Real Talk with Tina and Ann
Tina and Ann met as journalists covering a capital murder trial, 15 years ago. Tina has been a tv and radio personality and has three children. Ann has a master's in counseling and has worked in the jail system, was a director of a battered woman's shelter/rape crisis center, worked as an assistant director at a school for children with autism, worked with abused kids and is currently raising her three children who have autism. She also is autistic and was told would not graduate high school, but as you can see, she has accomplished so much more. The duo share their stories of overcoming and interview people who are making it, despite what has happened. This is more than just two moms sharing their lives. This is two women who have overcome some of life's hardest obstacles. Join us every Wednesday as we go through life's journey together. There is purpose in the pain and hope in the journey.
Real Talk with Tina and Ann
When Going Back to Your 10-Year-Old Self Changes Everything: A Journey You Didn’t See Coming with Author Amy Weinland Daughters
When Going Back to your 10-year-old self, Changes Everything!
What would happen if you suddenly woke up in 1978 face-to-face with your 10-year-old self? In this captivating conversation, award-winning author Amy Weiland-Daughters shares the remarkable journey behind her book "You Cannot Mess This Up," a time-travel memoir that beautifully blends nostalgia, humor, and profound emotional healing.
Amy reveals how what began as "a funny back-in-time book" unexpectedly transformed into a therapeutic journey through her childhood. Through vivid descriptions of Thanksgiving 1978—complete with Jordache jeans, Atari games, and her mother's traditional dinner—she explores how stepping back into her childhood home allowed her to see her parents, siblings, and younger self through entirely new eyes.
The conversation dives into the vivid contrasts between 1978 and today—a world with no smartphones, no Google, just a trusty Sears Catalog and trips to the mall that felt like events of epic proportion. Amy paints a nostalgic picture of a simpler time, filled with innocence and analog joys, yet she doesn't shy away from the reality of the present.
Most powerfully, Amy shares how writing this book healed her relationship with "Little Amy." What began as embarrassment at her younger self's exuberance evolved into deep appreciation: "I want to honor that bowl-cutter kid every day for the rest of my life and make her proud, because she's the best part of me."
Through laughter, tears, and moments of profound insight, Amy's story reminds us that our most ordinary family stories matter. As she puts it: "Just because it wasn't a case of extremes doesn't mean it didn't happen." Her creative approach to processing childhood memories offers listeners a roadmap for examining their own pasts with compassion and understanding.
Whether you're drawn to nostalgic trips through the 1970s or seeking ways to reconcile with your younger self, this episode promises both entertainment and healing. Have you ever wondered what you'd say if you could talk to your childhood self? Listen in and join the conversation.
Welcome to Real Talk with Tina and Anne. I am Anne and today I'm sitting down with Amy Weiland-Dotters. She is a keynote speaker, letter writer, satirist, sports journalist and award-winning author. She has written two books. Dear Dana, that Time I Went Crazy and Wrote All 580 of my Facebook Friends A Handwritten Letter and the book we are going to be talking about today. You Cannot Mess this Up. A true story that never happened. A laugh out loud, heart-tugging memoir about time travel and family secrets. And a complicated, hilarious, beautiful story of going home again. What if you woke up in 1978? No cell phones, no Google, no social media, just you, your childhood home, your mom's Thanksgiving meal and your 10-year-old self staring back at you. If you've ever wanted to understand your parents a little better or forgive your younger self, or maybe just relive a simpler time with Fresca and the facts of life, we're going there. So grab your Jordache jeans and your Atari, because this isn't your typical therapy session. It is Thanksgiving 1978. Amy, I am so glad to have you here today.
Speaker 2:Thank you, anne, and what a great, incredible introduction that will live in my heart forever because I just felt like that. You say that the story is so seen and celebrated, so thank you for that.
Speaker 1:Well, this is a very different way of looking at your life. I mean, at first I was like wait a second. You're in a plane, you got different clothes on, you're landing in 1978. I mean, what's happening? But it was a journey, it was a ride that I was in for and it actually is a very fast read because of how entertaining it is, because you are so funny.
Speaker 2:Thank you. But you know, and really that was the intention of the book when I first started writing was I'm going to write a funny back in time book and the rest of it, just you. But you know, and really that was the intention of the book when I first started writing was I'm going to write a funny back in time book and the rest of it just happened. But the humor is you know what I wanted to do. So thank you for recognizing that.
Speaker 1:I have to ask where did this incredible concept come from? Time traveling to your childhood home, a memoir wrapped in fiction? Or a back to the future wrapped in a memoir to heal? I mean what? Where did it come from?
Speaker 2:Well, it was, you know, I came to writing. I wasn't educated to be a writer. I got a business degree and I came to writing not later, I mean in my thirties and forties and I wasn't trained to be a writer. So the story was my husband and I moved to England with our oldest son, who was young at the time, for three years with his job, and we thought, oh, this is going to be a great adventure. But then when I got over there I had worked in purchasing for like 15 years I was like wait a second, what do I do? This is a very long day in the countryside of England. So the first thing I did is I went and took some history classes at the local university, but that wasn't enough to fill the time and I didn't have a work visa. And so my sacrifice was, you know, I didn't sacrifice my career per se, but kind of my sanity. And then I'd always been drawn to writing. When I worked. I would always reread my emails and think about how profound my email about the picnic or the Chardonnay was. And so I was like, well, maybe what I'll do is dip my toes in the water. So it was almost out of desperation that I started writing, you know, sitting in England. And then it was the beginning of the high speed internet and I was like, wait a second, I can actually sell my words to people. I didn't know that was a thing. And so by the time we got home from England I was pregnant with kid number two and I was like, well, I'm not going to go right back to work. So at the end of that pregnancy, once I had him at home, I was like, wait a second, I have a second career here that I could possibly launch, and so I my bread and butter.
