What to Say?

[Jaunty Guitar Music]

Mike: Welcome, everybody. This is Avoiding the Addiction Affliction brought to you by Westwords Consulting and the Kenosha County Substance Use Disorder Coalition. I'm Mike McGowan.

Mike: Words matter. Words are powerful, so powerful that many of us avoid talking about certain topics because of the emotions those words create.

Mike: I'm so pleased today to have back as our guest Jessica Lahey. Jess is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, The Gift of Failure, How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed, and the book we talked about the last time, The Addiction Inoculation, Raising Healthy Kids in a Culture of Dependence, as well as as a blog post, we're going to talk about it length today.

Mike: Jess was awarded the Research Society on Alcohol's Media Award for outstanding journalistic efforts of writers who cover empirical research on alcohol and for her book, The Addiction Inoculation and Advocacy for the Recovery Community. Over 20 years, Jess has taught every grade from 6th to 12th in both public and private schools, and spent five years teaching in a drug and alcohol rehab for adolescents in Vermont.

Mike: She serves as a prevention and recovery coach at SANA, Medical Detox and Recovery Center in Stowe, Vermont. And has written about education, parenting, child welfare for the Washington Post, The Atlantic, her bi-weekly column, The Parent Teacher Conference ran for three years at the New York Times. She has a podcast and links to all of that is on our website here.

Mike: Welcome back, Jess.

Jessica: Thank you so much for having me. I'm so grateful to be back.

Mike: Well, I really enjoyed our conversation last time. And, you know, occasionally I've had people back and I don't want to recreate the entire conversation. It's available and there's a link to actually her last podcast on the blurb. So go listen to it.

Mike: But for those of you who didn't hear the conversation you talked about your own history and that you became what you saw in your family and swore that you never wanted to become.

Jessica: Yeah, that happens a lot. I mean, I know someone in recovery who, you know, used to hang out as a little little kid at 12 step meetings.

Jessica: She grew up with both parents in 12 step and yet here we are. I mean, you know, it's a tricky thing, you know, substance use disorder sneaks up on you in ways that I did not understand. And before I knew it, you know, I was in real trouble.

Mike: Well, I think that adds an additional layer onto the shame, right?

Jessica: Mm hmm. Oh, yeah.

Mike: That you talk about. And you talk about the healing and even discarding the shame. How do you go about doing that?

Jessica: You know, for me, the shame part was tough because there are, you know, there's this phase during recovery where, you know, I happened to get sober in 12 step that was my route to recovery and people can do it lots of ways, but one of the steps I had to go through was this, you know, making amends thing. And that to me was the scariest part because I did some things that I'm really, really not proud of and you know, for me, there's a lot of, you know, yeah, I was up on a high horse getting upset with you about the fact that you were drinking and yet I was doing it and I'm really sorry that was, you know, that sort of thing.

Jessica: But then, you know, there's also just stuff that you know, I just, if I hadn't been drinking and I hadn't been so completely obsessed with where I was going to get my next drink, I never would have done. And, you know, even just little things like, I threw a, I'm the kind of person who walks along the street and picks up trash.

Jessica: That's just, I just do that. I live in Vermont. It's beautiful. The idea that people can throw trash out their car window drives me bananas. And I did that but I also made amends for it by like the next day by going out and picking up just not only my trash, but like lots of other people's trash, but just little things that I never in a million years thought I would do because that's just not me.

Jessica: And yet when I was in the depths of, it really had its hooks on me. Sorry for all the mixed metaphors. I did a lot of things that I didn't think that I would ever do.

Mike: Did you have anybody when you tried to make amends say, yeah, later?

Jessica: Sort of, yes. And you know, I have to just live with that.

Jessica: There's a beautiful, beautiful account of that in a book called, and I'm looking over at my bookshelf to find it right now, but there's a, there's a beautiful mother daughter account called The Lost Years. And in it, the person who had it has alcohol, well, substance use disorder goes to make amends for something really heinous that she did.

Jessica: And the person was really not interested was, it was so hurtful that the person was not that interested, but came up with a scheme for her to make amends over time. And I just, I read that account of her making amends for something she did that was just so, to me anyway, something that would have been so difficult to make amends for.

