Creative Alchemy

Here’s what I was reminded of during this conversation with writer and playwright Dennis Hawkins-Bogle. No one’s going to hand you the opportunity to tell the truth of your experience and tell your story. There is no validation and acknowledgement fairy who’s going to come along and anoint you with her magic wand. If telling your story matters enough to you – if you feel the pull to tell the truth about your experience, whatever it is – you are going to have to be the one that makes it happen. And here’s the good news: it is within your power to do so.

In the introduction, I talk about my experience of watching Dennis perform his play, The Blue Taffeta Party Dress, and how I was struck by his ease and comfort on the stage, and both the joy and poignance I experienced while watching it.

I also mention my new blog series, #MemoirMonday. Each Monday I’ll post a short article with a tip or some advice about writing your best memoir. Memoir is one of my very favourite literary forms and I believe everyone has a story to tell. I want to empower writers like you to tell their stories and tell them well so that readers have a good experience as well.

You can find all the Memoir Monday posts listed on this page.

Dennis Hawkins-Bogle is a writer, performance artists, and culture worker living and working on the unceded traditional territory of the Ligwilda’xw people in Campbell River. After 30 years working in public education administration, which took Dennis to live and work in Lower Post, the
most northerly community in BC, and Grise Fiord, the most northerly community in Canada, Dennis now devotes his time to creative pursuits.

Dennis’ involvement in community theatre
began in Williams Lake, where he played Ricky Roma in Glen Garry Glen Ross and won best supporting actor at the Interior Zone Theatre Festival. He has been involved with Rivercity Players in Campbell River as an actor, director, producer and board member. Dennis is a writer and storyteller, most notably for Where is Grise Fiord? Tales from the High Arctic, and the Blue Taffeta
Party Dress and Other Stories. Dennis won the Readers’ Choice Award and North Island Pride
Community Champion Award for The Blue Taffeta Party Dress. Dennis has also organised reading and writing events for local and visiting authors in Quesnel and Campbell River. Dennis is published in the Caitlin Press anthology, Queer Country Crossroads.

Connect with Dennis on his Facebook page.

This episode of Creative Alchemy is supported by the audiobook version of my award-winning, Amazon best-selling memoir, Cult, A Love Story.

Readers call the book ‘compelling’ ‘gritty’ ‘intimate’ and ‘not boring’ – which is what an author loves to hear. I narrated the audiobook and if you have a Spotify premium subscription you can listen to the audiobook for free as part of that subscription at alexandraamor.com/spotify.

You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.

Show Notes

On teaching at the northernmost school in Canada

Growing up in small town British Columbia and feeling like an outsider

Recognizing that being oneself can open us up to social ridicule

Turning a collection of short stories into a one person play

Breaking free from internalized stigma and shame via artistic expression

Working with a director to stage a one person performance

How writing and performing can bring new layers of understanding to an experience

Telling stories that involve other people and being respectful while also telling the truth

Writing prose vs. writing for the stage

Memorizing 8,800 words to be performed

The importance of getting our stories on paper

Finding the courage to tell our stories

Resources

Hollyhock Retreat Centre on Cortes Island, BC

Murray Hill, drag performer, actor and comedian

Transcript of the Interview with Dennis Hawkins-Bogle

Alexandra: Dennis Hawkins-Bogle, welcome to Creative Alchemy.

Dennis: Thank you very much, Alexandra. It’s nice to be with you today.

Alexandra: Good to see you.

Tell us a little bit about your background and who you are.

Dennis: I am a retired public educator in British Columbia. I worked for 33 years, primarily in education administration, school principal.

A couple of interesting notes about my educational career is I was at one time the principal of the most northerly school in British Columbia, in Lower Post. A little two-room kindergarten to grade four school called Denatia School. That was my very first principalship.

I was also the principal of the most northerly school in Canada, at Grice Fjord Nunavut Umingmak School. Umingmak means muskox.

Another interesting thing about my educational career is that I was my last principalship for seven years. I was the principal of the high school that I graduated from in Quesnel, and that really was an amazing opportunity to close a circle, because I grew up in Quesnel. I was born and raised in Quesnel. I came of age in Quesnel in the the 60s and 70s.

I reflect a lot on my upbringing in Quesnel about the socialization process and how in the 60s and 70s boys were socialized to to be one way, and of course girls another way. For those of us that didn’t quite fit that mold, there was an incredible amount of dissonance and distress, trying to figure out ourselves and trying to figure out where we we fit in.

Quesnel is a lumber town in the middle of the province was a great place to grow up, but the distress that comes with being an outsider, being gay, and growing up in this kind of small conservative environment, and I think it’s probably the same in any environment, even if you’re in a not so conservative environment. I think the socialization process is pretty intense on people to comply and to fit in.

When you can’t fit in, then there is all this distress. So after I finally graduated from high school and moved away, I was able to go to university, and I was able to come out of the closet, and I was able to embrace the person that I am. Embrace who I am, challenge the distress, replace some of those negative images with some positive thoughts and imagery. So that is who I am.

Alexandra: I have a follow up question.

When you returned to Quesnel at the end of your career, was that deliberate? Was it a choice on your part, or were you transferred there coincidentally?

Dennis: No, it was a choice on my part. I had left. I had finished my three year tenure in Nunavut, and I owned a small house in Wells, which is just outside of Quesnel, and so that’s where I went. I didn’t have a job to go to.

And then there was a principalship in the Quesnel School District, and I thought I’m about halfway through my career. I’ve got another 15 to 20 years of my career. I think I can do it in my hometown, and so I purposefully applied for the principalship and got that, and then transferred to another school, and then transferred to another school, and then finally transferred to the high school where I finished my career. It was a purposeful move back to Quesnel.

Alexandra: We’re here today mostly to talk about The Blue Taffeta Party Dress. So talk to us about the origins of that.

Dennis: My mother came home one day, and she was thrifting, and there’s six kids in the family, so thrifting was a great thing to do. And my mother came home; she was thrifting, and she bought a bunch of stuff for us kids to play with. And she brought this beautiful blue party dress, and.

I remember her bringing it home, and I remember myself and my sisters, who I was closest to in age, being fascinated by this party dress. I remember wanting to wear it, and then I remember wearing it and putting it on and twirling.

I remember the real joy that came from that. The internal comfort and joy of twirling around in that dress because it was layered crinoline and it was a party dress. And so when I would spin, it would flare out around me. I remember that dress.

But the other thing, Alexandra, that I remember that is really poignant is I remember knowing that I’m doing something that a girl does. I know that I am putting myself out there for social ridicule. Had anyone, whether it be my sister, my mother, my brother, my father, whoever saw me do this, I knew that I was potentially opening myself up to social ridicule by someone saying, “You’re doing a girl thing, or why are you acting like a girl?”

I was very much aware of that. I was probably only about eight or nine years old, and that awareness of being different and treading on thin ice socially, I was very aware of it as a child.

Alexandra: When did you start writing the short stories that highlighted the things you went through growing up?

Dennis: Well, the blue taffeta party dress story. I wrote that about 15 years ago, and I wasn’t in a particularly prolific writing period. I was still working as a school principal. I didn’t have a lot of time, but I because that story was so poignant in my life. I wrote it over a weekend, and then I just edited it over a course of time.

So that one was written about 15 years ago, and then it just sat. It just sat in my portfolio. And then once I retired, my husband Stephen and I, we went to Cortes Island, and we did a program there called Yoga Ritual and Meditation, and I did a ton of writing in my spare time out there. All these stories were just coming to me, and I just spent all my spare time writing.

We came home to Campbell River. Summer ended. He went back to work, and I just sat down and wrote story after story after story. I probably wrote about 70 stories in a two-year period after coming back from Hollyhock. Then some of the stories I realized this makes a great trajectory. If I compiled all these stories together, it creates one story, and that’s and and so the very first story in that collection of stories is the blue taffeta party dress.

Alexandra: Did you publish them anywhere at that point?

Dennis: No, I haven’t published. I’ve only published one story of that collection,

Alexandra: Did you show them to anyone else at that time?

Dennis: I showed them to my husband Stephen. I showed them to one friend who would come over. I’ve always written stories.

Then I would when I’m gathering with my friends, I would say, “Hey, would anyone like a little story time?” And I’d read a story or two because I always had a few little stories on the go. So during this time I shared them with a couple of friends, and that was it until I approached River City Theater in Campbell River to produce the actual present the stories. Then I really had to bring them and show them to someone who I really didn’t know who was going to help me with this project.

Alexandra: Okay, so tell us about that.

When did you get the idea to maybe turn them into this one person show that you do?

Dennis: So, when I was working in Grice Fiord, I didn’t have a lot of things to do with my spare time, so I kept a journal and I journaled the weather, where the where the light was at that particular time of year. Comings and goings. Who was in town? What sort of things were happening? What was going on in the community.

I kept this journal, and then I strung together a bunch of stories from my time in Grice Fiord, and I presented them to River City Theater, and I said, “This is a this these stories could be a play.” I performed them in Grice Fjord or I performed them in Campbell River. I performed them in a number of other locations.

It was sort of like a I hate to say a travelogue story because the stories were so unique and and just my perspective on some of the things that I witnessed. For example, the annual migration of the whales, seeing the whales coming by, and the community so exuberant and so joyful watching these whales come by, and I could hear these whales singing.

I’d never heard whales before, and there were thousands of them. They just kept swimming by and swimming by and swimming by because they’re on their annual migration. And after about 10 or 15 minutes of watching the whales swim by, I realized what was happening. I realized that this was an opportunity, or not an opportunity, but the lifestyle was to harvest whale.

The boats came out, and the guns came out, and the hunters came out, and the shots were fired, and everyone on the beach was exuberant and happy, and it’s so full of excitement because the whales were coming by and they were going to get harvest some of them. They harvested 13, and they pulled them up onto the beach with four wheelers.

So, I presented this collection of stories, and my director Heather Gordon Murphy, she said to me one day, she said, “Well, that was a great story. You know that Grice Fiord. Those collection of stories were very good,” she said, “But there is something more in there, and I want you to think about that. I’m not sure what it is, but that you’ve got another story in you, and I want you to think about that.”

For me, that was just the impetus to that was just the reinforcement that I needed to dig a little deeper into my own personal story, and start to write those stories. And like I say, I came back from Hollyhock. I had so many stories, and I pulled out about 25 of them, and I sat with Heather and I said these 25 stories go together really well.

Working with Heather over a course of about a year, we narrowed it down to 19 stories, and that’s the that’s the play that I do.

Alexandra: Wow!

For the listeners, what would you say would be the theme of the play, The Blue Taffeta Party Dress.

Dennis: The theme would be it’s a coming of age story. It’s challenging our internal ideas about who we are, because when I growing up in Quesnel in the in the 70s, I experienced a lot of name calling, a lot of taunts, and and a lot of you know aggression and some violence.

Because homosexuality was illegal, it was it was also in the DSM one, the Manual of Mental Illness, and so there was great social stigma attached. And what I did, unbeknownst to myself, is I internalized that disdain about gay people. I internalized it, and then it became a reflection of how I saw myself.

And so then I am later in life looking back at that and thinking, I really have to correct this misinformation because it was embedded in me. It was a really a part of how I saw myself, and so I had to crack that open and really challenge the misinformation and the disinformation and replace it with facts and lived experience. And with a very supportive community around me, I was able to do that.

Alexandra: That’s so beautifully said!

A lot of my guests and a lot of our listeners are cult survivors, and I think they’re really going to be able to relate to that idea of internalized disdain because that’s something that cult leaders. embed in their followers as a way to control them and that kind of thing.

Thank you for being so transparent about that.

Dennis: You’re welcome. I definitely see the parallels there between what you just described.

Alexandra: So you started working with Heather. And what did that relationship look like?

You took the stories from 25 to 19. What was that process like?

Dennis: Well, it was a fairly simple process because I realized these two stories that I wanted to tell one after the other were exactly the same. The themes were the same.

The themes were dealing with a situation where I was quite concerned about the social backlash that would come not if I got caught, but if someone were to say something, and so there were two stories that were identical to that. So it was very easy just to take one out because it followed the themes.

The 25 stories made the play too long, so I realized I had to cull some back. I had to take some back. One of the one of the struggles as a writer is, but it’s a real joy for me, is streamline it, take words out, cut it back, get that word out, get that word out. This is superfluous. You don’t need this. You don’t need that.

I just love taking things out in the editing process. So, taking some stories out actually really made the story much more succinct and much more on point.

Alexandra: When it’s a performance like that, you’re right. I think it does need to be much more concise than you might have in the written word.

Dennis: Absolutely.

Alexandra: One of the things we talked about when I met you on the night that you performed it, when I saw it, was the staging stuff that you had to go through that you worked on with Heather.

Can you tell us a little bit about that as well?

Dennis: Heather Gordon Murphy directed and she staged this play. Heather and I have done two plays together, and Heather pays attention to the directing and the staging, and she leaves the writing to me.

It’s difficult sometimes when you’re in a creative collaboration with someone. I don’t correct her direction or her staging, and she doesn’t correct my writing. Now, when I say that, that’s absolutely not true because we do banter back and forth about the staging and the writing and everything.

But she respects the fact that I’m the writer and these are my words, and I respect that she’s my director and she’s my stage manager, and we have those two two jobs or two roles to fulfill when we bring this play to the stage.

Heather’s just lovely to work with. We see things in a very similar eye. She really pushes me along a lot in my acting. I can remember when she said to me one day, she says, “I want you to raise that music stand. Just bring that music stand up about seven or eight inches.” Well, how difficult can it be to raise a music stand? I thought, well, that’s pretty straightforward.

So I went and raised the music stand, and she said, “Oh no, no.” She says, “I’m going to show you how to raise the music stand.” That whole lesson about being purposeful and where your hands are and where your eyes are and how you take the time to raise that music stand so that the audience can see how purposeful the movement is, instead of sort of, well, I can easily lift that, or I can easily do that. She really helped me see the way you would do movement for the stage, which I didn’t have a lot of experience with.

Alexandra: One of the things I’m really interested in is when people are involved in creative projects, what those projects teach us. So we might be telling a story that we think we already know, but very often something can come out of us that we didn’t realize.

Did you have any moments like that either while you were writing or while you were preparing this set of stories for the stage.

Dennis: That’s such a great question because I had thought that I had finished this project, and lo and behold, so much more has been coming to the surface. I had always thought to myself, this project is not about kissing and telling. It’s not about blaming. It’s just about sharing my experience.

I realized in many ways I presented almost a too sanitized version because I realized oh there’s a few more brutal things that took place that are really important and really worth telling, and those things didn’t surface until well into the project. I always relived them. They were always part of my makeup. They were always part of who I was, but they then started to come up to the surface.

I could hear that little voice in the back of my head, you need to include this piece in there. This is an important piece, so the whole process just continued to evolve. It continued to crack open once I started writing the stories.

Alexandra: Was there any part of you that was resistant when you felt that sort of feeling?

Dennis: There was because I mentioned about kiss and tell, because I never wanted to kiss and tell, but I wanted to tell some stories that involved other people. So I had to take a really good look at a couple of those stories and ask myself, why am I really wanting to tell this story? Because it involves another person.

How can I tell the story so that it shows my respect for that other person. It shows my care and my tenderness for that other person. It’s almost like telling someone else’s story a little bit, but I mean it was my story as well, and this involved a few people from my hometown. I really wanted to be careful that I told the story in a respectful way that didn’t breach some kind of ethical standard or some kind of moral standard, because I didn’t want to put anyone else into jeopardy.

I want to tell the story from my point of view, but the other characters in the story, if we can call them the other characters in the story, I didn’t want them to to be able to identify themselves, or I didn’t want them to feel like they were being treated unfairly, so it was a tricky situation. But you change the change things up a little bit, change names, change perhaps locations, change circumstances, but tell the same story.

Alexandra: You anticipated my next question. I was going to ask how you handled that. That’s great.

In terms of challenges from turning it into a series of short stories to a play, what were the challenges that you experienced? We’ve already talked about the emotional ones.

Were there technical ones or practical ones, anything that that you found was challenging for you?

Dennis: Yeah, when I write, I often hear my own voice, and I often hear my voice delivering my writing as I’m writing it. I often imagine that I’m delivering it on a stage to someone, and that’s my writing process. So while I write, I’m performing in my mind. That’s super helpful for me.

It gets a bit tricky because writing for a piece of literature and performing are two different things. So I had to take a look at my short stories, and then ask for each one of those short stories. I had to ask myself: Is it written for the stage? What do I need to do to change this so that it’s written for the stage?

