The Challenges of Being Vulnerable on the Page

Lisa [00:00]:

Why, hello, Megan. Welcome to the Writing Your Resilience podcast. It is so good to see you today.

Megan [00:05]:

 It’s awesome to see you too, Lisa. You’re looking fabulous, as always.

Lisa [00:09]:

Well, thank you. I can say the same. I love this color on you, and you know what? I think it’s a color that goes well with your book cover for One Bad Mother.

Megan [00:22]: Thank you. Nice coordination. It wasn’t purposeful.

Lisa [00:26]: Well, it works anyway. And, you know, I’m really excited about this, because you are launching this book into the world, and you and I have been walking this journey together for a while.

Megan [00:38]:

Yes, I think I can honestly say I never thought that this book would see the light of day.

Lisa [00:44]: And yet here we are. What would you like us to know about One Bad Mother?

Megan [01:00]:

I would like to say that this is really a story of conquering disappointment on multiple levels. One is the story of me going through the police academy and my gradual reconciliation with that process. And that’s braided into the narrative of motherhood and being disappointed by the lack of cultural support surrounding me.

So, there’s that kind of professional disappointment. And then, on the other side, I returned to this book after another book had stalled in contract negotiation. I was just devastated. Yeah. I didn’t know what to do, and I didn’t want to write anything new. I felt like I had two books I needed to get off the table before I could generate anything new.

So, I went back to this, and as I looked at it, I thought, “You know what? I actually kind of like this manuscript now,” which is always a wonderful feeling because it doesn’t always go that way, right?

Lisa [01:55]:

Right. And I love that you took some time away from it. It was that distance, in conjunction with an inner knowing, like, “I have these two books. I want to get them out in the world. I don’t have the headspace to write something new until I get some resolution on this process,” that allowed you to come back and see this in a different way.

You know, I read an early draft—not the entire book, but an excerpt—when we were at the Writer’s Hotel together back in 2019.

Megan [02:23]:

Uh, yes, yes. And I remember one of the comments was, “You need to be more vulnerable.” And, man, did I not like that comment.

Lisa [02:36]:

Tell us a little more.

Megan [02:38]:

I needed to show more of myself and what I wanted, but I just wasn’t there in 2019. I didn’t want to. My reaction at the conference was very defensive. And, you know, 30 years of therapy have made me able to label my emotions. I thought, “I don’t want to. I am showing myself,” like there was that little child, bratty voice.

And I recognized it. Then, when I came back to it five years later, I realized I wasn’t vulnerable, and I needed to make it more vulnerable.

Lisa [03:16]:

How did you get yourself to be more vulnerable on the page when you’d had this resistance?

Megan [03:25]:

I think distance helps a lot. Also, when I write, I’m not a deeply shy person—though I was growing up—so I don’t like really talking to people a lot. I do now, but I can only write if I imagine no one is ever going to read it.

Lisa [03:46]:

Hmm. I love that.

Megan [03:47]:

So, I imagine myself writing to my 80-year-old self. I can’t remember all the exact details, but I want it to be like a photograph to myself in the future.

Lisa [04:01]:

I love that frame because I often talk to people about who their reader is and having some sort of avatar for the person sitting across from them who needs this book or who they’re writing to. I love that you’re writing to this 80-year-old version of yourself so that you can remember this time and all the complex things that were going on as you navigated these many tasks.

Megan [04:24]:

Right. And, you know, one thing that really gets in the way of writing is when I start to think about the people who might read it. Like, “What if my kids read this?”—they’ve shown zero interest in reading it, to be clear.

Lisa:

(Laughs)

Megan [04:39]:

That’s when it starts to stall my writing process.

Lisa [04:44]: How did you get over that hump, knowing your book is getting ready to come out? At some point, you knew you were doing edits to a book in the process of being published.

Megan [04:56]:

 I think I was completely in denial. Completely in denial. I just didn’t even think about it. It always felt like it was just me and my book. Funny enough, I was actually talking in therapy yesterday about this. I had this expectation that I’d make myself vulnerable, and all the trauma of the past would be gone—that I’d write it into the past and move on. Only in the last couple of weeks has that uneasiness started to seep in, and my therapist was like, “You’re joking, right? You understand that’s not how life works—that you can’t just shove it into the past and move on, right?”

I was like, “But I keep getting reminded of all these little micro-traumas.” Raising my kids when they were really sick, I couldn’t deal with it in the moment, but now it’s seeping back in as this low-level ickiness. I guess I just have to live with that.

Lisa [05:56]:

Yeah, that can be one of the biggest challenges about beginning to publish, especially for your debut, where you’ve never gone through this part before. There’s a great sense of vulnerability in being seen and putting your work out there. So, yeah, all the creepy crawlies inside us get to come out and play.

