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Episode 312: Meredith May
219 Plays3 years ago
Meredith May returns to talk about her new book Loving Edie: How a Dog Afraid of Everything Taught Me to be Brave (Park Row Books).
Social: @CNFPod
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Show notes and the Rage Against the Algorithm newsletter: brendanomeara.com
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Transcript
Coaching and Opportunities
00:00:00
Speaker
ACNFers, okay, so there was this time when Roger Federer, one of the greatest tennis players in the world, did not use a coach. He was like, bro, I'm good, I'm the best. Single hand, back hand, all day long. But at some point, during his plight to stay on top, the greatest player of his time, for a time, it's arguable whether or not he's still, okay, whatever, neither here nor there, he hired a coach.
00:00:29
Speaker
He needed someone to see what he could no longer see. Likewise, if you're a writer working in memoir or sports, you have my area of expertise. I'm not going to throw a blanket over the entire CNF and world. And you're ready to level up? Someone to hold you accountable? Email me at Brendan at BrendanOmero.com and we'll start a dialogue. I'd be honored and thrilled to help you get where you want to go.
00:00:53
Speaker
Oh, and yes, by the way, call for submissions for issue four of the audio magazine. It's themed codes. Codes to live by, mantras, personal beliefs, rules, oppressive, liberating. I love people who are so principled. They live by a code. Captain Fantastic or the Mandalorian. This is the way.
00:01:14
Speaker
Give me your best 2000 words or fewer essays about codes. Email Creative Nonfiction Podcast at gmail.com with code in the subject line.
00:01:25
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Simultaneous submissions are fine, but if you have a piece accepted by another publication or you're holding out for a more prestigious publication, let me know ASAP so I don't read and edit your piece because I even give notes to rejected essays. I mean, what a guy. And so if it's going to be taken elsewhere, I just want to save me the time. I appreciate it.
Community and Support
00:01:49
Speaker
Deadline is October 31st. This is the way.
00:01:52
Speaker
All of a sudden I'm running in traffic after her and cars are screeching and honking. And her, I remember her green leash was bouncing behind her. And I was thinking, holy God, she's going to get run over and I'm going to watch. And this is my fault.
00:02:14
Speaker
Oh yes, this is the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the non-award nominated podcast where I speak to badass people about the art and craft of telling true stories. I'm Brendan O'Mara, how's it going? Meredith May returns, excellent. Little inside joke there, she's got a new book out, Loving Edie, How a Dog Afraid of Everything, taught me to be brave. It is published by Park Row Books, excuse me, Park Row Books, much better.
00:02:41
Speaker
Much better kid. She's also the author of The Honey Bus, which was one of my favorite memoirs of 2019. Even to this day, one of my favorite memoirs. And I read a lot of those things. And I really like it. Yeah. In this interview, we talk about the adjustments you sometimes need to make for the dog in your life. Hashtag Kevin.
00:03:03
Speaker
how Meredith approached the topic, despite the myriad titles of dog books on the shelves, what she learned about herself and her marriage, how it tested her marriage, this little puppy, and the community aspect of writing, lifting other people up, and of course, a recommendation. I want to remind you to keep the conversation going on Twitter at cnfpod or at creative nonfiction podcast on Instagram.
00:03:33
Speaker
You can also support the podcast by becoming a paid member at patreon.com slash cnfpod. As I said the show is free but it sure as hell ain't cheap. Members get transcripts when I get around to them and you know.
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They're coming. They drip in. They drip in. Chances to ask questions to future guests. Few people take up that offer when I put up a poll, but you know, whatever. It's there. It's there for the taking if you want it. You just have a fruit that does not go bad on the vine, and if you want that fruit, go and grab it.
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It'll hang there lonely, but never mind. Special podcasts coming down, like a month in review type things, you know, fun stuff. Free ways to support the show. You can always leave a kind review on Apple podcasts or a rating on Spotify.
00:04:21
Speaker
written reviews for a little podcast that could go a long way towards validating it for the wayward CNFer. Hello there. No new reviews to read. I know. I know, but if you publish one, this is where I read it. I will read it right here and give you the shout out you deserve, man.
00:04:38
Speaker
Be sure you're heading over to BrendanObera.com for show notes and to sign up for my up to 11 rage against the algorithm CNF and monthly newsletter say that 11 times fast first of the month no spam so far as I can tell you can't beat it
00:04:53
Speaker
Alright, is that it? That seems short for
Meredith May's Journey into Dog Books
00:04:57
Speaker
an intro. Doesn't matter. Enough's enough. It's time to welcome Meredith back to the show from episode 147 to 312. What are we even doing in this world? This is what we do.
00:05:19
Speaker
So many, you know, with the advent or the publication of say Marley and Me, you know, all of a sudden there's like lots of dog books over the years. And you have like John Katz, who's like made a career out of writing any number of dog books who I'm sure you're familiar with.
00:05:34
Speaker
What was it like when you were like, all right, I've got this story about my puppy. And what was it like for you to kind of step into the arena of something that is populated with so many different books? So your take, Meredith's take.
00:05:50
Speaker
Well, I was a little naive. I didn't know I was stepping into an arena. I mean, of course I knew of Marley and me and some of those big, big ones. I was looking at it more as, this is what's going on in my life right now. This is what's overtaking my relationship and my life right now.
00:06:11
Speaker
And it was so big when it was happening that that's what I wanted to write about. That's how I process. That's how I figure out how to get through things as a human is by writing it down. And so I called my agent and they all
00:06:29
Speaker
knew I had this cute puppy because I was constantly sending photos, but I finally called and said, okay, cute puppy has a huge issue and I need to write about it because I don't know where this is going.
00:06:44
Speaker
they, all I had to do was say puppy. And my agent said, yes, she didn't hear the whole pitch, actually, I'm remembering. So that was my first clue that dog books are good sellers or popular. Then I went to do the research and wait, okay, what else is out there besides Marley and me and, you know, racing in the rain?
00:07:07
Speaker
And then I thought, oh, whoopsie, I just dove into a really huge ocean. And it was a little intimidating, but I read a lot of books about dogs and I thought I was a little original writing about how a dog changed me as a person. I realize that's what every writer does when they write about their dog.
