You get to a certain age where you know who you are and you don't have to apologize for that
Or feel like that's even required like I understand to that my
Perspective on things and my sense of humor are not everyone's when I'm writing
I'm not really speaking to everyone. I really want to think about the things that I'm making
Becoming part of somebody else's life the best
Books the best songs the best poems are sort of lenses
That once you've spent time with them you view the world and your experience is differently
After you've read it it becomes this lens that you see things through and it changes you
So what if a poem could change your life?
Have you ever read something that felt like it literally cracked your world open giving words to experiences that you thought were
Unutterable my guest today Maggie Smith. She experienced exactly that but not as a reader as the writer of the poem good bones
After being rejected by many journals the poem was eventually published online and
And quickly became this global phenomenon her life would never be the same, but in so many ways
She never saw coming
Maggie is the renowned author of multiple bestsellers and award-winning poetry collections with work appearing in top publications
In her memoir you could make this place beautiful which I loved
Maggie just unflinchingly explores the disintegration of her marriage
Contemporary womanhood her renewed commitment to herself really weaving together
Snap shots of life with meditations on secrets anger and narrative itself in this deeply honest conversation
Maggie shares how in the early days music actually became her first poetic teacher
allowing her to transcend the constraints of plot and really distill pure
Experiences into lyrical language and we explore the fateful chain of events that led to good bones and the publication that captivated
Millions during a collective moment of trauma and suffering and Maggie doesn't shy away from the contradictions in her path
We dive into how mega success also revealed
Casm's in her marriage and life how she leaned on art to help metabolize hardship and the liberation in embracing life's quote
Unanswerable mysteries
She offers insights that will really resonate with any creative soul who is grappled with the complexities of
Success and relationships and honoring their true self. She unpacks the solace of solitude the courage to live on
Resolve mysteries and the simple keys to her own version of the good life
So whether you're a long time in Mara of Maggie's work or being introduced to her poetic wisdom for the first time
This conversation is a true exploration of beauty, truth and the regenerative power of vulnerability
So excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields and this is good life project
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So excited to dive in you I was reading a recent post of yours
I think it just in the last couple of days where you were talking about the origin story and how when you were a kid
Very introverted hanging out in your room and music really became something that was deeply meaningful to you
And you even describe it as sort of your your first poetry teacher and
Fascinated me because I feel like when you read your writing whether it's poetry or you know the recent books
Everything that you do is so lyrical and I'm wondering if you feel like that's really informed by a deep love of music from the time you're a kid
You know, I think so you know, I read mostly fiction when I was a kid
I think most of us do you know I was reading like Nancy Drew and Trixie Belld and the box card children and fairy tales and
Really anything I could get my hands on and a lot of them were adventure books without parents present which
Like that's the key if their parents around nothing good ever happens on nothing exciting anyway
But the thing about all of those books is that they're plot driven right?
So you have like characters in a place and there's usually some sort of like exciting conflict and then something has to happen and then it gets all
Soed up at the end and that's not the way my brain works. I'm not really a plot
person I'm much more I say I'm kind of more of an image presenter or
Like an experienced distiller more than a storyteller. I would much rather spend time
Describing something in great detail and maybe making a metaphor to explain what it reminds me of or what I think it's related to or connected to
Then having person a say to person be something and then they go to another location and
For me music was one of the first experiences with language
That didn't require plot
Hmm, you know like nothing had to quote unquote happen in a song like it could be you were sitting in a sunshine thinking about something
Or remembering something. I mean so many of those great
60 70 singer songwriter lyrics for my parents record collection
There's so much nostalgia and also like good time songs like I'm on the road and I'm looking out the window
And I'm seeing this or seeing that and so I think for me music
It just gave me permission to use language in a different way than I was finding in the books I was reading
Yeah, I mean that makes so much sense, you know because music especially so late the classic singer songwriters, you know like Joni Mitchell
Neo young
Dylan like that whole sort of like generation
It was really more vignettes than stories when you really think about it
You know sort of like these passing glimpses of a moment, but I think what's so powerful about that also and we feel like we actually have to have a
Story almost you know spoon fed to us with all the details for us to transfer angel
But it's almost like the deletion in a vignette allows you to fill in the blank spots with your own experience
And I feel like you're writing does a lot of that too. Oh, that's so kind. Thank you
I love that idea as a writer regardless of the genre. I'm working in I'm always thinking about how not to sort of
Close every window and door