What I found out was a lot of the transitions while I’m on the stage could be a lot harder because I could act the transitions out, and I could emphasize where I wanted to put emphasis, I could use my voice to create different mood. The written word was one thing, and then performing it was another thing too.

Alexandra: And you’ve said this wasn’t your first take at performing something; you had performed before.

Is that a fairly comfortable place for you to be on the stage?

Dennis: Ah, yes, it is. I do like it. In high school, I loved theater. I loved acting, and I loved being on the stage.

As a school principal, I really relished in those roles where I had an opportunity to stand in front of the school and deliver a message or instill values around what our school meant. I really enjoyed being in front of the crowd and delivering those kinds of messages, speeches, or what or whatnot.

I’m never nervous around that. I always look forward to it. I don’t know what it is. I guess I really enjoy the energy of that. I get super nervous now when I’m officially doing a play. I don’t quite get so nervous if I know that I have to make a speech in front of a group of people, I can prepare my speech. But when I actually have to have words memorized and I’m performing, I get really nervous. Good nervous energy, I think, helps me. But I’ve always enjoyed theater, and I’ve always enjoyed acting and performing.

Alexandra: It was so great when I saw you perform that night, and you seem like such a natural. And the thing that really blew my socks off was that, and I guess this goes along with performing, but you just had the whole thing memorized. 60 minutes of a solo performance, and you’re talking essentially the entire time.

How long did it take you to build up to have that memorized?

Dennis: Well, I will tell you, it’s 8800 words. It probably took me about four months to memorize it.

Now it took me a long time to write it, so that writing process and the editing process was super helpful because those words then become just sort of embedded in me. Very shortly after writing a story and working with it a little bit, I knew the flow of where this story was going, how the action might have been rising, and what the resolution was was.

When I started to memorize, actually word for word, I already knew the structure of the story, and I already knew the trajectory of the story. I knew where the story was going and how it was going to end, and so then it just became memorizing those lines.

What I do is I read the lines into a recorder, and then I wear my earbuds and I go for bike rides and I listen and I listen and I listen, and then I stop quickly, and I say, “I need to edit this story. It doesn’t quite sound right. I need to take out this little chunk and maybe move it over here.”

The whole memorization process also is an editing process. It’s really interesting when I did the story with Heather, we edited The Blue Taffeta Party Dress right up until opening night. I kept changing things and changing things and changing just a word here or there. I’m like, oh, this word doesn’t quite work, but this word works much better.

I’m doing that show on Wednesday in Penticton, and I haven’t done the show for about three weeks. I did it in the living room the other day, and I only made one mistake. So it was wow, super happy. I’m rehearsing every day now until my show on Wednesday, and then I have a show again in Cumberland on September 25th. I’ll just keep it fresh from now until then.

Alexandra: Oh, that’s beautiful. It was actually somebody who gave a TED talk say that she did the same thing, recorded it so that she could listen back to it, and then memorize it that way. That’s amazing.

Who do you perform the play for, generally?

Dennis: I perform this play, I would say generally, my audience is allies of the queer community and members of the queer community. I get so many people, so many people have come up to me after being an audience member and saying, “Wow, you just told my story. I’m not gay. I’m not queer, but I dealt with this growing up.”

I understand how we internalize messages that we hear about ourselves. I lived that struggle of unraveling the onion and getting at the core of myself. So when people ask me who I wanted, I really want young queer kids to come and see this show, because right now trans kids-I just can’t imagine what it would be like to be a young trans person in our society with the the rhetoric and the the language that people are using when they talk about transgender people, you can’t help but hear that.

If you’re a transgender person, you have to either have some heavy armor on to deflect it, or it’s going to get into you, the way it did when I was a child when I heard all the homophobia.

I have a lot of gay men come to my shows as well. They can relate to a lot of the stories that I share. I’ve done this show in three high schools in Campbell River. I just modified it slightly. I just took out a couple of stories that I didn’t think were appropriate for the high school audience.

When I’m asked, I tell people this is a good show for kids 16 and over. It’s not because there’s any particular language. It’s just because the concepts are fairly sophisticated. I’m talking about the socialization process. I’m talking about internalizing homophobia. I’m talking about collective psyches, and I’m talking about going on a healing journey and how you how I accessed that.

It’s not a children’s story. It’s a good story for youth as long as they have a bit of maturity about them.

Alexandra: And the upcoming shows, where are they being performed, and to what kind of an audience? Are they in schools as well?

Dennis: No, the next the show on Wednesday is actually going to be in Penticton as part of the Ryga Festival. Now the Ryga Festival is in Summerland, but because of the fires in Summerland this summer, they’ve really had to pivot. I just give the Ryga Festival Trista just huge kudos because they weren’t able to host the festival this year.

It’s supposed to be a three-day festival all in one town, and people buy your weekend pass, and there’s lots of different art to see. There’s music, and there’s theater, and there’s readings, and there’s dance, and there’s just a whole range of art, like a little community festival. And of course, that can’t happen this year because of the fires in Summerland. So they’ve had to pivot. So I’m being hosted at the Elks Club in Penticton on Wednesday, September 16th at 7o’clock.

And the other amazing thing that the people at the Ryga Festival have done is they’ve made their shows that they’re offering free of charge to people. Somehow they were able to offer these free of charge. So I’m hoping that this would entice some people to come, knowing that they don’t have to pay for it. I’m hoping that I get a real cross section of people at my show.

I love getting a cross section of people. I love it when I see youth in my show. I love it when I see allies, men and women allies coming to my show and hearing my story. I love it when I see other queer people, gay and lesbian men and women coming to my show, that’s part of my community. So that really inspires me and gives me a lot of comfort when I see my community show up for me.

I’m hoping that there’s a real diverse people in the audience on Wednesday. The next show I’m doing is on September 25th. I’m doing it at the Weird Church in Cumberland, and I’m being hosted by the Queer Center of the Comox Valley. This show is a fundraiser for the Queer Center of Comox Valley. The Queer Center of Comox Valley is raising funds so that. They can provide a physical location to be a resource center in the Comox Valley. Comox Valley is just down the highway from where I live in Campbell River, and the show at the Weird Church.

The tickets you can get online at I think it’s queercomoxvalley.ca, and you can go online and get tickets. Unfortunately, they’re doing it as a fundraiser, so they’re not making it free like they are in Kelowna or Penticton.

Alexandra: One of the things I’m really struck by in your story, Dennis is the healing that comes from this kind of work. Any time we take a chance and tell our own story, it can seem personal. But what I’m hearing is that the ripples go out more than we probably can even expect initially. You’re talking about them going out to the ally community and to trans kids and reaching out.

Did you mention that there was a grandparent that came up to you when you had given your performance once?

Dennis: It was a cousin.

It was a cousin in Powell River. She had seen the poster around Powell River, and she recognized my name. And she’s a cousin. She’s considerably older than I am, so as cousins, we didn’t know each other very well. We knew of each other more than we knew each other. I certainly knew her parents because I knew them as my aunt and uncle. But she was considerably older than me. She knew my brother, older brother, growing up.

I’m in Powell River in this beautiful venue, this beautiful community hall, and it’s packed. And I’m delivering my stories, and I see this beautiful woman in the front row. She’s in the front row, and she’s staring at me and smiling. And she has a beautiful wrinkled face and all of this gray hair. And during the intermission, I go outside and I go into the back, and I’m rubbing my neck just to release some tension off my neck. I see this woman approach me, and she’s rubbing her neck as well.

I say to her, “Oh, it looks like we both have sore necks.” And we kind of laugh a little bit about that. And then she comes up to me and she says, “I think you and I are cousins.” I said, “On my mom’s side or my dad’s?” She said, “On on your dad’s side and my mum’s side.”

She told me her mum’s name, and we just gave each other a huge hug. It was just so warm and loving, and it was so nice to see my cousin there to watch my show. Her and I have been writing back and forth now, sharing family stories. I’m hoping to get back to Powell River soon so I can see her again because she’s just lovely and it’s so nice to connect with my cousin that way.

Alexandra: Oh, that’s such a nice bit of connection.

So as we start to wrap up, I just wondered if you had any other thoughts or anything you’d like to share about your experience of creating this play from these short stories.

Any creative lessons or anything that you’ve learned or reflected on?

Dennis: I’ve had a number of people approach me and say, “Oh, I would love to do that. I have a story to tell.” I said to both of these people, I said, “Well, the first thing you need to do is you need to write your stories down. You need to get your stories on paper.”

I’ve always thought of myself as a writer. I’ve enjoyed writing. I’ve always been writing short stories. I wrote The Blue Taffeta Party Dress about 15 years ago. I have other stories that I’ve written 15 years ago, 20 years ago, 25 years ago, and I just keep them in my portfolio. I’ve always thought of myself as a writer.

Now I’m starting to see myself as not only as a writer but a performer. I’m also seeing myself as an agent of change, which is like a culture worker, which is like a promoter. I’m promoting myself, and I’m speaking to organizations like the Comox Valley Queer Center, for example, and I’m saying his is a really important story that the community needs to hear.

It’s not just because it’s my story, but I think this is an important story that young kids need to hear, older folks need to hear. As queer people, our voice has often been marginalized. We have never always been given the full range of opportunities to share our stories. Things are certainly getting better, but we need to tell our stories. Queer people, wherever people are on the gender or the sexuality spectrum, we need to tell our stories.

Everyone needs to know what it was like for us. We need to know what it was like for our neighbors. We need to know what it’s like for each other, so that we can celebrate in this collective humanity. Because if we don’t celebrate the diversity in our community, then people become invisible.

That’s the last thing I want is that young people, especially, go through these teen years or adolescence or young adult years feeling like they’re invisible and feeling like they don’t have a community. Sometimes I feel like I’m a culture worker, like I’m getting the message out there, and I’m sharing with people that we do have a community and we do have a voice, and we need to be collective in sharing our stories and sharing our voice.

Alexandra: That’s so true. And two things I want that makes me think of one is it takes courage, right, to step out and do that.

The other thing I’m reminded of is, do you know who Murray Hill is? He’s a transgender man, artist, an actor, and performer in New York City. I know him because he was on the HBO show Somebody Somewhere, and just a delightful guy.

He has this lovely expression that he says all the time: “If you don’t see yourself represented, represent yourself.”

Dennis: I love that.

Alexandra: Isn’t that great?

Dennis: Yes, it is. Otherwise, you’re invisible.

Alexandra: Exactly. And I’m going to sound a little political, but the big companies that own television stations and that make movies and all that stuff… the change isn’t necessarily going to come from the top.

Dennis: Right.

Alexandra: It feels like it has to come from individuals like us, like you, telling your truth and saying what’s important, and the change comes from the bottom up.

Dennis: Oh absolutely! I mean, Stonewall was a riot. Let’s not forget that.

It started with the entire spectrum of the community walking out onto the street and saying, “No, you’re not going to do this to us, and we’re going to fight back.” We’re not achieving equality and basic human rights because of their largess. We’re achieving them because of our fight.

Alexandra: Yes. Oh, so well said. Thank you, Dennis.

Well, this has been a delight. I don’t think the Blue Taffeta Party Dress has a website or anything, does it?

Dennis: I’m sort of promoting myself here and there where I can. I don’t have a website.

Alexandra: I think the shows will be over by the time this comes out, but I’ll put some links to whatever I can find so that people can learn more about the show.

Dennis: That would be great. Would you be able to put a link? Because I’m open to people contacting me if someone wants to have a conversation. So if there’s a way that you can include my email or my way to contact me, I’m okay with that too.

Alexandra: Okay, great. I will do that for sure with your permission. All right. Well, thank you, Dennis, so much again. This has been great.

Dennis: Well, it was my pleasure. Thank you very much, Alexandra.

Alexandra: All right. Take care.

Click here to grab your complimentary copy of the Creative Alchemy journaling handbook.

The post From Experience to Stories to Stage with Dennis Hawkins-Bogle appeared first on Alexandra Amor Books.

When we leave a high demand group, there is a reckoning that needs to happen. As survivors, we need to come to terms with so many things; among them, why we were drawn into the group in the first place and how we were affected by that situation. We need to deal with feelings that might include grief and loss and trauma and guilt. There’s so much to unpack!

My guest today, Gerette Buglion, understands this intimately. She herself is a cult survivor. And she hosts a writing program called Writing to Reckon which is specifically for cult survivors.

In the introduction, I talk about the phenomenon of scapegoating that happens in cults. In the interview, Gerette mentions her own experience of being labelled a ‘loser’ by the leader of the cult she was involved in and I reflect on my personal experience with similar treatment of myself and others in the cult I belonged to. I also talk about how complicated it is to unpack these traumatic experiences that happen to us in cults.

Gerette Buglion wants to live in a world where cult leaders, narcissistic abusers, and unethical, manipulative techniques are spotted, called out, and silenced, creating more opportunities for nourishing relationships to flourish. She is the author of two books: her memoir, An Everyday Cult, and the Writing to Reckon Journal – for Survivors of Spiritual, Religious, and Cultic Abuse. Her work as educator and consultant centers on liberation from coercive control and supporting the integrative power of writing for survivors of cultic relationships through Writing to ReckonTM programs and Reclaiming Autonomy Through the Written Word – a bi-annual writing symposium for survivors. She is Co-founder and Executive Director for the nonprofit Living Cult Free.

You can learn more about Gerette Buglion at GeretteBuglion.com

This episode of Creative Alchemy is supported by the audiobook version of my award-winning, Amazon best-selling memoir, Cult, A Love Story.

Readers call the book ‘compelling’ ‘gritty’ ‘intimate’ and ‘not boring’ – which is what an author loves to hear. I narrated the audiobook and if you have a Spotify premium subscription you can listen to the audiobook for free as part of that subscription at alexandraamor.com/spotify.

You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.

Show Notes

Getting involved in a cult that taught dream analysis

How the appearance of autonomy is often woven into cults

On the interpersonal neurobiology work of Dr. Dan Siegel

Creating a “coherent narrative out of traumatic or confusing experiences”

Using writing as a way to reckon with a cult experience

Resources mentioned in this episode

Gerette Buglion’s book An Everyday Cult

Dr. Dan Siegel

Writing to Reckon classes

Daniel Kenneman’s book Thinking Fast and Slow

The Living Cult Free project

Living Cult Free also has a podcast

Reclaiming Autonomy Through the Written Word symposium

Dr. Laura Anderson and her book When Religion Hurts

Robin Boyle Lazier

Hoyt Richards and the HBO documentary Bring Me The Beauties

Transcript of the Interview with Gerette Buglion

Alexandra: Gerette Buglion, welcome to Creative Alchemy.

Gerette: I am so glad to be here. What a pleasure!

Alexandra: It’s great to see you.

Tell us a little bit about your background and about the cult that you were involved with.

Gerette: I was born into a large family and grew up in a, I would say, a normally dysfunctional family. Nothing, you know, dramatic there, and I grew up in New York State of the United States, and when I was in my 30s, I got involved with a group that was centered on working with dreams.

I had been interested in dreams, and I had a couple colleagues. I taught in a Waldorf school, so I had kind of a spiritually oriented bent much of my adult life, and a couple of my colleagues were doing this work, and so I got excited, and I got involved.

At first, it was really lovely. I learned a lot. It was an opportunity for inner growth. And then over the years, I was involved for 18 years altogether. My daughter was born six months before I started. I had been interested in starting working with this teacher. I call him Doug in my book. I had been interested in working with Doug actually before before my daughter was born, but I put that off a bit because I felt it wasn’t good to start something new when I was you know preparing to welcome a child into the world, my first child.

There was a lot of anticipation in working with him too. But the first five years, I think, was fairly light involvement, and then that grew gradually over the years, as I became more and more, as the work we called it, became more and more a central focus in my life, and as my children grew.

I bought a business based on my ex teacher’s advice. Of course, he had no training in business consultation, nor did he have a marriage and family counseling license, but I also did couples work with him.

My husband was also in the same group. He was involved for 16 years, and he left actually while doing his training to become a licensed clinical mental health counselor. That was part of his waking up to the fact that this was not a cool thing to be doing, because some of his professors started pushing him a bit. He had a few experiences with Doug that were really questionable and made him think again, and so he left, and then that gave me an opportunity to go even deeper.

So my last two years in the cult were actually the most intense for me, and even the few years before that had been kind of growing in intensity.

Do you want me to just share briefly how I left? There was a crisis in the organization, and that crisis was that six of the head teachers left on the very same day. That was like this earthquake, it was a massive, massive rupture.

