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
What Happens When Everything You Know Is a Lie? An Interview with novelist Leslie Rasmussen
What happens when everything you believe about your family turns out to be a lie? In this gripping conversation with novelist Leslie Rasmussen, we dive deep into her latest work, "When People Leave, Love Lies and Finding the Truth" – a story that will resonate with anyone who's ever questioned their family narrative.
Leslie, whose impressive career spans from writing for comedy legends like Roseanne Barr and Drew Carey to publishing award-winning novels, crafts a tale that's both heartbreaking and healing. Three sisters return to their childhood home following their mother's unexpected suicide only to discover that their entire lives were built on carefully constructed deceptions. As they unravel the truth, they're forced to confront how these hidden family secrets have unconsciously shaped every decision they've ever made.
Our conversation explores the profound ripple effects of family secrets – how they mold us even when we don't know they exist. We discuss the ways trauma manifests differently in each sister: through addiction, stagnant relationships, and abandoned dreams. Leslie beautifully articulates how our parents' patterns become our own, even when we're actively trying to be different, and how forgiveness becomes infinitely more complex when the person who hurt you is no longer alive to provide answers.
What makes this discussion particularly powerful is Leslie's compassionate portrayal of the mother character – a woman who lied not out of malice but from a place of fear and protection. Through this lens, we examine the impossible choices parents sometimes make and the heavy burden of carrying secrets for a lifetime.
Whether you've experienced family deception firsthand or simply appreciate stories that explore the complexity of human relationships, this episode offers profound insights into forgiveness, healing, and the courage it takes to break generational patterns. Listen now and join the conversation about how we can make peace with painful truths and find freedom in authenticity.
Welcome to Real Talk with Tina and Anne. I am Anne, and today we have the very talented Leslie Rasmussen, a woman whose words have lit up both television screens and bookshelves. She was born and raised in Los Angeles and is a proud UCLA grad who went on to write for some of the funniest names in show business Burt Reynolds, roseanne Barr, norm MacDonald and Drew Carey, just to name a few which, by the way, is very impressive. I thought that that was really cool.
Speaker 1:Her writing credits stretch from hit sitcoms to beloved shows like the Wild Thornberries and Sweet Valley High, and it doesn't stop there. She's been published more than 20 times in the Huffington Post, and she speaks on panels about female empowerment and is a proud member of the Writers Guild of America and Women in Film. Leslie is an award-winning novelist with titles like After Happily Ever After and the Stories we Cannot Tell, both of which earned her well-deserved praise. But today we're diving into her newest novel, when People Leave, love Lies and Finding the Truth, a book that took me on a ride that I did not want to get off. So thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me, Anne.
Speaker 1:This is great I found myself completely immersed in the emotional unraveling of this beautifully broken family. The heartbreak was real, the secrets were raw and the journeys of these three daughters was deeply human and profoundly relatable. Each sister brought something different to the story. There was grief, resilience, regret and hope, and I felt like I was sitting in that house with them, sifting through memories and truths that they never knew they needed to face.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you, that's great. That's what I wanted.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what struck me the most was how loss revealed so much of their own unhealed, conditioned responses, and how important it is to embrace every part of the journey, no matter how hard, so we can evolve and become a better version of ourselves and become different than the dysfunction that raised us. The story is about more than saying goodbye. It's about saying hello to the points of ourselves that we've buried for too long. It's about how love can change as we evolve and grow and, most of all, it's a powerful reminder that sometimes the truth doesn't destroy. It sets us free. So I would like to start with. You know, this story encapsulates so many of us and there were so many strong themes that wove through this novel, things that we talk about on this podcast all the time. And I would like to start with the quote that you etched in the beginning of your book when there's a breakdown in the family, it's the ones that love you the most that hurt you the deepest. Anyway, how does this quote reflect the heartbeat of your story?