Megan [06:21]:

Exactly! It’s like that imposter syndrome craziness. I wrote a piece on that called Night Terror, and I feel like there are two voices inside: one is the little kid who says, “I don’t deserve to be here,” and then there’s the adult who says, “Yes, you do.” And those voices battle it out.

Lisa [06:39]:

And what are you doing to navigate that war? How are you protecting yourself from getting hit with friendly fire?

Megan [06:49]:

Friendly fire is a great term. That would make a good short story or essay. Honestly, I’m just breathing. You noticed that one of the chapters in my book, Breathing Room, was pivotal. I hadn’t recognized that until you pointed it out. But I think I’m just taking time to breathe—feeling the feelings in my body and just breathing through them.

Lisa [07:20]: The breath is so important. I’m glad you’re taking time for it because the more you breathe into it, the more it’ll flow through you instead of getting stuck inside.

Megan [07:29]: Right. I’m realizing a lot of the incidents I talk about in the book, I haven’t fully processed. It’s a gift to go back to them now on the other side, but it doesn’t make it easier.

Lisa [07:46]: Yeah, I don’t know if some of these things ever get easier. I mean, I don’t want to give away what’s in your book, but you write about some incredibly powerful moments in your life. You write about them with great honesty, and there’s a rawness around what happened.

When I read the early drafts, the police story was central. Motherhood was there, but it feels like you’ve braided them together more strongly now. One vehicle you use to move the story forward is the concept of tests. How did you figure that out?

Megan [08:32]:

Honestly, my husband came up with the idea of a test. We were running one day, and I said, “I don’t know how to tell the story. People say, ‘Write your truth.’ Well, I wrote my way into my truth by writing the police story and realizing the story I really wanted to tell was about being a mom.”

We were racing each other, and he said, “What about the idea of a test? You went to the police academy because you needed validation as a new mom and struggling writer. The test to get into the academy gave you that concrete pass-fail.” There are no tests like that in motherhood, just like there are no tests in life for being a good person. That was so gutting to me because we live in a culture telling moms, “Don’t use plastics. Don’t do this. Don’t do that,” giving no positive feedback for how hard I was struggling.  No daycare. No cultural support.  And this really became the story of me finding that validation within myself.

Lisa [09:53]:
Mm-hmm. Yeah. It seemed like even though there are no external tests for motherhood, there was this internal test of, can I weather this? Do I want to do this? What does this mean for me? And I feel like there was this beautiful exploration and breathing room for me. It was a pivot point because there was a certain tonal quality to the story and a certain lens through which it seemed like the story was being told, and then I felt this physical shift. Like, I felt the breathing room,

Megan [10:24]:

I love that because I didn’t even recognize it. All week I’ve been thinking about the questions you sent me, and that chapter as a pivotal point. It really is a physical return to my body.

Yes, my son is really, really sick—he has pneumonia—and at the same time, the police department is… I’m going through the application process, and they’re hounding me about how many drugs I did 30 years ago.

And it’s funny, but it also took me to this moment where I had these two things, and I was like, What’s important here, Megan? Get back to your body, get back to the breathing, and really find out what’s important. So, yes, you’re right, it is a pivotal chapter. I didn’t recognize that until you pointed it out.

Lisa [11:41]:
Well, that was the joy of having read some of it in the past and then also being an editor. My mind is always thinking about these things. I love that. And at the line level, you write so beautifully. I mean, you have a PhD in English, so it’s not surprising you have these skills, but they definitely show up in this book.

I’m curious to know, what was the biggest surprise for you, either in the motherhood thread or the police department thread as you were writing this, where you went, Oh my gosh, that?

Megan [11:46]:
Motherhood is just… I can’t even—that’s a 10-hour conversation. But I would say the biggest surprise with the police department was how obsessed they were with any candidate’s past drug use.

I had to take a polygraph, which I failed because for some reason, it said I “consort regularly with drug dealers.” That was literally what they told me. They were obsessed with the time I did mushrooms in 1990, and I just felt like, of all the questions we could ask of police officers, no one was asking about alcohol use. Nobody cared if I had a prescription for OxyContin—I didn’t, but nobody cared. If it was prescribed, it was fine.

That was shocking to me. I had been depressed in college and taken some heavy-duty prescribed drugs, and we had to do a PDQ, a personal disclosure thing, and write down everything we’d ever taken as drugs. They literally just crossed that page out and said, “That’s fine, these are prescription drugs.” I thought, if anything’s going to raise a red flag, it would be this.

Lisa [13:01]:
I hope that now that we’re so far into the opioid epidemic, and we know more about how these drugs affect us, they care now. But I loved that part of your book because it’s not just this adventure story where I go on a quest and these things happen. There’s strong commentary on what people are focusing on, and what’s actually important.

Megan [13:24]:
Yeah, that was eye-opening to me. That was the biggest shock to me in the whole process.

