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I love hearing from you guys. Plus, the thing is, I love talking and hanging out with people. I really actually do; I always learn the most surprising, amazing things from most everyone. So, if you have a book club or have an interest in chatting about In Spite of Everything, and there are at least ten people into it in the New York environs, I’d probably be happy to come, depending on scheduling and so forth. Drop me a line.
If you’d like to leave a message here, I’d love it. But I have a fair request: please read In Spite of Everything before commenting on it. There has been a fair amount of press on it, but space and time are necessarily limited in media outlets and, through no fault of their own, they can’t possibly really provide a complete sense of the book, however flattering that sense might be. Thanks!
If yours is a press-related question, please contact Karen Fink at Random House: [email protected] Thank you.
I just listened to your July 13 interview on WBUR’s OnPoint program. It was amazing. I am a child of parents who are still together after many years. But I still found what you had to say valuable because you helped me understand the experiences of my friends who are the product of divorced households. My previous attitude had been “get over it.” Now I see how tough it is to live with that legacy. Thanks very much.
Best, Jon
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Jonathan Kay
Managing Editor for Comment
National Post
1450 Don Mills Road, Toronto, M3B 3R5
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[email protected]
Loved hearing you today on NPR.
I have never heard or met someone who has grown up in a household like mine;
-Parents divorced when I was 12 in1969.
- Summer of my 12th bday, I was given 40$ per week to manage household: cleaning lady, food, and salary for babysitting my 10 year old brother and 7 year old sister. We used my brother’s little red wagon to carry the food from the grocery store. I made a good pasta sauce, Dunkin Hines mixes and my own scratch icing with real butter…………I loved every second of that summer.My mother left for the summer to live with her future husband.
-Father Montreal’s Merril Lynch VP
-Mother former deb.
-Country club life until “THE DIVORCE”.
-Father burned out on alcohol, depression and eventually became a vagrant…….a homeless person.
Mother(b1929) became one of Canada’s top five realtors.
-Summer of 1967 at age 10 I would leave all day with little brother and 5 year old sister spending days visiting “Man and His World”; Expo 67.Made the lunchs, and got us all home safely by metro just about every day that summer.
-Started making the children’s breakfast in grade 3.
-Gin Tonics with lime were a specialty by grade 1……..I made good strong drinks, knew how to serve them, pass around the hors d’ oeuvres and greets guests politely. Dressed my brother and sister as the occasion required when my parents had guests for drinks parties. I was also a good little ironer.
Did I marry, divorce have children and get an excellent education? Of course. But I never did drugs or drink too much. I was caring for my siblings and knew very well the sad consequences of addiction just by watching my super brilliant, handsome fun, glamorous scratch golfer father slowly kill himself.
The story goes on and on. No one I happen to mention this to at dinner parties can think all this is true. I appear a perfectly normal person having grown up in an uneventful upper middle class home ……….but we know it is true.
Nice to meet you, even if only on the radio.
Elise
Gladwyne
Hi, Just started your book and am already loving it. Your style is fabulous! I am a mid-lifer who’s parents divorced back in the late 50′s when it was most uncommon, to say the least.
But I’m really writing to ask you if you might consider doing a blog interview. I am a social worker/life coach. I recently launched my website/blog – http://www.rebuildyourlifecoach.com. My specific focus is on working with people to help them rebuild their lives beyond their personal adversities, and hopefully recreate good and meaningful lives despite…
Once a month I interview someone who has successfully been able to do this. I’ve had the wonderful opportunity of interviewing some incredibly inspirational people thus far. You can see one such interview at:
http://rebuildyourlifecoach.wordpress.com/2011/06/01/interview-with-jeni-stepanek-mother-of-poet-and-peace-activist-mattie-stepanek/
Divorce is one topic I have not hit upon as yet. You would be a perfect person for this.
Hoping you’ll say yes; but certainly understand if you can’t now that your book is taking off.
Thank you for your consideration.
Best.
Susan, I loved your book and the radio interview I heard. I come from the perspective of a long term marriage (just celebrated our 40th) that began as the divorce revolution was picking up steam. Many of our friends didn’t make it. I am also a marriage therapist and writer who thinks that my colleagues should read your book. Back in the 1970s the field slipped into a “neutrality” approach to whether marriages succeed or end in divorce. Your story is an antidote to that misbegotten ethic. If you’d like to communicate about this outside the blogosphere, let me know:
Bill Doherty
Just got a copy today; can’t put it down. Helps me understand so much about your Xers that this late Boomer finds mystifying. I did, however, put it to down because it’s time to feed my…CATS. Four of them. You seem like a nice person; I’m trying to put aside the fact that you hate cats. Trying to move on. After I feed said FOUR cats, I shall return to In Spite of Everything and probably read till midnightish when I expect to finish it. While I read, at least TWO cats shall be close by.