To leave some openings for the reader to get in
Because really a piece of writing isn't finished and I think this is true of music too
It isn't finished until it has a reader or a listener like it's
We are participating and sort of co-creating this thing. I make it and I hand it to you
And then you bring all of your life experience and emotional intelligence and
Associations to bear on the thing I handed you and it becomes something different
In your hands than it was when it was just me doing it by myself and if I've sewn everything up so tightly
That you can't find a way in it's sort of like I'm not really holding up my end of the bargain
Yeah, I mean that lands actually really powerfully it actually a couple years back
It was having conversation with Kate decomillo to the children's book author
Yeah, she said nearly the exact same thing but with kids books also
She's like literally the final act of like writing and publishing this book is getting into the hand of a child and into the mind of a child
And it's their reading that sort of like completes the cycle which is kind of fascinating
Yeah, yeah, it's really not done like when we think about you know stages of the writing process
I mean the last one is like you know revision editing publishing but there's like this whole other thing that happens afterwards
It's not really so delineated and it's the connection that you get to make with someone else and
I don't know for me
It's in some ways one of the most gratifying and also most terrifying parts of the process
Writing a book is one thing handing it you know kind of kicking it out of the nest and handing it to other people is something very different
Yeah, I mean that brings up another curiosity of mine
I know you sort of you know shared in different ways in different times that you know
You definitely see yourself on the introverted side of the spectrum and yet you write in a very publicly vulnerable way and I've often
I've wondered how that lands with you
It's not always easy
Yeah, I mean there's sort of a joke in my family that of all like I have two younger sisters and of all of us in my in my immediate family
I was the most introverted. I was the sort of room
Dweller
the opt-outer
non-joiner and I had sisters who were like athletes and doing show choir and you know
Just it was very different and it's kind of funny for everyone including me that I'm the person who now has
Probably the most public job
out of all of us
I think one of the deep ironies of writing is that many of us get into it because we are
introverts and we like spending time with our own thoughts and our our records and our books and our sketch pads and
Then if you do enough of that and if you find a readership
It requires you to sort of shepherd these things into the world and get up in front of people and talk and get on an airplane and
Go someplace and and do a lot of a lot of things that are more exposing and
Can be uncomfortable, but that's that's part of the that's part of the gig
So I guess I hope my fear of it which has not gone away
Hmm keeps me honest, you know like there's just no way I'm going to become a game show host
I do it because it's part of getting the work to other people
But I could also live in a cabin in the woods and not speak to other people and be just fine
I'm pretty much right there with you actually so but it's such an interesting dance, right because you know
If there's a side of you that that has figured out some kind of work that you really love doing that that really let you feel fully expressed
And then you have an opportunity to actually like share that with the world and have people
Receive it and support it and support you in turn. Yeah, it's this fascinating dance, you know
Because if if you don't actually need that on a sort of psycho emotional level and actually probably prefer not to have it or at least have
Pat some pretty serious boundaries up there
But you also see that it's enabling you to do this other part of you that really makes you feel more whole
It's such a fascinating dance. It's something I grapple with it. Well on a pretty regular basis too
Yeah, it's funny. I was visiting with some high school students recently because I've been doing an artisan residents program at a museum here and
We're all gearing up for this final end of your open mic and for some of these students
It's like the first time they're ever going to stand up at a microphone in a big room and read something
You know read something that they wrote that's vulnerable
We had this meeting and I gave them a pep talk
About the value of sharing and part of it is that part of it is what you say like this is what it takes to do my job
So I have to find a way to do it my way and make it work for me
But the other piece of it that I shared with them is like you know
I said how many of you listen to music today or read a book in the last couple of days or watched a movie or TV
And of course everyone raised their hands just with the music and then I said well what would have happened if those people had been so shy or
scared
Or
Rediscent that they didn't put that thing into the world. I mean it wouldn't have touched your life
And that's part of it too is is like we kind of have a responsibility to one another and
If I make something and I think it might have the capacity to mean something to somebody else
Then I feel a kind of like community responsibility to not like hoard that thing and I was telling them the same thing
Like you don't know how far the ripples might go something you read in that room might touch someone
And you might never know they might not even have the guts to come up and tell you
That they had that same experience or that it meant something to them
But we have to trust when we send things into the world
That they're reaching people that we may never meet. Yeah, I mean that must have been so interesting with are these like high school age kids
Yeah, yeah to certainly have that conversation with them, but also getting back to your earlier point
