Bestseller Lisa Genova: Work Hard, Have Fun, Do Good

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Welcome to the Jann Arden Podcast. I'm here with Sarah Burke Caitlin. Green is so sick that she has lost like seven pounds since last Tuesday. It's not a diet that you want to be involved in but it's some kind of weird flu. Listen. Let me get right to this. All of our listeners know that I am a writer. I'm absolutely a bookworm. I read voraciously. So I am so stoked, so honored to welcome an incredible, incredible author to the show and personality. I want to throw that in there, because I've been watching Lisa Genova interviews for the better part of two weeks. But I digress. Lisa has a PhD in neuroscience from Harvard University, and she's known for her unbelievably unique position in contemporary fiction writing stories about neurological conditions perfectly paired with our shared human condition, because you guys all know what I went through with my parents. So please, please welcome New York Times best selling author the woman behind Still Alice, one of my very favorite books of all time, Lisa Genova, who's going to tell us about her new novel, more or less Maddie, which is already a Canadian best seller. Did you know that, Lisa, I

1:22  
knew that. Thank you so much, Jann, thank you. I'm so happy to be talking with you. Lisa

1:26  
Genova, so right out of the box, take us to the beginning of this crazy ride. And I know you've been asked these questions a million times, but neuroscience, writing, fiction, acting, dancing, I know all of this kind of plays into what brought you to this point in your life. And this isn't just a fleeting fancy. You have six novels and a non fiction book under your belt, and you are a young person.

1:53  
Well, I'm 54 so you were a young

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person somewhere in the middle there, but you grew up in the 70s, so So just sort of walk us back and the beginning of this journey for you. Oh,

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wow. Okay, so, yeah, my background is in neuroscience. I had always been interested in science and biology in particular, and then when I went to college, I took a class in neuroscience, and I was like, I'm in as you do. So fascinating. I mean, if you're a biologist, it's, I think the most interesting organ, right? The heart is a pump, kidney is a filter, but the brain, this is the organ that is responsible for our ability to think and remember and our personalities and our desires and our ability to walk and talk and do pretty much everything. So I was fascinated. I also read a book called The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks around the same age you're laughing, yeah, so And like, I was like, Wow, this neurologist writes with such compassion and humanity, and he was really a big influence in sort of me making the leap over to writing. But that wouldn't happen for many years. I was a neuroscientist. I studied primarily the molecular neurobiology of drug addiction for a long time, and I did that at Harvard and Mass General and the National Institute of Health. And a bit later, my grandmother developed Alzheimer's, yeah, and I was one of the younger grandkids. She had nine children, five daughters, four sons, and the daughters really did the heavy lifting of the caregiving. So that's always Lisa. It's always the women. It is. I mean, I don't mean to leave out any men, but for the most part, 99%

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of the time, sorry, guys, it is the daughters.

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Women should really run the world. For goodness sake. I'm so tired of the men, so my aunts were doing it. But I'm the neuroscientist in my family, I have like an inside track to understanding this illness. It wasn't my area of research, but I could certainly dig in and learn everything about it and pass that education along to my aunts to help us better take care of her. And so I geeked out on the neuroscience and I read the scientific research articles which were very interesting to me, but did not help with our caregiving. I read clinical disease management like clinical texts on the prognosis and and sort of what the medications were doing, and that was helpful. And I read books like the 36 hour day books on caregiving, written by caregivers. And those were helpful, for sure, but what was missing for me, interestingly. So I was about 28 years old when she was diagnosed, and I had lots of sympathy for her. I felt so bad for her and so heartbroken for her and so bad for all of us, like she didn't know who I was anymore. She didn't know who any of us were anymore. She had this amazing, beautiful life and and she had no memory for how she was connected to it. How old

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was she when she started down the road? Lisa, she was in her 80s. When

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she was diagnosed, she had it for, I would say, 10 years before she was diagnosed, because my mom was 72 I would say my grandmother was like 75