Speaker 2:I wrote about college football for a long time, but that experience in writing for the Bleach Report gave me the confidence to write. You cannot mess this up. Because I did not take myself seriously, which this imposter syndrome I didn't realize was a thing, and I, I, but I that idea and I, I love the past, I love nostalgia, I love time travel. So I'd always been fascinated with and I always would like, if I had a choice, I'd go backwards rather than forward. I was fascinated with writing myself back to my own childhood. So it was just an idea. But, like I said, my intention was purely to write a really funny book where I got to use the Sears catalog as my research and that was my joy, like I have boxes of stuff I used for that book.
Speaker 2:But what I did not realize is, once I wrote myself back into that position, oh my gosh feelingscom. I was going to have to deal with every memory I've ever made, with my relationship with my parents, and looking at my own, because a lot of the book is based it's a memoir wrapped in the tortilla of time travel, which makes it a fictional book. But I had to all those childhood memories. I was re-seeing them as an adult woman with two kids who would have totally seen them differently once I'd lived the rest of my life. So it was profoundly impactful to me personally. I ended up writing Catharsis without even knowing it. I've had many people ask me did you work with a therapist? I was like no, the book was a therapist for me, right right.
Speaker 1:When I read this, I actually pictured myself being able to go on bookingcom and, you know, rent a house where I could go back in time and, you know, order a family and have them, you know, be represented as all the players and everything, and I thought how cool that would be, you know, for people to be able to do that, so you could go back and, you know, pick a day in history that you wanted to relive or not, if somebody else chose it for you. I was just kind of curious why you chose Thanksgiving and why 1978 yeah, those are great questions.
Speaker 2:I felt like this is funny because it wasn't really having two kids, but I had worked as a camp counselor for a long time. I'd grown up at a summer camp and the kids they always put me with were the 10-year-olds and they were not in puberty yet. And now it gets closer and closer as our culture evolves. But the 10-year-olds still had the innocence of they weren't in puberty yet. They were willing to do anything like all like you come up with any kind of crazy nonsense and these girls were in, but they also didn't require a constant, you know, like they weren't. Uh, they were less likely to be homesick, they were less likely to be a bedwetter. So it was like the sweet spot that I did this, probably six years. It was a sweet spot between those two things and I loved that part of of of childhood, it just being a.
Speaker 2:I was 18, 19, 20, 21 when I did that job, but I loved those kids and so when I thought about what age would I want to see myself at, I thought 10, 10 is a sweet spot, you know. And so I was. I was physically 10 year olds, you know, and so I was physically 10 years old in 1978. And so 1978 was chosen. I often think if I was going to do it all again, knowing what I know. Everybody talks about the fifties and the sixties, and really I feel like there's more people talking about the eighties and the seventies.
Speaker 1:It gets kind of left out, especially 1978, you know, yeah, unless you're talking about disco or something you know. I mean, that's all we're known for in the seventies, right, but the 78 by then?
Speaker 2:we were almost bridging the gap, gap to shoulder pads. You know we weren't there yet, but it's easy to rope that in, you know with. But I I'm really proud of that and that wasn't intentional on my part. I was just trying to get myself to see myself at 10. That was my whole intention.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I was going to ask you what it was like to sit across from yourself while you were writing this book. As you're looking at this 10-year-old self, did you write from your own memory? Was this your own perspective on who little Amy was at 10 years old?
Speaker 2:Well, you know that's another part of the journey that I didn't really expect, because what I did to a lot of the meat of those memories, or the way I wrote it, way I wrote it, I there was this. We lived in Ohio at the time and there was this 1970s resort called I'm trying to think what the name was it was in Oxford, ohio, outside of Oxford Ohio, but it was so, so seventies, and I had two small kids at the time, so this was a very indulgent process. I locked myself up in this room and I even went to dinner at night in the seventies dining room with the salad bar and the whole thing. But I took a VCR, I took all the family albums, I took everything I had and I put myself in this room and I started. You know, we had eight millimeter film but mom had got it put on VCR tapes and so I ran this stuff and just started watching it and I got all the photos out and laid them on the bed and I basically tried to immerse myself in this, my childhood as an adult woman, and my first reaction to myself was, especially with the videos.
Speaker 2:I was like, oh my God, she's crazy, she's absolutely insane. And there's one specific video where I'm wearing this like medieval school play costume and this stranger comes into the house and I'm wearing this like medieval school play costume and this stranger comes into the house and I'm literally in her. I'm just up in her situation, I'm all in her face and I'm leaping around and you know, sashaying all over the place and that that that's really how that scene in the book comes from. It's my absolute like, oh my God, are you kidding me? Stop. And I was so uncomfortable with just even watching the video and I've had a lot of people tell me that I was too hard on Amy, but I think that was a great visual for me to actually see her live. You know, minus sound, and that's where I, that's where I. You know, that was a lot of my reaction. That's how I got got her sitting across from me.
Speaker 1:I was wondering if you wanted to scream at her, laugh with her, hug her, Like what did you want to do when you were sitting across from her? Were there parts of yourself that wanted to do those things?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I mean I wanted to shake her and say, hey, we got to fit in just for a few years here. You know, we got to pull ourselves together because you don't understand, you don't get your 10. You don't get it, you don't get that this. You know we're laying this foundation at school, at home. You know that that, that you could be who you really want to be, all you want to, but like no, shut it down. And then I absolutely wanted to lay on the floor in the feet top position and hug her and be like you know, girl, we're going to be all right and we're going to, we're going to get through this. And I wanted to absolutely laugh at her and be like you are a badass, let's go, you know. But but she?
Speaker 2:I think the best way I can frame my relationship with the Lamy with this book is I went into that story and I don't know that I went into that story but I, when I started writing her, when I started doing all that research, I wanted to run away from her. I was like I cannot do this. I remember writing the book. It was like cringe, you know people say that now, cringe. That's what it felt like. But by the end of writing that book I was like you know what? I want to be her because and I didn't on purpose, and I think a lot of people can relate this I didn't do this on purpose, but I lived some of the best qualities of that little girl away just by trying to survive my regular normal life. Mother coming out of this book is I want to honor that bowl-cutter kid every day for the rest of my life and make her proud, because she's the best part of me, you know and I think about her as a separate person a lot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when you wrote me, I loved how you signed it Big Amy and Little Amy. I mean, that just warmed my heart actually, because I can see you in two different parts.