Lisa [13:32]:
Was there anything about the actual writing process that shocked or surprised you?

Megan [13:39]:
I would say how easily, once my husband suggested the frame of the test, everything fell into place. It was like, okay, which is nice, because it wasn’t holding itself together.

Lisa [13:55]:
Yes, it’s always nice when that happens. And that’s the magic. That’s when you know you’ve figured it out—when you have that “aha” moment and suddenly it’s like, this, this, this, and this. Then you’re done.

Megan [14:09]:
Yeah. The only problem I have is I hate it when people start a book with a dictionary quotation, but I did it, because I wanted people to think about the many ways we use the concept of a test. I talk about that in the prologue or introduction.

I love first sentences. I’ve taught a whole class on first sentences. I love them, and the fact that my book starts with a dictionary quotation hurts me deeply as a writer, but it worked.

Lisa [14:46]:
How did you know it worked?

Megan [14:49]:
I sent it to my beta readers, and they said, “This is great. This is what it needed.”

Lisa [14;54]:
Nice. Sometimes getting feedback from others helps us have more confidence in what our books truly need. You know these different strategies and best practices, but what’s right for your book isn’t necessarily the “best practice”—it’s what your book needs. And you were able to get that feedback.

As you thought about this book—and we’ve talked a little about the police thread—you’re so honest about modern motherhood, which is rough. I bow to any mother out there. There’s not a lot of support, and the experiences you can get yourself into… or find yourself in.

Megan [15:42]:
Yes, I’ve been reading a lot on the psychology of this. There are some really good books, Mom Rage is one, Ordinary Insanity is another, that talk about how there’s no other time in a woman’s life… I think it’s called matrescence—the term for the hormonal and identity change that happens when women become mothers. We spend so much time on adolescence, but when a woman has a baby, that’s it.

There’s no negotiation or discussion about the grief of leaving behind your former life. I got really depressed when I was pregnant because I loved my single life in San Francisco. It was amazing, and I grieved that life for the seven months I was pregnant.

Lisa [16:47]:
Yeah, there’s no takesie-backsies with kids. And that’s a really important point. There’s the grief of the life you had before, whether motherhood is something you really want, or something thrust upon you. Then there’s the image of what you expect motherhood to be versus the reality.

Megan [17:21]:
Well, it’s a cultural construct, right? I tried to talk about that more when I revised the book. I focus on the cultural context—Mother’s Day, this saccharine version of motherhood with no substance. It allows mothers to be the best unpaid labor force out there.

Lisa [17:40]:
Absolutely. The level of multitasking it takes… Some days, you just want to go to the bathroom by yourself for 30 seconds, maybe a minute if you can. That can be humbling for anyone, but it illustrates the lack of support in modern motherhood. A couple of generations ago, you’d be around other women. You wouldn’t be doing this alone; you’d have a cohort or elders to help navigate this with you.

Megan [18:25]:
Right. And not only that, but our culture has created this internal control mechanism where women don’t talk to other women, or rarely, about how difficult motherhood is.

Lisa [18:37]:
Yeah.

Megan [18:38]:
My kids were reading the title of my book and asked, “Do you hate being a mom?” And I said, “Absolutely not. I love being a mother, and I love you as people.” The only analogy I can give them is it’s like having dogs. I don’t always like cleaning up after them.
But you can’t say that culturally, right? About motherhood. There’s a huge amount of criticism in our culture of women who aren’t “mothering well.” There’s this idea that there’s only one way to mother.

Lisa [19:18]:
I think motherhood has changed. Think about the Gen X mom, the prototypical Gen X mom smoking cigarettes, watching soaps, and telling you to get out of the house until the streetlights come on. Then, maybe, you’d get food, but in the middle of the day, learn to be a hunter, and figure out. Find those coins on the ground, search out the hose that has the water in it that you can survive off of. That was considered acceptable or decent motherhood because they were home, and maybe they baked bread or something occasionally. But now, there’s a lot of pressure to make sure your kids are in all these activities, and you need to chauffer them everywhere. Nobody was chauffeuring our generation. They were like, you have two legs, and a bike, and you don’t need a helmet.

You know, find your inner strength and go to that practice, if you want to. But we’re not coming with you, and maybe we’ll show up at the games. I think the good moms or good dads would show up at the games. But practice? Give me a break.

Megan [20:34]:

No, you’ve got to get there yourself. Take the bus. I mean, I was taking the bus home, I think, at nine. My kids, if I showed them the bus at nine, would have dissolved into a puddle.

Lisa [20:43]:

And Child Protective Services probably would have been called, right?

Megan [20:46]:

I mean, yes, we are in an era of what I think psychologists call “intensive motherhood,” which takes a toll on your psyche. If your whole identity is wrapped up in making someone else’s life better… One, you can’t do that. You can’t ever make someone have a happy life. That’s— you can’t take that on. But it’s a huge psychic responsibility.