Speaker 2:Well, it's so true that, I mean, in marriages and relationships, you kind of become vulnerable and you give yourself to somebody and when you do that, that's the person that can actually hurt you the most. And people shock you I mean including your parents, and in this story that's kind of what happens. But the love that you have for somebody makes them able to hurt you deeply. But you still have to love. I mean, you can't go through life without loving. So you kind of take that in and say, well, I know that if I really love this person, they can hurt me and you take that risk.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. I've always said you know, if you can be hurt deeply, then you have loved deeply. It's just part of life, and these sisters really went through it. I mean, one of the things that I absolutely love about your book is how you don't shy away from anything. There is loss, there is suicide, there is addiction, there's identity, there's trauma, mental health, family lies I mean it is all there, woven into this story in a way that feels so human, and you explore how pain shapes us both as individuals and as a family unit, and you ask the kind of quiet, powerful questions that most of us have asked ourselves at some point and lots of times don't even want to talk about it. But one of the most gripping threads is family secrets. So often parents think that they're protecting their children by hiding painful truths, but these secrets end up shaping a child's identity and in your book this theme runs so deep. Can you talk about how you approach writing about family secrets and why they matter and how they shape us?
Speaker 2:Sure, you know, I didn't know about any major family secrets in my life, but there were little things that as an adult came out that I said like what, what are you talking about? I'd never heard that and I realized when I started to think about it those secrets can affect you, even if you don't know what those secrets are, which I thought was fascinating. I mean, in these sisters' lives I'm not going into the major secrets, but they're all dealing with abandonment and they don't know that the decisions that they have made in their lives are because of that. And so they turn out into these people as they become adults. They're all in their 30s and they realize later on they realize, oh my God, I made decisions in my life that just seem like decisions, but they actually were based on a past that they didn't even know about Exactly. So I thought that was a really interesting thing and I also. I had both my parents, so I wasn't abandoned. But I also know a lot of people that were in the foster care system and when I talked to, especially a very close friend of mine, and when I talked to her about the foster care system, she had parents. They put her in the foster care system because they just didn't want to deal with her when she was like 10. And it turned out in the end to be a better place for her. I mean, she ended up in a good place and somebody who took her in and helped her get to college. But during all that time she has tremendous abandonment issues, and so I was thinking a lot about that when I wrote this book.
Speaker 2:And the sisters all do have different things. The oldest is a sober alcoholic, the middle one is in a relationship that should have ended a long time ago but she just doesn't end it. And the youngest one basically followed her mother, where she married very, very young. But she also married somebody the only person she ever dated and she gave up her career and she had four kids very quickly up her career and she had four kids very quickly, and so she followed her mother. But she's also sort of thinking like, well, is this the life I'm going to lead forever?
Speaker 2:You know, things do come up. I mean, we know we have children. I mean, at a certain point it comes up to you where you think well, now what, what am I going to do? Is this where I'm going to go? Is this what I'm going to do? I gave up something. In my case, I gave up sitcom writing to raise my kids, which I'm very happy I did, but I've always missed it. So there's that loss also of the life you had before, and you know there's a lot of loss in this in different ways. Oh, there is, but I was very concerned about making sure there was a lot of lightness in the book. So I have two sisters and I wanted to write a book about sisters for a long time, but I didn't want my sisters to think that they were anything like these women.
Speaker 2:So they're none of us. They're so different. None of us have any of these issues or anything, but I loved the dialogue between my sisters and I and how we get along. And siblings. I think siblings have a lot to show each other, to teach each other.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I think siblings also have funny relationships.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love their dynamics. It was a very fun part of the book watching them interact with each other and that's so interesting because you did pull it from different parts of your life. Even though it wasn't your life, you took it from others around you and I was adopted, my kids were adopted, and I very much understood the abandonment part of it. Within that woke that was weaving throughout your book and I actually loved it because, even though you didn't live it, you portrayed it very well.
Speaker 2:Thank you. I did do research and talking to people. I have a friend who's in AA and she's sober and I talked to her a lot and so I knew a lot about AA that I could weave in there and how she felt. But yes, I do take from my life all the time, but it's not necessarily, you know, from my life as people. It's some of the dialogue, some of the stuff that comes from my childhood, the conversations with the sisters like over the salads, who likes what and who doesn't like what, and they all think somebody else likes something. That's all from my childhood.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, when the story was unraveling, the three women who we said are sisters, they discover that basically their entire lives were a lie, which you touched on. But what I loved is that, no matter how deep the lies got, that it left room for them to heal together. And so can you talk about not just the relationships that you touched on, but how they work together through this journey.
