A Conversation with Miriam Jacobson

Tomorrow marks the 20th anniversary of the attacks that took place on September 11, 2001. I had the privilege of working closely with writer Miriam Jacobson on a personal essay in which she shares her experience of that fateful day and its aftermath. Miriam's father worked on the 110th floor of the World Trade Center and was killed in the attack. You can read the piece here, published by the Huffington Post.

I asked Miriam about her experience writing the essay, something she says has been percolating for a long time, and what it means to see her words finally in print. Scroll down to read our interview.

It's rewarding for me, too! I become deeply invested in the stories shared in the intimate spaces of the workshops and private sessions, and to witness them fly into the world and into the hearts and minds of those who read them, is thrilling. I feel so grateful to be a part of this process!

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Miriam Jacobson is a holistic dietitian and the founder of Every Body Bliss, a functional nutrition practice located in Los Angeles. She supports individuals on their healing journey using a combination of nutritional therapy, mindset coaching, and breathwork. It is her mission to create a supportive environment for healing while helping individuals feel empowered, engaged, and joyful about their health. You can follow Miriam on instagram @everybodybliss.

Her personal essay commemorating the 20th anniversary of 9/11 is featured in the Huffington Post.

KARIN GUTMAN: The anniversary of 9/11 must be an emotional time for you each year. How is this year, the 20th anniversary, special or different?

MIRIAM JACOBSON: The anniversary is always so loaded, but I think this year it’s even more complex. I think about 9/11 on most days—my family and I still face its devastating impact on a daily basis. But writing this essay feels like it helped me reclaim some of my power. While some of my worst nightmares came true, I have also been able to help others along my journey and that feels really good. So, it’s complicated. But I’m also just really excited and proud (and honestly a little nervous!) to see my writing out in the world!

KARIN: What inspired you to write a personal essay to commemorate this event?

MIRIAM: For the past few years I wanted to write a personal essay like this, but I didn’t know what to share. I have spent so much time hiding my connection to 9/11 and I was scared of the visibility—was this something I really wanted to call attention to? But I couldn’t escape my nagging thoughts telling me to write my story. While setting goals for the writing workshop this past winter, I thought it could be interesting to write a personal essay for the 20th anniversary. I thought it would be a meaningful way to reflect on my growth over the last 20 years. The other students in the workshop were so supportive and encouraging, which boosted my confidence in later submitting it for publication.

KARIN: Can you share about your writing process? What did you learn from it, personally or as a writer?

I learned how much time and effort goes into writing a cohesive piece. I knew the essence of what I wanted to convey, but had no idea what to say or how to say it. I just started putting words down on paper and presented the essay several times to the writing group, changing the structure as I received feedback from them. Twelve drafts later (with your help) I finally had a final essay to submit. I also didn’t fully realize how challenging it is to write a short piece, because I needed to be picky with every single sentence.

Personally, I’ve been learning to be easier on myself. In the past I have been a perfectionist, pushing down my feelings and grinding through my discomfort to get stuff done. But I know this is counterproductive, and I am trying to rewrite old patterns and be kinder with myself. I took a lot of time writing the piece because it was an emotional process. I gave myself a lot of space and grace when I wasn’t up for it, or knew when I needed to lie down to do breathwork, or talk to a friend to integrate what was surfacing.

KARIN: What do you hope that people remember on this day, the 20th anniversary of September 11th?

There is so much hate and division in today’s world. I want to remind people how much more we can accomplish when we are able to come together and channel more love for one another. After the attacks in 2001, strangers in the NYC community were so kind and supportive, which brought me a tremendous amount of comfort back then. Although we all come from different backgrounds, I hope we can remember how much more powerful we are when we can embrace each other’s differences and act through love rather than xenophobia and hate.

KARIN: For you, who have experienced so much loss, can you share how writing might be helping you to heal or transform that loss?