Speaker 2:Right, and the book gave me, gave me her back, and with all her flaws and all my flaws. You know, I mean we. You know we're the same person and I. There's such hope in that, though, because, though she was a, you know, she was a freak express. She was the best part of me, a freak express. She was the best part of me. She's some of the best parts of me.
Speaker 1:I also want to ask you, though at 10, this was Thanksgiving in 1978, like we said. I mean, how in the world did you create all the behind the scenes things that were going on? Is that what you thought was going on?
Speaker 2:Oh, like the parent, the parent's party. Well, my mom, mom and dad, and mainly mom, helped me with some of that. I don't know there was an actual party, but I knew as a kid there was going to be components of that day that didn't understand and some of it, like me looking around realizing mom had cleaned all that stuff up, was just being a mom myself and being like, wait a second. I never even realized this was the real deal for this woman. You know, part of it was me.
Speaker 2:Part of the background was me realizing, oh my God, my mom's just trying to survive, kind of bedazzled by it. And the other part was conversations with my brother and sister and my mom and dad, you know, about my grandparents, about conversations that must have happened, that had been uncomfortable, and some of that was. You know that that dining room scene was not an actual memory, but that was a lot of that was drawn from an actual conversation with my mother about the conflict between the grandparents. So she, those undertones that I wouldn't have seen, she remembered. I don't know that she remembered them gladly, but she was. That's where I drew a lot of that from.
Speaker 1:Well, it was her perspective, Right? So I mean that's great that you were able to convey that in the book, because there was so much and when you went back in time to that exact moment, you know, with the party and the dining room table, like you just said, that scene I was wondering if you felt the awkwardness awkwardness if you remembered it at the table awkwardness, if you remembered it at the table.
Speaker 2:No, I don't. I remember the conflict between my mother and I and I remember feeling awkward at certain points, but I certainly didn't connect any of those dots until I and that's again when I didn't even realize it, until I wrote myself back to what that you know how much I had missed and then how much had to have been going on around me. I mean, I just think of my own children and my own life, and that's one of the great takeaways from the book. Please tell me they're not going to write a book like this, but they. You know there's so much more going on. I mean, as adults we don't know everything that's going on.
Speaker 1:We just think Exactly no, no, we really don't. But we have a really great thing going on in our head and what's going on, but it might not be reality.
Speaker 2:Right, and then this book. Really, I think this story really asks what is reality and what our memories and what part of like, how we retain them, how we recall them and how they're malleable, based on who's doing the remembering.
Speaker 1:You know, one of my favorite parts of the book that you talked about, you know, for briefly a little bit ago, was the nostalgia of it. You know, I wore Jordache jeans. I watched the Love Boat Electric Company. I couldn't wait for the Sears catalog to come, and we also had World Book Encyclopedias. I loved how you described yourself as tina yothers kind of way, mixing family ties with princess fergie, to come up with a bushy head of hair, a solid frame and a flat face. I mean, are you kidding me? It was just so funny. I mean I pictured this and I laughed out loud. You say that you were not born with that chip that instinctually tells you what to wear. I didn't get that chip either. I never. I'm a jeans t-shirt, you know Me too, and that's all I wear. Except back then I did have my Jordache jeans on.
Speaker 2:Right, and that was how that and Gloria Vanderbilt was the epitome of, you know, fashion and you know I I researched in my other than writing the funny parts. The research was just a delight and a joy, to the point where the girl ended the book we had to, we had to take out. She's like I know you're, you're funny and I know you're nostalgic, but we have to pick which parts of this to keep, because there's a lot of it. So there's a lot of things that I researched that I didn't use. But the other joy of this book is connecting with people like you who remember their own things, and us sharing those with each other, because there's something about nostalgia that's so soul warming. You know there's something about it that is, you know, just delightful and it does something to our spirit, I believe.
Speaker 1:Well, it brings a connection that I don't think we have in other ways, you know, because we live through the same time period. Right, yeah, I had Pong. You know I thought that that was really amazing, that I had this Atari system hooked up to this huge TV and this big wooden box. And you know, I watched the Gong Show and Tony, orlando and Dawn and Donny and Marie, and I read my Nancy Drew books on my canopy bed and I mean, I think that we can all relate. If we grew up then we had three channels on that big box. That turned to snow at 11 o'clock I think, and we played Tripoli and also this is interesting I live right by the Goodyear blimps, so I see them all the time, really.
Speaker 2:That's incredible Because you know spring Texas that was. The only thing going on was that blimp, and so you're in outside of. I'm in Ohio, Okay, Okay. Well, I spent 12 of the best years of my life. I wrote this book in Ohio. So parts of it, yeah, but yeah. But the blimp was a big deal to us growing up in suburbia because that blimp would come over. No one anywhere else in Texas could. You couldn't compete with that.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, all the time we see the blimp. They just did a really cool thing where it was the anniversary of something and they did all three of them at the same time all over our area, so we constantly were seeing them in the air. It was really fun.
Speaker 2:Is that Akron then? Is that where the blimp is? Yeah, yeah, the zips, yep.
Speaker 1:Not too far away from there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and by Cleveland, okay, from there, yeah, that's like Cleveland. Okay, that makes me want to go see it, because that the nostalgia of the blimps like if my brother and sister and I were to stand out in a yard and see a blimp, we would just, yeah, we'd probably cry, and we don't even believe in crying, you know just because it's such a sweet, sweet memory that's gone, like that, where the blimp place was is a home depot now. I think that's in the book oh okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we have a really big hangar about 20 minutes from where I am.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's about how far I was from the blunt base in spring growing up.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So anyway, I had to tell you that because I thought that that was like just a cool thing, and one thing that really stuck out to me was how much our world has changed since 1978. You know no phone, no internet. You couldn't Google anything. The only thing that you had was your handy dandy notebook. You know no phone, no internet, you couldn't Google anything. The only thing that you had was your handy dandy notebook.