Speaker 2:Well, the one thing I also wanted to make sure was they work together, but they didn't, because grief is so all over the place. So sometimes one sister's angry and one sister's sad, and sometimes they're all sad, and sometimes they're all like what's going on? Because I kept thinking well, I lost my father nine years ago and I lost him, you know, for medical reasons, so it wasn't suicide, but I was angry at him for leaving. So, even though it wasn't his fault, I was still had an anger in me that was like why did you leave me? Why did you go? And I was also very sad.
Speaker 2:And so I think that they're in their case. Because of the way the mother they think everything's great and she takes her own life. They do have an anger like why couldn't you tell us what's going on? Were you depressed? You weren't depressed at all. We never saw anything. So why did this happen?
Speaker 2:And the other reason that I wrote the book was, um, both my husband and I were in comedy and television and we knew somebody who was working on a show, running the show. We thought, and all of a sudden we found out that he killed himself and it was, I'm sure his family knew why. We didn't find out till much later that he actually was very depressed. But you wouldn't see that because he would go into a room and I saw him not that much before he died. I saw him at a restaurant. I was like hey, guys, hi, you know he was one of those very kind of outgoing people, wow. So you just thought he was and he was a comedy writer, so you just thought he was funny and on all the time. And so it shocked me and he's not the only person that we knew that did that.
Speaker 2:So that was part of it, and part of it was also when Robin Williams killed himself. You know the world didn't know until later that he had Lewy body dementia and he was going through all these things and in his mind he was no longer Robin Williams. So my first book deals with that a lot, because I did a lot of research with. I did some seminars that Robin Williams' wife did and learned a lot about it, about leaky body dementia and how people don't know they have it. So it was all combined into that too. I just thought, wow, the world had no clue that he was going through anything. So that's kind of where this sort of kind of came together. Wow.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, and I think that and that's so sad that you didn't even know that your friend was sad, this comedy writer didn't even know and there were no signs. No signs, and that's you know, because you always know about the ones that are dropping little seeds along the way and you pay attention to that, but if you have no clue, I mean that's scary.
Speaker 2:And that's why in that scene later on, when Abby says that Morgan gave her the necklace, she never knew why. Because a lot of people before they commit suicide and you may not know this like not see it happening, but they start to give things away.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, yeah. Well, that is a really deep lesson theme throughout your book of paying attention to each other and what was going on with each of the characters, for them to pick up what was much pain that is left behind by our parents. Often what we do is, you know, we take on that shame that is passed down, and then we blame ourselves and question if there were things about us that caused us, you know, caused our parents to make the decisions that they made, caused our parents to make the decisions that they made. So then they, you know, you, sit around and you wonder did I do something? Was part of what happened, part of what you know? Did I have anything to do with that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the sisters go through that too, because in their mind their mother was fine and they cannot figure out why she would do this. So, yeah, they start to say cannot figure out why she would do this. So, yeah, they start to say, well, did I do something? Was it that one time I forgot to call her and she got so upset that I didn't call her? That she, I mean even stuff that doesn't really make sense, like you know, your parents not going to take their own life because you didn't call for a week or two, but those things come into your mind and the guilt and the shame and the you know, just the blame that they kind of go through and it took them through the book they figure out.
Speaker 2:Well, it really wasn't their fault at all, but it takes a little time to kind of come to that realization.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the three sisters do so well at crafting their new narratives, which they continually had to do. They just kept rewriting themselves after realizing their past wasn't who they really were. Can you talk more about that, because it was so intriguing?
Speaker 2:Oh, thank you. I tried to figure out how to do it without giving away spoilers, but I think as the time goes on and they discover different things that were held from them that they never knew, they start to look at their own lives. And once they look at their own lives, they realize that things they did well, this isn't serving me anymore. And why was I doing this? Why did I stay in this relationship? Why didn't I find something outside of my kids to also fuel me?