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which is still. Way too young to start losing your short term memory. And as we know, and I certainly don't need to tell you, when you don't have short term memory, it is virtually impossible to enjoy a human life, because it's dominoes, you know, you start taking those out and the track just doesn't keep going. I mean, my mom said, Jan, you do not need to remember everything to be happy. So yeah, you're dealing with your grandmother, and it is, it's frustrating,

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yes, and so she's got these symptoms of dementia, so she's confused, and she's not making sense, and she's talking to these little plastic baby dolls as if they're real babies, and wanting to go home, even though she's already in her house, and so I did not know how to be comfortable with her dementia. I did not know how to be comfortable around her Alzheimer's while I felt all these feelings for her. That's sympathy when you feel for someone, and that actually keeps you emotionally detached, and our experiences are going to stay separate. There's my grandmother with Alzheimer's, and then there's me, who doesn't have Alzheimer's, and we can't really connect, and she can't join me in my reality because she has Alzheimer's. I has to be my job to join her where she is, but I did not feel comfortable enough to do that. I didn't have empathy, Jan. I didn't know how to feel with her because it made me so upset, I didn't know how to drop into agreeing to the reality she was in and riding that with her. And so what I then connected, which is like, My miracle is I was like, Oh, isn't this interesting? Everything I've read is non fiction and written by the point of view of an outsider looking in. So scientists, clinicians, caregivers, social workers, what I need is a novel. I need to read a story about someone with Alzheimer's told from her perspective. Because fiction is the place where we get the chance to walk in someone else's shoes and feel what someone else is feeling, someone who might be very different from me, and that's where we can create some empathy. And so I was like, Well, that's what I weirdly, that's what I need, after all of this, you know, volumes and volumes of reading on Alzheimer's, I need a novel. And it didn't exist.

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There really wasn't anything before still Ellis that that even touched on the storytelling. Yeah. And so I was like, Well, what if I write it and you were self published. I was because

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I wrote it and then couldn't get it published, which, as a scientist, where everything is peer reviewed. Like I did not want to self publish it, but I had no choice. No one would, no one would take it.

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Lisa, it worked out for you. Just fine. Yes,

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it worked out. Okay. It's like that scene from Pretty Woman when Julia Roberts goes back to the store where the yuppies wouldn't wait on her. Yeah, so it did work out, but, yeah, it was not a career that I planned, and then one still else worked, and that, like, you know, millions of people read it, and it has helped a lot of people understand the journey absolutely get to that place of empathy that I wasn't able to like. It's like, I wish I knew then what I understand now through the book, I can pass that, that wisdom, on to others. Once I saw the power and the magic that fiction can have, I was like, Well, this is I want to keep going. This is now my purpose. Because anything going on from the neck up, if you've got any kind of neurological disease, condition, disorder, mental illness. People don't know if they don't know what's going on with you, they're not familiar with it. They might have sympathy, but empathy is not there, and they get uncomfortable really fast, and the quickest way for those folks to relieve themselves of that discomfort is to look away. And so people end up feeling alienated and isolated and lonely with these illnesses. So fiction is a nice place to help people.

8:48  
Well, there's a lot of shame too. Tons of shame.

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Well, because you keep it a secret, people, if you feel like you can't tell someone about what's going on with you, then that breeds shame, right? Like, oh, this is something we need to lock behind closed doors. I gotta save other people from seeing me or experiencing me. But if they've already read about you in a story or watched about you in a movie, then you're not so scary anymore, and you don't have to hide behind those closed doors. Why do

9:16  
you think people are ashamed of memory loss, especially like, I I remember trying to kind of cover up things for my mom when it first started happening. I was just like, Oh, she's she's tired, or she's this, like, I, I kind of knew in the back of my mind that it was more serious than it was, because it was and my my father too, and they, they kind of did it at the same time, so it was like a double whammy. But I remember my own shame, which kind of caught me off guard, and I that's what kind of kept me. It's like you touched on. It kept me from reaching out for help. And I remember reading Still Alice just before it all started to kind of unravel. Okay, it was and it was so helpful to read that story. It was scary as hell. It scared the living Jesus out of me, yeah,