How do you then also let them know that even if you have the courage to stand up there and say this thing and speak your
Peace and express what's deeply vulnerable to you
Whatever it means to you. It's not going to mean to everybody else in the room
Yeah
They're gonna have their own interpretation and sometimes it's gonna be really different than what you your own
Like sort of like internal meaning was and that you've got to almost like the minute you speak it out loud
Or the minute you surrender to the public it really is an act of surrender
It's like it's as much there as now as it is mine which for any grown up
I mean like I'm 10 I'm 10 x and I struggle with that all the time
16 17 18 year old kids like it's gotta be tough. Yeah, I think so and and it's true like you know
I
Position basically is when I let something go when I say it's done
I'm no longer seeing things I want to change. I'm no longer dissatisfied with it
And I let it go or the deadline just comes and it's just time and I let it go
It's none of my business what other people think of it now
That's easier to say than it is to actually live by sometimes like no one wants to get negative reviews
No one wants to be trolled
On the internet. I mean it's it's always nicer to get kind feedback or at least feedback that you think
Is in the spirit that you intended when you made the thing
But that's not always going to be the case and so you're right
You have to kind of serenity prayer that thing right and just let it go and instead of worrying so much about what the
Reception is for the thing you just made the best cure for that anxiety is just start making something else
You know and let it go. Yeah, it's interesting, you know
I think we get so precious about the creative process and we don't own that you know to a certain extent
This is a volume game and not just to perfect your craft
Well, you'll never perfect your craft not just a work on your craft
But like you just said also it's sort of like it gives people something else that you're sort of like
Releasing and then it's like you're not judging all of the feedback and all of the moment by this one thing and then saying
Oh, it was terrible never again
You're just saying like gonna gonna keep putting things out in some land and some alone and but at least there's a quote a body of work
Rather than this one thing that you can kind of diversify the experiences around
Yeah, that's true
I mean, I think if you make a lot of different things somebody's going to like something
Like let us help and yet if you have 500 really nice comments and five snarky ones the five snarky ones will live rent free and your brain on repeat
Until you die. I mean, that's just sort of how we are as humans
I think it's hard to sit with negative
Feedback and so it's it's good to remind ourselves that like we just keep going we make other things
I say all the time. I'm not for everyone my works not for everyone
I'm not for everyone my music taste what I like to eat my sleep schedule like I'm just not for everyone
None of us is and if we try to be everything to everyone
We will have sort of diluted ourselves down to some unrecognizable
Form yeah, and I love that and it is really hard to stand in that
You know, it's when you read your writing in particular
There's always a sense of it's not overt but it almost a implicit gallows humor in it. Oh, yeah, that's that's Gen X
Right sometimes right I don't like raise my hand. Yes, disaffected all the all the stuff and you seem fairly fearless about just
Sort of like saying this is how I see the world and it's gonna enter the way that I express myself and I'm good with that
Even if other people aren't I'm wondering if that's been a process for you
I don't know that it would be safe or accurate to call me fearless in any situation. I am definitely not fearless
But what I have learned to do is do it anyway
Like oh, I'm scared. I'm doing it anyway
Or if I'm really too scared to do it
I will find some workaround that allows me to do xyz and not do that thing that is just too terrifying for me to do
But I almost never say no out of fear
Like that's not a good enough reason for me. I don't mean in dangering my physical safety
But if if I'm presented with some sort of opportunity or challenge
If the only reason I'm tempted to say no is because I'm afraid of failing or embarrassing myself or
being disliked
Like those aren't valid enough reasons to not
Lean in and try unless it involves public speaking in which case I can find I can find lots of reasons not to do that
I'm like I can't get away. I'm a single parent
But yeah, I'm not at all fearless. I think I just you know you get to a certain age where you know who you are
And you don't have to apologize for that
Or feel like that's even required like I
I understand too that my perspective on things and my sense of humor again are not everyone's
When I'm writing I'm not really speaking to everyone
I sort of imagine I think a kind of single human being who is my ideal reader
Who gets it and and I think if I
If I thought about
readership as like potentially millions of you know faceless human beings
I think it would be really hard to let go of things
Because that doesn't feel like it has the potential for warm
Reception or even real human connection
Which I think is what we want when we make things and hand them to other people like
I don't want to do like a t-shirt can in with my work where I'm just sort of like
Shooting it into like a hockey stadium and maybe somebody gets one
I really want to think about the things that I'm making
Becoming part of somebody else's life the way that like all the books and the room I'm sitting in now and all the records and the room
I'm sitting in now are part of my life the best
Books the best songs the best poems are sort of lenses
That once you've spent time with them you view the world and your experiences differently
After you've read it. It becomes this lens that you see things through and it changes you