Speaker 2:And so they start to not like they react to all of these things that happen to them by looking at into deeply and introspectively into their own lives and to see how things can change for them. And it takes them a while to change, but they also do really start to, for the first time, really start to look at it and figure it out.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah. Their evolution all three of them and together was such a beautiful part of the story, and one of the most powerful threads in the book is how each of them tried to break free from their parents' patterns. Abby, probably, but they each all had parts of them wanting to be anything but them. They didn't want to be anything like their parents, and yet, as the story unfolds, we see how deeply those inherited stories live within them, even unconsciously. How did you approach writing the tensions between wanting to be different from their parents but still carrying pieces of them?
Speaker 2:Oh, that was hard, because that's partially why Carla's backstory is in there.
Speaker 2:So, you can see things that happened to Carla that that also would kind of explain certain things with the girls and they loved their mother. They had a great relationship and the things that they knew about their mother they really liked about themselves. They were all. They all had pieces of her in them. It was when they found out all this other stuff that they didn't really rebel against it but they started to kind of go well that their mother did the best she could. I mean, most parents do, we all do the best we can with our kids and we all make mistakes. This mother made more mistakes than some parents, but the girls I think they never would have stopped loving her, no matter what.
Speaker 2:And that sticks with them. So even when they realize that they've made decisions based on something their mother did, they still want to keep, I think, the pieces of her that they loved, the things she did for them as a parent and she was fun and fun to be with and all those kinds of things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I really loved that. I loved how, once they were back in their childhood home to the sisters, slipped into their old ways. I mean you know how many times it took me back. You know how many times we were standing across from somebody who are there from our childhood and we regress, right, I mean that can happen. So what I loved is that when they went back to who they once were you know they lived in that house, they slept in their own rooms that they started to become those people again and the bickering and the bonding and all that stuff that you kind of touched on a little bit ago. But because we so often, you know, when we get into situations like that, I think it creates a different healing, a different layered of healing. Do you think that returning to their younger selves helped them find a different kind of closure, or more of a closure?
Speaker 2:Yes, partially because they all moved to different places so they were close, but it really through. You know they visited each other. It's not the same as when you live in the same house with your parent and you know you share rooms sometimes or you, you know you see each other every single day and in school. And those sisters did. Once they got back in that house and back, like to their old rooms, which hadn't changed that much, the two other rooms and they did start to almost revert, not having fights but arguments over some of the same stuff that they would have had arguments over when they were kids.
Speaker 2:And I think it's very normal to go back to your parents' house.
Speaker 2:My parents moved from their house but for years they lived in the same house I grew up in and we would walk back in and even though my bedroom looked completely different and the den looked different, I would walk in and feel this warmth and this comfort of being there.
Speaker 2:And my sisters and I are always the same like that too. Now we don't have the house to go to, but when we get together we are just in some ways like we were back then. We have a total bond, we have the same memories and a lot of things, things that made us like dislike each other, so to speak, at the time, you know, still come up as like, oh my God, I remember when you did that I was so mad at you, but it's fun now and I love that bond that the sisters have where they kind of do that. And the one thing that was really important to me in the book which I kept re-editing because I wanted to make sure that whoever read it understood that they love each other, that they're not just picking at each other, that they have this bond with each other, that there's true love, like in a relationship.
Speaker 2:If you say something to your husband, wife, whoever, and you say something kind of snotty and they go well, that wasn't very nice and you're like, oh yeah, you're right, you know what I mean, that you can come back from it and siblings, I think, have that bond where most siblings I can't say all siblings, because I'm sure there are siblings that don't get along, but siblings who are truly bonded together I think they do have that where you can say something to somebody and they can apologize and you kind of let it go where you might not do that with a friend.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, well, you definitely saw that in the book. I got that no-transcript think it's giving too much away but Charlie was in an escape room and really all of them had their own in their own reality. They were trying to escape from something and they all needed to answer those life-altering questions in order to figure out the next stage of their journey, which would then lead them to the next set of questions. So they were seeking to find their way out of this locked past which they didn't even know that they had. And I mean, I think one of the worst things that can happen to any of us is to find out that your entire life was a lie and your parents were not who you thought that they were. So one of my favorite questions in the book and I have asked this question myself how can I grieve you when all I feel right now is anger? That's a good one. That's so tough. Tell me about this question.