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which is why. You need to read. Remember, if you haven't, because all the people I scared the bejesus out of I wrote, remember for you to show you why your memory is okay, and that the day to day moments of forgetting that you have, like, Why did I walk in this room, or where did I put my glasses, or what that's, what's the guy's name, it's normal, and show you why it happens, and you'll be less stressed Consider it done. Yeah, because I was talking about Still Alice all over the world, and like after every talk, women would corner me in the ladies room with questions about their memory, assuming, you know, they're 50 years old, and they're like, oh my god, I must have Alzheimer's and everything. Everyone was bringing to me over and over. It was normal. I was like, oh, people need the owner's manual to memory, otherwise they after a certain age, especially if they have parents who went through Alzheimer's. It's just, you know, it messes with your head, and you get really scared. But to your point, like, if you have a loved one with this, Why do you hide it? Like one, it's, you know, no one wants this to be happening. So there is a bit of denial. Like, if I don't speak it out loud, then maybe it isn't real. And then there's, you don't want to make people uncomfortable. There's a oh, if I let people see mom or dad, or if I really expose their memory issues, then I'm going to make my neighbor feel uncomfortable or awkward, and I don't want to put them through that. And I think that we can be braver than that. I think that our neighbors are capable of handling it, and if they're not, that's on them. But for the most part, I know a lot of people with Alzheimer's now, and the world is much more accepting of it. It's more open now, so you can let your neighbors and loved ones know. Like, up, well, she's not going to remember what you just said. Just say it again, or they make mistakes and it's like, up, Yep, she's got she's having some some memory problems, people will hang in there with you. Oh, absolutely. Community and a village of people who are in the know about this is incredibly helpful. I mean, people need support. This is a hard journey, as you know, if you have to go through it alone, it's harder. So if the more you can involve your community, the less lonely you'll feel in it, and that's helpful.

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Lisa Genova, let's just jump right into more or less Maddie. It's so fantastic. This story is so different, and it's something that I have thought about a lot because I had a cousin that unfortunately didn't make it through the journey of his bipolar disease, and he took his own life. This was about three or four years ago, really hard on the whole family, but he was a university student. So let me tell you, more or less, Maddie, your new novel, which I will remind our listeners again, is a best seller in Canada. So if you are looking for something to read, more or less Maddie. Jump on that right now. It's available everywhere. This time, it's an examination of a really bright, smart young woman who's trying to understand what's going on in her own mind and eventually the diagnosis of a bipolar disorder. But it's a funny book. There's lots of comedic moments in this book, because you do have to laugh in the face of really hard things. So tell me about the sort of the where this began and what inspired you to go down, because it's it's just really important for anyone that's in university or secondary school right now that is feeling a bit bonkers to read this book. It really is interesting. Thank

13:26  
you. Yeah, so I wanted to write about something that is categorized as mental illness, next anything about anyone dealing with something from the neck up. So any brain issue, and I hadn't tackled mental illness yet. And interestingly, there is no neurobiological, neuroanatomical, neuro chemical reason to carve out some of these brain conditions and call them mental illness. It's arbitrary, and I think that it does us a disservice, because I think that while there is this shame and stigma that's attached to any neurological issue like Alzheimer's, there's another level of fear and distrust and dismissiveness if what you have is called mental illness. I think so. Interestingly, I wanted to go there, and I had the sense that bipolar disorder was hiding in plain sight everywhere. Seems like everybody knows someone. You

