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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
A Day with my younger self: Amy Weinland Daughters Memoir part 2
What would happen if you could travel back in time and meet your younger self? In this captivating conversation with Amy Daughters, we explore the profound journey she took in writing her memoir "You Cannot Mess This Up: A True Story That Never Happened," where she imagines returning to 1978 and spending Thanksgiving weekend with her childhood family.
Amy reveals how inhabiting the same space with her energetic younger self transformed her relationship with her past. "If I'm not going to stand up for us, who's going to stand up for us?" she asks, capturing the moment she became her own champion. Through the creative device of time travel, Amy found healing wit wounds that aren't 'extreme' are still wounds – validating that ordinary family dynamics can leave extraordinary emotional imprints.
The most touching moments come through Amy's reimagined conversations with grandparents who had passed away before she reached adulthood. These scenes provided emotional fulfillment that transcended fiction, becoming "real" and ultimately changing her. Ann and Amy discuss how the book allowed Amy to understand her complicated relationship with her mother in a new light: "I knew she didn't like me, but somehow this book helped me realize that she loves me."
Amy addresses family secrets, unacknowledged incidents, and the pattern of "acting like it never happened" was just the climate of the 70's. Her journey demonstrates how revisiting our pasts with compassionate eyes can reveal sources of strength and support that were present all along, even when unrecognized.
The conversation takes an unexpected turn when we learn how writing this memoir sparked another powerful act of healing—Amy handwrote 580 personal letters to people from her life. It’s proof that when we make peace with our past, we often uncover new paths forward we never could have imagined. Her latest book, Dear Dana: That Time I Went Crazy and Wrote All 580 Handwritten Letters, is out now.
Ready to take your own emotional time-travel journey? Listen now and discover how loving your past self might be the key to liberating your present one.
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 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 they're going to be with us only a short time, the grandparents, and then they're going to be gone and we'll regret all the questions we never asked them for the rest of our lives. It's such a part of the human experience that Generation One up from ours, 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. Even though they didn't actually really happen, they changed me, yeah.
Speaker 1: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. I forgot how supported and loved and celebrated I was, you know, and what a gift that was. And we're still different.
Speaker 2:But the book has become a family book and, um, okay, 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. He just listened to it on his way home from school for the first time, you know.
Speaker 1:So yeah, that's so cool, you know 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 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 all 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.
Speaker 2: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. You know I love the nostalgia and the differences and that you know, 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, 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:Okay, 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. 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 the Yardo beef. So there you go.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, that is so fun. I love that. Yeah, and you do talk. You mentioned the Pro Football Hall of Fame in your book. I go past it all the time. I see it every week.
Speaker 2:I've been twice and we got to go to the induction three years ago. That's where we went for our 30th anniversary. Everybody else went to 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.
Speaker 2:It's a beautiful facility. 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 entertainment destination as opposed to just the Hall of Fame.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is huge, it's fun. Also, I wanted to touch on this memory. 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, 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:Just wondering if that was an experience that you had or if it was one that you needed. Boy, that's a great question. No one has ever said to me your father was I'm really going to 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. 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, 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 wanted to show that in dad.
Speaker 2:That is such a great question, anne, 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 Right Right.
Speaker 2: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 act it at a table with all of us sitting around it. 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.
Speaker 1:I knew that. 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:in the better memories and it's another gift.
Speaker 2:And I just never would have expected, when I sat down to write my funny little book, that it would have this kind of emotional ramifications on me much less someone who read it, which would have been totally out of my mind. But I think, because I'm going through this process, I I think it is. It has shifted my perception where I. It has shifted my perception where I. I try to stay in the, in the, in the good memories more, and I also try to look at memories as malleable. And I 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, a hundred percent 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.
Speaker 1:Well, you do bring up the point 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. 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 an absolute way. I think it's just done emotionally and then we're just ready to go to the next thing. I love the line in the book and this just made me think of it but it's like the baggage carousel at the airport you take the bags on and off, and take them off again and put them on and at some point you know it's.
Speaker 1:it just goes around, around, around again until you walk away from it, 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 a certain part 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 uh, because it keeps things in perspective and that's who we could 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: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, which 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 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. So 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 the right guy for me. 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?