Jessica: And my, you know, my respect for her just goes way up because the fact that people are dedicated enough to their recovery, that they will do things that sound undoable when you're, Before you get there, before you get to a place in recovery where you know that honesty is the most important thing and then that's to answer your question, your first question, which is, you know, I was raised to not be allowed to talk about my parents substance use disorder. It was this to quote Susan Cheever, John Cheever's daughter, who's written beautifully about substance use disorder, alcohol use disorder. It was this elephant in our house and it was stomping on my family and no one was allowed to point at it and say, what's up with the elephant?

Jessica: You know, we were told it was a zebra. We were told it wasn't just wasn't there. And for a kid that's so painful because that's gaslighting right? When you say Yeah, I hear what you're saying about the reality you're experiencing, but I would like you to substitute it with the one that I've come up with that may or may not be true, you know, to that person.

Jessica: That gaslighting just made me so angry. And years later, this is actually, and I don't mean to I hate it when people do this, when people just drop names, but I'm going to drop a name because it was an important moment for me. I was at lunch interviewing Alan Alda, like...

Mike: Oh wow.

Jessica: Yeah. So this person that I used to watch MASH with, my mom had a big crush on him.

Jessica: It was a big huge deal. And one of the things I picked up from reading all of his books was that he hates euphemisms. And he didn't even realize at the time and I put this in the interview in the, and in the article that's in the Atlantic. I said, you know, you just really seem to hate euphemisms.

Jessica: And he, as a science writer, as a science explainer, as someone who grew up not being able to call things certain things. His mother had some mental illness issues and when his mother was dying no one wanted to call it dying. And, you know, I just, I had this realization when I was interviewing him that, wow, that's a through line with me too.

Jessica: I want people to call things by the names they are. And that's been one of the realities of what I do now on stage when I'm talking about one of my, the points of my job is to tell parents, to tell people, to tell teachers sometimes, the things that the research says are true, but can be hard to hear.

Jessica: And I do that with humor and I do that with lots of things, but above and beyond it means that that's what we do in our own family. It's what I do with my own children. It's what I do. You know, I had a woman approach me in a bar. I was sitting, eating at the restaurant bar in an airport. And this woman came up to me and she was so mad because she'd gotten in trouble with a flight attendant.

Jessica: And I was overhearing her conversation because it was very loud. (laugh) And she turned to me and she's like, Have I had too much to drink? And this is one of those moments that people in recovery are like, Here it is! It's my shining moment! And she turned to me and she said, have I had too much to drink?

Jessica: And I'm like, well, yeah, I mean, you're yelling and we don't know you and you're very angry. And it sounds like you got in trouble with a flight attendant for being loud and unruly. And so I'm going to, I'm going to say, yeah. And I got her to give me her number so that I could text her and make sure she made it home safely. Someone was picking her up.

Jessica: But, you know, when someone turns to you and asks a question like that, honesty that will be something whether or not she has an issue with alcohol. I have no idea. I don't know her, but she asked me a question and to be anything other than honest, wouldn't have flown at that moment.

Jessica: Well, that'll live with her.

Mike: Yeah. That goes to the conversation we want to have, right? That, it's hard to know what to say. People tell me all the time that I'm lucky because my kids so far have avoided the deep pool of addiction on both sides of my family history. And so the word they use is luck, right? We're lucky.

Mike: And I like what you said about your kids. I'll paraphrase. You can't promise that they'll avoid this disease, but you guarantee that the language of addiction, of shame, and secrecy will be different. than in your childhood home.

Jessica: Yeah.

Mike: I assume you mean more honest?

Jessica: Yeah, my daughter... there was something, how do I tell this without losing her confidence.

Jessica: There was something that I was concerned about with my daughter, and I brought it up with her, and it turns out that in discussing it very, very honestly, I hope, that my concern was a bit misplaced. And so at first, I think she got a little irritated with me. And then I said, look, if you went into my closet to find something, And you saw a bottle of vodka on the floor of my closet, I would pray, I would hope that you would talk to me about it, that you would say, I love you and I support you and you know, nothing's ever going to change that.