I wasn’t ready to write about any of this for a long time. Now that I’m finally ready, I find writing helps me process my experiences. Living through these traumas and losses felt like an out-of-body experience. Writing is the opposite—an in-body experience that helps me process the events almost like they’re happening in real-time. Sometimes I find myself in front of my laptop with tears streaming down my face as I write. This feedback points to what parts of my story still need love, attention and healing. I also think it’s incredible that I get to assign meaning to what I lived through, which has helped me reclaim parts of my past when I felt like I was out of control or victimized. I think that’s so powerful!

The most surprising thing about writing and healing has been reconnecting with my family. Writing about my parents feels like I’m bringing them back to life, which is a strange and also sweet experience.

Read Miriam's essay.

To learn more about Miriam Jacobson visit Every Body Bliss.

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Miriam and her father, Steven Jacobson.

Steven Jacobson, chief broadcast engineer for WPIX, perched on the transmitter's 360-foot antenna at the top of the World Trade Center, circa 1981.

Steven Jacobson, on the roof of One World Trade Center.

Photos courtesy of Miriam Jacobson.

A Conversation with Wendy Adamson

Over the years, I've noticed that writers who are writing their personal stories often have one primary fear.

Exposure.

The fear of exposing themselves and other people—and not knowing how it will be received.

In the feature author interview this month, Wendy Adamson speaks about facing these fears and how she moved through them. Now with her second memoir out, she is blazing trails for anyone who might take that bold step.

A prequel to her first book, Incorrigible is a coming-of-age memoir about a teenager who is reeling from the devastation of her mother's suicide, landing her in the arms of addiction and the criminal justice system.

Wendy says she knew deep down that she is here on earth to tell her story, and that it has the potential to help others and change lives.

Scroll down to read the full interview.

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With over two decades of experience in the field of mental health and substance abuse treatment, Wendy Adamson possesses a deep understanding of the recovery process. She has held many positions throughout her career, but currently she works in Business Development at Polaris Teen Center, an inpatient facility that helps adolescents who are suffering with mental health issues while providing them a safe place to heal.

For the past seven years, Wendy has also headed up Business Development for her son’s nonprofit, Hav A Sole, an organization that has partnered with major NBA teams, and corporations like Nike to deliver over 30,000 high quality sneakers to at-risk youth, and more recently started a mentorship program for marginalized youth. In 2020 Rikki and Wendy’s inspiring story was featured on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.

Wendy is a published author of two memoirs, Mother Load and Incorrigible, where she documents her own struggles with addiction and mental health issues and the long arduous journey of healing and repair that came as a result of getting sober.

KARIN GUTMAN: Tell us about this new book of yours!

WENDY ADAMSON: My new book is called Incorrigible, which is actually a prequel to Mother Load, my first book. This one starts with me visiting my mother in a mental hospital as a small child, and recounts her suicide at seven years old and shows how unexpressed grief and loss unconsciously directs my life.

As a typical California kid of the 70s I take the reader through my teenage angst and self-destruction until I end up in the same hospital that my mother was in. Using alcohol and drugs to self-medicate I am eventually labeled INCORRIGIBLE by the courts and plucked from a lifestyle of privilege and introduced to the criminal justice system.

KARIN: I notice that your first book follows your journey as an adult, and then you follow it in the second book with the story of your childhood.

WENDY: I had to write my adult story first. I would attribute that to a health scare I had some years ago which made me feel an urgency to finish that book. So, after more than ten years I was finally able to get Mother Load published. It was only later, that I realized that I had glossed over much of my teenage years. And since I work in an adolescent mental health treatment center, I knew first hand that many teenagers were struggling, especially during Covid19 and they would be able to relate to a book like mine.

KARIN: What was the writing process like for this book? In what way was it similar or different from the first book?

WENDY: The writing process has become somewhat easier for me as I have developed a discipline. I go to bed early and wake up early so I can write. The structure developed as a result of having a day job. Over time, I learned that once I start working at the job, it can be hard getting back into the writing flow.

This book was also different because the Covid19 lockdown gave me more time. Like many people during 2020 I was anxious when Covid19 hit, not to mention everything else that was happening in our country. The chaos and uncertainty in some ways felt like my childhood, and I felt like I was on high alert. I don’t know if this makes any sense, but writing became a place to channel my energy in order to get the angst outside of me and onto paper. I strongly believe that writing is a therapeutic tool, but during the isolation of 2020, I found it to be absolutely necessary in getting through my day.