Speaker 2:Well, the way their mother did it and when they found out all these things of course they're going to go to anger it's like well, wait a minute, who are we? We don't even know who we are, and we don't know who you are and what of everything. We know what is true and what isn't. They had no idea, really, who their parents were. The first thing you would really feel, before you felt sad, was what the heck Like? What did you do to us? We are in our 30s and we don't even know who we are. We don't know our life and what do we trust? What do we trust about anything that's ever happened in our entire lives?
Speaker 1:Yeah, because their mom lied about everything. She lied about everything and she never. She was a good actress, but she loved them. She lied about everything and she never.
Speaker 2:she was a good actress, but she loved them. She lied about everything but loving them.
Speaker 1:Yes and see that's. The thing is that we never know, as parents, what we will do when we want to protect our kids. How far will we go or what secrets will we tell to protect what we have? That was an interesting take on all of this, what did you think Carla the mom did? And the decisions, what did you think about her decisions that she made as a mom?
Speaker 2:I think for her. She told herself she was doing the best possible thing for everybody and I think once she I think at the beginning it's the best possible thing for everybody. And I think once she, I think at the beginning it's the best possible thing for her. But I think that as time goes on, she says I'm protecting my kids, so it's in her head that she is actually taking care of everybody and making their lives better, and I think she lives with that forever.
Speaker 2:I think she has to go into a denial that she's denied them of anything, because if she doesn't, then she will have the shame and the guilt and I think she almost creates her new past for herself and she almost believes it. She gets to that point when there's a point where she can't believe it anymore. But she gets to a point where she really believes and she thinks this is our life, our life is fine. My girls are fine. They grew up, they're living their lives, they're doing what they need to do and I've protected them from, you know, the scary things of the world.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't think that she ever thought that anybody would find out. I mean, they definitely had reached a stage in their life where that shouldn't have even happened.
Speaker 2:Right. But you know, something happened. She was very private. She made sure that nobody ever found out. I mean, she wasn't on social media, she was very private and she didn't tell people things. So she created this other life and this other past for herself of things she made up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and she definitely wanted to be different from her parents, and she was.
Speaker 2:She was.
Speaker 1:I mean, she did everything different than her mom and she showed up for her kids. She was there all the time. She was there for everything, yeah, yeah, and she deeply loved them. And I don't think that her lives, her lies, stemmed from anything but fear. Maybe and that's how it felt to me is that she had such a huge fear and a protection over her family that she was willing to do whatever it took.
Speaker 2:And also because of her past and things that happened in her past. She got very scared when everything happened, and so that's why she had to do what she did Right.
Speaker 1:I mean, trust is huge and you raise a really good question how will I ever trust anyone again when my own mother lied about the most important things? And I mean I say all the time, how are we supposed to trust when the ones who are supposed to be protecting us are the ones who are hurting us, even if she didn't mean to, but she did? And how can we trust what we see? How can we believe what people have told us? So I mean it brings a crazy making. So talk about betrayal.
Speaker 2:Well, in this book there's a lot of betrayal. You know they don't realize it at the beginning, but there's a lot of betrayal and I think what you just said is if somebody does that to you, how do you trust not just like your parents, I mean, and your life, but anybody else in your life?
Speaker 2:I mean you go back to the people in your life and you think if there's a man in your life you know, you think, is that person you know treating me right? Are they lying to me? Are they cheating on me? What are they doing? And even friends, I mean everything, and in Morgan's case I mean alcohol, you know. I mean that was sort of it kind of betrayed her in some ways because it got her involved and then she had to give it up. So there's a lot of different types of betrayal in this book. In Abby's case, I think she feels not I mean, she loves her kids more than anything, but I think she feels betrayed in some ways that she got pregnant so fast, you know, because she didn't get to do her dream. So that's kind of a betrayal of nature, or however you want to put it. So there is a lot of other ways that they're betrayed in their lives besides finding out that their mother betrayed them.
Speaker 1:Yes. And then, on the flip side of that, we have the person who was carrying the weight of the lies, and as a reader, it was powerful to watch Carla. You know the character who was navigating the consequences of her own deception, trying to keep up with the story that she built, while we in hindsight could see how each cover-up and decision slowly steered her towards this heartbreaking outcome. And so what was it like to write a character balancing that kind of inner conflict?