00:07:32
Speaker
Right? And to that point, as you're doing that market research and then trying to answer that question like kind of like, well, why now? And what new can be said about it? You know, how are you answering that question? Like, okay, what is the new thing that I can bring to the canon of dog books?
00:07:50
Speaker
Well, dog books fall into two kinds. One I found was more scientific slash dog training. So I read some books about, you know, dog lovers who were scientists and trained their dog to go into an MRI machine to study their brain and to try to figure out where's that and then show the
00:08:19
Speaker
the dog images of things it likes to see if areas light up when they're happy. And how does a dog love you? So there's that sort of scientific side. And then the other side is about relationships with dogs and what they do to you. But a lot of the relationship books I found
00:08:41
Speaker
were different than mine. They were more about overcoming a trauma, depression, sexual abuse, violence. There's this beautiful loyalty of dogs that fills holes in people.
00:08:59
Speaker
And so my book was a little different in that I thought I was writing about a dog with extreme anxiety and I wanted to write about dog emotions and how I was discovering their real
00:09:14
Speaker
and how to work with a dog that is highly sensitive like mine. I thought my book would be instructional, and it didn't really dawn on me until I had almost finished it that I was writing about how a neurotic dog was showing me that I was neurotic about her neuroses, and I was the one who needed to change, and she was just fine. She's just different. She doesn't need to be what I hoped she had was.
00:09:41
Speaker
Yeah, I think it also it gets to this point of when a lot of us either whether we get puppies or rescue dogs that we want them to really integrate into our lives seamlessly in a sense where they do all the adjusting to our lives and enriching
00:09:59
Speaker
our lives and what you found through this book was she was very much a square peg in the round hole of your lives and he was just like why won't you fit here and eventually you're like oh we have to for once the way we might with like human babies actually adjust our lives around the dog and it's a way it's so antithetical to how we raise dogs I think that was such a formative I don't know spine of this book was
00:10:27
Speaker
you having to really adjust to the dog and struggling to do so? Yes, exactly. It's a book about me thinking I knew everything about dogs because Edie is my third golden retriever, but I had two exceptional dogs before her and hadn't realized it. I didn't have to do any work with those dogs. They were just easy.
00:10:55
Speaker
And they made my life fun. And there's a huge dog culture in San Francisco. And then even within that, the gay community in the dog culture is so tight knit. Your dog is your replacement for your child, or it's an expression of you, or it's, I mean, even to some point, like fashion. And this whole community,
00:11:24
Speaker
You know, your ticket to it is to have a dog. You get invited to the cocktail parties on top of Wag Hotel. And you know, it's just a super fun community to be a part of. And I just wanted to keep the party going. And so I got this dog and she made me, you know, put on the break.
00:11:45
Speaker
and grow up and realize that she's not here for my entertainment.
Challenges with Kevin and Edie
00:11:52
Speaker
She's here to teach me something that I don't even know I need to learn yet. Yeah, we just adopted another dog, a German Shepherd mix. She's a girl we named her Kevin. Yeah, it's great. She responds to it too, which is awesome. But her separation anxiety is
00:12:17
Speaker
next level. It is it was it was so Kobe got her initially for other dog Hank like oh we feel like he could use a buddy play pal and turns out he's he likes her but he's kind of indifferent to her and so then we adopt Kevin and she's got major major separation issues.
00:12:35
Speaker
When the first couple weeks we had her we had our we had our dog crate for and we're like Let's see how she does in there if we leave for five minutes and we set up a phone and video to video Her and so we left for five minutes and it was some of the most disturbing video we've ever seen because she was just attacking the cage she's biting at it like she could have broken her teeth and
00:12:57
Speaker
And so at that point we realized just what a handful we had. And so since that day, about six or seven weeks ago when we did that experiment, we can't leave her alone. We're now working with a behaviorist, and she's on some Clomacom as well to just work with the separation. And so reading your book, long way of me saying,
00:13:19
Speaker
Reading your book. I was really relating to how you had to really fundamentally change your lives to accommodate and to And to provide the kind of solace and relief and a good loving home for this other animal Like you really had to change for her instead of the other way around Mm-hmm. Yeah, and you know, I didn't
00:13:40
Speaker
Both of us, we didn't quite get it the first time, yet we did the same thing. We hired our puppy school trainer who is a behaviorist to come to the house and help us with this. She was gently trying to tell us that you can't just take this dog with you everywhere you want to go like you used to. You have to consider what the impact is going to be on her and have
00:14:05
Speaker
either don't go or go at a different time when it's quieter or have a plan B or change your schedule. We would try to follow the rules, but then we just really would want to do something. We think, maybe she's ready. We've been working with her for a month. Maybe she's ready to handle this. We kept trying to get her to, I don't know, I'll give an example, to go with us to a restaurant that is dog friendly.
00:14:34
Speaker
We heard our behaviorist, but we didn't want to hear her. So we would sort of half-ass follow her recommendations. And it really got to the point where we finally just had to realize that we've got a change for her. And the changing has not been horrible. I mean, we have to reframe what
00:15:02
Speaker
what it is and the reward for being there for her and making her more comfortable and making her happy is better than getting to go to that restaurant. Thankfully, she does not have separation anxiety. She's got every single other one under the sun.
00:15:24
Speaker
And we do put the baby cam up and keep an eye on her when she's alone in the house, just in case. But she loves it. She just sleeps. But I had to learn how to work with a dog like this, which was very different. I did a lot of reading about counter conditioning and how you have to work them up.
00:15:47
Speaker
You work them out of their fears slowly. I guess, I'll give you an example. She used to be really afraid of traffic.
00:15:55
Speaker
If a car went by, she would just freeze up and then take off. So obviously she's always on a leash, but now when cars go by, she gets, we tell her to sit and we give her cookies and we tell her what a great dog she is. So now a car is like the candy man. She hears a car, she sits and looks at me like, feed me, you know? So she got over traffic. Yeah.
00:16:21
Speaker
Yeah, it's to that point too. We love to go hiking and we took Kevin out in Hank a few weeks ago and it was just kind of a nightmare. It was like she was on panic mode the whole time, even on the trail.