Jessica: But you know, you said that if you kept drinking, you would end up dead and I found this in your closet and we need to talk about it. That's the language in our household. I love you and I support you and I will support you no matter what. However, there is something really important that we need to talk about. And my husband does check ins with me every once in a while.

Jessica: If we're having company over and he wants to get a bottle of wine to have with the company, he'll do a check in with me. If something just feels off, if my mood is feeling off, if I'm not sleeping well. And I would rather not he do a really deep check in with me because I'm just not in the mood for it.

Jessica: He'll do it anyway because that's what we do because we care about each other and there's no room, especially with kids that have a genetic predisposition for substance use, there's no room for just sort of tiptoeing around and hoping the problem will go away because we know that they have an elevated risk for it.

Jessica: So I can't just tiptoe around. And you know, I do it in a way that doesn't make it so that my kids, you know, are so annoyed at me and are like, can we not talk about this every 10 minutes? But they also know I'm going to be very honest about it.

Mike: I think it's hard because let's just use the both of us, for you and I, the pictures of the families we grew up in are so vivid and clear that we just assume, I think sometimes, well, that the next generation also sees the same vivid picture.

Mike: And they don't because they didn't live it. So they sometimes think we're over dramatizing.

Jessica: No, I mean, I have an easy go. I had a very, very easy go of having a parent who is an alcoholic, but I was required to be the parent and that's just not fair. You know, anytime parent ends up being the child in, even if it's just in situations, that's incredibly difficult for a child.

Jessica: And anytime a child is being gaslit and told them, no, no, no, what you're seeing plainly in front of you is not what you're seeing. That, you know, people who, you know, there's an entire history of people who feel like they're going insane because of gaslighting. It's not fair to do to a child. And I will just won't do that to my children.

Jessica: It's too important that they, you know, for their future relationships. Oh, you know, when we've had concerns over a relationship, not necessarily because we don't like the person or whatever, you know, we tiptoe around the fact that that's not our lives and we can't live our lives for them. But if, for example, if we were to see that we think our kid is being emotionally damaged, or our kid is being abused, or our kid is being taken advantage of. I think, you know, those are important things to remember that, you know, kids who are taken advantage of as children are more likely to allow themselves to be taken advantage of as adults.

Jessica: And so, it's really important that everything about the cycle of being the youngest, I think I'm the youngest person in recovery in my whole, no, that's not true, there's another person in recovery in my family of this generation. We can't let this go on to the next generation. That also means, by the way, that I am an aunt to two wonderful girls.

Jessica: And I am the go to for those conversations. Sure, their parents have them. Their mom has them all the time. Mom and dad are divorced. Their mom has them all the time. But I'm the one that I'm just going to do a check in. When one of them moved to Los Angeles, I made sure she had a harm reduction kit, that she had Narcan, that she had fentanyl test strips.

Jessica: And I said to her, you know, this is not because I think you're going to rush right out and start using opiates, but this is because she's had friends who have died from opiate overdoses. And It's really important that she is equipped with the things she needs in order to save someone else's life, in order to be safe.

Jessica: If she does choose to use, I don't know, a party drug or something, and she wants to use MDMA, she has a fentanyl test kit. I'm not going to pretend that they're never going to be tempted. And, you know, the conversations like this and about the article that you wanted to talk about is just because we talk about sex with our kids does not mean that it's going to make them want to have sex.

Jessica: Just because we talk about suicide does not put the idea in someone's head. If someone is going to attempt, sorry, I have to use the exact right language because they've. The language is really important. If someone wants to possibly take their life by suicide, believe me, I'm not gonna be the, if I talk about it, it's not going to be the first time that they've thought about it.

Jessica: So calling things by their names is incredibly important to me as a journalist, as an author, as a parent, as someone in recovery. There's just, (sigh) we mess around at our peril, you know the article you're talking about, I didn't talk about suicide with this person who did take her life by suicide.

Jessica: And I'm not saying that I could have changed things if I'd just brought it up, but I continue to have nightmares about the fact that I did not call the elephant the elephant. And for my mental health, you know, there's that missing piece of the puzzle for me, because I didn't know how to say the word suicide and I didn't know how to bring it up.