Speaker 2:She liked when I said mom wanted to be a writer but she didn't have the opportunities 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 what the book brought out and what it didn't say, because that's all in there under the surface.
Speaker 1:I mean that's actually beautiful. And 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: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. 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 she knew some of the negative components of my relationship with my mother, but she was surprised at the breadth of it Because I actually shared with her, you know, more details and she was absolutely just dumped out in and upset, very highly upset about it, and because her reality was different than mine, 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, you know.
Speaker 1:Okay, 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. Why, 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 lives. Most people's, you know not the extremes, right?
Speaker 2: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, the whole thing is so relatable.
Speaker 2: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 yearyear-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.
Speaker 2:Right right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, because we're so quick to minimize our pain when it's not extreme.
Speaker 2:Right and we compare our. 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. 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 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, I mean it was a very hard time for her. But my daughter, talking about trying to relate in a way where you know your pain might not be as bad as somebody else's and you don't really want to share it Well, my daughter wanted to relate so badly in a way that we didn't know that she did. And she was holding my friend's hand in the hospital and she said I know I had a cold once.
Speaker 2:The hospital and she said I know I had a cold once and it was.
Speaker 1:she was only like three or something and it was just so adorable yeah so adorable. It was her way of trying to relate to her pain and meet her where she was, and I mean we just need to be who we are in the moment and not be afraid.
Speaker 2:And there's such a humanness in that, though, because that was born completely out of love and concern. Exactly, you know, and it wasn't. It's not about you know. That's one of the things I've learned from my friend who lost her son. It's not about the right words. You're not going to have the right words for something like that or for a lot of different situations. We don't have words to meet circumstances. You know. It's about the presence of your little girl holding that woman's hand, you know, and the most powerful thing I can do for my friend who lost her son is just show up and hold her hand.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's exactly right, and sometimes just be quiet with them and that's all they need. No-transcript. We could have thought that about you if you really did. Did you really do your Barbie's hair with a chemistry set?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I did all kinds of things, anne, and I don't like to put hair on the podcast, but no, I did get the chemistry set up in there because I was trying to do something with it and I didn't really blow it up, but that's a good. I love that whole scene where she's sewing her the stuff in her bedroom you know all of her collections and she's she lays back on the bed. These are the finest dice known to mankind.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's, that's good stuff, you know, oh it was I, what I, you know, what you showed, every aspect of little Amy, the good, the bad, ugly, the funny. And I also wanted to ask you, because you said that your mom, she was the mom that God gave you for a reason, and did that realization shift for you during the book?
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely Absolutely, Because I was a mom when I wrote the book and I watched and I also saw. You know, I always gave dad all the credit, you know, dad, dad, dad, dad, dad. But mom's the one who set me up for a lot of real things, you know. And mom, in trying to keep me, dad, just let me be me. And mom also, you know, helped me survive, you know, and she absolutely was the mom she was supposed to be, Because she realized the reality of life.
Speaker 2:Dad was more of like everything's going to work out fine, this is going to be great, you know. And mom was more like she was like you asked what I would. You know my reaction to my younger self as she sat across from me. Well, dad was the person on one shoulder going go, Amy, you know, go, take all your clothes off and run naked across the house. And he wouldn't have said that, but per se, but he was supportive of the football side. All the things I did that were kind of. He was like she's fine, Sue, she's fine. And mom was the one on the other side, the other shoulder, saying hey, we got to fit in because we got to survive this whole thing. So I think, as much as mom might not have liked me, she loved me. She loved me.
Speaker 1:She loved me enough to try to help me to survive the rest of my life, and that was a gift, but I could have not ever seen that I don't know what I've seen it without the book. I don't know, I have no idea, but I definitely would not have felt it to the depth that. I feel it because I knew she didn't like me, but somehow this book made me realize that she loves me.
Speaker 2:I mean, though, every child wants their mom to like them, right, yeah, and I think that that's well those of us who've had that experience. We look for that in someone else, like we want someone to be our champion. You know another female person in our life who will, you know, mother us or whatever it is we're looking for, you know, and then we'll probably reject that too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one of the things that I think that really got you through. It felt like I mean, you read two Bibles every night and the Green Bible was very special to you. The spiritual thread in your story is so quiet yet profound. What role did faith play in your healing journey?
