.

I thought I'm going to figure out how to put some poetry in this book. I'm going to, because I missed writing poetry. You'd be home. That was a really good opportunity to put that in because of the structure of the book, which was inspired by a play written by Thornton Wilder.

Okay, well, I just have to tell you that this book had any ugly crying on a plane in front of people. Like this wasn't a situation where I was able to blink the tears back. This was ugly crying. We're coming. The tears are coming out no matter what because of my

relationship, you know, to people. I think what really, let me say this, I don't read the synopsis of a book before I pick it up. It's like, yeah, do I hear good things about it? Have I seen the cover like just sort of mood picking books? Yeah. Obviously, there are pills on the front. So I

pick up the book, I didn't know that it was going to be from the perspective of someone, a loved one who is affected by someone with addiction. And I think that part of it really healed some parts of my inner child growing up with an addict. And so I wanted to, you know, if anyone is struggling and listening to this, and you have to read, so you guys have to read this book.

So you'd be how knows about Emmy who's struggling to help her brother Joey after he returned home from rehab for addiction. And Emmy's always been the very good girl in the family and her mother is very controlling. Very loving but controlling.

And I wanted to write that book from Emmy's perspective, because in the two previous books, the narrator is the one who's going through all the stuff. And I wanted to write a book from the perspective of someone who's watching someone go through that, because a lot of times, like you know,

When someone else is going through that and especially if they're in the family, you kind of become invisible because their struggles suck up all the energy in the room. And there's none left over for you. And I think that that

in and of itself is trauma, right? So it's when someone is going through addiction, you are not the person that is addicted to whatever it is, is not the only one affected. I mean, that is real life trauma for the people that are directly impacted. And that's something that you live with, whether the person recovers and is in recovery or not. That is something that you carry with you for the rest of your life. So I think I can appreciate that perspective so much, especially in this book.

There's so much collateral damage around addiction. It touches everybody. All of us have been touched by addiction in some way, shape, or form. And so Joey's addiction, it affects Emmy, it affects his parents, it affects his friends, it affects the school, like everyone. And I don't think that we talk enough about the mental health of those people who are collateral damage of addiction, the people who are watching this happen. We're trying to help someone.

who can't help them, who desperately want, especially for Emmy, she desperately wants to figure out who she is and to have a life. But she feels guilty about it. Because how can you have fun thinking about wanting to go to a dance when your brother

is struggling so much and going through all this stuff and and that we don't I don't think we talk enough about that guilt that people feel and it is really about like in the end figuring out what boundaries you're going to set like I love you and I can support you but also I have to go live a life and do these things that I want to do I can't make it all about you I can't

figure out where you are all the time. I can't sit with you all the time. I can't make sure you're safe all the time. At some point, all of that is it's up to you. I'm just here for when you fall. You know, and I know that's really hard for people to express because they feel they do. They feel guilty, but it really it ravages you like, especially, I think, kids who are in families that

have been ravaged by addiction. That is so difficult to grow up with. And it affects all the patterns of how you learn how to behave with other people and how you let other people treat you. And those are things that when you grow up later, if you do find a support system, you have to unravel and you have to start all over again and actually learn how to be a person without those other things. And it's so difficult. I don't know if that makes sense or not.

No, 1000% does like even today at 32 years old, I have to figure out what pieces of my childhood and being a child of an addict affects, you know, some of my behaviors and what is just naturally my behaviors. Trying to decipher what is what I also wanted to touch on the, you know, when you said that when you are

impacted by someone who has an addiction, right? You said that a lot of times we feel guilty for, you know, wanting to go do something and having a good time because there's struggles in that, right? You feel guilty, but there's also grief in that, right? Like it's, it's sort of like grieving someone that's still here. And so it's not the same grief that you talk about in how to make friends with the dark, but it's, it's grief in a different one, grieving for someone that's alive. Yes. And that's so, it's so hard.