14:22  
hear about it more and more these days. Yeah, it's so prevalent. Like,

14:25  
the numbers are, they're all kind of all over the place, but the average is, like, one in 50 people have it, what? Uh huh. But it's probably a lot more, because it's tough to get a diagnosis. Like, as we find out, you need a certain level of privilege to go through the healthcare system, and whether you're in Canada, the US, or wherever it's it's not a straightforward shot to get diagnosed. For most people, it often takes years. I gave Maddie a kind of straight shot to get there, because I didn't want to give you an 800 page book, but the average age of onset is late teens, early 20s, on average. Judge. So our main character, Maddie, is 19 years old when the book opens, she's finished her freshman year at NYU. She was depressed that year, but she wouldn't have called it that. She would have said everything was due to the situation. So her boyfriend broke up with her twice. School is so much harder than high school, she hadn't found her close friends yet, so she's feeling kind of lonely. She comes back home at the end of freshman year for summer, and routine is back in place. Mom is making three meals a day. She's going to bed at the same time, getting eight hours of sleep a night. She's exercising every day, riding her bike to work. She gets back together with a boyfriend, doing all the things, doing all the healthy things, and this is enough to support stability for her in such a way that she feels good over the summer, she's stabilized. She goes back to school in the fall, and everything is still in place, but the depression is back, and it is heavier and harder than it was before. She's having a hard time getting dressed and going to class, and even when she gets to class, she can't focus on what the professors are teaching. And in fact, she gets a notice saying that if she doesn't bring her grades up, they're going to kick her out of NYU. No pressure, I know, right? So in a panic, she devises a plan to go to the health center and just say, You know what, I'm really stressed and overwhelmed. Could I get an excuse for some of these absences and maybe also an extension on this paper that's due because she hasn't started it. So they give her those things, but they also give her a prescription for an antidepressant. Now, if what had been going on with Maddie in her brain was unipolar depression, that antidepressant probably would have been helpful, but because what's going on in her brain is bipolar disorder, unbeknownst to her and everyone else, that antidepressant is the catalyst that will catapult her into her first manic episode. So this story is about what it's like to be diagnosed with bipolar, how to wrestle with that new reality, what it's like to swing I mean, this is a your a disorder where your brain has an impairment in the ability to regulate things like mood, energy, emotion, sleep and thought. But the book really is about Maddie trying to figure out the distinction between I am bipolar and I have bipolar. Yeah, yeah, at an age where you're just trying to figure out your identity anyway, right? Like, who am I? What do I want? And then now this thing comes in, and it's saying, This is who you are. You're bipolar.

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It's such a hard age to begin with all that discovery.

17:34  
Lisa, I love your narration. I love your point of view on how you presented this story. It's really so great to read. Your dialog is fantastic. Thank you. It feels so real. Your dialog between your characters, Maddie, in particular, how she speaks to her friends, how she communicates with the other characters in the book, it's just so dead on. I don't know if you're drawing on your 19 year old friendships, or going back in time, but it just rang really true. And like you said, you know you're a woman in your early 50s, but the way you describe Maddie and her world is very visceral, like you really nailed it.

18:15  
Oh my gosh. Thank you so much. That means you're so

18:18  
welcome. I just want to read just a passage, just to give our listeners a sense of how you speak about it. So it's chapter 16, Maddie has been home from Garrison for eight or nine days, maybe 10. Her days and nights are a blur of indistinguishable monotony, the same card pulled from the deck over and over, making the passage of time difficult to track or remember. It's almost noon, and Maddie is still in bed, even though her mother parted the curtains and raised the shades hours ago, hoping the sunshine would lift maddie's mood and by extension, her body out of her bedroom, uninspired by daylight and curled on her side, she's been staring at the floor for a long time her childhood lovey, a once white, now Gray, lamb named sheepy is face down, Knobby, tail up, abandoned and alone in the corner. I can relate to that. I don't have Bipolar, and there was a time in my life where I was very blue when my mother came into the room and set her hand on the small of my back to kind of encourage me to get up. Well, you've been down here for 16 hours. I just thought I'd come and check to see if you're alive. And I didn't have clinical depression, just something shitty had happened. But just the way you your Descriptions aren't too flowery, they're not literary. I don't think you ever omit anyone from feeling like they need to be academic to read your books and understand the emotional importance of them, and I love that about your writing. Thank

19:47  
you so much. Yeah, that is the intent behind my writing. It's not to leave anyone out that this needs to be accessible to everyone. And

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you know what I mean? You gotta feel it. I do. These are emotional responses. Yes, and real time, real conversations that people are having. And I love that. Thank you know. And I think coming from your background, it could be freaking sciency, and you don't do it, you don't pull that. Why? Because