It doesn't matter if you read it once or if it's a book you've dog-eared and you come back to again and again
And there's no getting to that kind of intimacy with a reader via a t-shirt cannon approach
Yeah, no, I completely agree with that and we'll be right back after word from our sponsors
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2015 you write this poem good bones from my to understand it takes about 20 minutes to write this thing kind of channels out of you
You spend a chunk of time after that submitting it around trying to get it published
Nobody is taking then finally in 2016 somebody says yes
This goes online and this becomes for so many people for millions of people what you just described
Those books and those albums were for you
This becomes a moment in time at like an inflection point where they experience this poem and this is pretty concise poem
It's a short and sweet poem, but they experience the world and the experience their lives differently after and that leads them
To share on mass and this seems a crazy crazy crazy wild and I wanted you know
I want to talk a bunch about sort of like you know how that then became this before and after moment for you as well
But I'm also curious because
I'm always fascinated by the concept of sliding doors
You know this one thing slightly differently
You write this in 2015 you're submitting it around hoping somebody can publish it that it goes out there in the world
It doesn't it's a year or so later one of five in lands when it lands also
It is a moment in our collective history when there's a live trauma in the air and I wonder if you ever think about you know
With things have unfolded differently in terms of how this was received had somebody said yes like right after you
So nearly we're submitting around in 2015 or before yeah, I mean I wrote the poem in 2015 and started submitting it to
primarily print magazines print journals
And it got rejected a few times and then got taken by an online journal
I think it was still late in 2015 that it was taken but then
Publishing is such that it they slayed it's you know six months ahead
So I kind of forgot about it and it came out in June of
2016 at this time when all of these terrible things were happening
And yes, of course, I mean, I think it was sort of a perfect storm of
It was a short poem that you could get the whole thing in one screenshot
So it was perfect for like Twitter Instagram. No, I was not thinking about that when I wrote it
No one I think plans for a viral poem or certainly I was not planning for a viral poem in 2015
I was parenting a you know a three-year-old and a six-year-old and just trying to
Get a little something done in the evenings after they went to bed
And it has definitely occurred to me that if one of those print journals
You know prestigious print journals had said yes
It would have landed in a wonderful place that I would have been really proud of having it
But it wouldn't have gone viral
Probably not that many people would have read it print journals tend to have fairly small
It's the readership is not giant for print journals. That's poetry
Or even if the poem had been two pages long and been published online and you had to have to kind of scroll through a couple screens
Even if it had come out that week. I don't think it could have happened
So it was it was sort of the message of
Man the world is it is sometimes a really terrible place, but
We have the ability and
Also the responsibility to do better the message the timing the length and the fact that it was on the internet
I think all of those things
Had to kind of lie a line at the same time for it to go
As viral as it won
Yeah, no that makes a lot of sense and by the way for the three people who haven't read it yet
Well drop a link in the show notes
So you can greatly read it and understand what we're talking about and I think probably see why it was just so deeply resonant
For so many people in that moment
You know publicly it landed in this really powerful way
But also this became what you described as a lightning strike moment in your own personal life
On the one hand you've got this amazing thing you've been a writer for a long time a poet for a long time
You have a lot of stuff yet like you're raising two kids, you know, like you're married
And you're trying to just make everything work
And this one thing just creates profound change but like so often happens
You know when somebody says is this a good thing or bad thing?
Both yeah
Both
Yeah, it's funny. I thought a lot about that too and I think there are some
Growth moments that we can have like particularly professionally
That can impact our marriages our relationships our lives and a lot of times we can prep for those, you know
Like I'm gonna go up for partner or I'm gonna go up for tenure or I'm gonna go up for this promotion
Or I want to apply for this position in which means we're all gonna have to move
And those kinds of situations give families time to talk
And plan and sort of like argue or recalibrate or say and then no that's not gonna work for me or who's gonna
Pick up the slack and who's gonna drive to soccer practice if you're doing x-y and z
And having a pomego viral overnight is not one of those things
There was no planning for it and so it was a really wonderful lightning strike for me as a poet
And a really problematic lightning strike for me as a wife
And so yeah, I write about it in my memoir that there's a kind of like line of demarcation
That I don't know that I was so aware of it at the time because so many things don't really become clear to us until later
But like looking back on that I I can see
That that was a real turning point in my marriage
And I think sort of like the perfect storm of the poem going viral
It also took a perfect storm of various factors to lead to the end of my marriage
But that poem going viral is one of those
Factors. I don't want to blame the poem because it's not the poem's fault, right?