I had this question, this burning question of like, why would they all leave on the same day?

Because so much of what this group was about in terms of personal growth was that we got to make choices based on what was being revealed to us through our individual dreams. So it was one thing for one teacher to say, “Hey, I’m I’m done”. That would be a hard thing, but totally acceptable.

And in fact, that’s something that would happen. People would come to a place that they’re like I’m done, but then they would often come back. That actually is something that I did a couple of times. So we had this appearance of autonomy and choice being stitched into this organization, but it was really a ruse. And so, when all six of the top teachers left on the same day, there was a major, you know, WTF. What is really going on here?

That led me to have an experience in a final meeting that we had with those teachers. One of them, literally in the last five minutes of our meeting, shared things, shared how she was being verbally beaten down by our teacher, and so that’s what created the cognitive dissonance in me. It’s like, wait a minute, this man that I’ve put on a pedestal is doing that to this beloved person who I know, who’s an artist and a poet and a deeply sensitive person.

It was really that cognitive dissonance that made the opening, that was the crack, that really allowed me to free myself. I had a very sudden snapping. I call it my snapping out of the cult, and my husband was really waiting for me. He had recognized that if he started pushing me in those two years to come out, that I would have left him. And I would have, because I was so completely indoctrinated at that point. So he really held the space for me, welcomed me back, as did many of my friends who had watched me kind of disappear for 18 years into this group.

Alexandra: You mentioned your book there, which is called An Everyday Cult.

Once this happened and you decided to leave, how did you use writing to help you with that part of the journey?

Gerette: I love that question because writing is a huge part of my life. As I mentioned, I had good friends who really welcomed me back with open arms. One of them handed me an eight CD pack of Dr. Dan Siegel’s interpersonal neurobiology.

Have you ever heard of Dr. Siegel? Oh gosh, I cannot recommend his work highly enough because it was deeply important for me. Because there are many things he focuses on, as I said, interpersonal neurobiologists.

He’s a psychologist who has a neurological understanding and also a deeply relational understanding of the human experience. I listened to one of those CDs probably a dozen times, and the one that I listened to again and again, and this was in 2014 is when I left the group. The one I listened to focused on what Dr. Siegel calls the importance of creating a “coherent narrative out of traumatic or confusing experiences”.

That was like gongs going off for me. I have always been an educator. I was a teacher of elementary students, and also did parent education. And I had even, as I was a special educator, so I had an orientation towards brain development and healthy human development.

So hearing Dr. Siegel’s work was very impactful for me, and so the coherent narrative became like this. It’s hard to describe it, Alexandra. It almost was like a guiding impulse in my psyche. I felt like one of those homing pigeons. Wherever I was able to to actually speak to people in a safe space, that was part of creating a coherent narrative.

I had also been a journaler my whole life, and there was an aberration of journaling that took place in the group, where we had to write about our pathology is what we called it, and the deep delving of how how broken we were, and how the guidance of our teacher was setting us free. So that was part of what was actually required.

When I started writing for myself, there was this powerful reclamation of my own voice, because in the cult, I was one of the members of the group that was always the loser. I was one of the ones that was just never going to get it. There were others who would go up the ladder pretty quickly in understanding, and I might take a few steps forward, but then there’d be a slide back. That was my trajectory was a pretty rocky one.

So to actually recognize that there was something of value, not only for myself, but also even for one or two other people, the writing just became this pathway, this doorway to finding, refinding my own voice and what I thought, how I think, what matters to me.

Alexandra: So this idea of coherent narrative-you said that was kind of a homing beacon for you.

Were you writing to find that coherent narrative? Is that the right way to describe it?

Gerette: There was, and continues to be a continual kind of opening that takes place. The written word is leading me to deeper and richer, more nuanced, and more relational richer, actually, understanding of not only myself but also of the world. So, yeah, I think that the writing just kept opening, kept, and continues to open these these doors. Does that answer your question?

Alexandra: It does. I’m just not understanding the connection between Dr. Siegel’s work and writing.

Gerette: The coherent narrative is where it actually intersects with therapy, with healing through therapy. So, when I was immersed in the cult, I believed that I understood who I was and what was most important, and how I could learn and grow, and what my role was in the world. But that was my cult identity that had actually been formed by my ex teacher.

He harnessed my dreams, and harvested various images and experiences from my dreams to get me to believe that I was someone who was other than who I was. I believed, like I said, I was a loser. I was someone who was so damaged and so filled with pride, that was part of my cult identity persona.

So that pride was something that he would continually berate me for. That I needed to become a humble servant of the animus in dream language. To have the experience of recognizing how detrimental that was, and how opposed to my true self Doug’s narrative was, leaves me with a well, then, who the heck am I?

The coherent narrative is an opportunity to tug at those strings and bring those questions and hold them long enough to discover what words might actually emerge, and the words that emerged … some of them were very confused. There’s no question. I mean, you’ve written a book too, you know. Like there are, there were swaths of my writing that when I was editing, I would go back into and say, “What the heck is that? But that, that, that writing process was part of finding the coherence.

Alexandra: Got it. That’s yeah. I get it now. Thank you.

Gerette: Thanks for the question.

Alexandra: When did it occur to you that you might want to write a book about this experience?

Gerette: I was about five years out of the cult, and I was sitting with a new friend and colleague, who was a writing coach. We were actually in a business group together, and just having a coffee chat, and she like just implored me to write. I was like, I don’t know.

I was really uncertain at first. We actually started a process together where she assured me that she would be able to support me in that process. She also had had her own experience of cultic involvement, so that being seen in that way was very important for me, and that was a big part of what helped me to realize the value of writing.

When I first started writing, I’m a diehard educator, so I wanted to write something that was going to help people. So I was writing. I was actually with her when we were talking about genre and stuff, and to realize that I was starting to write a self-help book, and I was like, “Oh no, that’s not what I want to be doing.” Because the cult that I was in was part of the self help movement, self help world.

I worked for a couple years on it in that way, and I was struggling to find my voice because I could feel like even in terms of what tense to use and how to form these questions and responses. One day, I was sitting with a fellow cult survivor, I call him a cult buddy. So I was sitting with him, kind of angsting about it, and he looked at me and he’s like, “Gerrette, what if you just wrote your story?”

Again, that was just like gongs, and then that was the turning for me. Then it was relatively easy, because then it wasn’t like I was trying to convince anybody of anything, or show that I was smart or had something of value. It’s like, oh, actually, this is what happened to me.

And as far as that coherent narrative goes, that’s where things really started to crystallize because I saw the different phases of the cultic involvement that I had experienced. Of course, my experience was going in as an adult, rather than someone who was born in, and so to reckon with those choices that I had made as an educated, caring woman in my small community here.

There was a lot of reckoning to do there, and what emerged was a deeper and richer understanding of the forces of indoctrination and the mechanisms of control, and of course that combined with I was very fortunate to find a good therapist within a year of leaving, and that helped me dramatically. I was also able to kind of weave that work into my book as well.

Alexandra: You’ve touched on something that’s always really fascinating for me. When I wrote my book, I learned a lot about the cult. I started writing it eight years after, and the way that I say it is by having to sort of go up to 30,000 feet and explain it to people so that they would understand, I learned a lot about what was going on with the manipulation by the cult leader.

Was there anything that came out of your writing your book that was like that?

Gerette: Oh, absolutely! Yeah, understanding dreams as something that is so deeply personal, and how a dream, they’re ours, you know. We have them at night. They come to us. They don’t belong to anybody. But how a dream could be manipulated.

That mechanism of the twisting of meaning, which is something that I see living in the United States, I see that in a deeply disturbing way in the in the current administration. I was actually writing my book during the first term of his administration, and Alexandra, I actually had the naive belief at that time that, oh, this is so great! People will see on such a big scale how narrative can be twisted. We get to recognize this. We get to see it. We get to wake up to it, and we get to say no to it.

I wrote one of my early blog posts was “Thank you, Donald.” Well, that was my own naivete, obviously, and yet there’s something there. There’s something about the recognition of how something of value, something of integrity, can be turned against us individually, and can be turned against us on a societal level. So there’s definitely a profound, I would say, interweaving today of what I have come to terms with in my own lived experience, and how that manifests today in the wider societal authoritarianism that is ravaging our dear planet.

Alexandra: What challenges did you experience writing this book? You’ve talked about one already about how you had a little bit of trouble finding your voice.

Was there anything else you encountered that was challenging?

Gerette: One thing that just pops up when you ask that question is the publishing process. I worked with a hybrid publisher. It was very thrilling and empowering for me to be accepted by this small hybrid press that doesn’t publish everything. They decide what they want to publish, and so it was affirming. It was really empowering to have them choose my pitch, and bigan to work with them.

There was a point in that process close to the end where we’re finalizing things like book cover and design, and those final details, the blurbs on the front and back, and all of that kind of stuff, and there was something really wrong with the art that was used for. It was actually the photography of the art that I had. I actually had someone design the art for it.

When I brought that to the attention of the publisher, they pushed back, or this one person in particular pushed back really hard, and started bullying me, and really like it was actually a recreation of the kinds of language that I experienced in the cult, and that was deeply destabilizing. It took me a little while to realize what was going on.

It also was an opportunity for me to see it. Name it, and say actually, it’s not going to happen that way. We are going to rephotograph the artwork because the color and the quality is terrible in what you’re proposing to use. It’s not right. I held my own, and that process was actually really affirming.

So that’s an example of a major challenge that ended up positive. There’s, I mean, there’s the process of promoting the book. I’d say that is oh, isn’t that fun? That’s a challenge. I discovered that I actually really love doing readings, but scheduling the readings and the organizational stuff I find challenging. Those are a few things that come to mind, anyway. I’m sure that there’s definitely more.

Alexandra: Those are some great examples.

What advice can you offer to those who are thinking about writing a book about a cult experience or a traumatic experience, about where they can begin, because you work with writers.

Where do you recommend someone start?

Gerette: It’s so individual, isn’t it? Because we all have our unique triggers, and we all have our unique openings. I think learning enough about oneself is most important.

I highly recommend finding a good therapist, someone who really understands coercive control. I know people who have been in therapy for years and years, but they don’t know the coercive control piece. And I feel like there’s still some arrested development where in a cultic environment, our development gets stopped. So having a therapist who really understands trauma and really understands the mechanisms of coercion can be incredibly helpful. As a starting place, I would definitely recommend that.

The other piece that is really big for me is understanding how cultic trauma is ultimately relational trauma, and so finding environments where there can be some relational healing is also very important. I didn’t know when I started Writing to Reckon, the classes and workshops that I offer, I didn’t know that that’s what I was offering.But over the years that has become more and more clear to me that what takes place in a small group where there is an understanding that everyone there has experienced some version of coercion or manipulation, or cultic abuse, or religious trauma.

There’s enough of a container that people get to find their own words and dare to share them with each other, and through that process, there is just this incredibly life affirming, like if I can use the word soul, soul growing experience in the personality. The whole being of the person gets to heal when you’re seen by people who get it, people who you don’t have to explain yourself to. There’s there’s an understanding there.

It’s an incredibly beautiful experience that I have the privilege of experiencing every Friday in the Writing to Reckon class, and then whenever I do workshops.

I’m not saying that you have to come to a Writing to Reckon class, although of course anybody is welcome to. It’s more finding the places where you can exercise that atrophied muscle of being in relationship with others. We’re a social species. We need each other to grow, to be the most human we can be. We need each other. We can’t do it in isolation.

Alexandra: You mentioned your Writing to Reckon classes.

What does reckoning mean to you and to your students?

Gerette: I love that question. Reckoning is an opportunity to get really honest with what is, what happened, what exists in the moment, and in a certain way, to hit the pause button on all the ideas that our brain, or the internet, or all of the books that we read, or our therapist, even or our family and friends, or even our most trusted ones.

It’s like putting a pause on all of that noise and just saying, “Okay, I see this moment. This moment.” What I’m talking about here, Alexandra, is that we work with a writing prompt, and that prompt. I mean, you don’t have to work with prompt. There’s no requirements at all. But we come together around a certain concept.

For example, I’m a nerdy educator, and it might be. So I’ve got all these people. I love the work of Daniel Kenneman, the book Thinking Fast and Slow. I love the work of Robert Chaldini, influence. Robert J. Lifton is my hero, who I came close to meeting, but unfortunately didn’t. So, I might take a little snippet of one of their concepts, and then bring it into something that’s happening in the world today that reminds me of the cultic experience.

It’s like there’s a little nugget that we kind of plonk in front of us for a moment, and then we see where that takes us. The opportunity of just trusting the words that come, and then having the next opportunity of sharing those words and hearing ourselves speak them out loud by reading our writing, reading what we.

Even the next step of actually hearing others who just heard our writing offer their feedback about what they loved, that’s what reckoning is. It’s like we’re taking a lived experience, exploring it, and also getting some feedback on it.

There is a kind of alchemy, actually, that happens in that experience that just allows us to become more autonomous through that process. I watch people become better writers through this really simple process. I watch people grow and integrate, and their voices strengthen. And you’ve experienced this too, I’m sure. Like it’s just an exquisite experience,

Alexandra: Something that comes up a lot on this podcast about creating and using creativity as a part of the healing process after a cult experience is how powerful telling the truth is. It sounds like reckoning in your definition is really telling the truth. That is built in there as well, and people have the experience of telling their own truth and finding their voice in that, and then getting positive feedback about it from others.

Gerette: Absolutely, absolutely. It’s just that this is what happened.

There’s something about the reckoning process that encourages us to strip away all those narratives of justification that we may have built in to just allow ourselves to kind of sleep at night. When we strip away those justifications or the narratives that other people had told us, or their explanations, or whatever, not only do we get to sleep better at night, we actually get to stand up a little taller, because we know who we are in an unfiltered way, and it’s amazing.

Alexandra: Oh, that’s so lovely.

Another part of your work is the Living Cult Free project. Tell us about that.

Gerette: Oh, great! Living Cult Free is a nonprofit dedicated to exactly that, to cult-free living, and specifically in finding supporting individuals through education and empowering them to autonomous living in whatever ways. We’re a small nonprofit and we have big hopes and are working towards really growing more and more.

One of the ways that we’re growing right now is actually through our partnership with a project that I started in September of 2024, which is offering a writing symposium. The writing symposiums bring speakers, all of whom are survivors and authors and writers in a variety of ways, meaning memoir writers, screenwriting, even graphic novelists come. So there’s a wide variety of of writing. Creative expression through the written word in all of its manifestations.

Living Cult Free has a scholarship fund, and so people get to attend the the symposium, the writing symposium. The name of that symposium is “Reclaiming Autonomy Through the Written Word for survivors of spiritual, religious, and cultic abuse”. Because of this beautiful partnership with Living Cult Free, we’re able to offer scholarships for those who would otherwise be unable to attend.

Scholarships have also been given to attend other educational resources so people can apply to receive a scholarship. It’s a beautiful organization that is dedicated to growing slowly and organically, because of the dangers inherent in creating an organization.

You laugh. Do you know anything about that?

Alexandra: Maybe something. Yeah.

Gerette: Exactly. We’ve been through a lot since the organization began back in 2020, but we feel there’s a wonderful board of directors. People can look at the Living Cult Free website and sign up to be on the newsletter.

What I should say is that that newsletter is twice a year. If people are interested in a more substantial newsletter, I do send out a weekly newsletter that is educationally oriented. So my nerdy educator self gets to play every week, and for me that’s one of the ways that I get to keep growing. I know that I went on three different tangents there, but I hope that’s all okay. I hope it made sense.

Alexandra: Tell us where we can find more about Living Cult Free.

Gerette: Living Cult Free can be found at livingcultfree.org.

Alexandra: Perfect.

And then the symposium. Tell us more about that.

Gerette: Reclaiming Autonomy Through the Written Word. We actually have one that’s coming up really soon. October 3 is the next one. The symposiums happen twice a year, and this symposium is featuring three different speakers. One is Dr. Laura Anderson, who is the founder of the Center for Trauma and Recovery Resolution, and she’s also the author of When Religion Hurts. Do you know that book?

Alexandra: That rings a bell with me.

Gerette: It’s a wonderful book. She is just an absolute fount of passion and education for survivors of coercion, especially those who have experienced religious trauma. I’m thrilled to have Dr. Laura Anderson speaking.

I also have Robin Boyle Lazier, who is a legal scholar who just wrote a book on the title is “Taken No More: Protect Your Children Against Traffickers and Cults”, and she has worked for many years with ICSA, the International Cultic Studies Association, and she’s on the board of ICSA. Robin has been a colleague for a number of years, and I am thrilled beyond measure to have her as a speaker.