Jessica: And for me, that's, that's going to be something that I've tried to let go of the shame and I've tried to let go of the guilt around it, but, you know, my best friend is gone and I didn't say that word and it might've helped. I don't know, but I have no way of ever knowing.

Mike: Well, especially for somebody who had the role of parents when they were younger feels like maybe you should have said something.

Mike: Well, go into it. Tell us a little bit about Mary. The picture you have on your article is...

Jessica: Actually, there's another one behind me right here. When I graduated law school, she was there with me.

Mike: It's so joyful.

Jessica: Yeah. Yeah. That was the last time we were together. Her name actually is Mary Moore. She was Southern.

Jessica: So she has two first names Mary Moore, and her last name was Parham. And so my last name at the time was my maiden name was Potts. And so we sat near each other in our first in in law school. And I just, the minute I saw her, even before I knew that we were sitting near each other she just glowed.

Jessica: She just radiated joy and charisma and love and she was a connector and everyone knew that about her. Like everyone who met her just felt like she was seeing, she was one of those really special people who saw people very deeply, very quickly. And so we became friends immediately. And what I did not know when I met her was that she struggled from a cyclic depression.

Jessica: And so when things started to get very, very dark for her. We would have her over to make sure that she ate. We would have her over to watch, at the time, The X Files was the show that we watched together. Actually, we had a dog named Scully who sat right between us. We took care of her as best we could to make sure that, you know, she was as best doing the things that we could do for her, which didn't feel like much at the time.

Jessica: We surrounded her on that couch while we watched X Files and just attempted to sort of, you know, hold her in that space and keep her. But things got really dark for her. And eventually she came out of that cycle of depression and things got light again and things were light for a while, for a couple of years.

Jessica: And what I didn't know is that I had moved away and things started to get dark again. And what we also didn't know is that there was a certain date that she would make a decision every single year. Can I do this for another year? And I think with the darkness descending, she just, even though everything was going great for her, everything in her life was going so well with that darkness descending, I think what she said to herself was, If life is this good and I should be really happy and I can't see my way forward, then no, I can't do another year.

Jessica: So she was very, very thoughtful. You know, people say, you know, the way I think about this is she was not herself. She was not the Mary Moore I knew and loved when she took her own life because, you know, she cared about people so much that. I want to say, oh, how could she do that? We loved her so much.

Jessica: She loved us so much. She was not that person. She was deep in this darkness. But yeah, she took her life in a way that was as thoughtful as possible to the people around her. And it was awful. It was all, it was, there's no other way to talk about it. It was awful.

Mike: How did you find out that there was a date every year? Did she journal it?

Jessica: Yeah. What I didn't know is that there had been a time when she put a plan into practice years before and it had been on that date. And so that date just became the date every year that she would make that decision.

Mike: You know when we care about somebody, love somebody and we don't know what to say. Because we don't, sometimes.

Mike: That's the whole point of your article. The article is called, this is just to say, and then in parenthesis, the word suicide. We sometimes say nothing, rather than say the wrong thing.

Jessica: Right. Well, and, so I had evidence that would point to, you know, I had the evidence of don't talk about my parents substance use disorder.

Jessica: A friend from college once sent me and this other person what definitely read as a suicide letter. And I immediately called for a welfare check, and she wasn't at home, she was at work, and so they had to break down her door, and she was very angry with me for a while, and then she thanked me.

Jessica: But she was very angry with me, and, you know, we just are so worried that we're overreacting, that it's not what it looks like, that we're misunderstanding the situation, and you know, I went back and looked at that email that that person sent and it was a suicide note! It really, really was. And whether she was thinking about it in the moment, and you know, the fact that her door was broken down was evidence of how much we love her.

Jessica: And, you know, I talked to the other person who got the letter because that person called me and was like, Oh my gosh, what is this? And we agreed together that that was the best decision to make because this scared us. And even things like, you know, when I was a teacher as a writing teacher, students, especially in their writing class, write all kinds of stuff.