What like going back to grief and how to make friends with the dark when I went on tour for that, I met this student at a school and he pulled me aside afterwards and he said, I read this book and I don't know. I think that what I'm feeling in this book is what I'm feeling in life, but I'm not really sure. And I was like, what's going on? And he said, so my dad has this traumatic brain injury.

and he's like, it happened like two years ago. And he just, the only thing he can do now is like sit in a chair and watch TV. And I missed that guy who would hang out with me and like play sports and like talk to me. I don't know who he is. And he's like, I feel like he's dead, but he's not. He's alive. And I said, you are feeling grief. You're feeling grief for someone who's alive. Your dad is a different person now. And you have to get to know.

that person and absolutely everything that you're feeling is grief and it is valid. And he told me that

Um, he was so he'd been so angry, like the week before that he went outside with a baseball bat and bashed in the windshield of the car that his dad had loved and used to take him for drives and but couldn't anymore. And he's like, I feel so bad about that. And I said, I'm glad you did it. Because at least you weren't hurting yourself, but you have something that you need to express. And that's okay.

And like you grieve people who are alive, you grieve the person that they used to be that you knew, and you grieve the person that they might never become. Yeah. And it's, it's so difficult. And so many people can resonate with that. I can resonate with that. And so I think maybe that's, maybe that's a theme of your next book is grieving someone that's still here. And, you know, maybe, I mean, that's the inspiration right there.

And I, you know, at this book, because I've been in recovery now for almost 18 years. And I really wanted people to read about the recovery process that it's not linear, that you climb a little bit up the ladder and sometimes you slip down. And when that person slips down, it's not a failure. It's a, you start over and the people around them need to be safe, say,

Okay, let's start again. The road hasn't disappeared. We're just going back to the beginning of the road and we're going to start walking again, like together. You can, this can happen.

like there's a lot of shame surrounding addiction. And like I said, people often don't ask like, what happened to you? They're just like, why are you doing this? And so it's something that can be like fixed and it's like, no, no, there's there's something that happened. There's something going on and you need to get to the root of that first. I actually recently had a conversation with someone who is also a child of an addict and

We were just talking about our experiences and I had said that I have way more empathy for other people, but I cannot understand it for my mom because I know where family she came from and things like that. And he said to me, he looked me dead in my eyes and he said, Kale, something happened to her.

What happened to her? You're not asking the right questions. And I think that's why you're struggling with the empathy is that you're not, you don't know what happened to her. And maybe what happened to her is something that you could handle, but she could it. And so that you're going down an entirely different road because not everyone handles things the same way. And so that's really hard to sit with too. I think that's so like, I think that's a really profound thing that they said to you.

I mean, we don't really know our parents. You only know them as your parent and what they show you, and maybe what they choose to tell you about their childhood, their experiences in life before you came along.

You don't really know what their life was. And like that kind of blows my mind now that I am a parent. If you don't know them, they're actually like people. They're not just this person. You know, I'm not just this person that tells you it's time to study for your quiz. Yeah. You know,

It like I've had this whole lifetime of experiences and maybe you feel this way too. I think it's interesting because like you've been public about like your experiences like you've been in the public eye since you were a teenager. So people think they know you and the things that happen to you and your kids can probably Google you, right? Yeah. And they'll be like, wait, that happened to my mom. Like what? What is going on? Right? Yeah. And my kids can do that to me too. And they could see things that I've said in interviews that maybe I haven't yet like

Chatted with them about or Because you have this public persona most parents don't have that so anything that happened to them Like can stay buried unless their kid actually says I need to know what growing up was like for you. What happened to you? What happened to you? Yeah, oftentimes you just don't think about your your parent in that way I don't think I ever did even up until this point

Like really thinking of what kind of person my mom was before me, before the addiction, like I've never thought about that. I never, and I wonder what my kids have been very open with my kids about things that have happened to me and, you know, um,

traumatic events because I'm so open about it. So I think having the, you know, open conversations in the house that they're going to hear about it. Or if they do, I don't want them to, right? Yeah, they're going to hear about it. They're going to Google something someday. Yeah. Right. And so that's really interesting. I would be so curious to maybe when my kids are older, having a conversation about something like that where like we could talk about who I was before I was public. Right? Like, yeah, who were you? Let's talk about that now. Do I even know?

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Hi, I'm Stasi Schroeder. On my podcast, I share candid updates from my personal life, chat with some of my best friends about what's going on in our lives, give commentary on the latest pop culture headlines, and sometimes deep dive into random topics I'm obsessed with, like human design. It's a bit all over the place, but that's how I like it. And you will too. Listen to my podcast, Stasi, wherever you get your podcasts.