Also, and the third speaker is Hoyt Richards, who is a one of the founding board members of Living Cult Free, and he is also a featured in an HBO documentary that just came out. I don’t know if you can get that documentary in Canada yet. I know a Canadian friend who found it somewhere, but it’s called “Bring Me the Beauties”.

It’s a really interesting three-part docu-series. And it’s actually just-I don’t know what it is right now-but a couple weeks ago, it was rated as HBO’s top documentary. It features his story, and Hoyt, what’s unique about him is that while he was immersed in a new agey spiritual cult, he was also a rising star in the modeling industry. He became one of the very first male supermodels.

That was happening while he was in the cult. It’s a very interesting story, and the real story is the human story of what has taken place since he left, how he has healed with his family, and how he is growing individually. So, to have Hoyt be a speaker, he is also a screenwriter, and has written a number of films, so he will be speaking more from the screenwriting perspective. So I’m thrilled to have him at the symposium as well.

Alexandra: Is there a website for the symposium?

Gerette: You would just go to my website, which is gerretbuglion.com, and click on symposium, and all the information is there.

Alexandra: Okay, perfect.

That’s a great segue into you telling us where we can find out more about you and your work.

Gerette: Well, that’s the spot, gerettebuglion.com.You can contact me, sign up for my newsletter. I am always happy to do what I call a 20 minute chat. You can schedule that any time because I’m always happy to not only just connect with fellow survivors, but also see if I can offer resources for people in whatever way that might be a good fit.

Then also to see if any of my services, the writing support that I offer, might be a good fit or not. I want to also mention that the symposium, I really try to keep it affordable for people, and it’s $39 for this three hour symposium that’s very rich in content. Like I mentioned, people can apply for scholarship funds too, and I do pay my speakers. That’s part of why that’s part of why I charge for it because and that’s really important to me because I value the time. So many of us were abused through volunteerism in our various cultic experiences. So I do pay my speakers as well as possible.

Alexandra: Oh, that’s amazing! Well, thank you, Gerette. I’m going to put links in the show notes to all those things so that people can find them going forward.

Thank you so much for being with me. This has been a really rich conversation. I’ve really enjoyed it.

Gerette: Yes, it’s been my pleasure. Absolutely, thank you so much.

Alexandra: You’re so welcome. Take care. Bye

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The post Writing to Reckon with a Cult Experience with Gerette Buglion appeared first on Alexandra Amor Books.

Kimber Young can trace her Mormon family lineage directly back to Brigham Young, the second president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The Mormon church, she points out, was her whole life and her whole family was involved.

And yet, somehow, Kimber was able to begin questioning the church doctrine and dogma while also retaining a sense of her own spirituality, which was so important to her. For anyone who’s ever left a high demand situation, you know that this is an extremely difficult needle to thread. It is one I was particularly interested to talk to her about.

In the introduction I talk about my experience with how challenging it is to question a group or religion that we’ve become bonded to (or, in Kimber’s case, were born into), partly because this questioning is so threatening to our identity. Who are we without the group? It takes courage to ask that kind of question and the other questions that arise when we’re challenging our beliefs.

Kimber Young is an artist, writer, and creator of Something for Sundays, a weekly Substack
newsletter and a monthly illustrated zine exploring religion, spirituality, meaning, and the big questions of being human. After growing up in a religious tradition and spending years questioning and reconstructing her beliefs, Kimber became fascinated by the ways people across cultures make meaning, practice spirituality, and understand the world around them. Her work is an invitation to stay curious, and build a spiritual life outside of the box.

Learn more about Kimber Young at SomethingForSundays.Substack.com

This episode of Creative Alchemy is supported by the audiobook version of my award-winning, Amazon best-selling memoir, Cult, A Love Story.

Readers call the book ‘compelling’ ‘gritty’ ‘intimate’ and ‘not boring’ – which is what an author loves to hear. I narrated the audiobook and if you have a Spotify premium subscription you can listen to the audiobook for free as part of that subscription at alexandraamor.com/spotify.

You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.

Show Notes

Growing up in the Mormon church

Some of the benefits of belonging to a tightly knit religious or spiritual organization

How and when Kimber’s questioning of the church began

Navigating asking questions of a high-demand religion without giving up God

How questioning a religion or spiritual group can threaten the parts of ourselves that we like

Processing and disentangling through writing

How posting writing publicly opened up conversations with family and friends

Dealing with pushback about public posts

Exploring other religions to see what might fit

How audacity is more important for artists than talent

Becoming comfortable with the mysteries of life and not knowing the answers

How writing can help us to learn to think critically

Resources mentioned in this episode

Kimber’s Substack, Something for Sundays

Kimber’s post Done, Not Perfect

East of Eden by John Steinbeck

The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron

Combatting Cult Mind Control by Steve Hassan

We don’t discuss it during the interview, but one of my favourite books about someone wrestling with the Mormon religion is Leaving the Saints by Martha Beck

Transcript of the interview with Kimber Young

Alexandra: Kimber Young, welcome to Creative Alchemy.

Kimber: Thank you for having me. I’m so excited to be here.

Alexandra: I’m so glad that you agreed to come and talk to me.

Give us a little bit about your background as we begin.

Kimber: I was actually born in Oregon, but mostly raised in Utah, and I grew up as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is the official name, but colloquially known as Mormons.

My background really is about that because it just informed every aspect of my life, and I come from Latter Day Saint descent on both sides. My great great great great uncle is Brigham Young, who brought all the people over to Utah, so it’s very ingrained into our family culture and identity, and my identity as well. And when I think about my upbringing, it really is a lot Mormonism.

Alexandra: I was just reading a post. I had a few minutes to kill before we started, and I was reading a post that you wrote recently on Substack, and you were talking about how devoted you really were. Like you were all in; it was everything to you. And we’re going to talk about what your recent exploration is in that direction of asking questions.

Tell us what that looked like for you being all in.

Kimber: That’s a great question. I’m trying to think of some good examples, but I would say a big example is I served a mission for the church.

If you don’t know what that is, it’s just going out. You get assigned a place and a language. You don’t get to choose, and you just spend for girls, it’s 18 months. For men, it’s two years of your life. Just the sole focus is teaching about Mormonism and trying to convert people to Mormonism.

I was a pretty effective missionary. I feel like I’ve always loved people, and I love talking to people. I was called to serve in New York City, speaking Mandarin Chinese. So, I am fluent in Mandarin, and I ended up minoring in it in college. And it’s a really big passion of mine.

I was in it my whole life, but that was a part where it just consumed my whole identity, and I think back of other examples of me being devoted, and I think about meeting people who weren’t members and not knowing how to interact with them, unless it was in a teaching setting.

It was so easy for me to be nice to someone and talk to them, and because I had something to share, but when it came to just regular conversation or not having this pressure. I would just always have this pressure of I need to share the gospel with them. I need to help them understand what they’re missing.

I remember one of my best friends who she assisted me a little bit on my journey, my faith journey. But she has never been Mormon. Didn’t know anything about Mormons, and when I met her, I remember being like, “Oh no, I’m goint to have to invite her to church.” It was just this feeling of like, and I did. I invited her to church within a few weeks of knowing her, and I think it was a really big part of my life. I helped a lot of people get baptized and join the church, and yeah, it’s interesting having conversations with those people now.

Alexandra: It makes sense if you were raised that way, and as you say, both sides of your family going way way back, that totally makes sense.

Kimber: Yeah, and all of our important family conversations at home, extended family, was always centered around church. That was like how we connected and how we could think deeply about things. And if we weren’t talking about church or gospel related stuff, it didn’t feel as important, and so that was really a big conversation topic in our home. I think part of the reason why I still continue to be really interested in religion.

Alexandra: I get it. The cult that I was in, I had that same feeling.

I hadn’t thought about that in years, but when we were together, we could talk about the deep topics, and that felt so important.

Kimber: It’s a cool feeling like you’re all on the same team, and you all have values and goals. And in Utah, I mean, it’s super integrated into the culture, and so it wasn’t just my family; it was very reinforced by my neighbors and the people in church every week.

I was praised for doing things that, looking back, I’m like we’re a little bit intense. I would go up and bear my testimony about not wearing a bikini and how that was so important to not wear a bikini, and I’d speak that to the whole congregation. And then afterwards they’re like, “Wow, you’re so amazing.”

I would talk about how I would tell people, you know, in Sunday school that I didn’t date boys who watched rated R movies, and everyone would praise me for that, and so it was a way of like I felt always in the right. And I think that’s kind of a damaging mentality to grow up with, as I’ve learned, to feel always that you know the answers to everything, and you get to teach everyone else. And I think even within Mormonism, I tried to be the very, very, very best example of that.

Alexandra: When did your questioning begin, or your exploration?

Kimber: I was thinking about this. There’s there’s a few points that stand out to me. One, I continued to study Mandarin Chinese in college, and I had an opportunity to go to a study abroad in China. I was pretty pretty much the only religious person, let alone Mormon person.

I was with a cohort of students that were around my same age, like early 20s, and we all went out and lived in China for two months during a summer, and it was then that I kind of started realizing.

I was just so far removed everything. I couldn’t go to church. There was no church. You weren’t allowed to talk about the gospel out there. I got this paper they sent me. The church sent me that’s like you cannot proselyte because that will get you in trouble with the Chinese government, and so just all these things were stripped away. I couldn’t proselyte, and I couldn’t really talk about my religion, and I also couldn’t attend or or practice in the way I was used to.

And on top of that, I was surrounded by all these people who were never Mormon and didn’t really know what it was. And I feel like that was a time I started to doubt some stuff, and I started to really think about things. I would just try to shut it away, try to shut it away. But I think that was the first time that I really started seriously thinking about things a little bit more.

The other thing that comes to mind is getting married. I got married when I was 25, which is pretty old for a Mormon. Everyone’s usually getting married at like 20 or 21. In Mormon theology, in order to get to heaven, like the highest level of heaven, you have to be married, and so that was so consuming in my mind.

Once I got married, it kind of felt like I’d done everything I needed to do, and I was 25, and so I’d checked off all the boxes. I’m like, great. I get to go to heaven now.

Suddenly I had all this mental space to think about other things, and I think my my partner feels the same way. Once we got married, and we moved away immediately from Utah, we moved to Texas actually, and then it kind of gave me some space, similar to China. It gave me space to start thinking about things, and that’s when the questioning began.

Alexandra: Is your partner Mormon too?

Kimber: Yeah, he is.

Alexandra: One of the things in your explanation that you talk about, we’re going to refer to your Substack quite a bit because that’s how I learned a lot about you. On the about page, you talk about navigating a high demand religion, which you would describe Mormonism as, and then but without giving up God. So tell us a little bit. That’s a big question.

Tell us a little bit about why these two things are important to you. Asking these questions, but also not giving up God.

Kimber: When I first started questioning the truth claims of the Mormon Church…I guess for listeners who don’t know, Mormonism is very much founded on these certain truth claims that the LDA, the Latter Day Saint Church, is the only true church on the face of the earth. That’s one.

Two is Joseph Smith was is the founder of the church in 1830 was called by God to be a prophet, and there’s a lot that goes into that. And then also the Book of Mormon is the word of God, and the Bible is the word of God as far as it is translated correctly. So, which is like you can only know if it’s translated correctly by if the church tells you it’s translated correctly.

I started questioning these truth claims and looking into the history. I’m a huge researcher, and so I started researching a ton, and I still haven’t stopped. There’s so much to learn. I think I’ve been on Substack about three years, which is when I started writing about this.

What was really scary to me about even being able to question the church was I was really afraid of losing the parts of myself that I really loved, and that was the spiritual side of things. I loved having conversations about the meaning of life, and I loved thinking about how God could work in my life, and that my life had purpose, and that there was that I wasn’t solely in charge of.

I don’t know how to describe it, but I wasn’t just left alone in this world. I had a benevolent being that cared for me, andand so it was really hard for me to start even questioning because I was scared of losing that special relationship I had with God.

I think a lot of people in my situation feel that way. They’re like, well, I see all these people who question Mormonism, and then they have no religion at all, and don’t do anything, and that’s not a bad thing. But it was just something that I’m like I was scared of losing it all, I guess.

When I started writing, I really tried to focus on on God and tried to focus on this relationship with God and feeling like I belong to God and and I’m going to figure this out with God and then all this other stuff, I’m going to sort through it

I guess it’s important to me because I used to think that the church, the Mormon Church, and God were synonymous,

Alexandra: Right?

Kimber: And now I’ve separated the two, and it’s a very clear distinction to me now. But I think for people who read my Substack who are Mormon or in a high demand religion, I want to be approachable for them in a way that’s like, look, if you have these beliefs you care about, you get to keep them. Your relationship with God doesn’t need to be contingent on a belief in an institution. So, anyway, that’s my answer to that.

Alexandra: That’s awesome, and that’s so clear. It is possible to pull those two things apart, and my experience is it can be painful and confusing, and really puzzling and it will really challenge a lot of our beliefs, of course. But it is possible.

I can see that in your writing that that’s what you’re doing.

Kimber: I think I was scared of the word deconstruction for a long time because I didn’t want everything to just fall, and so I used the word disentangling for that reason. I’m disentangling Jesus out of this, or I’m disentangling God out of this.

There’s goodness here that I want to keep. And it is really hard, like you said, to separate what you’ve been taught about who God is and what God cares about, and what you you feel to be more true as you like expand your worldview.

Alexandra: Yes, what’s important to you? What feels good to you, to the individual, to hang on to.

How has writing helped you to do this?

Kimber: I would say it’s helped me quite a bit. I think a lot of my processing happened through writing, and then I would clean it up a little bit and make it more palatable and less angry, I guess, and more empathetic, and I would post it.

I think what really helped me was connecting with other people who are going through the same thing, and even having people in my life who weren’t going through the same thing, being able to read it and realize it’s something I’m taking seriously.

I think in Mormonism there’s a lot of phobias around people leaving, and there’s things that leadership says about well, they are choosing the easy way, or they just want to drink coffee, or they want to wear cute clothes, and it’s like, oh, they’re so worldly. I think that for me, writing began as a way of like, hey, if you want to know what I’m actually thinking, you can go and read this.

I posted it on my personal Instagram and Facebook, and and my family started reading it, and I think it opened up a lot of conversations with family members, and I think it provided the space for people to be to realize like, I don’t know, they they could see that I want people to see this is not an easy thing. It is a really hard thing to leave this mindset and framework, and also like leave a religion that I really loved and devoted my life to.

It helps me internally process what was happening, and I also think it helped me find support in my life because if people want to know, they could just go read.

Alexandra: Right.

When they have done that, what’s the response been like?

Kimber: The response overall, I would say, is positive. I think I actually wrote about this a little bit a few weeks ago. I wrote a piece called Disentangling Jesus, and it was an essay. And I was just talking about how I’m having to leave behind my certainty to follow God and some of my family members saw as me leaving the church at that time.

I was still attending and everything. I almost accidentally said I was leaving, and so people thought that by me saying I’m leaving my certainty, they thought I was leaving my worship. I think that became kind of a scary thing for people in my life.

I think specifically, one family member, I actually did write about this later too, but one family member like sent me like super long texts about how I’m deceived by the devil and stuff like that. It’s classic, but you know it was validating to get it. I’m like, oh yay. It feels like a big deal.

So when everyone is like cool, you’re like oh man, it’s a big deal. So then when my family member kind of like fought for me, I was like okay, I feel now. But she was like, God lost one of His most valiant soldiers, and all this stuff, and I get it. It brings so much pain for people.

I would say at the beginning, I think it was a little bit more polarizing, but now people are more used to it. I also took some of my family members off my mailing list because I think it was causing them distress. So I’m like, this isn’t for you. You don’t need to read that every week.

Alexandra: I’m curious when you go back to Utah to see your family, which I’m assuming you do.

Do you go to church? Do you have those conversations at the dinner table?

Kimber: So we just actually moved back to Utah like a few months ago. I’m in Utah currently. We were living in Asia for about a year, and then just moved back. And there have been some conversations.

I don’t go to church normally, but I’ve been exploring different kinds of churches because I think there is something in me that misses the routine and stability that came with being part of a faith community, and so I’ve been going to a lot of different churches. I’ve been to Baptist and non-denominational and Unitarian Universalist, and I can’t remember all of them. Orthodox and Catholic and Episcopal and yeah, so many.