A friend, a bit older than I and raised in another culture, said to me, “All mothers love their children, but, with you, it is something different, something extra.” I have never had the words to describe my vulnerabilities, my suspicion of authority, my desperation to give my children home and security. I tore through the book and wept. Thank you. I learned so much about myself.
Dear Susan,
Your book is spellbinding. I, too am a Gen-xer who got divorced …for almost all the same reasons you describe. I, too, grew up convinced I’d never do that to my kids. But something different happened in my case. I found new information that lead to a different understanding about what had really happened to us. And because of it, we reconciled and remarried!
I write a blog at Pyschology Today (http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/marry-divorce-reconcile) and am working on a memoir. I’ve pegged you as a draft reader, given your own experience and perspective (not to mention that, in the intro, I cite your book as instrumental to my own understanding of things). Interested?
I’m glad you shared your story…it hit me like a ton of bricks, and helped me see something I hadn’t seen before. Very warmly, Rachel Clark
Earlier this year my husband read an article about In Spite of Everything online and sent me a link. I remember he commented that it sounded like me, like a book I should read. Crazy, given I had announced to him only weeks prior that I was moving out, that I could no longer live a life of loneliness and resentment. The life your book describes and my life parallel each other in so many ways. I am an X, born in ’74. My parents did not divorce but one could argue that they should have. The arguing and fear of divorce that lived in the house was constant, though I may be wrong, I sometimes think separation would have brought my brother and I relief. After marrying, my husband and I immediately began ‘nesting’. We replaced windows and roofs, remodeled bathrooms and the kitchen, we painted and then painted again. Children did not come easily. We lived an amazing adoption story and then 3 years later I found myself pregnant. We have 2 fantastic girls. I also write, primarily personal essays none of which he was interested in reading. You wrote in the book about how your heart was not ice, it was dust; I understand that feeling. My husband was the cook, the laundry man, the grocery store guy, he did it all, leaving me to wonder how I was important, what I did well. When you speak about the depression you felt without your girls, I understand that. I moved out July 4th weekend and since that time I find myself hiding in a cave of blankets when the girls are with him and crawling out of the cave when the girls are with me. I am thankful that they need me; I am thankful that everyday I feel more like their mother, like I am showing them love in ways they understand. While I continue to seek support from my own mother, it has been hard to come by. Perhaps she beliefs that because she chose to stay and in her mind that was the right decision that my decision to leave must be the wrong one…not sure. I so enjoyed your book. Thank you for writing it. It spoke to me. It told my story too.
what i wanted to humbly recommend–after your reading your piece in today’s sunday nytimes about your garden, back-to-basics life, etc.–is that you expand on this in a book. as i read your piece, i kept flashing back to the Whole Earth Catalog (I’m 53), which, if you grew up in Berkeley (I’m a Southerner), you probably are familiar with. I love your writing, but even moreso it would be nice for me to know exactly how one raises hens, or how to build the hen house, or how many eggs one can expect after buying the hens and building the henhouse. In other words, I’d like your contemporary, urban, practical perspective on how to really set in motion what you’re doing. Plants. Dirt. Shampoo. Compost. Recipes. Vinegar. Baking Soda. All these separate how-to’s. I don’t anticipate I’ll do all you write about, but I would like to know how to successfully grow kale, since mine sucked so badly this year. Very nice piece today by the way. i never write writers–this is a first. All the how-to’s could have a great narrative thread to it–don’t abandon the story-telling. But I would like some basic advice also. Are you familiar with the Pioneer Woman’s website? Think along those lines, just as gritty and woman-ish, except you are urban and still for Obama. Way to fire,
Bruce, from Nashville
Hi!
I’m writing to you almost from another side of the world – Estonia. I read your column in NYT, “Back to the land, reluctantly”, and what can I say – welcome to the club! Over here, quite a lot comes from land – be it tomatoes or cucumbers, most grandparents live out of the city and have lands to grow anything imaginable and when it’s season, you have all sorts of berries and mushrooms in woods. This year we had a lots of apples. Almost like too much. At least 4 weekends went to make juice and jams, so we stocked for winter, whatever it will be. Since NY is on same latitude as south Italy, sun falls in such a good angle to land that you may grown almost anything!
I’ll be visiting NYC with kids this fall, I will think about that crazy woman in Brooklyn
All best
I am writing from this connection for three primary reasons:
a) to tell you that you have touched at least one person whose heart had
really just pretty much died off, and that you restored some of his
long-gone humanity,
b) to tell you that I did commute long-distance to school by public transit
every day during two childhood school years, and I would suggest you
speak with someone who did it as a child, and,
c) by way of thanks, to offer this resource to you and Big Daddy:
I have, after spending over a thousand hours of research, come up with a half-dozen ways to make decent money doing a half-dozen things…NOT for me, for yourself… on a part-time basis, which is the basis you’re going to want and need. I have only investigated micro-businesses which do not require much money, equipment, or space. See footnote for the gist: *.