Speaker 2:you know, right, and that was yeah, yeah, and that just came because I'm always jotting stuff down. As somebody who writes, I think I just like to observe things. And so the notebook thing, I didn't pre-plan, I just put that in her pocket because I felt like she needed it, because she was me, and but one of my favorite scenes from the book is when I sit down to write little Amy a note before I leave and I realized that I'm not going to quote some president or do something really important.
Speaker 2:And the only thing I have going for me is what I can pull out of my head, because I can't run downstairs and get the world books, because they'll see me, you know. But but I love that. I love that part where I'm like, oh my God, I'm just going to have to rely on my own cat-like reflexes here because I have nothing to Google. Like I cannot Google anything. I'm going to have to say something profound to her that came from my own head and heart.
Speaker 1:So I mean it's really interesting how we made it through school and everything back then, right.
Speaker 2:Right. I mean it's really interesting how we made it through school and everything back then. Right, right, the library, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean now people can, you know, even go and chat GPT and have it write their own papers for them if they want to. But I mean we really had to be really creative on our own and I think that that helped us.
Speaker 2:So, oh, I think it, I think it absolutely did. And then there was a slowed down, you know pace of life that we don't have now. I mean, I realized that too because you know, I drive through the neighborhood and there's all those children playing outside and there's all those adults outside. Well, now, I mean, you go anywhere even when the weather's nice and everyone's inside.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because they're all gaming and things like that. And another thing that you mentioned was how we can just Amazon something, and really quick. You know I can have it right now, but we would have to wait for weeks for things. You know, we never knew when our present, or whatever it was, was going to come in the mail.
Speaker 2:And then there was the finding of things. You know, now you still have to search for certain things, but when you got something that somebody really had to make an effort to get, you know, I like the scene in the mall and it's in Houston, and she wants little Amy wants a Redskins, a Washington Redskins helmet. And I realized they're the Washington commanders now, but they, but that would have been something really difficult, you know. The guy asks oh, are you shipping it to someone somewhere else? I'm like, no, what's the what's?
Speaker 1:where's the internet? We would never do that in a million years.
Speaker 2:I mean that's ridiculous, you know, and yeah, but it's also that that whole of a gift being special has been compromised by the ease in receiving things. But I think it's those small things that we have given up in the name of so many good things, but we don't even know we're missing things.
Speaker 1:And I think that's why time travel stories, you know, are important, not just mine, but, and I think that's probably one of the reasons I'm drawn to them- the other thing that you really talked about and I and I love this was it was kind of woven in there the difference between how life is now for women and back then and expectations within the home and the family, and you conveyed that so well. I'm so proud of where women have come. You took us into that time period so well. The thing that I did love about that time too, though, was the innocence, which you kind of touched on a little bit. And's such a trade, I mean, would you want that innocence for where we are now?
Speaker 2:it sounds like you might yeah, I don't know, but that's that's also, you know, looking at the past and making it better than it was, and I think that's very, that's a human response, like that was the golden era, you know, and I like the scene in the mall where I'm looking at everything. Everybody's wearing nice clothes or eating at that little cafe in the mall, but then you realize there's about, there's a whole bunch of people left out of that scene because you're now, we're, we're a much more, you know, inclusive society. Okay, that's true, and and though the innocence of that time, we're fast paced, we're in a big hurry. You know it's a very divisive culture we're living in, you know, but but that's part, I guess that's part of what change is about. And I don't know that there's probably a right answer to that question. When I go back and see my grandparents again, personally, a hundred percent, the innocence is is alluring, you know, but which world do I want my kids to live in? I don't know, maybe neither, I don't know.
Speaker 1:It's hard to say maybe a little of both. Right, because it's. The world is really scary right now.
Speaker 2:For my three littles that and I you know it is scary, it is it is and what's gonna happen, and maybe and I've never said this before, but it it's a great conversation. Maybe us that have been to 1978 and lived it, maybe part of our call is to share some of that you know, to live part of that culture here, because we can, you know, and bring some of that, not back we can't fully be there, but to share some of those traits with the people around us.
Speaker 1:Right, right, yeah, I think that that's really important. Some of the one thing that has really changed was that we don't smoke. You know, everywhere. You don't have smoke everywhere. My dad's car smelled so bad, so stale cigarettes everywhere, that you went and really people could smoke everywhere, and I'm so glad that part of the seventies is gone. Also, we would like get in the back of our station wagon and just kind of go with. You know, roll all over the place and we weren't secure going down the highway. I don't even know how we made it to 2025.
Speaker 2:No, absolutely, we were bicycles with no helmets. Oh, absolutely, we were bicycles with no helmets. You know, we were hanging off of trees in the backyard and that metal playground equipment that in Houston, was it not knowing? Because I think the internet, you and I wouldn't be able to have this incredible conversation without the internet, without zoom, you know, and we wouldn't have probably connected. It would have been much more difficult and so, but on the other side of that is, we didn't know what to be afraid of in 1978, like we know what to be afraid of.
Speaker 2:In in moms and as parents, the knowing it alters the way we're going to protect our children, and rightfully so. Just because my mom didn't know who lived down the street, or know I was going down the gravel slope at 94 miles an hour, it didn't mean she didn't care about me. And I and I think that's the other theme in this book is, you know, letting parents off the hook because they were just trying to do the best they could. It's not just freeing our parents' generations, but for us, because we're all just doing the best we can. Mom and dad were doing the best they could. Little Amy was doing the best she could. Kim was being the princess and the queen of the whole world. That's the best she could. Kim was being the princess and the queen of the whole world. That's the best she could do, you know. And Rick was oblivious. But I'm doing the best I can. Anne's doing the best she can. You know everybody was listening.
Speaker 1:Really, we're all probably doing the best we can. Yeah, absolutely correct. But one of the other messages that went through your book a lot was and I loved this because you mentioned how what happened in the house with your mom or in general, actually, I'm guessing, defined everyone right, Only it never actually happened and I loved that. Why do you think your family swept things under the rug and didn't talk about their feelings?