Speaker 2:Oh, I mean absolutely.
Speaker 2:I mean it's my personal faith.
Speaker 2:I did see, though, when I wrote the book that you know, I thought that God had kind of showed up in my life in my 20s or when I went to college, you know.
Speaker 2:But I did see, in remembering the Bible which I still have and it's in my box from when I wrote the book I did see that God showed up for me earlier than I thought God did, and I remember reading that stuff, but I realized that had a huge impact on me before I ever acknowledged that it did. I was just doing what you know, probably what I thought they wanted me to do in church, because I was kind of a. In one way I wasn't a rule follower, but in another way I was completely a rule follower, and I think that was God just showing up for me at a very early age and me not seeing that. And I did go look at that picture of Jesus holding the girl's hand and the hand on the boy's shoulder, and I felt very physically and emotionally drawn to that as a child, and I think that there's an absolute reason for that, because God was there and I didn't even know it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you wrote. Little Amy didn't know a thing about the challenges of religion the simplicity of grace combined with the absolute complicated nature of it, the double standards that mixed unconditional love with strict requirements, harsh judgment with hypocrisy, and total inclusion with exclusivity. Feeling unloved not by God but by God's people, which, by the way, I understand 100%. Amen, amen, amen. Not being capable myself of loving all God's people, judging being judged. In Amy's heart and soul there was no room for any of this. As idiotic, lost and naive as she seemed and she was, her grasp of what was real was tremendous. If faith were real, she had it. Unsoiled, unspent belief, formed in the face of real life, not some sort of milky white childhood fantasy land. I mean, I loved it. I just I wrote it down when you were an adult, telling your younger self that you believe in him too. I mean, come on, that was a moment for me.
Speaker 2:Oh, I mean, and just having you read that back, I mean that was obviously a reflection on my adult experience as someone who believes in God, obviously, you know. But to see that, I mean to see that faith in my young self, I mean that had to have a profound impact on me and probably changed my relationship with God again. Because I was like, wait, you showed up at the beginning and wait, this doesn't have anything to do with all these other people, this has to do with me and God. So there's another aspect of the book that changed me, I'm sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean you wrote if I couldn't love her, meaning little Amy, who would? I mean the gift that you gave yourself, the most important gift that you gave yourself was love.
Speaker 2:Right and accepting. Yeah, I love that scene in the mall when I'm in the sporty goods place and I feel like that guy, the salesman, is judging little Amy and I get all upset about it and I say that if I'm not going to stand up for us, who's going to stand up for us? You know, if I'm not going to stand up for myself, who's going to stand up for me? And I think by that I meant like if I'm not going to just accept myself for the girl who wanted the helmets and the sports bag and the bumper pool table and the sausage log, then who else is going to do it? And does that even really matter if I can accept myself for this screwed up, well-intentioned messy? Yet you know, okay individual with a bunch of quirks.
Speaker 1:I want to take us to probably one of my favorite parts of the book. It was so deep for me, by the way, and so I want to read this. The truth was that I was an awkward child. An awkward, graceless, uncoordinated, angry girl who was difficult to love, mostly by herself, mostly by her adult self. Was she unlovable because of the freak she was? Or instead, was she a freak because she wasn't loved? Did she throw herself down the stairs in the middle of the night just to see if anyone would come and check on her? Because there really was something wrong with her, something dysfunctional, or as a reaction to what was going on under the surface in the house? That actually happened. I was there. Did they ever discuss it? Because they never talked about it with me? Were they worried? Or did they, like certain people who hallucinated, drank a lot, almost got raped, just act like it never happened? How deep did this all go, and what parts was I not remembering? Wiping my eyes on the leg of a polyester pantsuit hanging over my head, I realized that the really screwed up part of the whole business was that everyone was going to forget about all that. Yeah, there would be pictures of the actual events and the sharp flashes of memory because they were real, but still everyone would forget because that was the thing to do, it wasn't on purpose, it was human and who wanted to go through life with all those memories in their head anyway? Maybe the luckiest people were those who couldn't remember. Eventually, thankfully, I lay in the fetal position on the floor and passed out slobber moistening the gold shag surface.