00:16:41
Speaker
yelping and barking and just all over the place so frenetic and it's just like oh boy alright so here's another thing like right now or maybe ever but I think right now it's just like we can't do we have to like slowly introduce her and start her world small and then start to expand it
00:17:00
Speaker
So again, that's just another thing that I was really, really connecting with in your book of where you had to, you had to really start small and then gradually build out her borders. So it's just that there must have been really, I got it from the glean from the book, but it must have just been a huge challenge for you, especially given your experience with Stella and Layla. Yeah. You know, for example, like the hike, when you take your dog hiking, what do you do? You drive to the trailhead, you park, you put on the leash, you're like, let's hike.
00:17:29
Speaker
And with a dog like the kind we have, they need time to get used to the place first. You can't just get, you can't go from jump. They have to smell it. They have to sit in the car and look at it. Like maybe that's all they can do that day is just look at it. And then you have to come back and maybe they take a walk around the car and that's a win. You know, you have to change your,
00:17:53
Speaker
idea of what a win is with a dog like this. But it makes perfect sense to want to just hike and get frustrated that they're not hiking and then think that they're being ornery or I had to unlearn all this stuff. And I thought I was a really compassionate animal person, but it
00:18:13
Speaker
I wasn't, I was irritated because she wasn't giving me the dog life I wanted, you know? So yeah, you know, maybe you take a few steps and they get tons of praise. Maybe you bring some of her dog friends with her. Maybe you just sit on a bench.
00:18:32
Speaker
You know, and then you have to let the dog make the next move when they're ready. And that was something I had to learn too. Cause I thought, well, you're not a very good dog trainer person. If you're letting the dog run you, that was kind of what I was thinking. But with a dog that's sensitive, if you push them, they're going to not trust you and then it's all over. They won't do anything.
00:18:57
Speaker
Yeah, and that was especially poignant for you, just someone who had such great experiences with your previous Golden Retrievers. And Jen, your wife was a bit reluctant to bring in a dog based on childhood experience, but also just knowing the responsibility of it all. So the fact that you guys had to so fundamentally change your lives at this point in your lives with this particular dog,
00:19:25
Speaker
That's just such a core element of this book. Was that always going to be part of this book, that it was also going to be kind of like your marriage is told through your relationship with Edie?
00:19:41
Speaker
Not at the beginning. My editor knew it was, but I didn't. I thought I was writing about the dog, but actually I wasn't. I was writing about how the dog affected me and made me into a better person and how also its strength. I did get what I wanted. I thought a puppy would complete our family and strengthen our bond.
00:20:07
Speaker
Ultimately, that is what happened, but it really put us to the ringer. Like you said, Jen was reticent. It took me about a year of gentle persuasion. She's the more responsible one in the relationship.
00:20:29
Speaker
uh, grew up with a stepfather who was, um, pretty cruel. And this is in rural Humboldt and she would bring home strays, cats, and one time a dog. And he inevitably would get tired of them or irritated by them and make them go away under
00:20:49
Speaker
you know, um, mysterious circumstances. And so she had her heart broken as a little girl and never grew up knowing what it's like to have, you know, a buddy and I really wanted that for her. And so I was putting a lot on 80 to do for us and for my wife. And when it wasn't going as planned,
00:21:17
Speaker
And I'm the stay at home writer and she's the go to work police lieutenant during the week. And she's, I'm the one who's increasingly being held captive in a house by an agoraphobic dog with, I should say puppy with a lot of energy and cabin fever.
00:21:33
Speaker
Edie and I were going bonkers and I started resenting my wife for not like picking up on it and helping more. And it really started to sound like, you know, I think at one point I said, it's just like you're the stepfather.
00:21:50
Speaker
comes in at the end of the day and spends an hour with the kid and that's it. We started sounding like a fifties heterosexual couple about our kids. It tested us, but in a way that ended up being very necessary and told us a lot about each other and how much we're willing to do to make it work.
00:22:18
Speaker
And given how Edie, you mentioned earlier, really overtook your life in such a way, what would you identify as maybe the nadir of her first year as a puppy where you were like, I don't know, are we the right people to usher her through her life? Well, no, exactly.
00:22:43
Speaker
The breaking point came when this isn't a period where we were really thinking we could bring Edie to a restaurant and we were in Carmel and Edie was under our table and tied to my chair and
00:22:59
Speaker
Happily gnawing on a bone and we were so thrilled because It was turning out to be the first time she could do this and we're this is back in the phase We're thinking she just has extreme puppy fear. She doesn't have a clinical
00:23:14
Speaker
issue. And the chef who was a friend came up to our table and startled her and she bolted. I got up to hug him so all of a sudden she was free but the chair was toppled over chasing her, scared her more and she just ran out of the courtyard of the restaurant and into traffic
00:23:36
Speaker
running uphill against two lanes of oncoming traffic. So she was running in the middle of two lanes of traffic. And I don't even remember getting up. All of a sudden I'm running in traffic after her and cars are screeching and honking. And I remember her green leash was bouncing behind her.
00:23:58
Speaker
I was thinking, holy God, she's going to get run over and I'm going to watch and this is my fault. I turned and Jen was next to me running. I don't remember how she got there. Eventually, this is the middle of the book, so I'm not giving anything away. Jen was able to find her seven or eight streets away.
00:24:25
Speaker
We were driving home to San Francisco after that, and we were having a real frank conversation. Jen was saying, this dog may be too sensitive for the world. This dog may not be able to function. Jen was saying, what if she'd caused an accident? What if a person had died?
00:24:54
Speaker
And we just had that really hard conversation, like, can we do this? Is this dog so damaged that she is just eventually going to have an accident anyway? Or do we know anybody who has a farm who could take, I mean, we were going through all the
00:25:12
Speaker
emotions and we slept on it. Well, I woke up and Jen wasn't in the bed and I found her in the middle of the night crying in the living room and she said, okay Meredith, we'll try one more year.
00:25:26
Speaker
And so thank goodness we, we took a breath and thought about it and decided, you know, no one can do this, but us, we can't give her back. We can't bring her to a shelter or give her to a friend. Cause I think to have to start over with a dog like that. Um, we already had, I just was afraid, like who else is going to take care of her the way we can? I don't want to give her away.