And it's not my fault for writing it or publishing it and it's not readers fault for sharing it on the internet
It's not marital streaks fault for reading it at Lincoln Center
It's not anyone's fault
But it was something that created strain and and like once that starts
It's like one little crack can make another little crack which can make a bigger crack
Etc etc etc etc
Yeah, and you read about this so powerfully in the book, you know and on the one hand
All these things you've been working for so hard for so many years
It's all happening, you know, and it's happening like you just said
There's no prep like you wake you open your eyes one day like oh wow
Yeah, life is different and doors are being open that were an open before and all sorts of things come tumbling towards you on a professional level
And part of that is also you have the opportunity to then be out on the road
a lot more than you had been in the past
And I guess the blend of this it ends up bumping up against a long time marriage where
Certain patterns were just like ingrained certain assumptions about how things would be had been laid over a period of years
And those all get blown up and again without any there's no ramping time here
No, there was no time to onboard
To any of this no it really did just sort of blow up
Over night and then the choice becomes like well do I
Turn down all of these opportunities because I'm to stay at home parent
or do I rally
babysitters and grandparents and
My spouse and try to lean in
To my professional life in a way that I really hadn't been able to to that point
And I wanted to lean in and I don't regret it
It took me a long time to get there, but ultimately I realized like if
Your partner isn't excited about opportunities that you've worked hard for over a long period of time
And isn't excited enough to adapt
And sort of like be in there with you if it's more about an inconvenience than it is about the opportunity
That's probably the death knell there's no negotiating
Like it doesn't matter how many babysitters you have if that's you know as my daughter would say the vibe
It's interesting. I remember um
Years ago sitting in a small gathering and there was a panel up front and they were talking about
Relationships in business partnerships and these were you know like big fancy people talking about all sorts of fancy stuff
And one of them said you know almost anything is recoverable
Almost any type of emotion or feeling between people in relationship
I mean he was talking about business, but it really applied to like any relationship
Is it recoverable? He said but there's one that I found
I've never been able to see somebody recover it from it and he said it's contempt
And it's like once that enters into it not that it's impossible for everybody
But it's just that's one of those things where it's like someone's dropped a bomb in the middle
And it's really hard to put the pieces back together and again in a way that forms a shape of a relationship
And it sounds like that's kind of like exactly what you're experiencing
Yeah, I've heard the same thing and I think that's I think that's true and it makes a lot of sense like there are a lot of things
That you can negotiate, but if someone doesn't if you don't believe that the other person wishes you well
It's a non starter. I mean, it's just a non starter like yes
It is not easy when somebody has to work late and somebody has to do bath time
And dinner and bed and you have small kids. Yes, it's not great when you're having to negotiate work
commitments and preschool pickup
etc etc but I think
When you wish someone well
You find a way to make that work
And when you don't it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what the logistics could be
No, that makes a lot of sense
You write that you're then husband
who at least say like don't travel um in service of your writing anymore
And of course like that those me have been the words on the surface
But what was implied underneath that it sounds like was you know, it was a really evaluation
It was an evaluation of the relative value of each of you in this relationship
Yeah, I mean, I think it's tricky for those of us who
Make a living as artists
we're probably out earned
By our partners or potential partners, right?
If you have one spouse who's a poet in one spouse who's a lawyer or a doctor or an accountant
You're never going to win the argument if the basis of the argument is who makes more money
Therefore whose time is more valuable
There's no way I could win that argument for me was never about the income
It was about being able to sort of live more fully
This life that I've worked toward for a really long time
Not accepting a net loss, but but realizing that it would take sacrifices
And yes, I was the lower earner in the family and and I do think I mean a lot of the patterns that I
willingly
Sort of adopted from my own upbringing
It was really traditional um and
I don't know why I didn't seek it coming that that would not work
Like I sort of took my parents marriage as like a template or your gen X
So you'll remember this like a transparency, you know that the teacher would lay on the little light thing to write on
I sort of laid the kind of upbringing I had like a transparency over my own life
Which looks nothing like this. I mean I went to grad school. I was publishing books
I was raising kids. I was traveling and teaching
It was not the same life, but somehow I thought I could be the same wife and mom and
I couldn't I couldn't do that. I couldn't do the same thing
Yeah, I've heard you say if I fold myself up so small
I don't know where to find myself anymore what model is that and
You know that was in reference also in terms of the model of how you're living your life
But also how we show up as parents, right? Yeah, I mean any parent knows kid really doesn't listen to what you say
They watch what you do. Yeah, they watch what you do right and that's the entirety of the lesson
And it's so it's so interesting when you find yourself in those moments because you're like, huh
What am I inadvertently transmitting to these little beings who I really want to have the best opportunity to live fully in the world
Yeah, I mean both my daughter and my son it struck me
You know fairly early on in the process of everything unraveling that if and I did for a time agree not to travel and kind of make that part of my life
very small in order to make it work
And at some point I thought this isn't going to work in the long term
And all it not for me
I'm going to be miserable and resentful because I've been asked to make something that means
So much to me
Tiny in order to accommodate the sort of family schedule
But it's also not going to work for my kids like what am I modeling for my children?