And I think it's really, it's difficult for people too, like who have had difficult relationships with their parents when they were children. And you still have a difficult relationship with them when you're adult, when you're an adult. And maybe that involves like no contact or like limited contact. And then at some point though, if you have kids, they're going to be like, why, why don't we see grandma all that often? Because when they see grandma, they're like, I love grandma, grandma's great. But in your head, you're like,

I could tell you stories, you know, but you feel like I don't want to do that because maybe they could have a fruitful relationship. But then also you're like, why are they being.

nicer to my child than they were to me. And that's a hard pill to swallow as well is when, you know, grandma or grandpa or an uncle are fantastic with your kids, but the relationship between you and that person is so strained and how do you navigate that? That's a whole other can of worms. Because then you're the kid, the little kid inside you comes back and you're like, why couldn't you do that with me?

It's like, wait, what about me? Well, I've struggled with that, right? Like, I haven't talked to my mom for seven years, and I'm just like, do I?

try to allow her to have a relationship with the kids, or is it going to be similar to how my relationship is with her? And I don't want to open those doors for my kids. And so, you know, I definitely resonate with anyone who's struggling with that. That is it. Like, it's very hard. Like, are you denying them something or are you protecting them? Right. And maybe both are true. I think that both, I think that both are very, very true. Yeah, I would agree with you.

And I'm sorry to hear that about your mother. Oh, I'm glad you're protecting yourself because I do think that is important once you're like able to. If that's the thing that you need, you got to protect yourself. You have to protect yourself. When you mentioned, you know, in regards to you'd be home now and going to a dance and being happy and deciding that I have, you know, you have to live a life

you know, to the fullest, essentially. Um, and you, you can't really worry about the other person. That's, that's a really hard place to be. And I think that, you know, for the people who stick around and are there time and time again for addicts in their life or alcohol, it's in their life. That's okay. If you, that is for like where you feel good and how not good. I don't think that's the right word.

If that's where you feel, you know, that's what you feel is the best decision for you. That's great. I never want to someone to hear my story and they're like, Oh, I have to cut my mom off cold turkey. I have to cut my sibling off cold turkey. That's not for everyone. Just for me, I knew that I could not continue the way that I was going, you know what I mean? And I think that that it's going to look different for everyone. It is. And then when you do that,

Sometimes you'll get pushed back from like other family members who are like, I don't know why you're doing this to her. And it's really awful. Or, you know, you're ruining up and you're like, I got to, I got to take care of me. Like that's the most important thing. And then especially I got to take care of me and I'm taking care of kids. And I can't take care of my kids if I'm not like good with myself and taking care of myself. Right. And that's, that's also an important thing to pass on to your kids is that you can think of yourself.

Absolutely. Yeah. And that, I mean, I guess that goes across the board for all the books, right? Like in some way that goes across the board for, for all of them. Well, similarly to girl and pieces for pride over pity, I didn't think that anyone would, it was more of like my thoughts and feelings. And I didn't know how to organize them. It took like three years of, of

things and also talking to family members and stuff. And then I was also just like you turned down by like six publishing houses right off the bat. And so I just sort of gave up. For the second book, I brought a notebook everywhere I went. Like when I tell you that I was writing

just thoughts that came to me, things that people said to me, just all sorts of things. And then the third one, my third memoir, it was mostly a compilation of my diary entries. So there were three different strategies, I guess. Yeah. Because each book is different, right? Yeah. And it's just different. I actually signed when I signed my first book deal, I signed

I am under contract, I guess, for a novel. I have no intentions of ever writing a novel. I never thought I would be in the book world as heavily as I am. See, we're in the same world now. And so I would love to eventually I wrote one.

didn't really love it. I would like to maybe go back to it and maybe rework it or start over or something. I just don't know how to write a novel. I don't know because you know when you combine different elements of different people into one character is so hard for me because I'm like, but it's missing something because these weren't one character. These were four characters, but you can't pull the characters in the book. So it's like, what do you do from there? You do whatever you want.