00:25:53
Speaker
Right, yeah. It got me thinking too about how many animals of this nature that are just, they just have, they have the issues they have and they get surrendered to a shelter and that's a whole extra layer of trauma that they're going to have to deal with.
00:26:15
Speaker
it's like what what what hands are they going to land in are they gonna let even the most well-intentioned caretakers like can they even afford medication the vet bills special trainers specialist trainers and it's like it's amazing
00:26:37
Speaker
To me it just it just got me thinking like you know for Kevin's sake you know we're lucky in the sense that we can if she's gonna bankrupt us I feel but we at this time we can uh we can afford to give her the the care she needs and the therapy that she needs to live a live a good life but how many I don't know thousands of dogs out there aren't afforded that luxury even with the most well-intentioned adopters of these animals
00:27:03
Speaker
Yeah. I think, you know, when I had my first gold and I was in my twenties, I couldn't have handled this. No way. I didn't have the money, but I also didn't have the time. I didn't have the freedom. I was working full time for newspapers. I couldn't have
00:27:20
Speaker
I left her alone during the day like I did with my other, you know, well-adjusted dogs. Yeah, and I think after that traffic disaster with Edie and Carmel, that's what really got me thinking because we were seriously thinking, okay, do we find a friend to take the dog? Do we surrender the dog?
00:27:43
Speaker
And I started imagining who would take her next, and it horrified me. What if a well-intentioned parent picked up Edie for their kid?
00:27:56
Speaker
You know, which happens a lot. Like let's get the kids a dog. Like that would have been a disaster. She's afraid of loud children. Um, so yeah, I, it was a turning point because I thought if, if not me who, and I am now at a point in my career where I'm a little more in charge of my time and I have a little more disposable income and it has
Rescue Stories and Training
00:28:21
Speaker
to be me. I made a commitment to this dog. I've got to see it through.
00:28:26
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I'll never forget when we filmed Kevin in her crate there, like when we left her, she looked normal, she looked a little confused, like, oh, where are you going? Okay, whatever. And we left and then when we got back, she was still assuming that a very similar posture though, the bed in her crate was just a little bunched up. I'm like, okay, she probably just dug a little, she was probably a little anxious and was just kind of digging at it.
00:28:50
Speaker
But otherwise, physically, she looked kind of like how we left her. And had we not seen that video, we wouldn't have known the extent to which she was in a full-on panic. And we're lucky in a sense right now that we can stay home and work and not – Melanie at times has to go to the office. Right now I'm lucky in that, but we're still office prohibitive.
00:29:12
Speaker
so I can stay and you know she's not allowed in a crate and she's not allowed to be alone but how many other people might have put her in her crate and not realize the extent to which she was panicking and be like okay you know go in there and then they go to work and come back and just think of that I just think of that like the horror that she would be under for like several hours at a time where she would be a physical harm to herself and probably break all her teeth which is I can't imagine I can't believe she didn't break a tooth the way she was going at her cage like that one day
00:29:40
Speaker
And yeah, I think there is growing recognition that dogs have serious emotions, you know, and that there's more to having a dog than simply molding them and training them into, you know, the perfect obedient soldier. And did you say that Kevin was a rescue?
00:30:03
Speaker
Yeah, she had been surrendered on two different occasions. One, under definite neglect, she was underweight and had yeast infection all over her skin, lost a lot of fur. And then the second time she was surrendered was, she had kind of regained some of her weight, the skin had cleared up, fur came back, but she's a bit of a barker and it comes from a lot of that separation. I assume that maybe those previous owners, that maybe they lived in an apartment.
00:30:30
Speaker
And for kind of a little dog, she's got a big bark. She's got that big German Shepherd bark. And she was surrendered as a result of the success of barking. So yeah, surrendered on two different occasions. So yeah, we're dealing with that, not knowing the previous, I don't know, five years of her life to that point.
00:30:51
Speaker
Right. But that makes sense, doesn't it? That she is terrified of being abandoned a third time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm thinking of something I read when I was reading about dogs with issues and it was a separation anxiety chapter and they sort of counter conditioned the dog to it by just leaving, leaving for 30 seconds and coming back and giving them treats. And then, you know, same thing we're talking about in the hike.
00:31:21
Speaker
But I wonder if your behaviors talk to you about that, but maybe with a dog like yours, even that wouldn't help them get over it.
00:31:32
Speaker
Yeah, what we're doing right now, we're in the first month of it, and we can, I think, afford two months of it, and then we'll have to try to do it ourselves from there. It's kind of like where we'll be, the missions are like, okay, we're seated at a table. All right, we exit and enter through our garage door primarily, so it'll be like, okay, walk halfway to the garage door, stand there for three seconds, walk back, and then make notes about what she's doing.
00:32:03
Speaker
And then the other time be like walk all the way to the door put door put hand on doorknob Jiggle the handle walk back and it's a lot of these very little baby steps and she's definitely what with the with the pharmaceuticals and that degree of of these baby steps and trying to interrupt her assumptions at time because she'll try to run ahead of us because she wants to block us and
00:32:27
Speaker
or she's excited to go, because she loves getting in the car. So she's like, all right, going to the car. She runs to the door. So sometimes she's showing those improvements of like hanging back a little, not always having to get up in front of us and block the door. So it's all of these little, little things. And sometimes you'll just stay laying on the floor, which is a big win when she's able to do that. So we have to really celebrate those when she just watches us. Yes, you get to get like crazy excited for it. Yeah.
00:32:53
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. So you're doing it. You're doing the microdosing, you know, microlessons and, um, yeah, that, that is, that's really great. You know, and, and for me, I'm a very impatient person. Well, I'm much less now that I have this dog. And so I would want to see results, uh, more quickly, you know, and, uh, it's hard when you're doing that, but yeah, a win is like, she lays down longer before panicking. Yeah.
00:33:21
Speaker
Yeah, big time and yeah, it's.