I'm showing my daughter that that women are service providers and should subsume
Their lives to the family as if it's 1955
And I'm showing my son what expectations he should have of a partner whatever gender someday
And I didn't want either of them to grow up fearing
What marriage and children might do to them in the case of my daughter and how limiting it could potentially be
And I didn't want my son growing up feeling entitled
Because he's witnessed like oh, this is what happens and then the mom compromises
So that she's always around
It didn't seem healthy for for either of them to see that happen and so now they live with me
I'm gone sometimes
There's a sitter here when I'm gone. I just got back from writing in a cabin for two days
There was a sitter here. It was fine. We text
But they see what I have to show for it and they come to events and they
They see the books on the shelf and they know how much I love
My work and they also are with me sometimes at the farmers market when random people come up to me and say oh my gosh
Your book got me through the toughest year
And so I don't know how much of that they're absorbing but I hope some of it, you know, but I hope it feels okay to them
Yeah, I mean just the notion you know that you're transmitting to them just by the way that you're showing up that
You can be in the world in a way which is truly nourishing and
That there you don't have to leave parts of yourself off to the side. Yeah, because there's so many messages that kids get now
That say no conform conform conform like we just want to fit in
You know you hit middle school is just please please don't leave me out like that is everything
And so many of us never leave that mode
We just kind of assume that this is the way that we have to be
To be able to breathe as we move through life, which means we just we're constantly like a lot in parts of our self
Off and leaving them off you know out of the room and wondering why we're never okay
And like what you're saying is now I'm in a show up like all of me is worth it showing that I mean not just
You know to your kids, but also I wonder if there was a certain amount of just internal rewiring yourself like in reclaiming that
Yeah, absolutely. I mean I think
once the sort of like extreme grief
I'm laughing that's the gallows humor once I sort of got off the floor
After my divorce I was like oh
I can do anything really. I mean that kind of life shift is terrifying
And continues in many ways to be terrifying like I'm the one steering this ship
That's that's scary
But it's also really exhilarating to just to be you know
I've said it's like it went from life went from being like a group project
And we all know how those projects go in school
It's like one guy just like buys the poster board
Okay, that tells you that I went to school in the 80s now. It's like all it's like all Google slides
So what who am I kidding? There's no poster board. There's no dire ramma
But you know, I hear my kids complaining about group projects all the time
It's like well, I want to do this but so and so wants to do this or I'm I
Prep so hard in this person isn't even really they're kind of phoning it in
That can be really hard in your personal life too
And the one thing I'll say about being single and living alone although it's a group project because I have two children and a dog in my house
Is I get you to do things my way
And not as a tyrant but it's just like do I want a yellow couch? I do I'm going to buy a yellow couch
Do I want to play the clash really loud while I cook dinner? Yes, I do I'm going to play the clash really loud
Let's get pizza. Let's do this. I mean there's
There I really did have to kind of hit a reset button where I wasn't
Considering what anybody else might think say judge give me side eye for just sort of show up and be
Fully myself finally in my mid 40s. I mean it took long enough
Yeah, I think for so many it never happens and we'll be right back after word from our sponsors
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You know curious about something else as well
And I've heard you speak about this I'm wondering what your current thoughts are which is this notion it
And I guess especially in the context of good bones that
You created something that was this really beautiful work of art that went out into the world and gave language to
The experiences of millions of others, but a big part of that experience was suffering loss grief
And I'm wondering how that lands with you knowing that you're playing some role in
the
Suffering of millions of others
You're not causing it but in giving them language on the one hand that does that feel incredible
But also does it feel a little bit weird it feels incredibly weird. I mean I I have had such
complicated relationship with the poem good bones
You know when it first went viral in 2016 it was the week of the polls nightclub
Yeah, shooting in Orlando and joecock's had been stabbed to death in England and she was the mother of young kids herself
not that far from my kids age and then with um
Trump becoming president. I mean there and then pretty much anywhere I'd go at any time if my social media
Mention started ramping up
Instead of being like oh great people are reading this thing that I made
Not a coffee shop. I would think oh no what happened
Mm-hmm
And it's a really strange thing to have your
You know quote success or or just your readership growing or people engaging with your work being directly tied
To tragedy time and time again and particularly with
Violence I mean the Manchester
Concert bombing at the Ariana Grande concert. I was at in New York City for reading and my social media mentions started going wild
And I thought oh my gosh what happened it was the night before my book good bones came out
My social media went crazy. It was the Las Vegas
Shooting from the hotel window into the concert. I mean on one hand like boo who
Right like I can't complain these things have not happened to me
And it's it is a wonderful thing to have people
Finding my work and maybe finding their way from good bones to other poems other books other things I've made
But it is complicated and it would probably feel less complicated if it were a poem