I’ve learned so much and it’s really fun and Methodist and whatever. I’ve learned so much from it and it’s been really fun. But as far as being here, we haven’t really been going to to the LDS Church. Sometimes, if my family is wanting to go, or there’s a special event, then we’ll go with them.

I think overall, it’s helped us have better conversations around things like that, where they don’t really try to persuade anymore, and I also don’t get so reactive about things.

Alexandra: That’s such an interesting position to be in because you’ve really announced, via your Substack, where you stand, and what you’re exploring and what you’re questioning.

So your family is aware. I just find that really fascinating.

Kimber: It’s interesting because when I think back to my childhood, it’s like yes, we were super devout, and my parents did this thing that I think really was good. I don’t really know why, but for this certain year, we all started going to different churches every week. We would go in addition to the Mormon Church.

Mormon Church was three hours, and then we would go to another church, and it was like another hour or two. So it was like five hours of church. But all my siblings and I, we all loved it. We loved seeing how different people were.

I think my parents do have a sort of openness because they are curious. They’ve modeled this curiosity towards other faith traditions. Even though my parents are very devout and strong in their own beliefs and and practices, I do think there’s a certain level of of acceptance and openness and that, and it hasn’t been like that from the beginning, but has turned into that.

Alexandra: That’s really cool of them, and that you didn’t lose them because of this.

Kimber: I know. I think people have different experiences, and right now in Mormonism, there’s a lot of people leaving, and so it’s becoming way more common for families to learn how to navigate it in healthy ways, and I think that’s really positive.

But I had an aunt and uncle who left when I was a teenager, and their experience was totally different in my larger family. I think they’ve been great at being able to support me, and sharing like, yeah, that’s it’s really hard. Like we get it.

It’s just been kind of a funny dynamic of being with them and being like, wait, like what side am I on? It’s almost like there’s a divide in my family. Like am I on the believing or not believing? And I feel like I’m somewhere in the middle, but it’s just interesting to. I don’t know. It just totally changed how I view my family as well. It’s interesting.

Alexandra: What you said about exploring other religions, I love that too. When I left the high demand group that I was in, it was actually a therapist who recommended I do that because I was experiencing a lot of loss and grief around not having a faith community or a spiritual community, and so yeah, did a similar thing.

I went to Anglican Church and Unitarian Church and United Church, and tried all different kinds of stuff. It was a really good experience, like yours. I really, really enjoyed it, and what lovely people I met, and and then I think, just to talk about myself for two seconds, the caveat I had in the end, I realized that any time spirituality becomes institutionalized, like any time there becomes this group think, I guess you might call it, about what God is or what spirituality is, it put me off.

In the end, I just couldn’t be a part of any sort of religion. But it was really fun exploring for sure.

Kimber: I think for me, it’s helped me be okay with the weirdness of Mormonism. I always kind of felt the shame, like, oh wow, being a Mormon is so weird. There’s always weird things, like rituals and doctrines and whatever. And then I go to like another, like a Catholic mass, and I’m like, why? Wow, there’s kind of some weird stuff there too, and I don’t even know all the ins and outs. Eeven like some of these more chill. I guess I don’t know if you want to say chill, but like like Unitarian Universalists that are more like accepting, and I go there. They have some weird stuff too.

So for me, it’s been very validating and helps me feel okay, like we’re all kind of weird. I think it’s because, like you said, we’re trying to capture this feeling and this essence, and trying to make it into an organization, and that’s really gets messy. And yeah, when humans are involved, it just gets more complicated because humans are complicated.

Alexandra: Absolutely. And you’re so right. If you didn’t know anything about Catholicism and you observed a mass, I mean, you’d just think it was the wackiest thing. And yet, as you were saying that, it feels like simply because it’s been around for so long, it’s just become normal,.

Mormonism hasn’t been around that long, so perhaps that’s why it feels a little kookier.

Kimber: I think about that a lot. Where I’m like, okay, Mormonism is only, however, like what, 200 years old, maybe a little less. And then I think about that like I don’t know, just in thousands of years from now, how are we going to? But also, Mormon is like we’re so close to the founding story because it only happened in 1830, right? So it’s like we have documents.

We have people’s affidavits and testimonies and whatever court, whatever. There’s so much to Mormon history, but I’m able to read all these primary sources, and that’s just something that we don’t have when it comes to Christianity or Judaism. We have these traditions that have been passed down from years and years and years, but we’re not engaging with the source material.

I think about that with Mormonism as like, this is how all religion started, and now it’s just become more normalized, or is this like a special case? I don’t know.

Alexandra: It’s such a good question. I think I think we’ve hit on something there.

I wanted to ask: your Substack is called Something on Sundays, correct?

Kimber: Something for Sundays.

Alexandra: Something for Sundays. Thank you. Is there something about that format that really works for you in terms of the writing that you’re doing? What I mean by that is you could have chosen to write a book or to host a podcast, or so.

What is it about Substack that works for you?

Kimber: I think overall, what I really have liked about being on Substack is I’ve always written a blog since I was like 12. I just have always been writing something. My Substack used to be called Kimber Was Here, and I was compiling all of my writings, like poems and past blog posts. I’ve kind of just been in different spaces on the internet, and I’m like, okay, I’m just going to put them all together on this substack.

Then I started writing more regularly about some of the traveling and everything that we’re doing, and then when all this questioning started happening, it just became a natural outlet for me. I majored in English, so I’ve just really liked writing.

I chose the name Something for Sundays because Sundays was a very special day to me all growing up. It was always filled. I always knew what I was going to be doing on Sunday, and I had a very specific routine of going to church and coming home and taking a three-hour nap and then eating family dinner.

Then when I started to distance myself from the church, I found like you were describing a loss and a grief around Sundays. Like what am I going to do this Sunday, or what am I going to go to a different church, am I just going to lay in bed? Am I going to listen to a sermon or online? There’s so many different things you do.

So I started to write Something for Sundays as kind of a thing of being like, okay, this is something for my Sunday, and it’s something for your Sunday if you’re in the same position as me. It’s kind of turned into something special.

Every week I give little recommendations; something to read, something to watch, something to try, something to make. I’ll choose a few each week, and so that gives people something to do on Sunday. With Substack. I also have been really enjoying doing more illustration, and so I create illustrated essays. I do them like I try to do it once a month. They take a little bit more time, so it just depends.

I started illustrating some of my experiences, and I started exploring different ways of communicating what I was going through, and also just what I’ve been thinking about. I think Substack has a platform that can hold all of that, which I like.

Alexandra: I was reading your post from yesterday. We’re recording this on a Monday, and it was about a sidewalk chalk event that you had done with your sister, which was really cool. The post is called “Done, not perfect.”

You talk about how completing things and how doing them is more important than making them perfect. And I really encourage people to read it because it was really deep and thoughtful about what it means to be perfect versus good. You talk about that and refer to East of Eden, which you say is one of your favorite books.

The thing that really resonated with me was how easy it can be to not try to do something because we think it has to be perfect. I just wanted to bring that up and point it out because I think when people are new to writing, they can stop themselves because they think it’s not going to be good enough, it’s not going to be perfect, and that kind of thing.

One of the things I like about blogs and places like Substack is that it feels like there’s less expectation to be perfect. Would you agree?

Kimber: Yeah, for sure. I think because of the frequency of it, if you choose to write weekly or monthly, like there’s definitely times where I’ve been like, this is done, not perfect. Just send it out there.

I think kind of what you’re saying, like feeling not good enough to start or not good enough to to put it out there. One of my favorite books is East of Eden, like you mentioned. Another favorite book is The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. Have you done that? It’s just amazing.

I did it last year, and she talks about audacity is what brings an artist to the center stage faster, or even more so than talent. It’s all about audacity, and that has just really resonated with me in all areas of my life. When I was reading that book, I applied to Harvard Divinity School, and I did all these things.

I had all this audacity of I’m just going to try it. I’m going to paint. I’m going to do this and that. I’m going to write, and I think there’s all these things I did and I tried that I would not have tried if I was so caught up in it has to be perfect.

Something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently is I think I just try to intellectualize everything. I’m intellectualizing like okay I want to paint an oil I want to get into oil painting for example and then so I’m going to watch a bunch of tutorials and I’m going to sign up for a really expensive class. I’m going to research all the materials to buy, and then I’m going to buy them, and then I’m going to buy better ones.

It’s like I keep procrastinating the actual doing of it, and I feel like that’s totally how it can be with writing too. I started buying writing courses and started buying like books and all this stuff, and then I kind of stopped writing as frequently because I started feeling like, wait, I’m not doing all these things that they’re suggesting, and I’m not having a perfect writing routine.

I think there’s value in those kind of books, like teaching you how to write or teach you how to be creative, but I think when you use that as a form of procrastination from starting the actual thing is when, at least for me, I start to get really anxious. It’s like all this pent up potential with no outlet, and so that’s what I have to think about.

I think with writing, like you’re saying, it is a really cool way to process. Same with drawing, like process and just make visual and make real what’s happening internally. I definitely feel it’s important to just just do it, just go for it.

Alexandra: Exactly, and we can’t get better until we do. So if we prevent ourselves from doing the thing, then we won’t ever improve.

Kimber: I fall into that a lot. I don’t know your whole experience with the cult you were a part of, but at least in Mormonism, there’s a very high focus on perfection, and it’s like they are constantly telling you like you will never be perfect, but you have to try. I get that. But then, if you’re hearing that, and that’s the core message every single week for 20 years, it just gets in you, and it manifests itself in the culture a lot. Plastic surgery is like the highest per capita in Utah.

Alexandra: Oh wow!

Kimber: Yeah, so it’s like that’s just an example. GLP one, plastic surgery, all these cosmetic things. I think it’s a reflection of this belief system because everyone is yeah. Anyway, we can go into Utah culture, but I do think it’s an internal thing for sure, like perfectionism.

Alexandra: My experience with the cult I was in was there was an expectation of perfection, but the goalposts were always moved, so you could never actually get there, and any fault that occurred was always with the person, the individual.

Kimber: Totally. Have you ever read “Combating Cult Mind Control” by Steve Hassan.

He talked about that, about how that’s like a common thing that cults will do is like make it be your fault, and I’ve been thinking about that a lot. What’s the use of that?

The use of that is they create a problem, and then they also create the solution, right? And that’s like a common marketing tactic. I think about I see all these billboards everywhere of plastic surgery and it’s like you know it’s like they create a problem like oh my nose isn’t like this turned up thing you know and then it’s it makes me feel like oh maybe I need to get a nose job because I have the solution as well. I think I think a lot of high demand religions work in that in that same framework

Alexandra: Yes. I think that’s a classic manoeuvre for sure.

I had this question that I had sent you in advance about what you’ve learned about yourself and your beliefs. We’ve talked about that a little bit with this exploration that you’ve been on. Is there anything else you can think of that really come to light for you?

Kimber: I think the biggest thing I’ve learned about myself, my beliefs. The biggest thing I’ve learned about myself is that I can show up for something again and again, week after week, for a few years, and I can be really consistent. I think that’s something that I’ve learned about myself. I didn’t know I was really capable of that.

I’m really proud of of being able to show up for myself and show up for the people who read Something for Sundays, and I think as far as beliefs go, I think I’ve come to really value uncertainty in the sense of, I really value the mystery of life, which was definitely not the case before.

I think when I was really in Mormonism, like really fully in it, I felt better than everyone because I knew everything about the inner workings of the world and the universe. Now I’ve really become more comfortable with this mystery and being curious. I think I really value people who are curious as well, and kind of what you were talking about when you were saying that you went to the different faith traditions and ultimately decide that wasn’t for you.

I think that I get that because whenever I’ve gone somewhere and they say something like so definitive, it instantly is like a red flag for me. Where I’m like, wait a second. How do they know that? What are they basing it on?

I’ve really learned how to think critically, and I think writing has helped me with that. That process of if I’m going to write something, and you can kind of see it if you read my really early things. I’m a little bit more preachy, which is just how I was back then, and I’ve definitely through the years have become a lot more like less willing to just be like, well, this is what I believe, and this is why it’s right. It’’s been yeah, it’s been interesting.

Alexandra: That’s so cool.

We are just about out of time, so as we start to wrap up, is there anything we haven’t touched on that you’d like to share with our listeners?

Kimber: I think one other thing is recently I started doing a zine, so it’s like a mini magazine, and it has illustrations and writing in it, and that’s been a fun new way, a new creative pursuit that I’ve done. That’s kind of brought Something for Sundays into a physical subscription form.

I did that one because I didn’t want to turn on paid subscriptions on Substack, but I was getting to the point where it was taking a lot of time, and so I was trying to think of a new way to maybe supplement some of my time with money and and so I started this this zine. It’s been really fun and exciting.

I send it out to people all over all over the country and actually internationally as well. So that’s something I think is my creative pursuit recently. That is fun.

I think along those lines, I would want people to know that you don’t need to box yourself into one thing. If you are creative in one way, you can be creative in another way too. Like if you really like singing and playing music, that doesn’t mean you’re not going to enjoy painting. You don’t have to be good at it. You can just try it, and you might be surprised that that can actually assist in your music. That’s just an example of I think as you use your creativity, it benefits other areas of your life as well.

Alexandra: Well said. Yeah, that’s amazing. All right.

Please tell us where we can find out more about you and your writing.

Kimber: My Substack is Somethingforsundays.substack.com, and I’m also on Instagram, Something for Sundays, and my mail club is something for Sundays club. So it’s all something for Sundays related.

If anyone is interested in the zine, something for Sundays club is where you can learn more about that. Those are my main three places that I update.

Alexandra: Awesome. I’ll put links in the show notes to those three things.

Kimber: Thank you so much.

Alexandra: Well, thank you, Kimber. This has been a delight. It’s been so nice talking to you.

Kimber: Nice talking to you too. Thank you for having me.

Click here to grab your complimentary copy of the Creative Alchemy journaling handbook.

The post Disentangling Religion from Personal Spirituality with Kimber Young appeared first on Alexandra Amor Books.

Vancouver Island comedian Patti Savard also happens to be a transgender woman. She brings the subject of gender transition into her comedy. So the biggest question I had for her was, how do we laugh at something that is often perceived as being a very serious subject?

I think you’ll appreciate her answer.

In the introduction, I mention the unique early morning writing practice that Patti talks about during the interview. And I touch on how this conversation made clear to me how important it is for all of us to allow our creative expression to be what it wants to be. We don’t need to fit ourselves into a predetermined type of creativity. By its very nature, creativity is freedom and expresses itself in infinite ways. We do ourselves a favour when we allow that expression to take any form it wishes.

Patti Savard is a Canadian comedian and comedy cabaret performer based in the Comox Valley, British Columbia. Blending stand-up, storytelling, theatrics, and song, Patti creates bold, heartfelt performances that explore identity, belonging, and the strange hilarity of being human.
Her one-woman comedy cabaret, Life in Transition, combines razor-sharp wit with disarming honesty as Patti shares stories of living authentically in spaces one wouldn’t expect acceptance of a transwoman.
Patti has performed at the Vancouver Just For Laughs Festival and was selected to present Life in Transition at the Glasgow International Comedy Festival, where the show has been nominated for the Sir Billy Connolly Spirit of Glasgow Award. Her work resonates with audiences through humour, vulnerability, and a joyful celebration of authenticity.

You can learn more about Patti at her Instagram: pattisavard18

This episode of Creative Alchemy is supported by the audiobook version of my award-winning, Amazon best-selling memoir, Cult, A Love Story.

Readers call the book ‘compelling’ ‘gritty’ ‘intimate’ and ‘not boring’ – which is what an author loves to hear. I narrated the audiobook and if you have a Spotify premium subscription you can listen to the audiobook for free as part of that subscription at alexandraamor.com/spotify.

You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.

Show Notes

Performing stand-up for the very first time with three days notice

Using comedy as a way to seek acceptance

Developing a joke writing practice

Receiving mentoring around comedy craft

Getting honest feedback from a live audience

How comedy is about connection with the audience

On writing jokes about the potentially serious subject of gender transition

Changing minds and hearts through comedy

How working through comedic material to make it authentic brings healing

Using dreams as a springboard for creative expression

How ‘weird’ is a beautiful expression of humanity

Finding healing in helping others

Resources mentioned in this episode

Iconic Canadian tv show, Corner Gas

Syd Bosel, comedian

Eddie Murphy’s stand-up comedy film, Delirious

Transcript of the interview with Patti Savard

Alexandra: Patti Savard, welcome to Creative Alchemy.

Patti: Thank you for having me.

Alexandra: It’s so good to see you.