20:14  
that's not what I'm writing. I could write a non fiction book about bipolar. I mean, I've read so many textbooks and so many memoirs, and talk to a lot of people who have it and their loved ones and psychiatrists who treat them and psychologists who treat them. I could write that nonfiction sciency textbook, but that's not what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to reach everybody, people who are familiar with it and live it and know someone and love someone who has it. They should feel seen and heard and validated on those pages people who don't know anything about bipolar has to be a really good story that you want to turn the page for them to get the education. So the education has to be in the lived, felt experience of the story, not like, you know, bullet points and homework. You have to want to know what happens to this character and care about her. Getting

21:03  
back to your dialog, I read something really interesting, and it might even have been in an interview that I saw and you spoke to your love of acting and your interest in acting early on, and how that informed how you went about your dialog. Because, like I said, the dialog is just you forget you're reading a book. Oh, thank you very much. Like, Still Alice, like I'm reading away. And, well, it's true. I read so much stuff, and sometimes you just don't believe it. It just doesn't feel real to a character. As much as people try, I guess they're just trying too hard to be academic. I don't know what the thing is, I I'm not making judgments. It's just, how did acting inform dialog? Because you did speak to that at one point, and I hope I'm getting that right, yeah. So,

21:48  
because I never took a writing class, so, you know, I have a PhD in listen to this people, yeah. So, I mean, I read a lot on writing, like Stephen King's, on writing and Bird by Bird, and writing down the bones by Natalie Goldberg, I read a lot of books on craft. I'm a good student, but I didn't actually go to school for writing. I don't have MFA, I didn't belong to a writer's group, none of that. But what I did do is I trained as an actor for a while, and I acted on stage a lot in Boston, and I found that the acting training applied beautifully to writing screenplays our dialog. So I think a lot of that is like you develop an ear for that economy of language. What is the subtext? It has to be. A lot of what people don't say is communicated in it as well, and what does that mean? And so acting was all about, what do people want from each other? Who gets it, who doesn't? How are people changed by what happens? And it's by scene, right? So, you know, my chapters tend to be kind of short. I'm not trying to win a literary prize here. I'm trying to write very believable. I'm trying to tell the truth under the imagined circumstances, and I learned that in acting as well.

23:06  
And your parents have both had pretty interesting lives. What was it like growing up? And obviously, you have been given the green light to be creative, to take chances. You've had a lot of support in your life, and I just feel like your parents have played a pretty important role in your character and who you are as a mom and who you are as a person making your way through really difficult times in this world. There's a lot of shit coming at us right now. You've got you've got kids of varying ages, yep, and I'm just wondering how their parenting of you has informed your work and your life as a parent. Was that a 44 part freaking question? I think so. No,

23:51  
all right, so, yeah, I I was born 1970 so I'm Gen X, great decade. I think so too. So I grew up in Waltham, Massachusetts. It was a very blue collar town. My dad was one of nine Italian. My mom is half Irish, half Italian. It was very like Italian, Irish kind of immigrant community. I had a great childhood. My dad, he worked as a computer programmer, a software high tech kind of guy. And he's lovely. My dad is a great man. He's one of those things he's always said to my brother and I, work hard. Have fun, do good. Like, whenever we go off to do anything, work hard. Have fun. Do good. And the do good, I've always taken to have sort of a double meaning of, like, do a good job and do good. Like, yeah, you know, be of service. So that mantra, I mean, from a very young age, work hard, have fun, do good. And I do that like, I have fun in what I do, I work hard and what I do and try to do a good job and help help out the world while I'm doing it. My mom was a stay at home mom and. And just made life work for all of us. I mean, it was very I had a very stable upbringing. Um, they're still amazing. So my I'm so lucky. My parents are both still here. I'm so jealous, Lisa, I know. I'm sorry, honey. I'm not looking forward to that day. In fact, I've got four movies in development, and I'm like, my dad's 83 I'm like, can we please make these movies now, but, yeah, my parents are great. They were just here like, I'm a single mom. I have three kids. My oldest is 24 she lives in New York City. She's a therapist. She's amazing. Could I