Speaker 1:Sometime before dawn I awoke, opened the door to the closet and crawled over to the bed. It was quiet. I awoke, opened the door to the closet and crawled over to the bed. It was quiet and I felt sick. I began to question myself, almost completely subconsciously why did I let myself drink so much? Idiot. Why did I cry like that and fall asleep in the closet? Idiot. Why did I go outside at the party? Total idiot. It was my fault, all my fault, but at least I didn't drunk, post on Facebook or text a bunch of people. At least there was that. As I drifted off, I thought about how lucky people were 30 years ago not to have the internet. I just want to say what the heck I mean. There was so much in this. Put me in this moment.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a lot. There's a lot there, you know, and I think that the buildup of writing everything I wrote up till that point comes out right there. And you know, and the observations, and you know, spending that time in my own imagination in that circumstance, and I think I'm being really almost too honest there, you know, to the point where it's almost painful to hear, because that's my real inner monologue especially, I mean the whole, and I had never I mean this is the crazy part, anne I had never told anybody and no one had ever said anything to me about to throw myself down the stairs, which was true, that's a true thing. That happened and I think I realized in writing all the stuff I wrote up to this point and, being a mom, that no one ever addressed that. I remembered it and I don't think I was even trying to be dramatic. I mean that is a freaking dramatic passage, you know, and but that happened and no one, and then no one, ever said anything. No one ever said a word about it. Dad would come up the stairs but I would already be in my bed and I'm sure I was heavy breathing and he just acted like it wouldn't happen and then he went back down the stairs and they never said anything.
Speaker 2:You know, and I think that I mean I wrote the part where I drank and then gone upstairs and laid the feet on position in the closet because I realized that if I had was actually to live through this whole thing, I would be at a point of completely emotional overwhelm, like too much, like I can't handle anymore, cause that's right after my mom and dad and I are drunk in the room downstairs and say goodnight to each other, my mom holds me in her arms and tells me how much she loves me.
Speaker 2:You know how loved I am and and I think it just too much, it was too much to write it by, too much to hear it again. I'm not saying you shouldn't have read it, I'm saying that's just a lot, you know. And so I think that's a reaction, all that honesty and all that analyzation, you know. And then that inner monologue is the classic over-served inner monologue. Blame it all on yourself, but we don't have the internet, you right, which is a great line I love because I would have been even more messed up if I would have had facebook back then.
Speaker 1:Oh a hundred percent A little.
Speaker 2:Amy was well-served not to have it. Um, you know, as was Sue, probably would have been my mother probably would have been more like some of her own personal stuff would have been harder with, with her mom and her looking on Facebook, you know, and Kim would have been okay, but Kim would have been even more. I mean, she would have been okay but it would have been hard on her and Rick wouldn't even know anything was going on. But you're right, though, I mean, and it was lucky she didn't have it, it's a good observation.
Speaker 1:You wanted to save your younger self from your future pain when you drank too much in college and slashed your wrist. You didn't want to die, but you did want someone to acknowledge the pain and it feels like, and you can tell me if writing the book helped you acknowledge your own pain.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, 100%. It validated a lot of things, not in writing a book and I clearly did not actually go back in time, but I it's. It's about taking, like taking it seriously, like letting my mom off the hook because she did the best she could, but also that stuff actually happened and it had an emotional legacy that was real. You know, that was that was real and and it's back to what we said, like I could compare my childhood to a bunch of other childhoods and my childhood was mild, completely mild, you know, compared to other things that happened to people. But that doesn't mean that it didn't have a real impact. Exactly that doesn't mean that it didn't matter. It doesn't mean there was something for me to be healed from and freed from, regardless of what anyone else thought about it.
Speaker 2:And that's maybe that's the the power in this story, cause I remember writing that scene because the editor I kind of alluded to the cause that actually happened in college, that another real memory that I obviously that was the hardest thing to share in the book. And I remember calling my college roommate and saying I just wrote this scene about what happened when we were in college because she was my roommate at the time I was like I don't even know what to do. She's like this might be the most she said without it, you're going to leave everybody hanging. You know, without it it becomes less powerful, the story becomes less powerful. And I just remember telling her I don't think I can do it. And she's like well, you just gotta decide. You're either gonna do it or not do it. And I did it and I, you know, put it in the back of my head.