00:33:25
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. It's really had to kind of re recalibrate what it means to like, you know, kind of bring bring a dog along and make it comfortable. Whereas kind of what we were talking before, you want this companion to just kind of go with you everywhere and have it reflect kindly on on you and your personality and everything. Whereas, you know, right now she's kind of a monster when she's out in public. And understandably, so we get it. But it's one of those things, OK, we got to take
00:33:54
Speaker
we gotta go all the way back and just try to try to rewire this brain a little bit it's uh... yeah i mean it's it's a lot but it to your point of being feeling impatient like we're kind of this we're kind of the same way like oh yeah we we wanna want to be able on the weekend go out and do those hikes and get out there work up a sweat see some cool things but right now it's like now we just we just can't right now and uh... occasionally have like a dog sitter come over cuz we have some tickets to baseball game so we had some
00:34:23
Speaker
sitters come over and watch her and she actually did okay with other people. She just right now cannot be left alone. Same, same. Yeah, so instead of a hike, maybe you have a sit-down picnic and you bring some good beer and you make it just as awesome as a real hike would have been. You just have to change your expectations.
00:34:45
Speaker
Yeah, I know. Exactly. How hard was that for you to change your expectations, or how have you gotten comfortable with it now having her for a couple years? Well, my wife, Jen, is really good at reframing as a police lieutenant. She's one of the highest ranking women she was in the San Francisco Police Department, and so she was around a lot of colleagues.
00:35:14
Speaker
that would challenge her. And then when she was on the street, she was around a lot of people who didn't want to be arrested. And she is really good at verbal judo. And so she uses it on me. And she'll say things like, well, that was as far as Edie could go today. Or, you know, she'll look for the win.
00:35:39
Speaker
and pull it out of my brain, which was looking for the disappointment. So Jen was wonderful in just helping me see all that we were doing for Edie and to notice her growth.
00:35:56
Speaker
And also, I want to say just learning to slow down. You know, we we couldn't go out as much obviously, like, yes, if we have go somewhere together, we have to have for more than a couple of hours, we have to have someone come to the house with Edie or Edie goes with us in the car. She loves being in the car. It's like her little den and I have blackout screens on all the windows and I play soft
00:36:25
Speaker
dog music for her, chill music and the whole bit. But, um, you were asking, Hey, you know, how did I learn to change my expectations? I learned to love staying home more, which kind of thankfully coincided with a pandemic, you know, not thankfully, thankfully. Um, so, you know, I got real, real used to
00:36:49
Speaker
You know just being with her here and slow here meaning the house and we're houses backed up to the Los Padres National Forest so slow I had the time and to slowly work her up to taking
00:37:04
Speaker
hikes in isolated places nearby that we can walk to. And it's really lovely. I actually love that more than being able to take her to a restaurant or down a busy sidewalk somewhere. So it worked out organically.
00:37:22
Speaker
Yeah, you're kind of alluding to it, but how did you learn to not feel as trapped, given that, you know, she often had you housebound and, you know, kind of relearning what it is to have a, you know, she fundamentally changed your lives and you, like, you truly were, like, kind of locked in the house with her. That cabin fever is a real thing. So how did you learn to embrace that?
00:37:49
Speaker
You know, Edie's sensitivity to the city and her sort of irritation with the city was kind of mirroring our feelings about living in an urban environment. I mean, both of us moved to San Francisco in our 20s, which is like when everyone does, it's perfect for that. But as we were approaching 50, we were getting sort of exhausted by
00:38:19
Speaker
looking for parking spaces and standing in line for everything and $10 lattes. It was just getting to be not fun anymore. We were getting to be those cranky people who want to eat at five and go to bed at nine.
00:38:34
Speaker
Yeah. The long-term plan when she retired, our plan was a two to three year plan was to move back to my hometown in Carmel Valley. So we were very casually just keeping an eye on the market to see what we could be able to afford.
00:38:54
Speaker
And when Edie came along, that sort of sped that up. And we decided, let's just start really looking. And by some miracle, if we find something, we'll live separately until she retires. And that's what we ended up doing. We started more earnestly looking. And then in a day, we found
00:39:16
Speaker
our forever house and we put in an offer that day and it was accepted two days later and then all of a sudden we're like, did we just do this? So Edie nudged that along. I'm not the kind of person that buys a house for my dog. It was part of the plan.
00:39:39
Speaker
I guess I'll speak for myself. No, we're both so happy here. We both feel so good. We love it. And it's quiet. And we would not have done it this fast had it not been for this dog that was initially a huge disappointment.
Motherhood Reflections
00:39:57
Speaker
And reading the book too, I love the little, the grace notes of the honey bus in there and like your grandfather and some of the things that you kind of echo from honey bus. I love that book so much. And just to hear it, like to kind of see your grandfather again and just like the homages to the bees and in Carmel Valley where you grew up.
00:40:20
Speaker
But also those – some of the darker elements of how your relationship with your mother at the time, which to me was kind of an undercurrent of this book because you bring up motherhood a bunch and your insecurities about motherhood and how Edie in a sense gave you guys that
00:40:40
Speaker
almost that more human motherly element that you guys just weren't comfortable with based on your upbringing. So I really, really like those elements that you were able to tie into it. I really felt that undercurrent throughout the whole book, which I feel like was part of your intent.
00:41:01
Speaker
Yeah, you know, they say that the dogs that come into your life are there to teach you something you don't even know you need to learn. And that's definitely true. I think part of the reason I resisted so much letting Edie be Edie and was that I was worried she was going to require so much work.
00:41:24
Speaker
And it was going to be a subtraction from what I wanted to do with my life. And I was going to be ruled by this dog. And then I started thinking that, God, that sounds familiar. And that's my mother. My mother, if you haven't read my first book, which is about my childhood, not you, Brendan, listeners out there.
00:41:47
Speaker
She was a depressed divorcee who really took to bed after the breakup and never quite got out of it and would openly rue the day she got married and had kids.