Speaker 2:I think it was a product of the 1970s and I think probably our foremothers and bears from the 40s, 50s and 60s and I don't know when it changed would agree with us, would share a similar, and I'm not educated enough to know, but I think there, you know, there's a point where humans just survive. And then there's a point where you know you go further and further into the emotional, in a good way, maybe in a bad way sometimes, but I think we were like a lot of other families in the 70s, a functional, loving family that didn't really discuss anything that actually happened, but still love each other. And I have a great story about the book when it came out, right before it came out. Well, this is funny because I didn't want to share the book with my nuclear family because I was afraid of what they were going to think and they gave me complete freedom to. They were like just do what you got to do. And so the book was coming out in March and I was home for Christmas and I basically dropped off binders at their homes and left like, went out of town and I was so afraid of what they were going to say.
Speaker 2:And so, like, two months later I got a text from my dad and the text read something like I read your book. It was, you know, a great. You know I traveled back in time with you. I think you handled the delicate matters really well. I won't say anything more because we don't talk about that kind of stuff. And then he put dog emoji, dog emoji, dog emoji. That's what he did, like 18 dog emojis.
Speaker 2:And I will tell you this, anne, that is the last text I ever received from my father. He passed away suddenly the next week and so he never held the actual book in his hand. But he read it and I got that great review and I got that incredible. We don't talk about that kind of stuff. You know, like he totally got it and it was. That text is one of the biggest gifts of my life. But it just said what you said. You know we don't talk about our feelings and he acknowledged that. But I also wonder if he felt like maybe we should have talked more. Hard to say, because I never got to ask him.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean you're right hard to say, because I never got to ask him. So, yeah, I mean you're right, we didn't talk about those things in 1978. We had huge secrets in our family, and we didn't have terms like gaslighting and things like that, you know. We just didn't talk about it, we ignored it and we moved on. And that was the times you said somewhere below the surface, what we think we see is real life, and that is so true. I love how you wrote that. Now, when you went back in time, though, what secrets did you find?
Speaker 2:well, I think well, that you know stuff like the grandparents not getting along. I felt like it was like Disneyland, except for it wasn't. Except for. You know, I think I, you know, and it's. This is hard because it's my own life, like I do discuss my, my mother's drinking, which is a delicate matter, for sure.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I didn't know about it as a child, so it wasn't a secret. But when I looked at it through the eyes of an adult and saw my younger self, especially as a mother, I think I unlocked secrets about how we dealt with it and how it impacted us all as adults and how it impacted my mother. And I think the other secrets I saw was my mother was reacting to her reality. That she was, you know, maybe not. I think. The thing is I always thought mom was happy because we lived in a nice house and dad was wonderful. But maybe that's not the life that mom wanted. I mean, no one asked mom, you know. She just went along with what they. She grew up in the fifties.
Speaker 2:She went along with the program more than I went along with the program. I went along with the program less. My kids will go along with the program less than their kids. No telling what they're going to do. There'll be no program. But I think that was. The secrets were more nuanced, you know. I didn't come across anything that was like oh my God, I can't believe I didn't know about this. It was more nuanced. It was more a perspective shift. It was more about truth, truth finding.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you know my aunts and everybody in the family, the women. You know they were always in the kitchen and they were doing their thing and lots of times they had a dress on and you know they had their hair up nice and everything. And I mean those times are just gone.
Speaker 2:Oh, completely, yeah, and no, absolutely. And it's funny, though, because things are changing right now, we don't even know it. You know absolutely. And it's funny, though, because things are changing right now, we don't even know it. You know just like it was then. You know, we went from the bouffant and the pearls to, you know, skorts and sweatpants. You know and amen, I'm all. I'm here for it.
Speaker 1:I wanted to ask you about the comment about your dad in the book, how he said that our biggest fights about were about you and I tried to protect you. Where, where were you coming from with that?
Speaker 2:Well, dad told me that you know from an early age that he never understood it, that mom just did not. She cared for me and did all the things, but she didn't like me. There was something, ever since I was tiny, that she didn't like, and so he didn't go into great detail, and this is when he was older. He was in his seventies when he told me that and I wrote the exact truth. He told me that in a room in Ohio with our dog running past and my younger son, and so we didn't discuss it anymore. But I know that things happened and I think this, this book, helped me, not and I.
Speaker 2:On one hand, it made me realize that all my memories weren't though they were true to a certain extent. You know they, they they may have happened, but the but the actual, I don't know. Without re-seeing it, like I re-saw some other things in my own imagination, I would have to say. But I think there were things, there were memories. I had splashes of things that really happened and I think it validated that, and I think he tried to protect me because she didn't like me.
Speaker 2:I think she tried to protect me because she that it turned physical sometimes, but the book was a careful tiptoe down the tightrope of my mother's still alive now. I don't want to. I want to say this is my truth and this is my story. But I also want to have a relationship with my mother and I think that is such a common, very common thing. And it was tricky, made the writing the book tricky, and I think that's why he said you handled the delicate matters well. Though I alluded to some things, I didn't straight go into them, except for a couple times because the editor pushed me to do it.
Speaker 1:I think that you're touching on something that was really big back then, because I had the exact same experience with my mom and that appearance was very important. And you know, make sure your shirt is tucked in. Oh, look at you, you can't go out of the house looking like that and everything had to appear perfect on the outside. And little Amy didn't appear so perfect and you know, I mean you went out in public and you might have ruffled some feathers or say, you know, she might be afraid that you're going to say or do something that you weren't supposed to do and represent the family in a way that she didn't appreciate. And I know that I was kind of like that too. I was, you know when, against the grain, I guess you could say. And so you know she wasn't.
Speaker 1:My mom, too, resorted to physical with me, and I think that that's some of the things that they just did back then. And times have changed. I mean, now you can't even hit your kid, even like a SWAT sometimes, and it's, you know, oh, it's, it's abuse. So I mean, things have really swayed the opposite way, but I think that appearance doesn't matter as much as it used to.
Speaker 2:Right, and it's back to the. It's back to the pearls and the dress and the updo to serve dinner at the end of the evening. It's that same thing that pressure was put on the child, that had been put on the mother to go out. And my grandmother in the book, my maternal grandmother is a reaction to me. She was just trying to survive, I think, mother. I think mom loved me, but she didn't know what to do with me because she was trying to fit in this box so she could just go to the next day, you know, and that didn't make what she did, right, but she was literally just trying to survive.