And you, and you hope, and you hope for the best. And like I said, like each, like, and now you've discovered like each book is different. And each book kind of the more you work on it, it tells you how it wants to be written or like the voice or the structure and how you're going to do it. So I believe in you. And you, and you'll figure, you'll figure it out. I think you've, because you've already mastered the hardest part was actually just sitting down and starting.

If maybe that's the hardest part, like you have to sit down and start it. But then once you started, like, especially with your first one, were you kind of excited to go back to it? Yeah. Like every time you're like, I kind of just want to write today, right? Like that's the best part is you build like that muscle memory. A bunch of like mood writing for that. I'm all for vibes and mood writing. Yeah. I don't know that I would be able to do what you guys do, right? Like having deadlines. I don't know that I operate that way. Um, no.

I don't operate that. I don't operate that. But you will figure it out and you'll figure out your own mood and vibe deadline.

Like I like to write like a little bit every day and it takes me a while to get started on a book and it takes me maybe like two drafts to figure out like the voice of the character like I think about a book for like months before I start writing it and like things happen and I'll make like little notes but once I start writing I just like the first draft I just write till I get to 300 pages.

Because you know, you can always go back and you will edit out the stuff. Things will jump out at you and you're like, that doesn't happen. But I'm very much like mood and vibes and intuition. And if I can get like those first 300 pages out.

Then I know what the actual story is that I should be telling. And then I have a little bit of structure when I start like the other drafts. So I didn't get a chance to read The Glass Girl yet. Can you tell me what this is about?

We'll hold this up again. You know, my target book of the year right here. Thank you. It's like great here. And you have a sticker. I have a sticker. The glass girl is about a 15 year old Bella who's been self medicating with alcohol since she was 11.

And she is suffering from the effects of her parents' bitter divorce, the grief over the death of her grandmother, a bad breakup with her first boyfriend, and friendship group struggles.

She's been self-medicating and no one has noticed and one night she goes to a Thanksgiving party and she gets blackout drunk and her friends drop her off on her mom's doorstep and after that after a stay in the hospital for alcohol poisoning she goes to a rehab in Tucson in the middle of the desert called Sonoran sunrise where she's gonna have to confront Everything that she's been trying to erase

And she, you know, and a lot, and I did want to, in this book, because I am in recovery and because I started drinking really early, like Bella did, then I, you know, I think about it every day because it's something that I have to manage and be on top of. I have, you know, like why?

Why do some things latch on to some people and not others? Like, why when I was 11 and I had that first drink was I like, oh my God, I feel like I'm home now. Like this is my thing. And but other people, you know, teenagers, some of them are like, oh, I went to a party and I, you know, last weekend and I got drunk. They don't drink again for like three months. But then there's like some of us where it's like, oh, that's my thing. Like that's where I feel.

You know, like what is addiction and how does it latch on to some people and not others and what are those reasons behind it. And like I said, it's that thing inside you like what happened to you. And she's stuck in this awful place with like parents who are fighting with each other. She's been parentified because she has to take care of her little sister and try to protect her. And she's her grandmother who's the person who gave her her first drink, you know, playing Scrabble at her house. Like here, just have a little bit of this.

But her grandmother was also the only person that really accepted her and, you know, was unconditionally loving. And it is sort of a COVID book because

And like, especially if you're writing fiction now, you kind of, even if it's not on the page, you have to understand that each and every one of your characters, if it's contemporary, went through the pandemic. And they probably lost people. Or if they were kids, they had to stay home and do remote learning. And that's like a whole other thing. And that affected like their social development. It really affected like a lot of kids anxiety levels. And like Bella is struggling through that because they worked really hard to keep her grandmother safe through that whole thing.

And then suddenly her grandmother goes to the curb to get a newspaper and drops dead. What was that all for? Do you know what I mean? But she's 15. She doesn't know how to articulate this. And it is very much a book about

severe anxiety and self-medication because we don't really talk enough about why kids might be drinking or doing drugs in the first place. And I think for some of them, a lot of it has to do with anxiety and depression because you feel better. That's the thing we don't talk about. You're like, don't do drugs. And it's also like, but sometimes they make you feel better.

and they chill you out. And maybe that's something that could be helped with a medication that's prescribed and some therapy, but sometimes you don't have access to those things, especially as kids, that you have access to alcohol. But also I think when you're young and before we sort of get to, I guess, where the frontal lobe is developed,

Hey, um, you know, in high school or college when you're sort of drinking and experimenting, you don't realize at that age that those things are, you know, quote unquote.