00:42:05
Speaker
you know, children were always a burden. And, you know, we were the reason her life didn't turn out the way she wanted. So I guess I absorbed some of that. And, you know, I have half of her DNA and I always
00:42:22
Speaker
Growing up, never saw myself as a mother. I worried that I wouldn't be able to be a writer. That makes no sense. But I just wanted to make sure I was happy and doing what I wanted to do before I decided to have children. And I think it's because I saw my mother complain constantly about the choices she made in her life. So I think that was my resistance to Edie needing
00:42:51
Speaker
constant lifelong protection and care and not being my entertaining sidekick that made me popular. It's a very, very selfish way of looking at it, but the lesson I needed to learn was that when I can mother something and I can like it and it can be an addition to my life.
00:43:13
Speaker
Yeah, you know, you wrote late in the book, deep down, I always worried that I had inherited my mother's belief that to give birth is to die yourself, to forfeit your individual happiness for the drudgery and subservience of parenthood. Well, I must have been in a mood that day.
00:43:32
Speaker
Well, I totally I get what you're talking about, too. Like, you know, my wife and I don't we don't we don't want kids or don't plan on it. And but I think a part of the reason why I just don't have any sort of paternal instinct at all is growing up, my dad would always complain about how noisy kids were, how even though he was a teacher and he was a high school teacher. So and he was a coach who's always around kids in his livelihood depended on him.
00:43:58
Speaker
But he just constantly complained about the nuisance and inconvenience of noisy children, of just what a pain in the ass they were. And they get drummed into your head. And it's just like, okay, maybe on some level it's looking for approval. I'm not going to be one of the ones contributing to the population, so there's a win.
00:44:21
Speaker
But then it's also just like, well, if it gets drummed into your head like that, it's like, why would you even want to pursue it? So it's like, I kind of feel it's a different level, but I understand what you're talking about there with that. Like the drudgery that it is like a net loss and that there are these anchors that bring you down and like your life is over because of it.
00:44:43
Speaker
So we're from the same club. Yeah. But what's funny is if you overheard me on the phone talking to Jen about our dog, Jen will say something like, oh, I took Edie down the street to so-and-so's house to meet the foster dog that they're fostering. And I'd be like, oh, how'd she do? Did she play well with the others?
00:45:09
Speaker
Was she scared or did she pick up any toys? It can be shockingly similar to some of the conversations my real parent friends have.
00:45:26
Speaker
And I really, I'm smiling as I'm talking right now because I'm so proud of her. She's really come a long way and she can do some things that she couldn't do before. And she's actually, I'm standing in her dog bed in my closet right now for good sound and she's curled up on my feet.
00:45:47
Speaker
But, you know, I feel she brings me great joy knowing that I'm her home base.
Writing as Therapy
00:45:55
Speaker
And if she gets scared, she doesn't flee anymore. She runs to me. She looks for me and runs to me. And that is everything.
00:46:04
Speaker
Yeah, that's amazing. The other day, I was just kind of feeling gloomy, as I am wanting to do. As an artist sometimes. I know, I'm just like a brooder. If you look at my journals, you'd be like, oh my God, BO, you need some.
00:46:25
Speaker
You need some help, buddy. But in any case, I was just feeling like, you know, down in the dumps. But then, you know, working on this book and book proposal. And I just wrote, like, I had a bunch of newspaper stuff, a bunch of things, and I ended up writing about 300-ish words, which is a big win.
00:46:44
Speaker
I felt great after. I was like, wow, that was nice. And I think oftentimes we sometimes forget that like writing can be a great source of joy and energy in our lives. And that's something we complain like, oh, my God, the writing is so torturous.
00:46:59
Speaker
But I drew such energy from it. It actually had a very anti-depressant effect. And I wonder for you, with writing, and maybe not to the extent that I just described, but how do you maintain the joy of it and not get pulled down into the stereotypical mire of the tortured writer?
00:47:19
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Um, sometimes when I, yeah, that's like two sides, the, the, you know, double headed, you know, artists, right. And sometimes I do find myself going that way, like, Oh, I can't get a good sentence to save my life. Or I've, you know, procrastinating and I've cleaned every, the whole house and I still haven't walked over to my desk. Um.
00:47:48
Speaker
But, you know, the real trick for me is to just, I don't know who said this, I want to say like Philip Roth, but if I just keep reminding myself that nobody writes the way
00:48:04
Speaker
I do, you know, because every single person can take that into themselves. Like no one is going to put the sentence together the way Meredith May would. So that in and of itself means that, you know, it might not come out. Well, the first time it's going to come out, it's going to be you, it's going to be your voice. And that's all you need. You know, I think sometimes
00:48:31
Speaker
You know, we all writers work alone and we all work differently and we all think that there's this idea out there of how a writer is supposed to work, like how many words a day or how quickly do the ideas come? And we hold ourselves up to this imaginary Uber writer hero person and then start feeling bad about ourselves.
00:48:54
Speaker
I didn't get invited to that book writer conference, but look at all those other writers and you scroll through. I'm on this panel. I'm on five panels this year. I'm like, go fuck yourself. At the end of the day, you are still leaving your mark.
00:49:19
Speaker
And that's all that matters and that you can do it and you're doing it. That's enough. So I actually wrote on a little card. Nobody writes the way you do. And I circled you and that's right under my screen on my desk. Like that's, that's all you need. That's all that you should be holding yourself to, not to what you think you should be doing.
00:49:43
Speaker
Oh, for sure. And from our first conversation, Guy brought up the whole, you know, the comparison and jealousy thing that I like talking to people about, because it's definitely real. And you called it the Comparison Olympics. And it's a term I refer to over and over again. Even when I ask people on the show, like, I'll use that term, and sometimes they give you credit for it, sometimes they don't. But sometimes I just say it. Sometimes they just say, you know, the Comparison Olympics. Yeah.
00:50:12
Speaker
And it's just like how it really brings you down and really the only, because you just never, because that avatar of the writer on getting all the grants, being a staff writer in a prominent newspaper or magazine, and it's just like you compare yourself to that while you're here just struggling to get anything down. And it's just such a sewer. It just does you no good.
00:50:42
Speaker
Yeah. And it's an infinite loop, right? Because say you do achieve something that you think is worthy, but then when you're in that pool of writers, well, wait a minute, these writers have fellowships or these writers are teaching positions. Well, now I want that. And no matter where you go on your perceived ladder, you're always going to be playing catch up if you have that mindset.