Speaker 2:And it reminds me of Facebook and Instagram. Now, like we, we, you know, now we're just trying to make it all perfect there. That's the realm where everything still has to be perfect. So we think we've gotten better, except for everybody filtering their pictures and their lives. It's really the same thing, you know, but it's it's it's electronic, as as opposed to personal. But I think you're right. I think our mothers, you know, in the context of the time period of this book, were brought up in the 50s by mothers who were born in the 30s and they expected a certain level of perfection, you know, but there's things that can bubble in a sinister way underneath the you know, canopy of perfection, which is, you know, it cannot be achieved by human beings.
Speaker 1:No, it was a very difficult time to grow up, I think in an unspoken way, and we just did what our parents told us to do. And but little Amy kind of went against the grain a little bit and did what she wanted to do, and that's fine. But I think that your mom was trying to stifle the very creative part in you.
Speaker 2:You were a very creative child, right fine, but I think that your mom was trying to stifle the very creative part in you. You were a very creative child, right, and I think I actually think that mom probably sees that now. But again, I do think. I mean, I think it's a again, it's a balancing act. I some of the stuff that happened shouldn't happen, but I do think that there's a lot of grace for her, though, because she was trying to do what she thought she did.
Speaker 2:Now would she go back and redo the whole thing? Maybe she would, but there's parts of my parenting, parts of my whole life. I would go back and redo. If I can't get some of it, I just flat out messed up and um, and I apologize for that.
Speaker 2:But also you know that it, putting it in that lens, makes me look at my mother in a different light, you know, and I think that one of the powers of the story for me personally again, was in the sharing of it, and then it being in book form, I mean it makes you kind of own it and I think that's a great. You know, that is a good takeaway and it also reminds us that you know, regardless of how exceptional we feel like our life story is or isn't, whether it's going to be on the Today Show or Good Morning America or not, it matters. These stories matter, these emotions matter. This stuff that got put under the rug matters, and it doesn't matter that it matters to all of Facebook or the rest of the world. It matters to us and the people who care about us, and it matters enough to have the conversation. It matters enough to imagine ourselves in the same situation as Big Amy was, and I think that's really important.
Speaker 1:One of the things that you did that I loved, and I regret that my dad had passed away when I was 11. So I never got to have. Yeah, I mean it was a really huge loss in my life, for, you know, he didn't walk me down the aisle, he didn't, he wasn't around for me to get to know him as an adult and have any adult conversations with him. Really, and I loved that you, in this book, sat across from your grandparents and had these, these adult conversations with them. What was that like?
Speaker 2:Oh, it was. I mean, it was, you know, one part, magical, to imagine that I could have that conversation, that I could be in a physical realm as an adult person, and it's one of the most emotional parts of the book. And I think for a lot of readers it was one of the most emotional, relatable parts of the book because, you don't know, as a I mean, we all say this is such a relatable part of life, but then you know they're going to be with us only a short time, the grandparents, and then they're gonna be gone and we're gonna regret all the questions. We never asked them for the rest of our lives. It's such a part of the human experience that that generation one up from ours, you know, it is such a part of all of our human experience.
Speaker 2:But to get that opportunity, even just to have the opportunity to write it, was so emotionally satisfying because there's a part of this book that I feel like was real. It was real because I wrote it and the emotional experience I had and I had no idea that I would have that kind of satisfying. And the dog, for me, was so emotionally satisfying because Cecil yeah, oh, thank you for remembering his name but they, and then the, the for me when I had the conversation with myself, my younger self, in the bedroom. Those are probably the three points in the book that are so emotionally satisfying.
Speaker 1:Even though they didn't actually really happen, they changed me yeah, there were times that I had to remind myself that this wasn't real. This was like a fiction, that you went back in time because it felt so real. I wanted to ask you about your siblings too, because I mean, there were a lot of dynamics that were going on with you as kids and as adults. So did you understand your siblings a little bit better after writing this book?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think one of the things that I understood the most well. First of all, I got this rare opportunity to when I wrote them as children. I remembered them from the pictures and from what I remembered of what we did. But seeing their adult selves in their imagined child selves was really again satisfying and, you know, wonderful. But also I just gained this appreciation that we'd done this ride together, as different as we are, you know, and we've come fractured, just like brothers and sisters do, all over. We seem to come apart and get together because we are so completely different. But that just an appreciation that I've got to do the ride with these two people and you know what. And then the appreciation for how they approached the book project as the greatest thing and they were just so proud and happy and wanted to talk about it and I think you know those dynamics, like even with my mother, that it was hugely.
Speaker 2:I forgot how supported and loved and celebrated I was, you know, and what a gift that was. And we're still different. But the book has become a family book and, um, you know, we're, we're proud of it. Now there's the kids. We all have kids and my sister doesn't have kids, but my brother and I do, as they've gotten old enough. Each of them has read it. Uh, my son, who just he's a freshman at LSU, he just read it.
Speaker 1:He just listened to it on his way home from school for the first time, you know. So, yeah, that's so cool, you know, I well, I believe that you are right in the book when you say that three people can be raised in the same household and come out with completely different memories, and we all have different experiences with the same parents and talk about three different people raised together in the same home. You're you three, and one of my favorite parts of the book that you kind of touched on earlier, when you went to the mall and you took each of you shopping including yourself shopping you, you got. You took each of you to be able to go to the store they wanted to, to get the things that they wanted to, to have the experience that they wanted to. Why did you choose what you chose for each of them? And I'm really curious why you chose what you did for yourself.
Speaker 2:Right. Well, I really tried to be true to what I thought each person would want, based on what I remember they wanted and then, of course, based on what I know they want now. But you know, that whole scene was written because and I hate to give her credit my sister Kim, who doesn't have any children, she, every time one of our kids has a birthday, she takes them to the store they want to go to and she buys them what they want. So that was totally a tip of the hat to my sister. That's what she does, and so that was the inspiration for that. And then, plus, it got me in the mall longer and I liked the whole mall scene. I loved the nostalgia and the differences and the mall in the seventies was about the greatest thing that could ever happen to you. Yeah, you know, and so I wanted to. I wanted to write that, but I you know the things that you know Kim selected the K stick pen because hers was going to be all about fashion and going through the Sears catalogs. I had forgotten about the stick pens and I knew she would want whatever it was was the thing, and that was the thing in 1978.