25:31  
get her number? Who doesn't need a good therapist? We

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all do. We all do. My son is 17. He's a junior in high school, and my youngest is 14, and so my parents come to my home when I need to go out in the world and do things like book tour or speaking gig, and so they help out a lot. I want

25:50  
to get to book tours, but I do want to talk about you alluded to having four projects, not one, not two, not three, four of your books that are in development to be made into films. That blows my mind. Authors dream of something like that, like, I think of Adriana Trigiani, you know, in getting Big Stone Gap made, and the things that she has done, and you guys seem to walk, you know, similar paths. Do you have a hand in developing how these things come from the page into the screenplays and onto that screen. Like having four projects seems like very daunting to me. Well, some

26:31  
of them I'm not very involved in. It makes it easier. So for inside the O'Briens, I have written the script, so I'm very involved in that one, and we have our director, and we're gonna start to cast it next. Good for you. Yeah, every note played. The script is written and produced by Monet Clayton and David Mandel. These are two amazing, brilliant people out in LA and we should be announcing our cast very soon. So, yeah. Everybody follow me on social media, because I will, I will announce the second they give me the green light to go ahead and do that, but hopefully we're filming that within the year. And things have been in the way. We had, we had the pandemic, we had the actors strike, the writers strike, like we these movies would have already been made several times over, but things just kept getting in the way and then falling apart, left neglected is in development as well, and more or less, Maddie, we have our main actress here that already attacked really, yeah, that's just

27:33  
absolutely incredible and inspiring. And you know, this question probably gets really tired, but how do you make the time to do this? And I know your kids are getting older, but I think women, in particular, single moms, single parents, you know, they're looking at you, and they're doing their best to write 200 words in a journal every night before they go to bed. Yeah, and there's a lot of aspiring writers out there, you're so inspiring, like I was very nervous about having this conversation with you today, just because you're so accomplished and oh well, so are you. Well, I appreciate that. But I mean, for people that are listening right now that are trying to

28:12  
Sarah's laughing, just like, Do you not see yourself? Oh my gosh. Well, no, I don't think

28:15  
any of us see ourselves, probably the way other people see us. But just writing a screenplay, but having these four things on the go and doing these things, I mean, it seems it's a dream. It's it seems dream like to me, and I'm sure you appreciate that. You strike me as a person grounded, someone who is steeped in gratitude. But how do you sit down and make the time to do this work? That was my question. How long did that take me?

28:43  
Oh, I love you. All right. So being a scientist, I think, really helped train me to be a novelist in so many ways. Because in science, you show up to the lab bench every day. You work alone. You're not going to get your experiment isn't going to be done for months, if not a year or more. I mean, it's a real long patience, the marathon. Yeah, it's patience so, but it's also showing up every day. Like, the only way to get it done is to show up so and, and thank you. Like, as a single mom, like i It's all on me. I am 100% financially responsible for all of my kids, so I have to make it all work. And as a writer, I'm also a speaker, which really helps. So my background in neuroscience helps me as I'm an expert in brain health and memory, and I've developed a career as a speaker as well. And so that helps supplement income, but yeah, it's not I don't have a salary job, so it's not like, well, here's my job as law, I'm guaranteed an income this year, every single year as a writer, every year is different. We have to cobble it together. So writing the books, it's, you know, I'm not writing 300 pages today. It's, I'm gonna show up and I'm gonna sit down and I'm gonna get 1000 to 1500 words down today, and I can edit something I can't edit in. Nothing. So it's not fancy or romantic. I live on Cape Cod, and people imagine me sitting in an adirondack chair facing the beach while I write. And it's like I sit at the kitchen table staring at the closet door or facing the closet door. I used to write at Starbucks. I got a dog over the pandemic, so I don't leave my house now because I don't want to leave my dog alone. He's looks, he's asleep at my feet right now. But yeah, it's, it's you sit down and you get the words done. And it's most writers who have all day and infinite time and no children. They don't write for eight hours a day. They typically do four to five hours, and then that's a good writing day. That's enough time while your kids are in school, so my shtick has always been drop the kids off at school. Now my son drives, so I don't even have to do that, but I after they go to school, I've got four to five hours that I can devote to staying in the seat. No social media. Just get the words down or write it by hand. If this feels stuck, I go back and forth between pen and computer. Oh, I love that. Yeah, pen is more permissive. It's like, I can just write. It's like, oh, this doesn't matter, because it's just on paper so but, like, it often, like, lets things go, and I can complain about myself. Like, what's wrong with me? I'm so scared. I don't know what happens next. Like, oh, my God. What if this is terrible, Lisa, it's fine. Like, you're gonna get through it. Like, write something down, you'll fix it later. Like, I'll pep talk myself.