You're not, you don't realize that you're hoping or they're helping or they're making you feel that way. And so by the time you realize, Oh, I'm using alcohol before anxiety, it's too late. You're already an alcoholic. Yeah. You know what I mean? And so I actually had a conversation with a friend this week and she, she was like acknowledging that she copes with anxiety.

with alcohol she's like i only realize that now but it's a little too late and i was like oh that's really interesting that you even made that connection i think in particular like girls and women do because it's acceptable yeah i like for me i stopped

self-harming like physically, but I moved to alcohol like hardcore in my late teens and twenties and thirties, right? Because that's acceptable. It's another form. It's another form of self-harm. You're just switching to one that people are like, oh, she just likes to party, right? She likes to cut herself. She just likes to party, right?

But oh my gosh, if you like cut yourself or burn yourself, that's all that's, you know, but like when you drink to excess like that, that's another form of self harm. Did you realize at some point that you that's

what you were coping, how you were coping with anxiety. Did you realize that? Did you make that connection or did you just realize? Oh, I have a problem, but still didn't necessarily realize that it was helping with your anxiety. I knew that I was, I was doing that to like, to feel better, to cope with my anxiety.

Um, especially like as a teenager and also I was trying to escape just, I didn't want to think about the things that were causing me to feel the way that I felt in the world because of the way that, you know, I was raised in the way that I grew up and I had, and I still struggle with like all of those things. I like to say that I'm just like living life, um, completely raw now. Like I have no,

I have no skin. I don't have a protective covering of like alcohol or drugs anymore. And I just have to go like all my characters into the world like an open wound and hope for the best. And I feel proud of myself for taking that on and like.

making it. So the glass girl is about that. But it is also about divorce, because I haven't read a lot of why books were maybe the parents are divorced, but they get along just fine, right? It's like a TV show. Everything's cool. They're co-parenting. What if they aren't? And also your kids, it is really hard for them to go back and forth from one house to another. It's like going to stay at a different hotel every week. You have to pack your bag. And I hope that you remember your charger.

And I hope to remember your favorite pair of pants because those are the ones that make you feel better when you're at school because you have the right kind of pants. And I wanted to talk about what is that like when your parents don't get along and you're in the middle and they use you like they text you to tell your mother something you know that's like that shouldn't happen and they need to get their shit together.

I agree. I have very different co-parenting missions. All the kids die. I've experienced everything that you touched on. And I think in theory, right, like if you're going to get divorced or you're going to separate from your child's

father or other parent, it sounds good. Oh, we'll just do 5050. And here where I live, the default is typically 5050. And it sounds good in theory. But I think whether you do a 225 or a week on week off, at the end of the day, the child, no matter how old they are, or how

mostly fair, the split is. That's so difficult for any child, no matter what they're able to handle. I think going over to their dads, as soon as they settle down over there, they have to go right back to moms. And I think that so many kids can resonate with that aspect of it, even if they don't necessarily relate to the alcohol piece, I think the rest of it is very relatable for kids today.

Yeah. And it, you know, and sometimes the rules are different at each, each house. That's, that's the way it is. Like a lot of times the parents are not on the same page. And so you go to one house and it's like, okay, you have to do your homework. And then you can like look at your phone and then you have to go to bed. And at the other house, it's like, that's not the case at all. Right. And I think in terms of,

Like rehab and recovery when you get out of rehab like everything is not perfect. Like there's no fixing it. It's a disease and you have to manage it every day. But oftentimes like Bella you go back to a family where maybe one person is supportive and the other one isn't like Bella's dad.

She's supposed to go stay with him, but he never thought that she needed to be in rehab in the first place. So he's still drinking beer when it's time for her to go stay with him for a week. And there will be people like that in your family who are like, well, that's your problem.