I also have more experience now and know that in order to keep developing the manuscript it helps to have a trusted editor giving you feedback along the way.

KARIN: What are you learning about your creative process?

WENDY: This may sound strange, but I’ve learned that writing about early life experience can be a portal to my ancestors. In writing Incorrigible, I was able to explore the relationship I had with my father. In some ways he always loomed in my consciousness as a monster, but the more I wrote, the more I began to see my own behavior as an unruly teenager. I was not an easy to kid to raise. Since I grew up in a family with a lot of secrets, I felt betrayed and wanted to make my father pay for his mistakes. In writing, as I dove deep into my childhood, I invoked unpleasant memories of how I treated my father. As a result of dissecting many of my actions, unsuspected empathy welled up in my heart for my father. And that was a gift I did not expect.

KARIN: That's incredible.

How easily do your memories come back to you as you write? Are you having to use your imagination a lot to fill in the details of the childhood scenes?

WENDY: Often I get flooded by memories when I write the scenes, but yes, I also use my imagination as well. In writing scenes of Camarillo State Mental Hospital or Sylmar Juvenile Hall I researched online and found articles and pictures of the institutions. This helped me immensely with the details of the environment I was in at the time. With dialogue, I don't remember every word that was said, but I try to capture the essence of the conversation as well as the dynamic between the two people who are talking. I also had the benefit of talking to my sister and brother to see what they remembered as I pieced the chapters together. Sometimes my timeline was off as I am going through dramatic events, and there were a lot of them in my childhood. But I think most writers of memoir use their imagination when it comes to early memories.

If only I knew I was going to be writing about all this one day, I would have taken better notes.

KARIN: Tell us about what you do to market your book, which is such a different mindset than writing.

WENDY: A marketing mindset feels like the other end of the spectrum from creative writing. It feels endless, and since I don’t have a publicist, I’m always questioning if I’m doing enough to get my book out there. There’s just so much to do. Come up with content for social media posts, composing a press release, trying to get on a podcast, a blog or organizing a virtual book launch. All of the details in marketing take me far away from my writing process, and if I’m not careful, I can go down the rabbit hole. Right now, I am considering hiring an intern to help me with details of social media, reaching out to podcasts and such. I just don’t have the time to do it all.

KARIN: Do you have a sense of how the first book is doing? I’m curious about what it's like to publish with a small press.

WENDY: Mother Load is selling slowly but mostly by word of mouth. I have a five-year contract with my publisher and at the end of that we can discuss renewing the contract or I can take it somewhere else.

I have a friend who published a book six years ago. She wasn’t happy with her first publisher, so after the contract was over she brought it to my publisher and was able to create a new book cover and add two chapters. It's going to be re-released again in the fall.

KARIN: Are you working on anything new? Do you have a sense of where your writing will go from here?

WENDY: Yes, I am deep into book three which is about my insane twenties. Seriously, if you’ve lived a life like mine, all that ‘drama’ makes for good content. Besides, it’s very satisfying to take the pain and struggle and turn it into something that might be able to help someone going through the same thing.

KARIN: How does it feel to have your life exposed so completely? I know this was a source of great fear in the early stages of your writing.

WENDY: The fear of being judged kept me small and not taking risks most of my life. I’m at a point now where I still get scared of exposing myself, but I do it anyway. Again, this kind of drive comes from a deep desire to use my story to inspire others to change the trajectory of their lives. After all, if I can do it, so can you.

I often wonder if I had read an author I could have related to when I was a kid, would it have made a difference? I know people that say that a certain book changed their lives, so why not?

KARIN: What would you say to someone who has a story to tell but is afraid of the exposure?

WENDY: I would tell the person I was afraid of the exposure as well because of a deep-seated shame that I carried into all aspects of my life. It was that shame that kept me from telling my story, the same shame that wanted me to stay small. It blocked my creativity, sabotaged my goals, and kept me from pursuing my dreams.