31:24  
Good advice. Listen to that. Listen to what Lisa saying. But then I

31:28  
usually have an hour before I have an hour usually baked in there as well, before the kids come home to try and take care of my my body as well. So an hour walk while listening to an audio book or yoga class or a dance class, because I love to dance, something where I get to move, maybe outside, if the weather's warm enough. And then the kids come home, and then I am their personal assistant, personal chef.

31:50  
You download all their stuff, their Uber

31:53  
I'm like, I just work for them, you know, until they go to bed, and then I go to bed too. I like as a neuroscientist, with every neuroscientist I know, prioritizes sleep. So I I really love getting my I like to get nine hours a night

32:07  
if I can. Well, we talk about that a lot on this podcast. Is just get your sleep, honey. Rest. Rest. It's so important.

32:22  
Going out on the road and selling things. And, you know, because obviously, Lisa Genova, you're a brand as much as you don't want to, you know, talk about that or focus on that. It's still you're a brand. And you have written books, like you said, from the neck up, that really explore the human mind and where things go right, where things go wrong, where memory fails us, where you know all those things now you go out on the road, you're in bookstores, you're in small theaters. What's that experience like for you? And do you enjoy it? Because I know what it's like for me, but I'm really curious to get your take on getting interviewed over and over and over. How is that.

33:00  
So I love it while I'm there. I love being in front of people, and I missed out on that when it was the pandemic and remember came out and everything was over. Zoom. So being in the same room with people and signing books and giving people hugs, and I'm so lucky and that like people will share with me what my work means to them, and it's usually through tears and hugs and like sharing really personal stories that is about. You know, a lot of our interactions with people day to day are like, how are you good? I'm good. How are you good? And that's it's so superficial, and people, because of what I write about, they drop into a really vulnerable, real place with me immediately, and I may never see them again, most likely, but we have these exchanges that drop into a very authentic human connection, right? Like sharing, like something deeply real for them, and I'm there for it, like I'll be I'll be there with you in that, like, I want to be real with you, too. And so it's Wow, it's rewarding. It's I'm so grateful for it, and it means a lot to me. It reinforces and excites me in terms of, like, this is why I'm doing what I'm doing. Look real. People are affected by this, and they're taking what I've written, and it's meaningful to them, and it's healing for them, and it's helpful. The part that's not fun is the logistics of it all, like leaving my kids, or my parents coming in a to b dog, yeah. Got a schlep on the plane like, yeah, it's just yeah. The schlepping of it, all the travel is is grueling.

34:37  
Well, I can't tell you how much we all appreciate it, and just appreciate your work, your sense of humor, your you know, your Lightness of Being. With a lot of these issues, it's not always doom and gloom. I'll tell you what, and I and I've said this many times before, I'm the best version of myself because of my mom and dad's Alzheimer's, because I actually stepped into a version of myself I didn't even know existed, that I could do it, that I could look after them and. Said something, you know, very poignant, and that is, they can't come where we're going. We have to go where they're going. It took me five years to figure that out, yeah, because I wasn't easy. I was the gatekeeper, I was the referee, I was the memory police. I was all these negative I hated myself. My default was anger and contempt and just and then one day, I figured it out. I don't know what it was, but my mom said, there's a bunch of people on your deck, and they've got orange hats on, and they're they're sweeping and they're building a city. I remember it specifically, and I was about to launch in to the very shitty version of myself, where I was going to go. There's nobody out there. It was just this repetitive thing. And I actually gave up, in a way. I went, Well, I hope they just really clean up my deck, mom, because I could sure use some help over there. Well, for sure. Well, they will. And I don't know what happened to me, Lisa, but yeah, I got myself back. And so the next five, six years were spent in kind of this really great Twilight place where it wasn't really my parents, but it was, it was okay.