Speaker 2:And Rick loved Star Wars and actually in a Houston newspaper that was an actual ad Meet Chewabaca at the Greens Point, jcpenney or whatever it was. So I wrote that in based on fact. That was part of my research and then. So we did that and then mine those things are true about me and unfortunately I like processed meat logs and fake cheese and I always wanted to go to Hickory farms and that's a lot of people's favorite scene.
Speaker 2:You know, I always wanted to go to Hickory farms as a kid and I never went. And then I love football. I ended up writing about football and I didn't see that at the time and I would have completely been up in the helmets and the bumper pool tables and so I wrote that whole thing. True, those, those, all those things that we selected were true to who we are as kids. And I actually got Kim and Rick for Christmas after the book came out. I got them the items they got at the mall as as uh, and my brother got me a big meat log, so that the yard of beef.
Speaker 1:So there you go oh my gosh, that is so fun. I love that. Yeah, and and you do talk you mentioned the pro football hall of fame in your book. I go past it all the time.
Speaker 2:I see it every week I've been twice and, uh, we got to go to the induction three years ago for our. That's where we went for our 30th anniversary. Everybody else went to the hawaii and we went to canton, loved every minute of it.
Speaker 1:Well, we go to the parade every single year, okay and yeah, and we go to a lot of the happenings so it's a beautiful facility.
Speaker 2:Now it's grown too. I know where there's a whole lot more. They're building more where it's going to be like a oh my gosh entertainment destination, as opposed to just the, the hall of fame yeah, it is huge, it's fun.
Speaker 1:Also, I wanted to touch on this memory and, well, I wanted to know if it was a memory or if it was something that you needed to write. And that was about the bonanza scene and when you were there with your dad, because every other scene in the book this was so different to me. Your dad seemed happy, more joy, like he wanted to go out to eat, he wanted to be a part with the family, uh, and I didn't catch that in any other part of the book. So I was just wondering if that was an experience that you had or if it was one that you needed.
Speaker 2:Boy, that's a great question. You know, no one has ever said to me your father was I'm really gonna have to think about this that I portrayed him different in that scene. I'm going to write that down, no one's ever so. Thank you for that. Yeah, thank you for that. I don't know if it's not from a memory, because that's how dad acted, because it was such a big deal when we went out to dinner that he would have made such a big deal out of it, and he liked to do the whole thankful thing, so maybe I let him run that scene. He was living when I wrote the scene, though.
Speaker 2:But, maybe it was something I needed to do, and I don't know if it was subconsciously that I wanted to celebrate him in that scene, because I you know, the whole focus had been on mom throughout the book and then I I wanted to show that in in dad. That is such a great question, ann, and I don't know that I have a definitive answer. I have to think about it.
Speaker 1:That was the one where your dad stood out the most to me in the book.
Speaker 2:Right, right, yeah, that's interesting. And he, but he liked to do the whole around the table thing and my mother hated it and I and I wrote that to the siege, like Dick, I'm fine, you know, like shut it down, but and and I think that had dinner table vibes, which I did a little bit of. How? Cause, you know, we all sat like a lot of people did in the seventies. We sat down every night and everyone sat down in their place and it was kind of somewhere between like very warm and friendly and like this is a total. You know, like anything could happen, like this is the most dysfunctional thing anybody's ever been to. And also, yay, this is wonderful.
Speaker 2:But I think that maybe that was me showing how he acted at the dinner table, because we only had, I think, breakfast at the actual table in the book and that was dinner, dad too, and so maybe that's what I was, maybe that's one of the things I was highlighting. So I made that scene bigger because that's how he would have acted at a table with all of us sitting around him. Well, it was a good scene, thank you.
Speaker 1:And it also made me realize how expensive things are today, versus $14 for a meal.
Speaker 2:Right and all those prices were. I mean, that's all research, but that's you know. So all that was completely. It's like the you know the scene, the go meet Darth Vader scene in the mall in Houston. That was a lot of it's based on facts you know, and then Sure, I knew that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I could feel that you, with your memories, talking about memories, you bring up a really good point when you talk about staying in the bad memories versus good memories, and where do you find yourself most of the time?
Speaker 2:I think this book has helped me stay in the better memories and it's another gift and I just never would have expected when I sat down to write my funny little. I try to stay in the good memories more and I also try to look at memories as malleable and I rely on my memory still because I have a great memory. I have a better memory than my brother and sister and they would admit that. But that doesn't mean the way it all went down is completely, 100% factual and I think there's a lot of hope in that and I think there's a lot of almost emotional freedom in that, Like I don't have to be anchored to that anymore all the time, Like it happened, but that doesn't have to be the anchor for the rest of my life in the book that you know those tough things that happen to us, that when does it get to the point where we talk and talk about things and then we realize that it did happen but the realization that talking about it makes it worse after a while.
Speaker 1:So and we're all different in how we deal with our trauma and how we talk about it. But I do know that we can reach a point where it is not healthy to revisit and revisit and it's healthy to pick up and move on and figure out a new way to move. Did this book help you do that? It seems like it did.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely, absolutely. And I think what you said is so important that threshold is different for each human being. You know, each of us have a different threshold, for you know, when we're ready to say, okay, that happened, that was bad, but I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to move forward now, and I don't think it's even done in a definitive way or, you know, an absolute way. I think it's just done emotionally and then we're just ready to go to the next thing. I, you know, I love the, I love the line in the book and this just made me think of it.
Speaker 2:It's like the baggage carousel at the airport, you know you take the bags on and off, and take them off again and put them on and at some point you know it's. It just goes around, around, around again until you walk away from it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I had that visual in my head when I was explaining that to you, because that's what it feels after a while. It's just it is time to kind of pick up and pick, get those luggage off the carousel and then go off and move on. And we need to do that. At times we have to, and I felt that with your book. It felt so healing to me in such a creative way and it wasn't like the normal boring way of revisiting our life.