When you speak your truth and expose yourself you’re becoming the alchemist of your own life. It's challenging old thought patterns and constructs that have boxed you in. For me, the biggest payoff of all was that the shame didn’t own me anymore and I was finally free to pursue my dreams.

KARIN: What would you say to someone who has a story to tell but thinks they “aren’t a writer”?

WENDY: I would say I understand, and tell them I was a high-school drop-out with a rap-sheet and didn’t think I could get anything published. I told myself that no one would ever care about what I have to say. I had to challenge all of my old beliefs and take contrary action by doing multiple writing workshops with you, Karin. I had to have a safe place to write, because in the deepest part of me I knew I am here to tell my story. And in spite of the critic that tries to convince me with great authority that I am not a writer, I have been able to publish two books. That would have never happened if I would have listened to my head.



Buy the book!

To learn more about Wendy Adamson visit her site.

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A Conversation with Lisa Cron

Everything I know about Story I learned from Lisa Cron. Well, not entirely, but sometimes it feels that way! Lisa is the author of two groundbreaking books, Wired for Story and Story Genius, which are devoted to her passion to educate us about what Story is, and also, how to harness its power—both on the page and in life. It turns out that most of her teachings are based in brain science.

Her latest book, Story or Die, extends her knowledge beyond the world of writing and applies it to the public and political sphere. She shows us how we can strategically use our deep understanding of story to persuade and change minds, around the issues that matter most to us.

Scroll down to read our full interview below!

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Lisa Cron is a story coach, speaker, and the author of Wired for Story and Story Genius. She has previously worked as a literary agent, a television producer, and a story consultant for Warner Brothers and The William Morris Agency, among others, and currently advises writers, nonprofits, educators, and journalists on the art and craft of story. Cron has also served on the faculty of the School of Visual Arts MFA program in visual narrative, and since 2006 has taught in the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program.

In her new book, Story or Die, Lisa decodes the power of story, first by examining how the brain processes information, translates it into narrative, and then guards it as if your life depends on it. Armed with that insight, she focuses on how to find your real target audience and then pinpoint their hidden resistance. Finally, she takes you, step-by-step, through her method for creating your own story, one that allows your audience to overcome their resistance and take up your call to action, not because you told them to, but because they want to.

KARIN GUTMAN: How did this book emerge after your first two books? It feels like you're entering new territory. Did it come from your political frustrations?

LISA CRON: Yes, it did come from the political. I had written a proposal for this book at the exact same time I wrote the proposal for Story Genius, which was 2014, and my publisher wanted both of them. And I thought, “You know, let's just do Story Genius and then we'll see.” And then I decided, I really don't want to do Story or Die, because I was looking at the world of advertising and the last thing I would ever want to do is help advertisers, because it's like now we're going to help you go sell something that people don't want. I mean, the whole world of advertising has always turned my stomach.

It's funny, in the TED Talk conference I did, the last person talking was Jonathan Gottschall who wrote The Storytelling Animal. He's one of the nicest people on the planet, and I asked him at that time, “Have you done any consulting with businesses?” And he said, “Oh my god, yes. I did it once. And I will never do it again.” He said, “I did it for Pepsi and I realized, the last thing I wanted was to help them sell,” and these were his words, “diabetes juice.”

He's just like, “I don't want to be part of that.” That so stuck with me. Politicians and advertisers and televangelists, they understand story way better than writers and way better than the rest of us. Stories are affecting us every minute of every day whether we know it or not. And we don't. We tend to think of story as soft science or not science at all, and it's just wrong. That's the myth. The truth is story is literally how we make sense of absolutely, positively everything.

KARIN: So obviously you changed your mind and decided to publish?