Speaker 1:You were sexually assaulted in the book. Why that was in the book back in time.
Speaker 2:Right and a lot of people have asked that and more people have told me that that scene doesn't fit in the book than anything else. But to me it was a vehicle to show how extreme the I'm not going to tell anybody what happened was from. For a bunch of people in 1978 and certainly myself, you know, and I was not sexually abused as a child. I had that exact scene happen to me at another point in my life, like in my late teens, outside of the house, and I wanted to use that as I went in the bathroom and brushed myself off and act like nothing ever happened and I told myself in the half bath I'll never tell anybody this and I 100% know I wasn't going to tell anybody that and I'll stand by that and I just it was the extreme that it showed, the extreme that certain people in certain situations are not going to tell you what happened and we don't know what we think we know is is not reality. It's back to your quote about what's under that surface is what's really going on here.
Speaker 2:Right, right, yeah, I mean, and we didn't talk about those things back then, Right, or a 24 hour news cycle where they look for, you know, everything's highlighted because you have to fill all the hours. You know and we didn't know. We were supposed to be afraid, but then the legacy of not telling something that significant to another human being, the legacy for the women we are today. That's part of the story, you know, and we're all holding onto things.
Speaker 1:You are.
Speaker 2:I am. Just because I wrote a back in time book didn't mean I told everybody everything. And it doesn't mean I don't sit here and think, oh my God, I can't believe I shared all that. And if there's a part of me that doesn't understand how logically I thought that was a good idea to share those things. You know, like what in the hell were you thinking? You know you should have stuck with man bulges and chest hair. But I do think it is why the book has resonated with people. You know, and I guess I just stand by that.
Speaker 1:Another thing was when you left in 1978, when you left 1978 and left your younger family for your new family, it became really visual for me. I saw you leave your young dad to your elderly father. So what was that like for you when you wrote it?
Speaker 2:Oh, it was, yeah, because I had felt like I'd gone back in time, you know. It just gave me a new appreciation and you used dad as an example for dad. I mean, dad was once this young guy, you know, who was almost the same person, but in a different shell and a younger version. And again it's almost like looking back at my siblings and having this appreciation for them. It made me appreciate that, dad, you know, and dad's place in my life and mom's place. It made me appreciate that dad, you know, and dad's place in my life and mom's place, that they'd spent their whole life doing nothing else but just try to love me or contain me or whatever it is they were trying to do, you know. But there was something like it's like backwards nostalgia, if that makes sense. Like seeing dad as an old man was almost nostalgic after seeing him as a young man. It's like a. It's like a Right, right, right.
Speaker 1:Yes, I totally understand that and I felt that in the book.
Speaker 2:Right, right, it was like the golden age is now maybe and we just didn't know it.
Speaker 1:The final note from your son to your younger self was a gift. Do you think that love really can fix everything? Because apparently your son did.
Speaker 2:Right. I wonder if he still thinks that, and that was an exact quote from the application he filled out for that summer camp. He put that in there and so it was, I think while I was writing the book so it became easy to use. I do. I do believe that. I do believe when, you know. I mean there's a lot of different contexts for that.
Speaker 2:There's self-love, there's love for our family members, our children, our spouse, all those things. And then there's love between people who, on the line, a lot of those things that dictate, who we can't care about, begin to dissipate. And I do think that in the context of myself me seeing my younger self as this yes, off the chain, bowl-cutted, bad glasses, freakazoid but me seeing her as someone who was bold enough to live the way she felt like she could live and had all this energy and creativity, and me loving her for who she was is absolutely life-changing Me loving my mother and seeing her for who she was, absolutely life-changing. So in the context of all those different ways, I think love really can, in its purest form, you know, unfiltered can absolutely change anything, save anything.
Speaker 1:And I also love that. Your main message to yourself that you wanted to convey was that, no matter what is going to happen to you in the next decades of your life, you're going to be okay. Right of your life you're going to be okay, and I think that's a message for all of us to learn as we look at our childhood self and, you know, go through our decades. I think consoling, validating ourselves, holding ourselves in such an is an important message in this book. Do you think that little Amy would be proud of who you became?