Speaker 2:Well, I almost felt sorry for her the whole time, even though she had done this to her daughters, because I knew why she did it. But I felt sorry for her because to carry a secret like that and to go into another life and not be able to tell anybody, I mean you are keeping such a big thing and there's nobody else that you can really tell all these secrets to, and you're closest to your daughters and you're keeping a very private life. Even with the friends she had, she kept everything at a distance. So if you're living your life like that, you don't get close to anybody and you can only get so close to your daughters because you're lying to them so you can love them and you can be part of their lives, but you can't let them know who you really are.
Speaker 2:So I kind of, when I was writing it, I was trying to do it with empathy and compassion for her and everything she was going through also, and I didn't want her to be the bad guy, because really she's not.
Speaker 2:She made bad decisions, but she's not a bad person in any way, shape or form and she's really actually a good person who did all this, and sometimes decisions are made from people and it doesn't make them bad people, it just makes them bad decisions, and they can have the best reason in the world for making these decisions, but that doesn't mean they're good decisions. And so I kind of just kept looking at her character and building her past to make sense why certain things had happened and why she had made certain decisions, and mostly just felt compassionate for her.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I did too. You did a great job in writing that, because I think a reader could have looked at that differently and said you know, she, oh, look at all these things that she did to her family. This is really horrible. But the same time that the story was unfolding and that you were finding out more and more what the lies that she had told and why you really felt for her. You know, I felt compassion for her. I felt so many things for her. I was mad that she made the decisions that she made in the moment. But I can also see why she left this area because, you know, she was afraid. I could see why she felt that she had to take her family with her and why she created what she did. It really makes sense to me, and I don't know. I asked myself would I have done that if I was in the same situation? I mean, it brought me to that question with my own kids. I don't know what we would do if we are in that situation.
Speaker 2:I don't either, because as parents, we think well, we would protect our kids no matter what.
Speaker 1:I think that trumps everything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but it's still scary. And what she did was scary. I mean, it's not like she did something like, yay, I'm going, I'm doing this. You know, she was terrified and scared about everything she did.
Speaker 1:And she did finally let somebody in. She had that one friend from the real estate and she, you know, in a drinking moment she told her some things and you know I was glad that she had that and I was glad that they found and I loved how their path, her kids' paths, led her to this woman where some of those things were answered for her, which started the whole entire investigation, which I thought was really great. But I'm glad that it unfolded the way that it did. So she did let that person in. She kept so many people away but she let that one person in and they found her and I thought that was great.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I, I, the girls knew who she was because they knew their best friend in you know where they were in Los Angeles. But I needed somebody to give them some information also. So I thought if Carla has given something not a lot, but something to this woman, then at least she can relay something to kind of send them on a path.
Speaker 1:You asked the question, and this one hit me pretty hard too how do you forgive a dead person? I mean, I've asked that question because there is somebody in my life who, you know, made a lot of really bad choices and they're no longer here. So how do you forgive a dead person?
Speaker 2:I think it's very individual and I think that it's something that it's actually for you to forgive. It's obviously not, you know, has nothing to do with them at that point, right, but I think it's really a process. I think it takes a long time. I think as you go through time you start to remember the good things. If this person did have good things. I think there are people that cannot be forgiven. I'm sure there are millions of people out there that you know you would never forgive, but somebody like Carla, I think they could forgive her because they knew all the other things that she did for them and how much she loved them and how much she was there for them. And so the initial thing is I'm never going to forgive you. I can't believe you did this to me, but they all acknowledge that they obviously loved her so much that they would have gotten through that.
Speaker 2:They would have worked through it, whether it was in therapy or with you know, their partners or whoever but they would have worked through it and come out on the other end where they started to see all the good memories and not just what she did.
Speaker 1:And without giving too much away. I do want to ask you this question and I have quite a. I have a few more questions after this, but I really needed to ask you this question and I have quite a. I have a few more questions after this, but I really needed to ask you. Who were you more like without and people are going to have to read the book for them to know this what to understand your answer but were you more like Morgan, charlie or Abby?