If you (Susan and Big Daddy only) would like, you are welcome to have my entire e-library on these occupations: everything. I am willing to e-mail all my archives to any e-mail address you may have assigned for who-the-hell-are-these possible internet weirdoes. The rest is up to you.
Finally, the “Complete Idiot’s Guide: Low-Cost Startups” is actually not bad!
Every “For Dummies” book I ever read was gibberish, but that particular book is quite good indeed, and might lead your family to part-time prosperity.
Yours Gratefully,
“Broke-Ass-Ian”
* Among others: Mobile Notary, Aquaponic (Legal, edible) Herb Grower, or aquaponic grower of other expensive produce), Mortuary Writer, Process Server. There is one more…and in my entire life, I’ve met exactly one American who could do it because by dint of American schooling: Court Interpreter. It pays eighty-five dollars an hour. If you happen to be un-pathetic American #2, I could send you the info I have on that opportunity as well
I just finished In Spite of Everything. I enjoyed it very much and could really relate to it! I am just curious – how old were your daughters when you were going through your divorce? I have 2 daughters and it’s likely that my marriage is not going to weather all the storms between myself and my husband. So their reactions hit home as I contemplate the end of my own marriage.
Dear Susan,
Thanks for your piece, “The Good Divorce,” in Sunday’s NYT October 30th edition!
I’m a divorced father w/two fabulous kids, ages 8 and 12. Their mom and I share joint physical custody and we, like you and your ex-, now alterate weeks.
The kids are thriving in school, do great in sports, are liked by their peers, and they are happy!
I subscribe a big part of their doing well to the fact both mom and dad are involved in their everyday lives — neither of us was summarily “fired” from daily parenting because lord, forbid, there might be conflict in the family.
I don’t buy the argument that dividing time between functioning parents is a negative, as Mr. Kim’s study seems to suggest.
Nor do I buy the argument that intact families should be compared monolithically to children of divorce.
Show me a divorced set of parents who have trouble communicating, and I’ll show you an intact family with a similar set of challenges. The biggest difference is the state gets involved in one, but not the other. Managing and resolving conflict is a fact of life.
Rathering than picking a “winner” and a “loser” while lawyers and experts line their pockets in trial situations like mine, let’s figure out more ways for both parents to be engaged in the daily lives of their children.
Yes, establish a rebuttable presumption for cases where one or both parents maybe whacko. But don’t require good fathers to have to pay a King’s ransom (usually fathers) to be an active part of their children’s daily lives just because mom wants more/full control and perhaps a larger monthly check.
Set up the legal system to encourage cooperation and manage conflict, and I believe we’ll see even more progress to helping children cope post-divorce. But I agree, there are few “good divorces” and mine was the scariest event in my life I’d never wish on anyone else.
Thank you for sharing.
Sincerely,
John Norwood
Susan–I just read your piece on the Warrenville Jesuit retreat house visit in today’s TIMES. You knocked me off my chair. Wow. I forwarded it to my five brothers (all of us educated by Jesuits in Chicago). But you write with such force, such power, and with a surprise popping up again and again. A Google search now shows me how to see more of your work. Good luck.
-Bill Foley, Pelham, NY
Just read your article about Wernerville in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Tears of joy, remembering my two 8 day retreats in my twenties when I came to KNOW and own a personal relationship with God. So beautiful. Thank you! I so long for that time again and know I will get back there some day. For now, family and other things call to me. I will never forget my time there. It remains so rooted in my very core. Thank you, thank you, thank you! What a great way to start the New Year!
Thanks much for your essay in the New York Times about visiting the Jesuit retreat center. I was very impressed with both what you said and what you refrained from saying. I went on a retreat myself to a monastery years ago and wound up converting and becoming a Catholic. In fact, yesterday I finished work on a book I’ve been writing about that experience — and then I opened the paper this morning and there was your account. As Paula D’Arcy said, God comes to us disguised as our own life. What that means in this case, I have no idea, except to write and say thank you. I loved the suggestions made by Sister. Peace.
I just read your article on your silent retreat to the Jesuit center. Wonderful! Both your writing, and your bravery. In case you care, and you’re really on a budget, the vipassana centers around the world, started by S.N. Goenka, run totally free 10 day silent retreats. There’s one center in Shelburne, Ma, as well as in other places across the country. If you’re interested, their website is dhara.dhamma.org. Thanks for sharing your experience!
Susan: I was moved and inspired by your piece in Sunday’s New York Times about a silent five day retreat with the Jesuits. How refreshing to read about a spiritual journey in a simple setting where peace was found. Thank you for writing about your own struggles and the ways in which a relationship with Christ brought you a sense of calm. I was interested to see that you live in Philadelphia (I do too) and wondered if you ever do speaking engagements.