Speaker 2:Yeah, man that I I do. I think she would. There'd be a couple things she called me out on for sure. I think she'd be like you know, why were you? I don't know she would, I think it depends on, I think.
Speaker 2:But after, before writing the book, I think she'd definitely have more stuff to say to me than after writing the book. And as I have gotten older since I wrote the book okay, the combination of book and age had, you know, I think age normally I mean naturally frees us a little bit, makes us think I don't care anymore, you know, but I think my kids leaving the house, that freed me even more. So I think there'd be a lot of things she'd be proud of. She'd probably still call me out on a few things if she was sitting here right next to me, I think. So, I really do.
Speaker 2:But I think there'd be things that she'd be like wow, like that was pretty cool, you know. And I think she'd think the sports writing and the Excel spreadsheets, and I think she'd meet my kids and she'd be like, wow, I didn't even know we could do that, you know. And I think that she would look at the book about her and she'd be like, wow, you know and I think she would some of the accomplishments. It's not even the accomplishments, but some of the accomplishments. It's not even the accomplishments, but some of the things I've gotten to do. She'd just be like we're bad ass, it's true, and I play golf and I'm horrible at it. But she'd be like get out there every time and if you quit, I'm getting out of the cart and I'm taking you home.
Speaker 1:I mean, like she, she was, she's the better version of me, though I loved your connection with her. I mean I know you bought her more presents than you did the other two and I know that you kind of showed favoritism towards her because I mean, you know, your mom kind of thought that it was because you needed it. She needed it versus the other two, and I think that that was accurate.
Speaker 2:Right, right, yeah, and I love, I love and that's all you know. That's a reflection of how I felt getting to know her through the narrative of the story, you know, the reflection of I've never thought about this, of me getting her more gifts. And then there's a scene I guess it's at the breakfast room table that morning we wake up from like I really can't think about it. She's the most sane person at this table, really, like the rest of these people are fruitcakes, and I think it's that you're seeing the progression of me reconnecting with her and being like celebrating her rather than, you know, running from her. And that's what I love about the bonanza scene, cause she goes off the chain when she says what she's thankful for, and she's thankful for pantaloaloons, and she goes into this whole.
Speaker 2:She doesn't stop, yeah she doesn't stop and I like how I called her the EF Hutton of the Thanksgiving bonanza table, but she, because everybody stops and listens when she talks, because she's going to do something stupid. But I think all that is just a reflection on how I feel about myself in the journey of writing the book.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Well, what would?
Speaker 2:you say to Amy, little Amy today, oh man, I don't know, I'd give her the biggest hug and I would just thank her. I think I would. I'd thank her because I'd be like you know, I didn't see it.
Speaker 1:I didn't see it before but I see it now, you know, and I'd thank her and I'd tell her I was how proud I was of her, and I tell her that I'd spend the rest of my life trying to honor who she was. One of my favorite moments in the book is when the note appeared as an adult out of your green Bible. I wanted that so badly. I waited and waited and hoped that that would happen. So I was really glad that that was a big connection for me. It kind of came full circle.
Speaker 2:Right, I'm glad you said that, because you wonder what readers you know think or how you ended it, and it comes very late, I mean like on the last five pages, probably four pages before it, before it comes, yeah, and the satisfying thing is then you're left with a thought of oh, it was real, you know, and for me as the writer it was real. I mean, the experience emotionally is very real for me and so the note I don't know it almost validates it for me emotionally in a way.
Speaker 1:Were, your memories changed after writing this book.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because I you know the perspective of and just a realization that you know, memories are malleable depending on who's doing the memory. So so though, I think Amy's memories, little Amy's memories, were absolutely little Amy's memories. But now I look at every memory through a different lens, because now I have had this experience where I can turn memories from 1988 on their head and I think it's probably something I need to remember as I remember, I put it at the forefront of that and not forget the experience of the book.
Speaker 1:You mentioned this in the book, how you kept people at a distance. Do you still do that?