Speaker 2:Oh, wow, probably, if I had to pick one, probably Abby, only because I gave up something that I really loved to go be with my kids. So that's the only thing. Like I said before, because of having sisters and I did not want this book to have anything to do with any of us, including myself book to have anything to do with any of us, including myself, so I think it'd probably be Abby, just because I've always sort of mourned my old career and even though I love what I'm doing now, I still working in television was just such a blast for me and I really enjoyed it. So I think that's why I talk about grief. I think there's different grief at different points of your life.
Speaker 2:Whether or not it's a person dying, it could easily be just giving up a job and learning, like at first you're like angry, like why can't I do that? And then it's like okay, but I'm choosing to do this for my kids who need me. I'm making the decision to give that up. So it's a process, but there is also anger and sadness and something like that too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, too, gave up some work in order to be home with my kids that I got. And then COVID happened and I have an immunodeficient kid and you know, pivot, pivot, pivot. You know that's what we do and we figure it out. But I think that I took, I think I related a little bit with each of them. I think that there was a piece of me that related with each of them in a different way, so and it was very relatable, as I with all of them and even with Carla being the mom and the decisions that she made. So, but every page was very life changing for the girls with a different problem and they had to work through together, like we said, kind of, and they really had to figure out how to move on past nonstop devastating news and loss. And I love the constant evolution of self, I love the resilience. This was such a perfect example of how, no matter how hard things get, that we can sustain and come out stronger. Was that something that you were going with this?
Speaker 2:Yes, I wanted to make sure at the end of the book when I went back that all these women they changed, but they changed for the better and they figured out what was the best thing for them, and not I didn't want characters that didn't change and just went oh well, I'm angry or whatever.
Speaker 2:And not, I didn't want characters that didn't change and just went, oh well, I can, you know, do a little bit more than this, or I can you know, move on from this relationship or whatever those things are. I can stay sober.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, and forgiveness is such a powerful thread and it felt like it was the underlying heartbeat in this story and it was a quiet, but it was a quiet, powerful reminder that healing takes time. And what really struck me was how differently each character approached forgiveness. Some leaned in, you know, one leaned in, one resisted and one took her time. And I think that that's such an important lesson Forgiveness is a choice and there's no one timeline. Each of the sisters wrestled with their unresolved anger and emotions. What did you want readers to take away about the power and the challenge of forgiveness when it comes to family wounds?
Speaker 2:Well, first of all, I want people to take away that they forgive themselves also, because forgiving their parent is one thing that's almost outside of you. You know it's like over here and you're trying to go and forgive them over here and have all those emotions needed to forgive themselves because once they realized why they made these choices, they needed to say oh well, I made these choices not necessarily because I just made the choice. I made it based on a past that wasn't necessarily true, so I need to forgive myself for making bad choices also besides forgiving their mother.
Speaker 2:So I wanted to make that really clear inside of them that they also need to go through this process to forgive themselves for not standing up to something or whatever that was.
Speaker 2:Because that was based. I mean, they were very, very young when their mothers started all this, so they weren't developed enough, you know, to make any real big choices, so they didn't realize why they were making these choices. And that's what I thought I wanted to do mostly was make people realize that something over here can make you do something over here that you don't realize why you're doing it, but it's based on something else, and so they needed to forgive themselves and forgive her for making these decisions and realizing that she did it for them yes, and you also explore, like how the pain, the, the, the self-forgiveness that they had to work on, how that manifested in other ways like addiction, substance use, like relationships, control, and so can you talk about how you wove the self-forgiveness and different forms of coping into this story and what you hope readers take from that?
Speaker 2:Well, everybody copes differently. So that's why I wanted the three sisters to be pretty different similar in some ways, but pretty different and watch the way they cope. And watch, like you said before, that Morgan almost falls off the wagon and the sisters save her. And you know just like Morgan's coping is alcohol and I'm sure that a lot of people who are alcoholics would go there would say like, well God, everything's up in the air, why don't I just take this? What's the point in doing it? And in Charlie's case, her coping was just to kind of stay with the same person and just make her life as comfortable as possible without taking.
Speaker 2:None of the women really took a lot of risks, if you really look at it, even though, because Morgan hid behind alcohol, charlie took no risks, abby took no risks, she kind of married the guy and had the kids and kind of stayed in that little place. So I want readers to see a couple of things. I want them to realize they're not alone in whatever their feelings are, whether they discover a big family secret I mean, I'm sure that doesn't happen every day, but there are little things in our life that happen every day and so I want readers to really, for all my books, I always want readers to see that they're not alone, that things happen that they can relate to and say, oh, wow, like you said, you related a little bit to each one of them. If a reader can find anybody in the book that they relate to, that makes me so happy.