Tell a little bit about who you are and a bit about your background.

Patti: All righty. I am a comedian from the Comox Valley up in Courtenay. I’ve been doing it for going on five years now. I’ve performed in Toronto’s Massey Hall. I’ve performed in Just for Laughs, Vancouver.

This year, I performed in Glasgow, Scotland, at the Glasgow International Comedy Festival, and I was nominated for the Sir Billy Connolly Award, which was kind of cool. I absolutely love that man’s comedy. What a fantastic storyteller! So, to have a nomination associated to that guy’s name really feels good.

Other than that, I am a carpenter. I run my own business because I’m a Canadian comedian, and five years at this game. I don’t know how to tip the scales, but I don’t want to be a starving artist. And since I have skills, I am happy to use them. I’m a parent also, and I also have to make sure that I’m taking care of their financial obligations that fall on me.

Alexandra: I hear you about the starving artist part. I don’t have the answer to how you can tip the scales either. I don’t know about that.

Patti: It’ll come all things in time. I don’t know, or I don’t know. I keep doing goofy stuff at work too, so at least I’m not getting lost in the process.

I bought a a Kool Aid Man costume, and if you go on my Instagram, you’ll see a video of me running through a wall wearing that suit as I’m doing demolition, which I have written off on my taxes as a business expense because it’s for comedy purposes and for business purposes, it’s my demolition suit now.

Alexandra: Exactly. Oh, that’s great. I wonder if you could write that off twice. Wouldn’t that be good?

Patti: I think that’s illegal, but um, but okay.

Alexandra: I saw you first when you gave a comedy show coordinated through a group that I belong to called Island Queers and Allies Who Care, and that was my first exposure to your work. And one of the things that really struck me was that you talk about your transition in comedy, and so I’m just wondering how that started.

Let’s start at the beginning. Tell us about when you felt comfortable to start doing that.

Patti: Sounds good. I actually started performing stand-up comedy right after transition, relatively immediately. It was a way of trying to see in front of a large group of people how I would be received as a human, but also, I think the entire process is very funny.

I was born in 1983, and so the the concept of transitioning from one gender to another is ludicrous in terms of all the beliefs that I was taught and everything, and so I think the whole act of it is brilliantly funny. I thought using comedy as a way of trying to force people to receive me was very effective, and it worked out. Yeah, so it it all started right at that moment.

Actually, as COVID came to an end, it was the very first event to happen in the Comox Valley. Right at that moment when we were allowed to have, I think up to 100 people in a space or something like that. Somebody organized an open mic comedy night, and I went and did it. And it was packed. There were literally exactly 100 people there, and I got really great laughs, and I became addicted.

Alexandra: Had you always been a fan of comedy up to that point?

Patti: Definitely, but not so much of a follower. I’d actually never been to a comedy show before.

Alexandra: You’re kidding! Oh my god! Wow!

Where did you begin? How did you start writing jokes and that kind of stuff?

Patti: Well, that week, I guess. In comedy, there’s the rule of threes, which is you know there’s certain jokes that you tell them like series of three things together, and usually works out if it’s a good joke.

I was working at a brewery in Comox. That’s another story on its own. I was having a bad day, and I just kind of joked around to myself because I was working by myself to try to make my day lifted, and I was like, “That’s kind of funny. Maybe I should write it down, because maybe if I’m having a bad day, I could just look at these stupid things I’ve written, and just cheer myself up.”

About an hour later, an older gentleman was walking past the brew house on the sidewalk and to my open garage door that I had there, and I started just goofing around with the guy, and he was like, “You’re so funny. You should be on Corner Gas.” Which, as a Canadian, is a very strange reference. It’s very directly Canadian. But again, it was like, “Oh, you think I’m funny too?”

And then my ex wife, well, we were married at the time. She came into the brew house another hour beyond that, and she said, “Hey, did you hear that? There’s an open mic comedy night happening at the other brewery in Courtney.” She told me that because being like, “Hey, that means we can have events now too,” but I took it as I should go perform at that.

So I wrote down everything that I thought was funny, and then three days later, I was up on the stage.

Alexandra: Really, holy cow! And you said you got lots of laughs, so it was received well.

Patti: It was, yeah. I mean, considering I only had a few days to write the jokes, they went okay. But like I said, the whole transition process is funny. So those jokes were up in the old vault. I just had to pull them out.

Alexandra: It was stuff that you had been thinking of that was absurd for a while. It sounds like.

Patti: Yeah, because I think life is a joke. Everything is a joke, and and and if you just have to see it.

Alexandra: I want to talk about courage then. Being creative can require a lot of courage, and it’s something that people can avoid at times because it feels like maybe it requires too much of them, too much courage, too much exposure, that kind of thing.

Did you feel like it required courage from you to do this, or did you just take the leap?

Patti: No, because you know, like telling my mom that I was trans and my dad, and like, oh yeah, my stepdad, just like my all my family, that was so hard, and so after once that was done, I was just like, I can do anything. Got it.

Alexandra: Everything pales in comparison to that. It sounds like.

Patti: Mind you. If you threw me in the middle of the ocean, without a boat, I’d probably be losing it.

Alexandra: Do you have a practice? So that first show was really put together quickly.

Did you develop a practice after that of writing jokes?

Patti: Yes, I did. Fortunately, some of the other comedians were new to the Comox Valley and looking to start a comedy scene here. And since I had that brewery space, not the one that we did the open mic at, but the one that I was working in. I said, “You know, we could run a regular occurring open mic to try to get more people out and and start a bit of a scene here.”

We started doing that – a monthly open mic, and then eventually a monthly showcase. And so for me, it gave me a reason to write because you know, once a month, I got to get up on the mic, and it’s the same people, so I can’t just say the same jokes every time, which is also a trap. I don’t want to say that that’s a good idea for new comedians.

I think the best thing to do is write your best five minutes, and that means perform that same five minutes over and over and over again, so that you can crack the code on making it really funny. But it also is a good idea to write some different stuff here and there. And so I kind of did that. I wrote a few different five-minute sets.

About a year later, there was a comedy competition in Vancouver, and I decided to enter it. And then one of my good friends, Syd Bosel, who is a local comedian here, she’s kicking it. But in the comedy scene right now, she’s on CBC Debaters. She’s super good. She was just like, hey, why don’t you send me what you think is your best seven minutes, and I will go over it. Then we’ll go over it together, and we’ll work it down to what your best five is, because she wants to get more into comedy mentoring.

I could totally use the mentorship, and so she showed me a few techniques that I’ve taken with me to this day in terms of writing, and yeah, I’m grateful for that. Absolutely.

Alexandra: Sometimes I hear about comedians talk about working out stuff on stage. I heard Tig Notaro say that just recently. She figures out what she’s doing and what’s funny while she’s on stage.

It sounds to me like you maybe do a bit more preparation beforehand. Is that true?

Patti: Yes, that is true. I am definitely a relatively scripted performer. A lot of us are, and the key or craft behind being a scripted person is to make it look like it’s not scripted.

That being said, if you learn your stuff really well, that also allows you to sit in the zone, which is basically what Tig is referring to, where you just are in that full zone of comfort, and you just allow to come to you what comes. If I get up there without a book on the stage, so I don’t look at my. We often throw a book out there, especially if it’s an open mic or something like that, where you’re working out new stuff, just to make sure you hit your beats.

You don’t read your full word for word. You just name the joke. You write the joke, then you name it, so you can see the name. So, if you ever find a book on the streets and it’s just random statements that make no sense from one to the other, and they’re a little bit inappropriate, it’s probably a comedian stage book.

I tend to be a little bit more on the scripted side, but the more that I’ve gotten to know my material, the less scripted I’m becoming. If that makes any sense, because I already know the jokes and I know what I want to say next. But sometimes in the moment, because of an interaction with somebody in the audience, for instance, it makes me say something different, and then that makes me want to change the direction, and then I say something else instead, and I will fall back into the jokes.

I’m sure Tig does it too. I mean, there’s no way that she’s entirely unscripted. What she’s referring to is when you go up on stage and you already have written the things in your head, and you just go you pull it from your head. But that’s a long way of saying that.

Alexandra: Was this something you could ever imagine yourself doing when you were younger?

Patti: Yes, actually, I remember when I was a little kid.

Firstly, when I was a kid, I knew that I always wanted to be a girl, like from the age of four, basically. But I believed that to be impossible, and that it was actually that belief system or that thought that I had was potentially a mental illness, and so if I did not allow myself to indulge in it, then I would not become mentally ill.

I remember watching Eddie Murphy’s Delirious and just finding it so funny, and just just being jealous of him doing that. I almost pictured myself almost the opposite of being like an Arnold Schwarzenegger muscular kind of person up on stage and making jokes about it being like you wouldn’t expect somebody that to be funny because they just look so big and brash and all that kind of stuff, which is I suppose a touch ironic. If that’s actually ironic, no, I don’t really know what ironic actually is. It doesn’t matter.

Schwarzenegger is funny, actually, brilliantly funny. But so, but anyhow, that that that was, yeah, I did think about it, but I was like, never. I’ll never do that. Never in a million years.

Alexandra: It sounds like you admired the artists that were doing it at the time.

Patti: Oh gosh, yes. Eddie Murphy was one of my favorites, and then Robin Williams, later like Sarah Silverman, and Mitch Hedberg eventually became my favorite of the favorites. Now these days, John Mulaney. But truthfully, I don’t really watch much stand-up. If I’m not performing on stage with you, I probably haven’t seen your material. I just don’t watch things in general.

Alexandra: How did you learn? So you did that very first open mic night three days out, after you had the idea, and then what? Did you watch instructional videos on YouTube or read books?

Patti: Well, practice, write a joke, practice the joke, go up on stage and do the joke. Take the honest feedback from the audience. Go home, work, rework what didn’t work. Take it back to the stage. Take the honest feedback, and do that until the joke murders.

Alexandra: Wow. Okay, I’m just reflecting on being a novelist and someone who writes books, I never really have to expose myself to that kind of immediate feedback from people. That takes courage, I think.

Patti: We thrive on it. That is what the art form is. Every once in a while, you get a gift from the universe. You get a joke where you write this, you perform it, and it just crushes, and you never have to change the words. That’s like a a gem.

I actually have a joke that I wrote three years ago that always did pretty well, but I I knew it needed something different, and actually, just last week, I reworked the joke entirely, and all of a sudden, now it’s doing what I want it to do, and that’s three years.

Alexandra: Wow! I didn’t realize one could do that. That’s really extraordinary.

Patti: Well, it’s really about the audience connection, and so that’s I think why we write this way is because comedy is very subjective. What is funny to you might not be funny to everybody else, and so if a joke falls apart, it’s usually lacking in about in three things: clarity, contrast, or shit. What’s the other? It’s 3c’s. It makes it easier to remember, but it’s not working for me right now. Clarity, contrast, and compression.

If you’re too wordy, sometimes you know somebody goes on a bit, right? So usually one of those things is what makes a joke land. If it’s tight in all those three areas and context, there’s a fourth C, but I don’t know whatever C’s. Just we’ll just throw C words at it.

Alexandra: We’ve talked about feedback, and one of the things I wanted to ask you was what the reception has been like from people about you joking about what can be quite a serious subject: transitioning from one gender to the other.

What’s that been like?

Patti: Well, therein lies the beauty of comedy, and that and one of the C’s contrast. What beautiful contrast it is, right? It is a very touching, emotionally very personal subject, and so it gets the audience’s attention because not a lot of people are very familiar with it.

These days, it seems like most families have somebody in that or who’s trans; that could be a cousin or whatever. Maybe not in your household, but it’s becoming more common now. Not because we are changing in that respect, but because we’re feeling more safe to come out, and so our very degrees of transness are now rising to the surface.

That being said, it gets the audience’s attention. It does cut. The hard part for me is when it’s not working. If I have an audience that’s tightening up, and if I can’t shake them I just stand up there and I basically tell really personal things to people, and they give me nothing back. And that, well, as a comedian, you get used to it because everybody bombs.

Alexandra: Yes, yes, of course. I think of the performance that I saw that I mentioned earlier. I would consider that audience to be kind of warm. They were all involved with or aware of the organization that was organizing it, and that it was queer focused.

In that performance, you talked about performing in bars in Taber, Alberta. That must require another set of skills.

Patti: Yes, and I think my first year into comedy, I probably would have cried after performing in places like that. Because I approached it like well, it was last summer that I was in in rural Alberta, Red Deer, Taber, a bunch of places, but you know rural, on the more conservative side of Canada.

My strategy going in, well, I have what a lot of well, there’s a term referred to as passing privilege that that we use. Where I mean, those who can’t see me, I don’t know if this is a visual podcast or just audio, but if they can’t see me, my voice might give me away a bit, but not necessarily. And so, I have strengthened my non-trans subject matter material.

When I get up on the stage, I just get up and I get them to like me as a comedian first. And the longer I can go without having to touch on the subject, the more trust I get with the audience, and then I cut their legs off. And so I then I out myself as trans, and then I have to pick up the pieces again.

99% of the time it works out, and it’s because you like me already. So if you don’t like me now, there’s something up with you. And this is something I’m starting to now strengthen a little bit. Now is when I out myself at this point, if the audience still tightens up on me, as long as the material was working before I outed myself. Then I can start crowd working them, and just being like, “Oh, you look really uncomfortable. How are you feeling right now?”

And then lean on the other audience members who are laughing, and try to pull their laughter towards that person, so hopefully they can crack loose. It’s interesting. It pulls some interesting energies out of the room, but you know, comedy’s all about discomfort and then cracking it.

Alexandra: You’re making me realize, and I had just had no idea how many skills are required really in what you’re doing. There’s the courage of getting on stage, which for some people like me would be virtually impossible.

And then you’re talking about there’s so many other skills that you’re having to use, and I imagine those have gradually built up over time.

Patti: Yeah, with the performance skills, definitely. But a lot of those are life skills too. Just like navigating this world as a human being. I feel like I give credit to whatever it is that you do in life, whenever you take on your next endeavor, because something else that you’ve already done will give you a skill that you didn’t realize was associated to that craft.

Thinking about everything that you do in life, pull all those things together, and I think it helps and it goes a long way. Comedy’s not easy. Drag queens get so many tips. I think comedians need to get tips too. We have to figure out how to do that.

Alexandra: It’s not fair. That’s very true.

Do you feel that comedy is healing?

Patti: 100% for me, and absolutely for sometimes audiences that I’ve gotten to perform to, which is really neat.

Alexandra: Has anyone ever approached you after a show and said that you’ve changed their mind about things.

Patti: That exact statement which you just said. Yes, I was in Salmon Arm, British Columbia, and there was a couple in the front row. They were definitely on the redneck side. You know, but I really joked around with them a lot, and I mean, my dad is such a redneck, you know. So I get rednecks. There’s definitely a tan on my neck too.

At the end of the show, the woman came up to me and she said, “I gotta say, I’ve had a lot of negative experiences with trans people, and you changed my mind today. The way that you brought up your material was just so approachable to the subject.” I think I’m using better English than she did. She was a very confrontational human.

I imagine everybody in the world that you encounter seems to be a mirror of yourself to some degree. So, I imagine if she had negative encounters with trans people, it’s probably the way she approached it in the first place, and vice versa with the people that she was encountering.

That kind of thing happens often, and it’s my favorite part, especially in the rural parts of the country. Usually, I get discussions that are just so raw and real, or somebody asking me questions.

I had a grandmother come up to me afterward, and I was so worried about doing this show in the first place because it was a bar, and I’m like, okay, I’m gonna do a few dirty jokes tonight. But there was a table of very old women that were clearly out for a nice night, and I did a few off color jokes about anatomy and things, and I was like, “Oh my God, I can’t believe I did that.”

At the end of the show, one of them came up to me, and she was just like, “Well, firstly we loved your show.” And I’m like, “Yes, you did. You guys laughed a lot.”

And she’s just like, “But you know, I have a grandchild who’s trans, and I’ve been afraid to ask a lot of questions. And so just the stuff that you said like really made me feel more comfortable about how to approach things.” I love that a lot.

Alexandra: It feels like soft diplomacy almost, doesn’t it?

Patti: I like that term.

Alexandra: That’s great. Oh, and good for her. Getting back to the subject of courage; good for her for having an open mind and for acknowledging her grandchild and wanting to know more.

Patti: Yes, and this is another fascinating thing too-a beautiful thing, really-is one of the main reasons why I tour the rural aspects of the country.

Firstly, I have the privilege, so I can kind of go undercover until I decide to out myself.