Speaker 2:I think less. I think to a lesser degree, and I think that is because it's back to the power of sharing a story and standing next to it and owning it and that being and it is a hard transformation for all of us who grew up during those time periods where feelings were not discussed that it's okay. It's okay to talk about your feelings and you're not doing anything wrong, and I think that's something that's really important to those of us who were brought up that way. And it was not done nefariously. They were not telling us not to talk about our feelings because they were bad people. They were just living the way they were taught.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, but that it's okay not just to talk about our kids, about their feelings, because I think that's the obvious outlet, but to talk about ourselves, to talk about our own feelings, and we're not being indulgent by doing that Within the context, like you said, of when is it okay just to walk away from it? Right, right, because there's all different kinds of little nuances to that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I also have to ask this because I really wanted to know if you went back to the intimacy of paper and pencil after that, instead of the vulnerabilities of social media.
Speaker 2:Well, that's an amazing question because you know, this book didn't naturally lead to the next thing that happened to me, but there's statements like what you just said, and then I talk about thanking people and I need to get pens and thank you notes. That's a line later in the book, but I totally in an unplanned, uncharted way, after this book I got reconnected with an old friend on Facebook and this is a girl whose son died of cancer and I hadn't spoken to her in 30 years and she was at St Jude in Memphis and the cancer came back and I sat down at my desk to write one Monday morning. It's like a lightning bolt hit me in the head I think it was God, but everybody can put it in their own context and I came up with this idea I was going to start sending this pair handwritten notes while they battled this cancer, and so I started doing that. I hadn't written anybody a handwritten note in 30 years and her son dies. I keep writing her because I don't know what else to do. She starts writing me back.
Speaker 2:We spent two years being pen pals without any kind of electronic communication, and the experience was so profound that I was like wait a second, if this can happen from this one girl, what about these other hundreds of people on Facebook? So I ended up taking 18 months and I wrote 600 handwritten letters to all these people and I wrote a book about that and I speak about that. So you just tied the two things together by that question, which is unusual. But I can see shades of what happened next in the story and what I learned from the story. You know, and I and that's such a nugget of goodness for me to have been asked that question by you- I yeah, I wondered if you really did write all those letters.
Speaker 1:So you really did.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, 100 percent. It took 18 months and it was like I didn. When I decided I was going to do it because of what happened with my friend Dana and her son, I didn't really think I was going to finish. I just like this is a great kind of idea. I'll just roll with it and see what happens. But I say that. But I felt completely invested in it enough to buy stationery, but I thought 580 letters was not achievable. But then once I'd written about 30 letters, I was like wait a second, and I didn't intend to write a book about it, I didn't intend to do any of that. But I realized that this may be the most important thing I ever did in my life and it was like a freight train of good that I almost couldn't hang on to because it was just too much. But then, once I got over the halfway point, people were expecting their letters then and I realized again that this was going to be probably the most epic journey I ever. Went on. And so somehow, someway, I wrote 580 handwritten letters.
Speaker 1:Well, I think it's going to be my next read, because you know you said that if my life could be so changed by someone I consider just a Facebook friend, what would happen if I wrote all my Facebook friends a letter? And you know, I mean like we might think something like that, but we don't actually do it.
Speaker 2:You did it, yeah, and I think that's. That's a credit to Lil Amy, though to maybe a credit to writing. You cannot mess this up, because you know me seeing Lil Amy as someone who was clearly not afraid to do something crazy. You know, lil Amy, she would have had an Amazon account. She could have really blown the world up. You know she would have. You know that's like. The Facebook project was like processed meat log from Hickory Farms. I mean, it was. I'm just saying that it's. You know. And I think little Amy would absolutely be proud of the letter writing project. You know, because it went right up her alley. She could have done it in her office there at the closet. You know, she, there he goes, she. But I, you know, and I'm so appreciative of this conversation because I've tied those two stories together in my head, but not to this degree. So I appreciate that very much, Anne.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I wondered if there was some kind of connection there. Is there another time in history, another particular day that you would like to go back to?