Speaker 2:Wow, that's very humbling. I will say that as I've reread the book. You know, I think this is very common for anyone who's written a book or written anything. You are being creative about anything. You look back at certain parts you're like, ah, you know, I can't believe I said that, but I think the thing I'm the proudest of is how the book goes. It'll get kind of deep and then there'll be some humorous zap right right behind it. I like that and I think that's what life is like, though you know, we we live through things that are real and hard and then someone makes us laugh. You know there's such, there's such value in that and we forget that. You know we can be that to each other, you know, and that's so important. You know levity is so important and because it keeps things in perspective and that's who we can be to each other as adults who have experienced, you know, this incredible, messy, screwed up, beautiful life.
Speaker 1:I want to ask you about your mom. Did she have a hard time reading herself in the book?
Speaker 2:did she have a hard time reading herself in the book. I cannot imagine Mom and I have discussed it, but we haven't had like a in-depth like we. We, we touch on it, you know, and I I know that she cause I the epilogue is true I did go and talk to mom, you know. I did go and have that conversation with her and we did not agree on everything. We both cried, which we, neither of us, cried ever, and we walked away at least living in the land of honesty. And my mom has chosen, at least in her conversations with me, to focus on the parts of the book that she felt seen and valued and she's, she's, she's, you know, focused on those things and maybe with her friends she said oh, my God, I can't believe she said all that, but I think she's. I what my perception of what she's done with it is she's done what dad said in the text. We don't talk about those things and she's good with that and she's fine with with not discussing those things, at least with me, and I know she hasn't discussed them with my brother and sister, but she has told me stuff, like I liked when you said dad's a great guy, but he's, he's the right guy for me.
Speaker 2:You know where's mom's ladies night out?
Speaker 2:She liked it when I said you know she's living this beautiful life, but is this the life she wanted? She liked when I said mom wanted to be a writer but she didn't have the opportunities that I did, because I think mom saw herself seen as a woman and as this you know, amazing individual who was captive to her time period, which was absolutely the truth. And I think she liked having her mother being seen as this negative force, you know, in this backhanded kind of way in her life, and I think she's chosen, at least with me, to focus on those things. And then she also I mean this is personal, but she has apologized to me several times since the book came out, and not in a specific way, but she said stuff like I know I did stuff I shouldn't have done. I know I did things and I'm like mom, we're good, you know, and so she has. So I guess that's her reaction to to what the book brought out and what it didn't say, because that's all in there under the under the surface.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's actually beautiful. And I what about your siblings? Have you been able to revisit with them and say you know, why did we act like nothing was happening in the house? I mean, it wasn't extreme, but whatever it was at the time, why was it just ignored and moved on?
Speaker 2:Right, and I think the fact that it wasn't extreme makes it even more not dangerous, but you don't, you know, like nefarious, like like it's, because it's not big, nobody's going to deal with it, and so it just seems like everything's perfect and it's fine, you know Right.
Speaker 2:But but they, they both, they were, I think they were both, or especially my sister. My brother and I have discussed it less. He's assessed it in the context of one of his children's relationship with his wife, but he, you know, my sister, was surprised that my, she knew some of the negative components of my relationship with my mother, but she was surprised at the breadth of it, cause I actually shared with her, you know, more details and she was absolutely just dumped out in an upset, very highly upset about it, and because her reality was different than and I didn't go into her room and talk to her about it, you know, and it didn't happen in front of other people, and so I think she was shocked and very, as my big sister, I mean, as jealous as I was at her, she had my back, yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:Okay, you know well, every family has secrets, and you're right, and it doesn't have to be a huge life altering situation in order for it to affect who we are as individuals for the rest of our lives. You know, it is those underlying hidden secrets, those things that are not said, those dynamics within the family that shape us, that are not healthy, that no one mentions. And these are the stories that are not normally written about. And I'm so glad that you did that. Because is that why you added that twist to the time travel too? Because I have to say I think that everyone should read this book because these stories they're not the ones that are often told and it is that kind that hits people where they live. You know more people where they live. So many people don't have those extremes. And I think that time travel twist actually kind of made it more fun in a way where we were invited into most people's lives Most people's, you know, not the extremes.
Speaker 2:Right, I think that's a great observation, you know, and for me the time travel was what I want to do. So and it ended up being, like you said this great, you know connector, you know a device to, rather than just remembering it, to relive it, you know, and then that's so relatable.
Speaker 2:The whole thing is so relatable and whenever I talk to somebody about it, even when someone hasn't read the book. You know you're an exception because you read it, and I mean you read it with great attention to detail. But you see the click, click, click, click, click and all that is is male, female, it doesn't matter age. What would I do if I went back to my 10-year-old self? And my kids have told me that I thought myself back to my 10-year-old self and I was only how many years removed from that. But that's the immediate takeaway is I put myself in that situation and what happens?
Speaker 1:I loved how you said just because it wasn't a case of extremes doesn't mean it didn't happen. Right, right, yeah, because we're. I loved how you said just because it wasn't a case of extremes doesn't mean it didn't happen, right, right, yeah, because we're so quick to minimize our pain when it's not extreme Right and we compare our.
Speaker 2:You know, I have a dear friend who lost her son to cancer at 15. And she tells me all the time you cannot not share your stuff just because you don't think it's as bad as my stuff. Like when my dad died. She goes we're going to talk about your dad dying, even though you don't want to do that with me because you're comparing it right away to my son's death. She said that doesn't take away from your experience being a real experience that has had a profound impact on you. But I think social media has done nothing but it accelerates that thought because we look on social media for the extreme, we hear the extreme stories. That's what's shared and so we think if we don't have something extreme, it's not worth sharing. And I like what you said. This book is just it's kind of there's not right words for it anymore not normal, not suburban, you know, but it's just like you said, for most people, for a lot of people, it's relatable.
Speaker 1:Um that makes it powerful in a backhanded way yeah.