36:12  
Oh my gosh, I love this so much. So first of all, it wasn't a shitty version of you. It was just the situation wasn't working, and it felt shitty you because of the approach you were taking, which, by the way, is not your fault, because nobody gives you a manual for this. It's not diabetes where they're like, here's the insulin, here's how many times a day, here's the dosage. You're good to go. Not to say that diabetes is easy, but there's a prescription for that that works with Alzheimer's. There's no prescription for how to do this day to day. You know you're learning as you go. And so of course, you didn't know to begin with. You have to learn. And so this is why community and finding other people who've traveled this road before who can give you the wisdom that we've gained, like here, don't start at the beginning. Don't reinvent the wheel. But so you weren't shitty. It wasn't a shitty version of you. It was just the situation was shitty, and it's because the the approach you were taking was keeping you disconnected from mom. So what you did was, interestingly, it's like improv acting. You said yes and right. So the number one rule of improv acting is you say yes and to anything the other actors offer. And that's how you build a scene. That's how you stay connected to each other, and can be in relationship if you negate the actors reality, if you say that's not true, or that's not right, or no, I'm not doing that, then you kill the scene. But So with your mom, when she offers you the the orange people on the deck, you said yes, and to it, you agreed to the reality she offered, and you added to it, and it felt good. It didn't feel shitty anymore, because now what you did was Yeah, it doesn't make any sense, but doesn't matter, because what you did was you, you created a relationship, right? You stayed emotionally connected to

37:54  
Yeah, and I wasn't hurting her feelings in that No, no,

37:58  
right? Like, the example I use is if my Nana had said to me, Oh, I'm waiting for my mom to come. She's going to be here any minute. Like it's not my job to say, Nana, your mom died 30 years ago, because now she's going to be all upset. She's going to live the

38:13  
job. She's got her dude all over again. What do you mean? She freaking died, right?

38:17  
So instead, I can agree to the reality She's offered, even though it's not true, this isn't lying people. You just think of yourselves as an improv actor. So it's like, okay, yes, we're waiting for your mom. Hey, let's have a cup of tea together while we wait for her. Yeah, oh, she had a great garden, didn't she? I love her garden. So now you're just in conversation and you're waiting for someone who's been dead for 30 years. That's okay, yeah, no, it is. You're connected. That's the point. Lisa Genova,

38:43  
I could talk to you for about 72 years, but your writing is superb. Your storytelling is so visceral. It's like I said, it's funny, it's real, and I think it'll help people get through you must get this book, more or less Maddie best seller in Canada. We have lots of listeners in the States. We have listeners all over the world as well. So please run out and get this book. We wish you nothing but stars, rainbows, happiness for these next projects. I will be in line buying tickets to all of those films. We need women like you out there. You're just incredible. What a journey this has been to watch, and still, Alice helped me immensely. It was one of the few stories out there. Oh, thank you. It was different from what I was going through, but I was Kristen Stewart, so I don't care what you say anyway. Thank you so much for taking time for the Jarden pod today, Sarah, I didn't even let you freaking say a word.

39:38  
Hey, you two. Geeking out was perfect. I was so happy to be a fly on the wall.

39:42  
It's just it's such a pleasure to speak to you. So thanks so much continued success. Thank you for having me, more or less. Maddie is available everywhere. If you would like to revisit feeding my mother that I wrote about my parents and Alzheimer's, please do. There's recipes included too, because I actually physically did. Eat my parents sometimes dinner at 330 in the morning, but that's a whole other story at a whole other time you've been listening to my conversation with Lisa Jenova, wow. She's the author of six novels and one non fiction book, all of which are worthy of your time and attention. Such great writing. Lisa Jenova, thanks for being with us. Thank you. Sarah Burke, we're hoping that we see Caitlin again at some point, but until next time. Totally Do you?