And not mine. Right. And yeah, and Bella has to figure that out and be brave enough to say, I can't stay with you when you're drinking. Right. And that's tough. But before we go, I would love to do a couple rapid fire questions if you're OK with it. OK. OK. If you could collaborate with any author living or dead, who would it be? It would be you, of course.

We'll do that. We'll finish that book for you. I'll come in. I'll be your ghostwriter. And then you, me, and Liz, we can write like this whole mystery together. Oh, I'm down. I don't even have to ask me twice. Sign me up. Like our kids can play in the other room while we're sitting around a dining room table like hashing out a mystery. Oh, I would love that. That would be so fun. It would be perfect.

Okay, so if one of your what if one of your books was turned into a podcast What would it sound like and who would you cast as a net as a narrator? So I'm thinking with this question like have you read listen for the lie? No, okay, that one is sort of like a podcast format and there's points of view which is really cool I didn't listen to it, but I've heard it's incredible on audio So if you were to do something like that, what would you what would you picture?

So is the podcast fictional or real? Fictional. Fictional. I would say that the perfect book to turn into a podcast would actually be, you'd be home now. Because it has all these different elements to it and you could bring in all these different topics like addiction and then parentification. But also it has some poetry and it has those great moments with the character Miss Educated who does those Instagram posts. And I would say that has like enough multimedia that that would be like a perfect.

three. Actually, that's a really good idea. What is at the top of your To Be Red list? At the top of my To Be Red list is this book that I need to read through and finish. Actually, it's a new book. Did you ever read the book all the right places? No. By Jennifer Niven. It's another YA novel. Okay. They made it into a Netflix movie.

Oh, okay. I'll add that. Yeah. So she has a book coming out and I'm reading her new book right now before it comes out. And it's totally different for her and it's kind of a dark academia mystery and I'm really enjoying it. So I have started that. I have to finish it, but first I have to finish my book.

I actually, I love that you actually read the books that you do blurbs for because I feel like, and this is not just pure assumption. Yeah. Um, is that authors are all friends and they just write things for the book without reading them? So it's really here that you actually, I don't know. Nobody's ever said that to me. Yeah. I just thought like, Oh, I wonder if they actually read it, but that's so nice that you actually, I think a lot of people,

Like think that and I mean, I don't know. I read all the books that I blurb because you can't you can't just slap something on there because what if there's something in that book that like you're like, oh, no, no, like that's highly objectionable. Do you know it like you're like, oh, you know, and so no, no, also, I mean, I don't maybe some people do. I don't know. Who are they? That should be the mystery that we should try to solve in our book that we're going to write with Liz is like the mystery of our blurbs real or not.

Well, we have to wait. If you read a full review on Goodreads, then I'll definitely believe that you read it. Not you, just in general. It's like now that you're an author, you know, don't go to Goodreads. You don't know what you want. You don't want to know what they're saying. Like someone for, I think it was girl in pieces when I made the mistake of going over there and they, their review was just one line and it was like, this is the stupidest book that I have ever read in my life.

Which is fine, because once your book is out, people have their own opinions, like some people like a book, some people don't, whatever. But whenever I'm teaching writing workshops for teenagers, I'm like, how many of you think that way you write is stupid? And they all raise their hands. And I'm like, so I actually wrote the stupidest book that's ever been written. So you can't. I win. Whatever you write, it's going to be great because I wrote the stupidest book. No, no, it's fine.

They love it. And then they're like, yes, it's so much pressure been lifted off them because I win. I have, I have the trophy. But yeah, you don't, you don't go over into those spaces. Okay. Well, now I know don't check my reviews on Goodreads. Just, okay. Yeah. Touching on the fact that you just said you do writing workshops with teenagers. Is that public knowledge? Is that something that you advertise ever? And where can people sign up for that if that's, if it's public?

It is I don't I don't like offer them. I do it when I do school visits because like how I have like so much like social anxiety and like anxiety about speaking in public that when I do a school visitor I have like a public event. I will usually say I don't want to come to your

school and stand up in front of 500 teenagers because I didn't, that's like no. No, I don't want to do that. But I will do smaller breakout sessions with like 20 to 25 students and we will do a writing workshop and I will teach them how to draft a novel in 30 minutes.