00:51:07
Speaker
And then you're really sucking away the space in your brain for joy and bliss and creativity and wake up in the middle of the night with a killer idea. Where's my notebook time? You know, like you're losing, you're eroding that because all you're doing is looking around at other people.
00:51:25
Speaker
Yeah, I've said this before, but I feel like I truly wasted almost my entire 30s with this very notion and this topic. And I was just so desperate. Desperate was a good word for that decade for me, just desperate to get some traction, to get a toehold on anything.
00:51:46
Speaker
And I was always looking for, I wasn't afraid to do the work, but I wanted to make sure the work I was doing felt like I was, and you do crew, it was like I wanted all the auras to be going in the same direction. So at least my effort is being forwardly propulsed. And I just was so desperate looking for a playbook or a roadmap. And the more and more as I've sort of developed in this, and this show has been a great tool of therapy, if you will,
00:52:15
Speaker
is that really nobody has any idea what they're doing and no one, I couldn't take your playbook and make a successful career for me out of it. You just have to really fumble your way through and then you'll pick your head up and you'll look behind you and you'll be like, oh, there's a body of work back there. I don't know how that happened, but it's there.
00:52:37
Speaker
I remember signing my very first book contract and then afterwards I was like, okay, well, who's going to tell me how to write this book? I was amazed that they just trusted me to figure it out.
Navigating Publishing and Community Support
00:52:54
Speaker
There is no.
00:52:55
Speaker
like, how do you do this and how does it get done? I was approached by a children's book publisher and they wanted to turn the honey bus into a picture book for little kids. And I said,
00:53:13
Speaker
Yeah, I have no idea how to do that. But yeah, if someone approaches you, they think you can do it, even if you think you can't do it. And you just fake it till you make it. And I was really honest. I said, I love this idea. I want to do it. I have never written for kids. I don't have kids. I have no idea what I'm doing. If I can turn in 500 words of pure junk and you'll help me with it, then yes.
00:53:39
Speaker
it worked they they were like of course we'll help you with that and so just be honest and people will help you yeah for sure and like and not to have and this is something that comes up all the time too is not to have that scarce mindset that if somebody else is getting this particular you know by line here it means you can't ever do it i forget who i was talking to about that point but they they saw it as like oh
00:54:09
Speaker
If so-and-so got published there in that capacity, that doesn't mean I can't. It means I can. They are actually opening the door. They're actually kind of blazing the trail instead of closing the door off. I wish I could remember who said it because I've done more than 300 of these, so I just sometimes forget who I talked to.
00:54:31
Speaker
But someone said that they viewed it as, oh, seeing someone publish there meant, oh, that gives me the opportunity to. And I was like, oh, that's a great way of reframing it.
00:54:41
Speaker
Oh yeah. I mean, so many people have helped me that have paved the way. I remember when I was still writing for the San Francisco Chronicle, I was interviewing an author from San Francisco, Josh Moore. He wrote the termite parade and a bunch of great just book novels and memoirs about
00:55:03
Speaker
sort of the bar scene in San Francisco and then also fatherhood when he had a baby. But at the time I was unpublished and I would interview every author I could to ask them about their work, but then I would inevitably switch the conversation over to, well, how did you get an agent and how does this work? And then they'd catch on pretty quickly that I was trying to do it too. And Josh said, all right, lady, what are you working on? What's your book about? And it was the honey bus.
00:55:32
Speaker
And he said, well, I want to read it. And he did. And they said, this is great. I want to show it to my agent. And he did. He showed it to his agent. His agent didn't want it, but his agent knew somebody who might. And then that's how that happened. Oh, but during the interview,
00:55:52
Speaker
when I was interviewing him about his book, he said something I'll never forget. And he said, every writer's job is 50% to work on their own work and 50% to help bring other writers up.
00:56:07
Speaker
And I never forgot that. I think that's really true. So I try to pass forward what he did and help people and connect to people and, you know, show them my book proposals if they're working on what he does, whatever, because the whole publishing industry is so intentionally mysterious that it's difficult and you can really help each other figure it out. And that's what we all should be doing.
00:56:37
Speaker
Yeah, I remember just when this was, I think, around the time that MacArthur grants were coming out, I remember everyone's on Twitter just talking about it, and that's just one example, but there are so many other grants or fellowships that so many people don't even know, one, that they're there, or two, that you can actually apply for, that you're not just plucked.
00:57:06
Speaker
out of the air and to your point of like some of this information is so secretive and so privileged it's like it can be really dispiriting to know that like those are there for you but you know they're kind of just see you have to know someone who knows someone who knows someone in order to like even apply for it which is just
00:57:24
Speaker
It just kind of puts people in corners that they can't get out of and they get jaded and they give up. So just think of all the other people who are just not capable of getting their work out there, not because they're not talented and not working hard enough, but just because they simply don't know. And that's part of the community building element of it where you just have to be like, hey, I know of this thing. Here's information. Apply for it.
00:57:47
Speaker
For sure. I tell everybody I can about Hedgebrook, which is a writer's retreat in Whidbey Island off the coast of Washington state up near Seattle. It's a writing retreat. It's women only, I should say. But
00:58:05
Speaker
And again, another writer friend in San Francisco who I interviewed for the Chronicle, I told him I was going to pay to go somewhere and study writing. And he said, pay? No, no, no, no. You're the artist. You're an artist in residence. They pay you to stay, or not they pay you, but they'll fly you there and you stay for free. And they feed you and you work on your work.
00:58:29
Speaker
What? I didn't know what an artist residency was and he told me about McDowell and Yaddo and all these ones he'd been to and I thought, this is lovely. He told me, you might really like Hedgebrook.
00:58:47
Speaker
I ended up going there for a while and it blew my mind. It was the first time I called myself a writer with a W because other people were and, you know, they flew me and I stayed there for three or four weeks and worked on the proposal for the honey bus. Yes, you know, I met the other women writers there who had been to lots of residencies and I was asking a million questions. What's this? What's that? And now, you know, I try to pass that on too because why was that?
00:59:17
Speaker
news to me. You know, I've been in the writing community in San Francisco for a long time. I had no clue that you could get supported for your work. So yeah, yeah, we need to keep talking about this loud and clear.