But, I believe that there’s more love out there than the news wants you to know. And so far, I see nothing but this come forward. I definitely have the odd encounter, which isn’t awesome, but that’s few and far between, and the majority of people are like opening their minds, and their hearts, really. So it is nice.

Alexandra: We touched on healing.

Do you feel like there are specific things about your experience or your feelings that have been healed by working on this craft of comedy?

Patti: Absolutely, yeah. I was reviewing some of my older stand up videos just to study notes and things, and I noticed my hyper feminization when I first started this four years ago. The amount of hyperfeminization of my voice, the mannerisms a bit too. I kind of had to, like over the past few years for myself, accept that some masculine parts within me are actually part of me and don’t need to be shoved back under the rug, which is kind of like like a teeter-totter game of basically that’s what I was doing.

When I lived 30 something years of suppressing everything feminine, and then as soon as I let it rise, that masculine side fell all the way down, and I kind of had to scale it off and accept all parts of myself. I believe we all have a bit of masculine and feminine energy. I’ve got way more feminine energy than I do masculine energy, but it needed to be allowed too.

That was a big part of my healing journey that came through with this. Talking about it on stage about these really personal aspects of myself, and then having to rework the material one so that I could believe in it, because in order to believe in it, I had to feel it, which is what actors do with their craft too. I had to truly feel it and own it, and that process itself brought the healing.

Alexandra: That visualization of the teeter totter is so great. What I pictured as you were talking about it was sort of the extreme swings, and that what I think what you’re pointing to is that gradually they come into balance. They’re not tipping so much one side or the other.

Patti: Absolutely. I think that general state of weak equilibrium of what my normal is is kind of what that what that means, absolutely.

Alexandra: I can really understand how tricky that would be when you’ve spent however many decades pushing that feminine part of yourself away.

It would take some time and some doing to find that balance.

Patti: No doubt. I think you know, for those first couple of years after transition, I really had to let her shine. So I think he had to stay under the rug. I think he did it okay.

But then I started having dreams-a lot of dreams-with masculine energy around fire, like just like a lot of visualizations, and with this power, and I wanted to have the fire power that they could have.

Dreams are so metaphorical, and my dreams were actually a big part of what showed me that too. Is just that suppression of self was the limitation on finding that kind of power. I part of my writing process is I write down my dreams in the morning.

They’re fascinating, and it puts me in creative writing mode. After I finish writing them, I’m already in the creative spirit, and then I can start. Hopefully, jokes are what come next. Sometimes they’re not, but when they are, it’s great. And so yeah, that dream state part. I forgot what the question was, but I think I answered it.

Alexandra: Yes, you did. Thank you.

On that note of writing practice, do you do that every morning? Write down your dreams.

Patti: I do. I wake up much earlier than I need to before work, and I write down my dreams. It takes usually about 20 minutes or so, and then right after that, whatever the finishing thought was after writing out the dreams is usually what I carry forward.

Then I go into just free writing, just write whatever comes to mind, or sometimes there’ll be a joke that I was working on yesterday, and then I’ll be like, “Oh, okay, let’s write on that now.”

A writer-I forget her name-but she said that when you’re in the zone, when you’re writing, stop yourself like before you’re done. So right when you’re still in the gist of it and you want to keep going, but it’s been a good amount of time, just deliberately stop, and it kind of keeps that thread active for next time. And so I’ve started trying to adapt that a little bit.

Alexandra: Nice, and that works for you.

Patti: It seems to. I mean, I’m consistently getting new material or or writing strengthening notes on other stuff, and it seems to help out a lot. I mean, there are just those moments too where you’re out doing something, and I’m like, oh, I’ve got to write this down. Most comedians are that way.

If something just happens, we’ll drop what we’re doing. Like in the middle of a conversation, I’ll be like, I’m really sorry, but I have to write this down.

Alexandra: I’ve seen musicians refer to that as well, and carry little notebooks around with little snippets of ideas. I keep ideas in my phone sometimes too, and that helps.

Patti: Me too. I use a phone also.

Alexandra: I think I’ve heard Elizabeth Gilbert talk about that, finishing before the thread is finished, and then picking it up the next day. But I don’t think she’s the only person who’s said that.

Patti: I don’t remember. I didn’t write the person’s name down, but maybe it was her. I don’t know.

Alexandra: As we’re coming toward the end of our conversation here:

Is there anything that surprised you about this career and the comedy that you offer to the world?

Patti: Good question. I think the thing that surprised me is how small the comedy community is here in Canada. I found that to be rather interesting. I mean, it’s growing a lot, especially since COVID and and there’s a lot of people getting into stand-up now, but that was definitely one aspect.

Just how connecting it can be due to that too.. I’ve got friends across the country, just because we share this instinct to get in our car and drive three hours to perform 15 minutes. Sometimes even less.

I don’t really know what else. I suppose just how much it’s connected to my life itself. Actually, here’s one: the types of friends that I’m making. I feel like comedians are misfits. We’re all just a group of people put together.

I play a lot of sports. Or you’re a computer guy who sits at a desk. We would not be friends if it wasn’t for this, but our brains all have this weird thing. We look at the world in a bizarre way. That it was a surprising thing is the more you talk to comedians we seem to have brains that function in a just an interesting way. A different way of looking at the world.

I mean the fact that we’re trying to find the joke in everything means that you can go super dark, or you can go really light, or you can go really goofy, or there’s so many different aspects of it. Those things are definitely a bit surprising.

That’s a question I’m gonna have to sit on a lot more though too. What else has surprised me? But I don’t know. That doesn’t help with this interview.

Alexandra: That’s great. Thank you.

What has the response been from the trans community to your comedy, if any?

Patti: I run a monthly show in Nanaimo called “Bring Out Your Weird”, and it’s a comedy cabaret variety show I did at the Vault Cafe on the last Thursday of the month. And the premise of that show is: if you are weird, consider yourself weird, have a weird performance, showcase yourself.

Weird is just a beautiful expression of humanity, and I think being trans naturally falls into that. I was asked to join Comox Valley Pride, which I did a few years ago. Being a trans spokesperson, I guess, so to speak, I’ve done a lot of performing within my community, and so I’ve been asked to show leadership in ways.

I no longer am on the board because it was just too much work, and I am so not political. But I still perform in functions like, for instance, just coming up this weekend is Comox Valley Pride, and so I’m going to be doing performing at a couple things there.

I would like to think that I’m helping mentor some of the younger trans kids and folks who are finding themselves. The QSA in the Comox Valley. That’s the Queer Straight Alliance. They asked me to speak a couple times at their functions to the kids, as well as they do a Pride prom, which is oh my god, such a beautiful thing. It’s once a year.

After COVID, there was no prom because the prom committees all just stopped doing it, and so the QSA said, “Hey, why don’t we organize it? It’ll be for everybody, but it’ll be organized by the queer kids.” Naturally, the queer kids thought to throw a party first. Just saying. But every year I do trivia with them. I usually just make up some dumb game, and I do it at their intermission at the halfway point.

It is so fabulous getting to be there as an adult, as somebody who’s openly trans and out there, watching these kids who are feeling free to express themselves at a school type function. For me it helped. That helps heal my own trauma, that trauma of not being able to express myself back in those ages. It’s just so amazing to get to watch them do it, and I literally heal every time I’m there. It’s great.

I’d say I’m playing my part in my community, doing my best to. But we’re healing each other.

Alexandra: Oh, that’s a lovely way to say it. That’s amazing, beautiful.

As we come toward the end of this interview, is there anything you wanted you’d like to share that we haven’t touched on yet?

Patti: Oh, what haven’t we touched on? I mentioned that I’ve got a monthly show in Nanaimo. And I don’t know. People just follow comedy and comedians. We need the support. We need lots of it.

You can follow my social media stuff. I’m PattiSavard18 at Instagram. That’s my social media. I don’t post a lot of videos because I’m currently working on my comedy album, and so I’m just kind of holding the material back until I do that. But I do a lot of self-promotion on there.

I do post a lot of video content from the Bring Out Your Weird show because on that one I do a lot of ridiculous things. I’m not just a stand up, and the beauty of this show that Bring Out Your Weird is a concept is that I get to do whatever I want. So this week’s show, for instance, I will be singing Alanis Morissette’s Ironic, but I’ve rewritten the words to make the song actually ironic, just for fun.

I do a lot of dumb, silly antics that are just ridiculous, just because I can. I think for whatever people, everybody is a creative person, and I think I want everybody to realize they’re a creative person. So yeah, that’s something I really want to say.

If I’m just getting to know somebody, if I go to a pride function or something, and I’m having a conversation with, I hate small talk. I hate small talk. So I’ll just say, “What do you do creatively? And then sometimes they’ll say, “I’m not creative.” I’ll say, “Yes, you are. What is it that you’ve done that’s creative in the past?”

They often have to rack their brain, but they’ll come up with something like, “Oh, I used to write poetry.” I’ll ask, “Oh, what made you stop?”

actually had that exact conversation with somebody, and then I saw her six months later, and I was just like, “Hey, so what are you doing creatively?” And she’s like, “I’m writing poetry.” I’m like, yay!

Alexandra: Well done, wow, that’s awesome. I totally agree. Everybody is creative, and that’s one of the reasons this podcast exists.

Patti: Amazing.

Alexandra: Thank you for reminding us about that.

This has been lovely. I will put links in the show notes to your Instagram, and is there a link I could put in for the Bring Out Your Weird Show?

Patti: That is in the top notes of my Instagram. There’s always a link there to the current show.

And that one’s monthly, so I don’t know when this will be aired, but so I’m not sure if it’ll be aired before that show or not.

Alexandra: Okay, I’ll make sure there’s a link to your Instagram in the show notes.

Patti: Wonderful.

Alexandra: Thank you, Patti. It’s been lovely talking to you.

Patti: It’s been so lovely talking to you as well. Thank you so much for having me.

Alexandra: You’re so welcome. All right. Take care.

Patti: You too.

Click here to grab your complimentary copy of the Creative Alchemy journaling handbook.

The post Finding Healing in Gender Transition with Comedy with Patti Savard appeared first on Alexandra Amor Books.

Every human appreciates knowing they are not alone. When we have an experience – perhaps one of being in a cult or being an addict or being a single mother – we all want to know we are not alone in that experience. Two of the most powerful and reassuring words in the English language are “me too”.

My guest today, Hanna Etu, works with neurodivergent and mad writers, supporting them to tell their stories so that others may find comfort in knowing they’re not alone.

In the introduction, I talk about how I connected with Hanna’s work shepherding books, particularly memoirs, into the world. And how my memoir, Cult, A Love Story, came into being because of an unmet need I had to read someone’s personal story of being in a cult.

Hanna Etu helps mad and neurodivergent writers establish a regular writing practice so they can finish their memoirs without losing the heart of their story. She has a book coaching certification in memoir and nonfiction from Author Accelerator. Her degrees in Creative Writing and English
as well as a professional background in traditional book publishing give her unique insight into the craft, production, and marketing aspects of the writing/publishing processes.

Hanna’s work-in-progress is a memoir about the loss of her brother to suicide and her personal history with mental illness.
Hanna offers one-on-one coaching for writers struggling to finish their books, is gathering interest for a group program, as well as hosting free, monthly co-writing sessions for Substack subscribers.

Learn more about Hanna at hannaetu.com

This episode of Creative Alchemy is supported by the audiobook version of my award-winning, Amazon best-selling memoir, Cult, A Love Story.

Readers call the book ‘compelling’ ‘gritty’ ‘intimate’ and ‘not boring’ – which is what an author loves to hear. I narrated the audiobook and if you have a Spotify premium subscription you can listen to the audiobook for free as part of that subscription at alexandraamor.com/spotify.

You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.

Show notes

Working as a book coach with neurodivergent and ‘mad’ writers

Taking ownership of a personal story by writing about it

On supporting writers who have challenges with organization

Getting to the central idea of what your book stands for

Using specific tools to ensure the storytelling in a memoir is captivating

Building small habits that support a writing practice

How a first draft is often powerful for different reasons than we think

Dealing with the challenges of writing about a very emotional subject

Resources mentioned in this episode

Hanna’s Substack piece about beginnings

Madwomen in the Attic

David Sedaris

Mary Karr’s memoir Lit

Jenny Lawson

Transcript of the interview with Hanna Etu

Alexandra: Hannah Etu, thank you for coming to Creative Alchemy and welcome.

Hanna: Thank you so much for having me.

Alexandra: Please tell us a little bit first about your background.

Hanna: I am originally from Buffalo, New York. I have an English creative writing and German degree from Canisius University. I have an editorial background. I worked in publishing for a few years for a publishing company in Buffalo, and then when they were bought out by a bigger company, then I went elsewhere.

Now I am a certified book coach. I was certified by Author Accelerator in nonfiction and memoir. So now I am helping memoir writers, particularly neurodivergent and mad memoir writers, finish their books.

Alexandra: Tell us what mad means, because I was new to that term when we started emailing.

Hanna: Sure. Mad in this context is in reference to the Mad movement, so the mental health justice movement. People who may have had adverse mental health experiences, or people who have been negatively affected by the mental health system that may have been involuntarily institutionalized or involuntarily medicated, things like that. That’s typically what the MAD moniker refers to.

It’s comes from the ‘mad woman in the attic’ idea, from Jane Eyre. That’s kind of where that whole thing comes from. It’s reclaiming an older term, basically.

Alexandra: Got it.

What’s the reason that you chose to work with writers who are neurodivergent and part of the Mad community.

Hanna: There’s a whole combination of reasons.

I am a lead organizer and regional literacy director for a grassroots feminist mental health literacy organization called Mad Women in the Attic. We advocate for people in the mental health system. And lately, our biggest work has been writing workshops because we’ve been able to connect with people all around the country.

It used to be more localized to Western New York, and now we’re doing work with people all around the world. Actually, we’ve had people in Canada, we’ve had people in Europe, all over the place. So we’ve been able to help people write their books, which has been really exciting. So that that is part of the mission.

The other part of it is that I’m also neurodivergent. I wasn’t diagnosed with anything until I was an adult with anxiety and general depression. And I tend to believe that I have other neurodivergences, but I’m just too high functioning to get a diagnosis. Nobody, none of my practitioners seem terribly interested in diagnosing me because I get through the day.

The other the other reason is that both my brothers suffer from mental health issues, and my older brother died by suicide in 2018. So it’s a very personal issue, and I really want to connect with people who have had similar experiences to me or similar experiences to the people that I’ve worked with. It’s about a shared experience and validating people and advocating for themselves. It’s all about working through our difficulties and finding common bonds.

Alexandra: Maybe give us a few examples of how you think writing memoir specifically fulfills those that goal, or helps people to heal and to connect and that kind of thing.

Hanna: So with memoir, I think people find it cathartic to write their stories to talk about their traumatic experiences. I think it can be painful. I know personally it can be hard to write about difficult experiences, but I think people find it also find it empowering.

In a way they’re taking ownership of their story and their writing. They’re taking ownership of the narrative, where the narrative has previously been written for them where they may have been in a place where somebody was making the decisions for them and telling a different story about who they are, and they’re now able to reclaim that. So I think that’s a big part of why a lot of people choose to write memoir.

Alexandra: I think that’s so true. I was talking to somebody else the other day, and we phrased it in a slightly different way, but I think we were aiming at the same thing. Sometimes it’s the first time that someone can tell the truth about their experience, and more specifically, their own truth about their experience. And so that’s exactly what you’re talking about. That we get to take ownership of the narrative.

Hanna: Yeah, exactly.

Alexandra: You mentioned that it’s a difficult experience, which it is.

What are some of the challenges or hurdles that you that your writers encounter when they begin this path?

Hanna: There are the difficulties of writing about a traumatic experience and re-experiencing that and having to go through that again. There’s also the kind of experience, the kind of writing difficulties that neurodivergent writers have in general.

I’ve noticed a lot of these writers have difficulties with organization, and this isn’t like I can’t say that this is typical to everyone. Like everybody has their own individual experience, but I have noticed that many writers have expressed that they have a hard time keeping organized, keeping the writing organized, keeping a structure, keeping a regular practice-that’s something that a lot of the writers in this community struggle with.

I think a lot of writers, going back to the organization, they also have a hard time building a structure around their narrative because memoir is such a broad topic. Figuring out where to start, where to end, when to know what is the end, and and often these aren’t positive experiences.

These aren’t usually positive experiences, and they’re trying to end. I mean, you try to end the book on as positive a note as you can, and I think a lot of people have a hard time knowing when is it done? Is it done yesterday? Is it done a couple years ago? Like when? What period of time am I covering? And what is my mission? What is the objective? So there’s a lot of different issues that they deal with.