And that is actually the funnest exercise for me to do because everyone starts participating because it's like when you co-write a book like I did with Liz, the pressure is off you alone and you're not by yourself. And everyone has ideas and we could come up with this whole draft of the book in 30 minutes. And usually in like six months, two of the kids from the class will email me and say, I wrote 100 pages based on what we did.

And I'm like, yay, you're off running. You did it. I gave you a little structure and ideas. You're doing it. I want to see your book on a bookshelf someday. And so I will do, I do things like that. I love that so much. That's incredible. People, I'm, and I'm sure that that's just making a kid's day where you know what I mean to do that with you. It's like, it's fun because

Once you get started, you're thinking about a book like ideas that will just happen like everyone is created. I think that when you're younger, sometimes that's it starts being graded in school and then you say, oh, I got to see on my story and you say, I'm not a good writer. And you give up. And that's that's that's one way to kill creativity in a kid. Like definitely like don't do that. Let them like that should be in more schools. You should be writing. You should be painting. There should be no grades for those.

Class every day gets an egg, you know, they just want you to be like producing your work because it's good and you feel good when you do it like when you were writing your books and you were in the zone, didn't that feel great? Yes. And actually, that's a really good point that you made. I follow a book talker and she says that she doesn't

give ratings to memoirs because she doesn't have the right to judge someone else's story, something along those lines. And I actually, that's sort of what you're saying. You shouldn't grade someone's creative piece, whatever that looks like, because feedback is nice, but maybe you don't grade it. I think that's a really good point. Yeah, feedback. You just want them to keep going. So I've met so many people who are my age and older, who they're like, oh, I've always wanted to be a writer, but

You know, I'm not any good and I'm like, well, what have you written? They're like, well, nothing just. And then like, well, I didn't tell you that. Who told you that? You just have to try somebody out there is probably really going to like that story. You just have to start and then.

Take your steps, whether you want to self publish or traditionally publish, but something out there is going to love it. And that's the person that you're writing towards, right? Not, not the other people who are going to give you like one star, no stars or say awful things about you and hold up your book. You're writing to the other people. Like that book isn't, isn't for, yeah, you know, you person. No, that makes sense.

Where can people order your books? And do you have anything else that you want to add for our listeners? They can find my books anywhere. Books are sold. They're everywhere. The Target edition is the exclusive edition with the beautiful Omre cover. But they're available everywhere. And the Target one has that book of the year, which I will carry proudly to the end of my day.

And then I just want to say thank you to you for having me on and giving me the space to chat with you one of my favorite people ever. Like, it's interesting to me to think that you have been in my life, like since my early twenties. And I was, I literally watched you like grow up. And I'm like amazed and proud of you for your, your journey and everything that you have done. Like, and now I got to meet you. So I have like a bucket list item.

No, because there's going to cry right now. I know. It's just so, I mean, like, whatever you thought that you would achieve in your life, like, you have done it and so much more. And that was through hard work and like drive and like never.

Giving up like I when I do go to high schools. I tell don't cry you'll make me cry I tell the students there I'm like first of all I want you to know that like I Was kicked out of high school at 16 and I have a GED like I didn't go back I just got my GED and then I went to college like much later But I screwed screwed all of that up as well. Sometimes your life journey It's not what people tell you it should be or what order it should tell you sometimes you're dealing with all this stuff

that was not your fault at all. And sometimes it takes us longer. But the important thing is not that I wrote books that a lot of people read. The important thing is that I'm still standing and I'm here. And that's all of you here. That's the important thing.

And I love that message because you are so spot on. And like you said earlier in this, in this episode is that it's not always linear. The progress is not always linear. And sometimes out of order. And I'm proud of you. And I think that these, these books are all a testament to who you are, like who you are, what you've accomplished, what you've overcome. And I'm so proud of you as well. And I'm so serious if you ever want to sign me up. I'm, I'm really sorry. I made you cry.

Your makeup, your makeup still looks perfect though. So you're all good. I made you cry. Everyone's gonna be like, you may kill cry. I'm sorry. Thank you for coming on Barely Famous. Thank you. You can find me anywhere. Thank you so much. This was like the best part of my day. Oh, well, you've made my whole year and I'm still glad that we could end 2024. I'm talking finally. Perfect. It's good.