00:59:32
Speaker
For sure. And it brings up another point, too. I've written about horse racing a lot. And a bunch of years ago, a photographer, I don't know his name, but he had his work run in magazines for decades. Never won an Eclipse Award. Eclipse Award is kind of like the Pulitzer Prizes for horse racing riders.
00:59:53
Speaker
And so that just to give you some context. So, you know, he had wondered all the years. He's like, I've been doing these great, like great work all these years. I've never won an eclipse award. And it was like end of his life. And then someone told him, like, you have to submit your work to it. Like you don't just get a lot. No, he was waiting to be tapped.
01:00:12
Speaker
He was waiting to be chosen and he had to put together enough stuff to then submit it to the, to be judged. And I'm sure his editors could have done that for him, but they didn't. So it's always upon the writer too for whatever the anthology is too, like oftentimes you have to submit your own work. You know, you don't like to think that you have to be the biggest advocate for your work, that your editors might
01:00:36
Speaker
But they're all overwhelmed and whatever. So if you have a piece that you think can be a best American essay, you submit it to that editor. You know, no one else is going to do it. And that's how these people get chosen because they stood up for their own work. And here's this poor photographer who, you know, you know, talk about kind of a death of a salesman kind of thing. And he just goes to his grave thinking that he wasn't getting the recognition he deserved, but he didn't know that he had to be his own advocate. It's just like so tragic.
01:01:04
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And that makes me think of oftentimes people who are trying to get published will contact me and ask questions. And I'll say, well, have you written a book proposal first?
01:01:20
Speaker
And they said, well, what's that? I mean, that was also me. I did not understand the point of the proposal and what this document was. The thing that saved me there was Brooke Warner has a book
01:01:36
Speaker
She's with She Writes Press in San Francisco and she wrote a book called, um, I might butcher this, but it's, uh, 12 steps to a memoir proposal that sells something like that. And I just followed it to the tee, but, and it worked really out really well. But, um, that's the other thing, like.
01:02:00
Speaker
There's just so much confusion about how a book becomes published and gets out into the world. And yes, yeah, I mean, we really need to help each other.
01:02:15
Speaker
Now Meredith, as I like to bring these conversations to a close, I like asking guests for a recommendation of some kind for the listener.
Personal Growth and Professional Tools
01:02:23
Speaker
And I planted a little seed in your brain a while ago, and I'm wondering if maybe we can harvest that seed. So what recommendation might you have for listeners out there? Well, you did plant the seed, and I thought about it. And I am digging this app right now. It's called Alfie.
01:02:44
Speaker
and Alfie. And it's a community space, it's an app
01:02:50
Speaker
for advancing women personally and professionally. And so they have these talks that are with these really amazing badass women who are like the first women in their fields or just so like they have Olympians on there giving talks. They have, there's just a series on the very first venture capitalists
01:03:16
Speaker
female venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, judges, inventors. And, you know, they're all talking about their work, but they're all talking about how they trailblazed through these mostly male-dominated professions to get to their jobs. And then they are just so helpful with advice. And I'm really just digging this space. So I would say the Alfie app.
01:03:44
Speaker
Nice. Is that A-L-F-I-E? It's A-L-F-Y. Fantastic. Well, Meredith, a pleasure as always. I'm glad we were able to do this for the second time. Too long in between conversations, but I'm so glad we were able to have the first one a few years ago. And then, of course, with your lovely new book, Loving Edie. So thanks so much for the time, Meredith, and best of luck with the book. And thank you for having me. It was tons of fun, as always.
Finding Joy in Writing
01:04:14
Speaker
Oh wow, did we do it? Did it happen again? I have made it to the end. I always like it when that happens. Thanks to Meredith for coming back on the show to talk a little shop and her amazing puppy Edie. You can see a couple photos of her at BrendanOMeredith.com. Subscribe to the show.
01:04:32
Speaker
so you don't even have to think about it. I mean, we're everywhere, CNFers, and if you have a moment, leave a kind review on Apple Podcasts or rating on Spotify. You know, they go a long way, as I say before, for the wayward CNFer. If they see all those reviews of this show, they'll be like, oh, I don't know who that guy is, but...
01:04:52
Speaker
That looks like a promising podcast and I love writing memoir and essay or documentary film and narrative journalism. I'll give that guy a shot. Seems like he knows what he's talking about. Sometimes. This week, I gotta say, was kind of a rough one for me mentally. Like, okay, my entire life I've been somewhat of a depressive person, bit of a buzzkill, a person my friends routinely avoid, a sheer joy to be around.
01:05:20
Speaker
This week I found myself kind of just being sleeping a lot and not exercising and not really seeing the point to life at all.
01:05:29
Speaker
Like, it all seems incredibly pointless, am I right? I replied to a friend's Instagram story, quote, existential journaling this morning for your podcast host. You ever ask yourself, when was the last time I woke up excited for the day? Because I can't. LOL. She didn't reply. Who can blame her? What can you even say to that?
01:05:52
Speaker
So my mind routinely and naturally drifts to self-destructive behavior as it does and has for decades. Listen, I'm not gonna do anything. And I'm not telling you this to make light of it. Trust me on that. Here's my point. The other day I removed my head from my asshole and committed to writing a few hundred words of another sample chapter that I desperately need to finish from my book proposal.
01:06:20
Speaker
And for the first time in several days, I felt like really alive and engaged and kind of excited. Whereas before all I wanted to do was curl up and disappear. And after writing, there's just 300 or so lousy words just building the world.
01:06:37
Speaker
Yeah, it was a damn fine session. Like, those 300 words, that was a big-ass win, and I sure as hell gave myself some fist bumps for that. I was flying high. I know some people say they write to make sense of the world, which escapes me, but I get it. I know some people say writing is pure torture. Listen, I understand it's not easy, but I don't really get that it's torture. It's just letters and words, man. It's hard to make it artful, and it can be raw and vulnerable. I mean, exhibit A, bruh.
01:07:06
Speaker
But writing might just save your life. I don't know. Some big league chew for you, as I want to say. Stay wild, CNFers. And if you can't do, interview soon.
01:07:52
Speaker
you