Alexandra: That’s such a good point about wrapping up a book because when it’s a memoir, it’s about your life and your life isn’t over yet as you’re writing. So this may be an unfair question:

Are there any tips that you have for finding a good place to end a memoir?

Hanna: It’s funny because I’ve been wanting to write a Substack post about this and want to dig into some of my favorite memoirs. I think I would recommend reading a lot of memoir, especially by writers that you admire and writers who are writing in a similar subject matter, but particularly memoir writers, of course. I think seeing kind of comparing those.

I did this with beginnings. I did a Substack post on beginnings. Now, of course, I’ll have to be held to that. But I kind of analyze. I was like, this is really good because they get right into the action. They don’t give us extra exposition. They make us care. Right off the bat.

Now I want to kind of do the same thing for endings. How did they make us feel like we bookended this book with the end of the person’s arc. There has to be some kind of development. Like obviously your character development, you’re not a fictional character. Like you’re going to develop as to who you are now, so you’re not making anything up if you’re a good writer.

But in terms of any other techniques that I would recommend, I’m also liking the idea of writing several versions, and it might feel tedious to write multiple endings, but to force yourself to try different, try them on, and see how they fit.

I think it’s important to focus on where you are as a person, where you’re trying to show us that you’ve gotten by the end of the book, and that’s really where we should sit by the end of a memoir.

Alexandra: Nice, yes, and very much like fiction, the main character who is us, that’s writing the memoir, is going to go through some sort of arc.

I guess it’s a matter of finding the closure place for that arc

Hanna: Yeah. Even if it’s not necessarily the happiest ending. Like the writing itself is a reflection for the writer. The writing itself is a reflection on that experience. So, I think even in the process of writing it, you’re finding new things about yourself and about that experience. So, it’s a hard thing to to think about at the beginning, but it is something important to think about at the beginning of the process and at the end of the process of writing your first draft.

Alexandra: Right. A bit of a north star, I guess, to point to you know to write toward if you’ve thought about where you want it to end up,

And then for organization is such a good point. I use a piece of software called Scrivener, which is really helpful for organization because on the left hand side of the screen, what you see is a list of all the chapters that you’ve written, or you can break it into scenes or whatever you want.

What other sorts of organization tips do you have for your writers?

Hanna: That sounds great. I think I should try it.

In my book coaching certification, we were trained on Jenny Nash’s blueprint for a book, and so that has been my north star in terms of organization.

I’m working on adapting my own version because I want to add some elements specific to neurodivergent writers. I use the blueprint in my coaching process, but I also use some what’s the word I’m looking for? I use some surveying to figure out what every individual writer’s style is, what their schedule is, what their needs are, because I think that that’s just as important as knowing what their book is about if we’re going to work together.

But getting off topic, the blueprint is basically it’s a set of questions, and eventually you get to an outline, and you’re talking about you’re digging into the deeper questions about why you’re writing the book, and what your book really stands for. What you’re trying to say?

It’s interesting because I don’t know if everyone really sits down and thinks about that when they’re going to write a memoir. What am I really trying to say with this? Am I just trying to write my story? Which is okay if you just want to write your book and you just want to self-publish it, which is fine, which is great.

If you’re looking to try to get it to a trade audience, you want there to be some central objective. The blueprint prepares you for the mindset of preparing your book for the literary marketplace. With the memoir blueprint there’s an impact outline, where you go through and you break down each scene and what happens in each scene and how it’s connected to the one before, and basically you’re justifying to yourself and to your coach if you’re doing it with a coach why each scene is where it is. Which is very tedious, but it’s really enlightening too.

Alexandra: That sounds great because it’s so important that every scene, every chapter serves a purpose. It serves the narrative in some way.

When we’re telling a personal story, I know this from personal experience, we can kind of get out there and get lost in the weeds a bit, and think that every detail is important, and every bit of the timeline matters, and every little event that happened is important to include in the story. So that this really speaks to me as a way to narrow our focus and really make sure that yeah that we stay focused on what what matters.

Hanna: Exactly.

Alexandra: That sounds like a great tool. So you use that tool with your clients to help them to do that.

Hanna: Yes. I’m working on adding elements specifically for neurodivergent writers because it is a lot of work upfront. Some coaches will do it in segments. Some coaches will send it to the writer all at once.

I’m also thinking about the ways in which I can customize each coaching process for the writer, because everybody works in different ways, and especially neurodivergent writers are wired differently. And some people they can say, “Okay, I’ll write an hour a week.” But some people it’s like you write in a two-hour burst, and then you don’t write for another two months. So that’s something that we always have to keep in mind, and as as as a coach for people who with with differently wired brains.

Alexandra: Exactly. And you did talk about time as part of what a writer has to organize.

I don’t know if this is a fair question either, but do you have any tips for people to help them to organize their time? Everybody is so individual with what works for them in terms of writing, as you just said. Some people write in bursts. Some people are like to write every day, just a tiny little bit if they can.

What are your thoughts on that sort of organization?

Hanna: In terms of writing practice, or in terms of planning the timeline of the book?

Alexandra: In terms of writing practice. Getting your bum in your chair.

Hanna: I like setting a particular goal. During the pandemic when I could write all the time, I set a goal of 30 minutes a day. Just set a timer, stopped at 30 minutes, whether or not I wanted to keep writing. So then I knew what I was going to write the next day when I sat down.

I’m really into the idea of setting a regular time for it, whether it’s once a month, once a week, a little bit a day. I’m very much into building small habits. I really like that. I know it doesn’t always work for people.

My other tip, which is less related to time, but I’ve been really into body doubling for writers and hopping on Zoom with other writers, and writing for like an hour and a half. So that’s something I’ve been doing as well. I have one once a month, and now I know I’m going to work on my book once a month.

Alexandra: Nice, and so it’s a group of writers in a Zoom room, and and you’re just you’re all with your heads down writing. Okay, so it’s like accountability. You have to show up. It’s like a meeting.

Hanna: Exactly.

Alexandra: Nice.

Hanna: That’s my my new favorite way of of maintaining a practice is if you have a body doubling group whether once a week, every other week, twice a week or whatever that really gets your butt in the chair because you know other people are going to be there.

Alexandra: That’s amazing. That’s a great idea.

Do you find sometimes with clients who are writing a memoir that one of the things they’re looking for is permission to tell their story?

Hanna: Yes, almost all the time.

And especially with mad writers, because they’re dealing with a lot of stigma. I hear them saying so often, “Is anybody going to care about this? Is anybody going to read this?” And these writers are brilliant, they write the most brilliant stories.

I’m sitting here thinking, this has to be in the world. You have to publish this. What do you mean? Would anyone care? I care. You’ve got to publish this for me.

I feel like a lot of people come to me and they’re like, is this even worth? Is this even worth writing? Will anybody be interested in it? I think that’s a very valid fear to have in the memoir writing space now because of how competitive the genre is and how saturated we can be with memoir.

The more popular memoirs tend to be people who are either established memoir writers or celebrities, famous people, along those lines, historically relevant people. But I never want to discourage somebody from writing their story. I’m going to tell them what I think they’re writing, and if I think they’re on the right track.

But I’m not going to sugarcoat that feedback on the writing, but I think people will care, especially in these stories of people who have been stigmatized. I think that there’s not enough of those stories out there, and I think people would really appreciate to have more of that in the world. Just to feel seen, people who are not brave enough to tell their stories or talk about how they’re feeling and the differences that they’re noticing about themselves, to see somebody else feels the way that they do, like that is so important.

Alexandra: I absolutely agree. To have an experience reflected back to a person is just so valuable. So incredible and so brave on the part of the writer.

I want to bring this up because I had never seen this quote from Terry Pratchett. You posted it on Instagram a little while ago that I love so much. The quote is:

“The first draft is you telling yourself the story.”

Why did that quote resonate with you, and what do you think it says?

Hanna: I really like that because I think that writers underestimate the power of the first draft. I think that we tend to think, okay, first draft, give it a little edit, or maybe overestimate is the better term for it, but write the first draft, give it a little copy edit. It’s good to go.

But the first draft is so powerful for a different reason. It’’s important because it tells us exactly how, in terms of memoir writers, but also for fiction writers, how we see the story, how in our original voice, how we picture it. What so many writers get wrong is that the writing becomes stronger through revision and revision and revision.

I think if more writers knew how much revision their books would really need, they probably wouldn’t have started writing their books in the first place. I think that’s why that quote really resonated with me because I think that the first draft is so important and so personal that it’s very much for the writer, for you to process your story and and to just tell it, just get everything out unfiltered.

Especially with a memoir when you could be writing about people that you may eventually not want to write about anymore, or people that need to be concealed in some way for the purposes of privacy. It’s always better to write everything raw, unfiltered, and then go back and pare it down, edit it down, so that it’s appropriate for publishing.

So the first draft is always something that I think really is meant for the writer, whereas a second draft is where you start going. All right, let’s talk to a developmental editor or a beta reader. I think we have to spend more time with our first draft.

Alexandra: I love all that. My experience has been the same; that it’s so true and often you know I mean there’s so much in there it’s so rich we don’t know what we think sometimes until we’ve written it down. Or we don’t know the impact that an experience has had until we get quiet and write it down.

I know for me, with my memoir, I learned stuff about the cult that I was in by trying to explain it to the reader. So that’s a slightly different topic than a first draft, but it did happen in the first draft where I would realize the cult leader did this so that six months later she could do this other thing over here. I didn’t see it at the time when I was in the group, but trying to explain it enabled me to see what had happened.

I imagine that’s true for anybody who’s writing down an experience that they’ve had.

Hanna: I think with the benefit of hindsight, we start to reflect on people’s motives and what people were thinking, or when we write about past experiences with what we know now about those people and start to put the puzzle pieces together, and it’s very interesting what you find, but you won’t necessarily find it unless you write it down. That’s just the way the human brain works.

Alexandra: One of the things you mentioned at the top of the show was that you are sadly a survivor of suicide. You lost a brother to that, and when we were emailing back and forth, you mentioned that you hadn’t written your memoir about that yet.

I think it might be valuable for our listeners to hear about your thoughts about that potential book and the issues that you’re facing finding time to write. You’ve addressed that a little bit already with the the Zoom group. You called it body doubling. I’d never heard that before.

Tell us a little bit about your thoughts about what you’ve encountered thinking about writing that book.

Hanna: I’ve written about 30,000 words. I wrote a lot during the pandemic. I was writing, as I said, I think I got to like a 30 minute a day writing practice, and I was in one of the writing workshops. I was trying to have something to read and share every week. So that really pushed me. The people pleaser in me really pushed me to to have something to write.

You get to a certain point where – I think it was two or three years after I lost my brother that I started writing about it, and that was still very raw, and I think I got to a point where I realized that there was still a lot of healing that I needed to do. I don’t think that’s why I stepped back from writing it.

I definitely stepped back from writing it because I was working on my book coaching business, and I have a lot of other hobbies and activities that I do, and I have just a lot of going on in my life at the time, and so I stopped making the time for it. But I definitely hit a wall creatively with it at a certain point where I hadn’t done the deep thinking that you’re supposed to do when you sit down. I had just written. I had just been writing.

I wrote everything that happened from the day that my brother died, to his funeral, and through that. I wrote all of the events that went from there to there, and then started digging into my mental health history, and digging into his mental health history, and my family’s history with mental health.

I began realizing I had just all these moving parts, and I had no idea where everything should go, where the timeline should be. I had just taken all the rules that I so preach to writers, and just broken all of them.

I’ve recently gotten back into it with the co-writing with the body doubling, which has been so valuable, and I’ve gone back and I started doing the blueprint, which I’ve started before, but I’ve gone back into it. That has been so valuable because it’s doing what we talked about with the first draft, where you’re just writing things out and you’re writing things out, and I started writing again.

Why am I writing this book? Because I just feel called to it, like losing losing someone to suicide, especially someone who was. I was 25. He was 27 at the time. Their life is so short, and he was so creative, so artistic. He was a filmmaker. He was also a writer, an artist. He painted. He made clay figures and different clay things. He’s a sculptor.

I think that I wanted my my original mission with it was like there was so much left unfinished in his life where he was supposed to reach a certain point. He was supposed to, I don’t know, become a famous filmmaker or he was supposed to go on to direct a movie, whatever. I had this vision of what I thought his life should become, and now I’m going to write a book to tell everybody else about this person because I want him to live on in the ways that I remember him.

Which of course is also another layered part of it, in that my memory of him isn’t everyone else’s memory of him, isn’t how he remembered himself. And there are things that you learn after the fact.

It’s been very complicated to write about and figure out exactly what I’m doing. But I actually was writing about it yesterday; just free writing and trying to figure out why I’m doing this, why I’m doing this, what is the point, what does my book stand for, because it has to stand for something. I started to really have more epiphanies than I had had in a while, so I’m very excited. It’s making me more motivated to get writing and have a better structure, a beginning, middle, and an end.

I can talk about this forever.

Alexandra: This is great. Thank you for your vulnerability. I really appreciate it.

Hanna: I think for a while, I was stuck because I also didn’t know how it was going to end. I didn’t know what the ending would be, and I thought the ending should be me in a place where I have dealt with my grief, or I have overcome my grief, or moved forward with it. And that’s not really how grief works. But I couldn’t figure out what version of me am I stopping this book at?

For so many years after my brother died, I was in a relationship that was very toxic, and so I was not the best version of myself. And now that that is no longer part of my life, I’m finally realizing that I’m a more skilled person. It actually has allowed me to grieve more, and that’s been incredibly helpful, and really brought me to a place where I can say I feel like I’m starting to see the resolution. I’m starting to see the ending, which is a really good feeling. So those are the challenges that I’ve been having around it, but it is getting better.

Alexandra: Thank you so much for all of that. You brought up so many important points. I think, or special points, one of them being that it does feel sometimes like books have a gestation period, and sometimes we can’t force it, just like giving birth. You can’t make it happen necessarily, and having patience with ourselves as things are going on, and the book feels like it’s just kind of sitting there, that can be a challenge in and of itself.

Hanna: Yes,I think I needed to wait and see what the book was going to be because I was still living it, which so many of us are.

Alexandra: Absolutely. And you bring up the point about grief too, and how it’s not linear at all, and the importance of taking care of yourself, both just as a human being, but also as a writer. I just think it’s so important to put a pin in that and notice that we can’t ignore those things., especially when we’re writing about something so close to our hearts.

Hanna: Yes.

Alexandra: We wish you all the best with that book. Please let me know when it comes out, and I’ll make a mention of it for sure.

Hanna: Wonderful, thank you. Yeah, I will.

Alexandra: As we start to wrap up here, I wanted to ask you, what are some of your favorite memoirs?

Hanna: I got into memoir by reading David Sedaris, so I love everything by David Sedaris. But in terms of really deep, like I love Mary Carr Lit is one of my absolute favorites. Just one of those where I felt like I could just soak up every page. I love everything she writes. I like Sloane Crosley, who wrote recently a book called Grief Is for People. It was about losing her best friend by suicide in the last few years. I really liked that, and I tend to really connect with humour writers who write about mental health. Jenny Lawson, her name is escaping me now. It’ll come to me later.

Alexandra: Jenny Lawson. I haven’t read any of her books, but I’ve seen people mention them, and her titles alone are hilarious. I’m trying to think of one now. I’ll link to them in the show notes, but yeah, they’re very funny.

Hanna: I think I’ve read every book she’s written.

She recently did a book, How To Be Okay When Everything Is Not Okay, and it was a little less memoir, but more about staying creative when times are tough, and that really that was a really good book. She got really serious when she needed to, but also very silly when the occasion warranted it.

Alexandra: Oh, that’s great. All right.

Tell us, Hannah, where we can find out more about you and your work.

Hanna: You can find me at hannetu.com. That’s Hanna with no H on the end, and you can find me on Substack. You can find me on Instagram, Hannah Etu Book Coach, or on Facebook, Hannah Etu Book Coach.

Alexandra: Great. Okay. I’m going to link to all those things, but also specifically to your series on beginnings in Substack because you mentioned that because I think that would be really helpful for people.

Hanna: I’ll make sure it’s up there if it’s not. So I know I wrote it. We’ll have to make sure it’s on the substack.

Alexandra: Okay. Great. All right. Well, thank you again so much for being with me here today. I really appreciate it.

Hanna: You’re welcome. Thank you so much for having me.

Alexandra: My pleasure.

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