Speaker 2:You know, after writing this book, the first thing I think is different points you know in my own life that I would like to go back to. As somebody who loves history, I'd absolutely love to go back to like 10 points, you know, just to walk through it and see what it actually felt like and maybe spend 36 hours or a couple of days, and for me that would be. You know the post-war period between World War I, world War II. You know maybe the fifties, when we're talking about what's going on. You know our moms were being brought up I think I'm older than you but you know we're a lot of the legacy of what we lived in the 70s was being under and I would want to spend two or three weeks then like wandering around or maybe in a family inserted like that, and just understanding some of the nuances of the life.
Speaker 2:You know that that that we lived and I don't know where I'd go back to again in my own life. You know, definitely I don't think I could handle my teenage years, you know. But I would like to see my kids both young again, because now that I've just gone empty nest, you know I'm holding like I realized that was one of the best parts of my life and I knew it at the time. But there's no way you can emotionally, you know, internalize all those feelings of you, know how this is exhausting, but it's the best thing ever.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, life goes so fast and we just and it's also so busy that you don't, by the time your head hits the pillow at night, you don't realize, and we don't hold on to those moments. I had a moment the other day with my eight-year-old where we were sitting at the zoo and he's just we're looking at the lions and he's eating his dip and dots and I'm just like I just want to freeze this moment, right.
Speaker 2:And you knew right then. And you're, you knew and that's the thing we could we have. We have moments, I think, where we know like this is the best, this is. I don't know that it's you know. I feel that way now when I see my kids, I'm like I just gotta hold on to this, I gotta hold on.
Speaker 2:But I'm having moments, and it's not devastating or tragic. It's such a normal part of life but it is, and it's like back to what you said about under the surface. That's where real life is. We just can't see it because we're busy doing all the things that have to be done.
Speaker 1:Right, and it's kind of sad that we kind of just skim over it as on the surface, and we don't really realize how important these moments are. But when we break them down, I mean it's they become these snapshots in time, you know, and the photographs that we hold on to. But it's better to be in the moment than to look at them in hindsight and remember and wish that we would have enjoyed them more.
Speaker 2:Right, and that's what's important about conversations and about real talk. You know your podcast, because it definitely is. You know I've got a lot to think about, but hopefully people are listening, hopefully people who are listening.
Speaker 1:You know this will help them wherever they are in their journey, you know to remembering and thinking about those things in their current situation, not just in the past. Well, I can tell you, Amy, I really enjoyed this conversation.
Speaker 2:How can people get a hold of you? Do you have a website? I do, it's amydaughterscom, and that's everything about both books about. Of course, there's a bunch of silly stuff on there and you know how to connect with me and I'd love I love to connect with people, email, social media. I have my mailing address on there because I'm a proponent of letter writing now, after all my many letters, but yeah, and I'd love to hear from anyone about anyone's thoughts, about anyone, and I will say too, this is one of the best interviews I've ever had, especially about this book. I really appreciate how thorough it's been and you've taught me things about my own story that I didn't know, so I just am so appreciative, very sincerely, thank you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm going to have to read your Facebook one. Maybe we'll have to do another one.
Speaker 2:I would love that and.
Speaker 1:I'm here for it. Well, everybody, I just want to thank you for listening and I just want to thank you for being here today, amy, you just didn't write a book, amy. You opened a portal for all of us to walk through a time-traveling, heart-repairing, laugh-out loud, healing journey that proves maybe it did really happen. Please grab her book. You Can't Mess this Up, a True Story that Never Happened. And, trust me, you'll want your own handy dandy notebook by the end instead of posting everything on social media. Remember there is purpose in the pain and there's hope in the journey, and also love really is the answer, even when the question is should I go back in time to find it? We will see you next time.
Speaker 1:Welcome back to Real Talk with Tina and Anne. I am Anne, and buckle up, because this isn't just part two. It's a continuation of the time-traveling, heart-string-pulling, laugh-out-loud journey with the one and only Amy Wineland. Daughters, if you missed part one, go back and grab your fresca, your Jordache jeans and your middle school diary, because Amy took us back to 1978 with her brilliantly crafted, deeply personal memoir. You Cannot Mess this Up A True Story that Never Happened. But today we're diving deeper into memory, into grief, into healing and, yes, into the magical, messy beauty of figuring out your family, your faith and your place in the world. This episode will make you laugh, cry and maybe call your dad after. Let's go ahead and do this. This is part two.