That was about how beautiful the world was and not how terrible it is to
And people read it at weddings, you know and at
Confirmations or high school graduations or you know other kind of celebrations and then whenever
People were sharing and I think oh baby was born or someone just got married
And it would feel like a celebration instead of oh
No
What now
Yeah, I mean it's so interesting
I think oftentimes we feel like we're bonded as a culture around things that are elevating
I'm milled dark times, you know theory and collective effort lessons, you know like we come together
We celebrate together and this is how we form a sense of belonging
I've always believed that
Commissaration was an equal source of belonging as we don't want to go there though
We don't want to have that conversation because we don't want to invite that
Because that means that we're like there's a level collective suffering that yeah bringing us together
And we don't want to acknowledge it let alone have a conversation about it
It's interesting that you bring up shooting in Vegas. I was actually there and I was in it
There was a weird similarity to what you're describing because I was there to speak to get them inspiring sort of motivation
I'll talk to a large room of like people who had worked for 15 years to become partner in this giant firm. It was this celebration
And this was the morning after the shooting in Vegas
And I walked down from where we were on the other end of the strip to where like everything was blocked off and everything was it was
Heurithic absolutely horrific and it just stood there like for half an hour
You know like just on the able to function or move or breathe and then as I'm walking back thinking about like now my job is actually to
Celebrate the fact that there are a whole bunch of people who are still alive
And who have come and who have sacrificed so much to be in this moment in their lives
And I can get to stand on stage and do this thing that I love doing
An offer something
It was a really hard thing to do
Yeah, but I feel like you know, we like to imagine that we live in a world of binary
But like it's all gray at the end of the day and that's so much of what you speak to when you're writing
Yeah, yeah, it's so gray or it's it's just and it's and this right like it's not like this is true
But this is also true. It's like it's everything all the time like
Beautiful terrible things are happening all the time. They don't take turns
That's not that's not how it works. I mean at the same time that that massacre was happening beautiful things were happening
Probably in the same city on the same block, you know people were hugging their
Children goodbye people were do you know having conversations with their mothers
I mean
It's everything all the time and frankly I write poetry just to manage
The everything all the timeness of the human experience
Yeah, I mean it sounds like a no-small part also that the book was
One of the ways that you were
Working towards trying to metabolize this big transitional window in your life the end of the marriage
But also like the beginning of a whole lot of new things
Do you feel like you were able to through that process?
You know mostly it's funny. I sat down to write you could make this place beautiful with a really naive
Intention which is I thought if I spent a whole year
Doing every day just sort of every day writing about
My marriage and the kids and sort of trying to piece it all together. I would have it figured out
Like I would be able to sort of see very clearly. Oh, that's what happened if that hadn't happened
This wouldn't have happened either. Oh, that's where we first went wrong
Like it was almost like trying to retrace the breadcrumb trail
And get back to a safe place and enhance all incredible
And that I couldn't do. I mean, it's sort of an unsolvable mystery and that again
There's too many factors and and too many other people involved for me to be able to say well. I know for sure
Why this happened how this happened when this happened and that there could have been no other way
So it didn't solve that for me, but it definitely helped me metabolize
The experience. I don't know what I think until I write it down. That's
Maybe unfortunate for you because I'm talking to you verbally right now
So I may change my mind about everything I've said once I write it down
But I I do use writing not as therapy. I don't find it necessarily therapeutic
But I think it's really satisfying to take a kind of amorphous
Idea or experience or feeling that sort of swirling around in my mind and to give it a form to give it shape
And to frankly just simply put it someplace
Not in my head
And so the shaping of the memoir and the telling of the different stories
And the playing with the different questions and the going over the various metaphors for the experience
all of that collectively
Helped me feel more at peace
With what had happened by the time I finished the book and then
Again, because we were just saying the publishing process doesn't end with publishing you still have to get it to people
the past year of
Of being with this book in the world with others
And hearing other people's stories getting male from other people getting DMs from other people
Hearing how it's touched them that has even added like a different
level of
Metabolizing
For me and if I had any doubt
about the sort of value of undertaking such a vulnerable writing project it was completely dispelled
After like email three from a stranger
Yeah, you use the phrase unanswerable mystery and I know you've used the phrase unanswerable question also
And it's interesting because you know you were writing a book like this and it almost like well
What's the resolution? Let's solve the problem. Let's get to the answer
But the notion of intentionally
Identifying unanswerable questions and then spending a lot of time
Really dropping into them knowing from the beginning that this is actually not about the pursuit of the answer because it's unanswerable
It's on the one hand really hard to wrap around like how could you spend so much energy doing this
But on the other hand, it's like but isn't that the matter of life