Speaker 2:And I've gotten some emails and things from people that said you know, my parents actually killed themselves and this. I didn't know if anybody would read it if that was the case, but I had people say thank you so much because this actually helped me watch them go through the journey to figure all this out. Wow, that's really that made me feel so good, because you know, you don't know if somebody's going to read it and go oh my God, I can't believe you wrote this or you know, you never know and the people have been so great and said really nice things and related to a lot of the women.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've had a lot of those different not suicide but I've had a lot of the themes that we talked about in the lessons that we talked about today. I've had a lot of the themes that we talked about in the lessons that we talked about today. I've had a lot of those things happen in my life and sometimes I can't go there in a book because it's too hard, but this was written in a way that was very inviting and it was okay to come out on the other side. It really was. It was really well done. One of the things that I also saw in myself was that they all stayed stuck. You know, they just stayed stuck and they stayed stuck for too long Because they didn't make risks.
Speaker 2:They didn't take risks, and neither did their mother. They learned that.
Speaker 1:Yes, but I loved that journey and how they figured out how to get unstuck.
Speaker 2:They weren't really living their lives in a lot of ways and, same as their mother, carla, wasn't living her life, and they sort of picked all of that up, even if they didn't realize it.
Speaker 1:Right. Are there any themes in the book that we haven't covered that you want our listeners to know?
Speaker 2:I think you covered them all. I think you did an amazing job. You pulled out stuff. This escape room I never came up with. When you said that I was like oh wow, that never occurred to me. I just like thought of the place and thought, oh, that would be kind of an interesting place to do a scene in. But when you said that about escape, I thought, wow, that really hit me.
Speaker 1:They were living the life that the end, that little scene was actually the entire book in like a couple paragraphs.
Speaker 2:Which I never realized till you said it. See, that's what I love is like a reader tells you something. I've had readers say things about my book that I know I didn't intend. But when they say it's there, I see it and I think, wow, where did that come from? Because it wasn't something in my mind. So I love that you said that. That just made me so happy.
Speaker 1:That's so cool? Yeah, because you know they ask questions which led them to another, which they broke free, this, and then they had to go to another level of their life and then they get out on the other side.
Speaker 2:That's true, you're right, it is. It's so funny that I didn't even think of it the way you saw that that's so cool.
Speaker 1:How can listeners get a hold of you? And I got my book on Amazon and I saw your other books. I already started another one but yeah, how can they get a hold of you or read your books?
Speaker 2:My books are available everywhere, but, yes, amazon has them. They can go to my website. It's lesliearasmussencom, and I also have signed books on there too that they can buy.
Speaker 1:Oh, I might have to do that.
Speaker 2:And then I'm on Instagram at LeslieROthor, I'm on Facebook at LeslieARasmussenAuthor, I'm on LinkedIn I'm pretty much everywhere. Also, the audio book of when People Leave will be out next month.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, that's great. Well, thank you, leslie, for being on the show. When People Leave, a Story of Love Lies and Finding the Truth isn't just a novel. It's a mirror, a reminder that behind every perfect family photo is a layered story of survival, silence and sometimes secrets that we're still trying to understand To our listeners. If you've ever felt like your family's story was too complicated to talk about, you're not alone. And if grief ever left you asking questions with no answers, you're not broken. And if you've ever wondered whether healing was possible after the truth comes out, this story proves that it is.
Speaker 1:This is a novel that relates to us all and it has so many lessons that we can take from it. When change becomes what we need, lean into it. Allow the hard work so you can step into growth. Invite transformation and let yourself evolve. Own the shift. Let it become the catalyst. Get Leslie's book and her other two novels After Happily Ever After and the Stories we Cannot Tell. Thank you for being a part of this journey with us. Share this episode with someone who needs it. Remember there is purpose in the pain and hope in the journey. Subscribe to Real Talk with Tina and Anne and we will see you next time. World changers aren't pleasing everybody. They're just not Next time.