LISA: It felt like, it’s important to get the information out there in whatever small way that I could by writing this book. Because my other goal—besides bringing the world back from alternative facts and demagogues like Donald Trump and QAnon—was to reframe how we see emotion. Because again, we get it completely wrong—150% wrong—in terms of what we think emotion is, and what we've been taught emotion is. We're all afraid of emotion. Even our fear of emotion is gendered, in that men are terrified of emotion and women are terrified of what the patriarchy will do to them if they express emotion. We tend to think of emotion as that big, nebulous, ephemeral cloud that’s going to try to get in our way and make us do something wrong. That is not what emotion is. Emotion is literally the way that our brains are wired, our body's wired, our nervous system is wired to telegraph meaning.

Emotion tells us what the facts mean to us, and that's why every decision we ever make is made by our emotion. Emotion is just telegraphed meaning. Again, we don't make decisions based on our rational analysis of something, we make decisions based on how the analysis makes us feel, because the feeling is telling us what that analysis means to us. And the meaning that we read into things comes from one place and one place only, and that is what our past experience has taught us those things mean. It's all biology.

KARIN: But some people perceive themselves as rational, relying on logic to make decisions, and accuse others of being highly emotional.

LISA: Well, define emotional. What does that even mean? A strong feeling? Emotional sounds like it means a bad nebulous thing that's over the top and has nothing to do with logic or rationality—two things that are opposites. Biologically, that isn't true. It's a great model, because it makes us feel safe secure, but it just isn't true. That's why I love brain science so much, if you dive into the biology of how and why we feel emotion and what emotion does.

KARIN: So, both of these people—the “rational” one and the “emotional” one—are more similar than they are different?

LISA: Oh, 100%. The example that I always give is the guy Elliot whom neuroscientist Antonio Damasio was evaluating, because he'd had part of his pre-frontal cortex removed when they took out benign brain cancer. At that point, his life completely fell apart. He lost his job, he lost his family, he lost his money to con men. What Damasio discovered was that he'd lost the ability to feel and process emotion, and so he could enumerate every possibility of any question or problem asked of him. He couldn't pick one, because emotion is what allows you to pick. Emotion telegraphs meaning. And Elliot was someone who would've never said he made decisions based on emotion, ever.

KARIN: That’s fascinating.

LISA: Obviously, he's male. He was brought up in that male notion of, “Be careful of emotion, don't feel it, because emotion is weakness.” Western society equates emotion with weakness. And when we think about the word emotional, we know which societally defined gender it's applied to, because men are afraid of women. I think men are afraid of women, because women are way more powerful than men. The irony is that because women are allowed the full gamut of emotion, it makes women so much smarter than men, because what any evolutionary biologist, evolutionary psychologist or neuroscientist will tell you is that the smartest among us aren't people who are good factually, who can rationally go in and figure and analyze and do it just with data. The smartest among us are people who are emotionally intelligent, who can read other people. That's what genuine intelligence is.

Obviously, women have way more of that than men, not because men couldn't have it. It's not like there's some biological reason why women have it more than men, it's just that in our societal construct, women are allowed to feel every feeling, and men are allowed to feel about four. Like anger and pride. It's just the conditioning, which is what gender is.

KARIN: I can really feel your underlying frustration that fuels this book.

LISA: I realized that what I really wanted to do is smash the patriarchy. I wrote Story or Die to do that, because the way that we get people to change their minds or open up is through story, meaning narrative. We tend to think of story as a novel or a movie or once upon a time, and I don't mean that at all.

We make sense of things through narrative, and the only way to change anybody is to change their narrative, and the only way to do that is for them to change it, not us. Not with facts but by creating a story, by creating something that speaks narrative to narrative. People don't listen until they feel heard and it doesn't mean you just hear what they're saying to you, but you go deeper and you understand why they believe what they believe and then you can feel what they feel. You can feel that same feeling that they feel given what they believe. Once you've got that, you can create a story that can change how they see things, provided it's not such a core belief that nothing could possibly touch it.

KARIN: Who are you hoping to reach?

I'd like to reach everyone. It's literally how to change someone's mind, anybody's mind about anything, and I think the really good thing about it is that it helps instill empathy. Because when we really understand why someone's doing something, even if what we think that they're doing is horrible, to some degree it gives us empathy, because we get the why behind it.



Buy the book!

To learn more about Lisa Cron visit her site.

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