Yeah, it's not just this book. It's life. I mean the material of life is unanswerable questions
Or you know, they have answers, but they have many answers that change
From day to day situation to situation. There are so few absolutes
And that is not something I think I would have said six or seven years ago. I would have said oh no
I know who I am. I know the kind of life I'm building
This is the way we do it. I think I was a lot more
Sort of structured and binary even in my own
Thinking before my life imploded. It's it's funny how your life imploding can help you see the ways that you were probably not thinking
correctly
About things in the past
But you're right. We don't know we just do our best
Every day I tried to do as little harm in the world as possible to leave it a little better
Then I found it to be compassionate to raise my kids well
To write things I believe in to take care of others and
I don't know where that all leads, but we're all just doing our best
Yeah, it seems like you have been on this bullet train for a number of years now
And like we said is it a good thing a bad thing? It's it's a thing. Yes, and yes, and right
Oftentimes I found that when I'm especially when I'm talking to folks who sort of like they've been on a rocket ship
And and it's been a number of years now
With all the amazingness that goes along with it. There's also often just a profound tiredness
And I think we like to overlay. Oh best years of our life and she's doing amazing and creating great work
And like yes, there was hardship, but she's quote past it now
I wonder from the inside looking out what your experiences around balancing the amazing parts of what's going on and also
A need for stillness and rest
Yeah, that's a great question. I mean I
I have been well aware since I was a young person the amount of solitude
I need is more than the average person
And I don't I don't know if that's like a writer thing. I don't know if it's an introvert thing
I don't know if it's a Maggie thing
But I need a lot of time by myself
And I need a lot of time when I'm not on
That's another thing. So if I if I am on for two hours
I need to be off for like six
Then I can be on again
And so
Yeah, it's funny one of the most challenging parts of
Of having work in the world and having it be sort of warmly received is the oneness
The oneness that it takes and it's it's wonderful and I I actually really enjoy it when I'm doing it
And then I realize I feel like I've been hit by a bus
Yeah, it's the introvert
Yeah, I get back to my hotel room and I'm like room service
No, I don't want to have dinner. I just need to sort of go underground and put my headphones on and
And so I think I have been
smarter
Particularly in the past three or four years about being very realistic
about what I need
And not over scheduling myself
Not pushing myself
Too much and like setting boundaries around my time like no, I can't do five things in one day
Like maybe some other person could do five things in one day and and be fine at the end and have that dinner and do the whole thing and then go for the drinks after
I'm just not that person
And it's not because I don't want to be that person. I think when people do that and make it look effortless
I
I'm like, oh, that must be fun
But no, I'd like to be in bed by 10
And
Upwriting alone I mean, I just said I got back from a cabin in the woods for two days. I
Single parenting means you don't have a whole lot of time alone except for when the kids are at school
I love it when they're at school
Summer is coming and it's going to be the three of us in this house. We don't do camps. We don't do anything
We travel together. So it's going to be like two and a half months of like intense social
Social stuff and I will probably need to put my headphones on and go for some pretty long walks
Mm-hmm. During the summer months
Yeah, I've heard you say um that your biggest wish is um how do you get to peace? How do you get free?
Is that it for you? I mean, it's kind of called this full circle to the beginning of our conversation also
Salitude music writing
Yeah, honestly that's all it takes. I'm actually like quite a cheap date
Like I really I don't need any fancy things if you give me I mean I used to tell my mom when she went to the grocery store when I was a kid
My you know my sister's both played club soccer and it was like really expensive and there was all this traveling
And I was like I'm cheap and easy just get me some legal pads and some pens
At the crogre let's really all I need and to be quite honest for the last 40 years
That's what I need I need paper. I need pens. I need people to leave me alone for periods of time
Good music
Maybe coffee some dark chocolate. It really is not that
Difficult peace for me is actually very very simple and therefore
attainable
Hmm you and I are very similarly in that way
Especially the good music and the dark chocolate are pretty critical after
Yeah, I know again though. It's not like it's not a tall order. Yeah, no
Pretty straightforward. It feels like a good place for us to come full circle as well
So in this container of good life project if I offer up the phrase to live a good life what comes up?
Oh
Be yourself
That's what comes up be yourself. You know what it's not easy always but it's simple
Like telling the truth right and being yourself is
In essence telling the truth
just
The uncomplicated truth of who you are
Hmm. Thank you. Sure. Thank you
Hey before you leave if you love this episode safe that you'll also love the conversation
We had with Liz Gilbert about writing yourself letters from love
You'll find a link to Liz's episode in the show notes this episode of good life project was produced by
Executive producers Lindsey Fox and me Jonathan Fields editing help by Alejandro Ramirez
Christopher Carter crafted our theme music and special thanks to Shelley Del for her research on this episode
And of course if you haven't already done so please go ahead and follow good life project in your favorite listening app
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Until next time I'm Jonathan Fields signing off for good life project
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