Lisa [21:10]:

And it sets you up for failure because there are so many aspects of motherhood that you can’t control, including some of the things you write so beautifully about in your book. I mean, just even when your kids are born, how they’re born, or what happens directly after. It’s not something you can necessarily control.

Megan [21:31]:

I said once to my OBGYN— I guess the kids were like four— I said, “I really don’t want another child because this was so traumatic, but I kind of want to get pregnant again and give birth so I can know what it would be like to have a normal, less traumatic experience.”

And she said, “Yeah, that’s not a very good reason to have a kid.”

But yeah, it is a tough road. I mean, I have to stop myself sometimes from thinking like… even saying, “Oh, my husband was babysitting the kids.” They’re his kids. He doesn’t “babysit” them. He’s being a parent. And when you hear about a kid being left in a car when it’s too hot, the first question is always, “Where’s the mom? Where was the mother?” That paralyzing feeling of, “I made a mistake, my kid is in danger,” is just catastrophic. It’s an awful, awful feeling.

Lisa [22:38]:

Yes, and that’s one of the things you bring into the book— the vulnerability around how to wrap your mind around these things that are outside your control. Yet, society looks at you like they’re in your control. And you figured out a way to navigate this beautifully. When I started reading your book, I didn’t expect us to get to where we get. That was a delightful surprise.

You pull it off nicely. I didn’t know where it was going, but I loved that. As an editor, I’m always predicting where a book is going to go, because that’s my job, and I see those arcs. But you do a nice job of working through that. You weren’t even sure this book would come out, and yet, here it is.

Megan [23:42]: Yeah, I spent many years pitching to agents at Writers Hotel. I would get a lot of criticism like, “This book would be better if you did X,” or “This book would be better if you were Y.” Eventually, I decided to try a different route.

Lisa [24:03]:

I know people who have published in all kinds of ways. There are two learning curves when it comes to writing: one is learning how to write a book, and the second is learning how to launch a book into the world.

Any writer who gets their book published has gone through that first gauntlet and made it to the end. But I’ve met so many writers who get to that point, the pub date comes, and they haven’t really had the support from their publisher. They haven’t been fully educated on what’s required of them, or they’re relying on their publisher for things that they really should be doing themselves. The reality is, for most writers, unless you’re part of a small group of debuts with a large publisher, it’s up to you to figure that out. So, can I give you one piece of advice? One thing to do, and one thing not to do?

Megan [25:07]:

Always have your book stand— the product placement is key. As for what not to do. Be kind and friendly to everyone who works in the bookstore.

Lisa [25:15]:

Yes!

Megan [25:16]:

Know their names, their history. They’re putting themselves on the line to host your event, just as much as you are.

Lisa [25:33]: Absolutely. They’re the ones recommending your book to people, and they’ll recommend books from authors who treat them well. That’s a great tip. So, as we begin to wrap up, I always ask writers three lightning-round questions. What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received?

Megan [25:59]:

I was a TA for Rick Moody at another Writers Hotel workshop, and he said to me, “Megan, we all know you know how to write a scene. Stop flexing. Stop writing just for the words or the beautiful images. You have to edit that out.” And I was like, “No, I love the words!” But that was great advice— to pare it down to its bare bones.

Lisa [26:32]:

So, what I hear you saying is, don’t write scenes for the sake of writing them. Make sure every scene counts.

Megan [26:42]: Yes. And make it as lean as possible. It’s hard— this book was originally 100,000 words, and now it’s 70 or 60 thousand. It’s really pared down. I have a file of all the things I’ve taken out.

Lisa [27:10]:

Yeah, it is hard, and I think when you’ve worked really hard on something or you feel attached to something that feels like a strength, it’s really hard to cut those darlings. But sometimes we have to, so I love that you have that file. I hope that you use some of those things for essays that you’ll publish in support of your book launch.

Megan [27:35]:

I should call it “My Darlings.”

Lisa [27:40]:

Perfect! So, by the time this airs, your book will have launched, and you’ll be in your launch year. What are you doing to prepare for this?

Megan [28:25]:

I spend a lot of time alone, but I also spend a lot of time with animals. I have a horse, two rescue mastiffs, and a cat. Being with animals helps me breathe.

Lisa [28:53]:

Animals are so therapeutic.

Megan [29:17]:

Yes, I used to volunteer with horse therapy. It’s like speaking another language.

Lisa [30:28]:

 Amazing. Well, if people want to buy One Bad Mother and connect with you, where can they go?

Megan [30:43]:

You can buy it anywhere books are sold, but I recommend independent bookstores. You can also connect with me through my website or Sibling Press’s website.

Lisa [31:10]:

Wonderful! Thank you so much for being on the show today, Megan!

Megan [31:55]:

Thank you!