Jessica: You know, I've had kids admit to all kinds of things, some of which were reportable, and some of which were not, and I'm a mandated reporter as a teacher, so I, you know, but, you know, a student will write about... I had this one student once who wrote poetry that was very much about death. In retrospect, and as someone who has seen a lot of poetry about death, I mean, look at Emily Dickinson and look at lots of, you know, it's just one of the things we write about.

Jessica: But this was also an adolescent and 22%, over 22% of adolescents think seriously about taking their own life. And 10% of adolescents admit that at one time or another, they have put plans into place to take their own life. Those are big, big numbers. In fact, when I say those numbers, people look at me like, that's not right.

Jessica: That, that number can't be right. That's one in 10 who have put plans into place. Even it, it shocks me 22%! But those are the real numbers and those are, you know, those are the nationally, those are the numbers and state by state, it varies a little bit. But those are the national numbers and we don't have time to mess around with stuff like that.

Mike: No, we don't. And I work with kids all the time. And if you simply crack the door open, they'll walk through.

Jessica: Yeah. And sometimes it's not about necessarily, maybe that student wasn't, you know, contemplating taking her own life. But, it also means I read the poetry, I understood the poetry, I put myself in her place, I want to talk to her about what's in her poetry, I'm seeing and hearing and looking at her and knowing her.

Jessica: And either way, that's a connection between the two of us. And that also, you know, if she were to come up against something else, she would know that I'm one of those people who cares enough to talk about it and actually say the words. Because for me, if someone had said, alcoholic or alcohol use disorder.

Jessica: We didn't use that term then. When I was a kid, I would have been so relieved. I would have been so relieved. It would have been like, Oh my gosh, the door's open. I'm allowed to talk about this thing.

Mike: Well, I talk about that all the time that that just didn't happen in our generation. Well, you know, you talk about this in your article that that shame over the silence kept you from addressing it for so long. (laugh)

Mike: I love the part in your article. Where you say, okay, so then you finally write about it and isn't this the world we live in? And then you got criticized for writing about it in the comment sections, right?

Jessica: It's 24 years. Well, that's the other thing is that people have really, people have a lot of baggage going into any conversation, whether that's about, you know, it's, it's why it's difficult for me to get people to come and talk about substance use prevention.

Jessica: And I now couch it in other content, like where it dovetails with my first book, The Gift of Failure, because, you know, for example, the best possible substance use prevention comes from helping kids feel like they have self efficacy and competence and all that sort of stuff.

Jessica: So fine, that's in Gift of Failure. I'll approach it that way. I'll bring my Trojan horse out, jump out of it and start talking about substance use prevention. But suicide, you know, for, I think it has taken me 24 years. You know, I stopped having nightmares about it. I used to have these nightmares where I would go to the state she lived in, and I would look for her and I couldn't find her and I would panic.

Jessica: And those dreams only stopped for me about 10 years ago. So I would have been bringing my baggage. You know, I host a podcast about writing and the publishing industry, and we always say, If you have something really, really painful to write about, it may be as best that you talk to a therapist first, because you don't want your reader to be your therapist.

Jessica: You know, if you've got unresolved stuff, maybe talk it through with an objective third party before attempting to spill your guts out in a book. And the books that I have read that really someone should have talked through with a therapist first are just awful. I feel like I'm, I feel like, They're just trauma dumping in a unfiltered way.

Jessica: And I just wasn't ready to write about it. And when I've written about like the suicide thing in the past, even just by illusion, people have come back and said, you know, that's not helpful! You can't talk about it that way! You have to talk about it this way.

Jessica: So instead I stuck with the language of journalism and the standards that we have around the language. Like we don't say someone committed suicide or someone attempted suicide because for someone who wanted to take their life and failed, It made it sound like they failed, right? If attempt, you attempted it, but you couldn't even do that, right?

Jessica: You know, so that's why we've taken that language away. Committed suicide, attempted suicide. We've taken that, that language out of the style guides. It's now that they died by suicide is the way to talk about that. It's just, it's why I like style guides. You know, if we have agreed on language that has been sort of filtered through someone who knows what they're talking about, a psychologist, and they can say, you know, that language is harmful.

Jessica: Maybe we should use this language instead. It's why in substance use disorder, we talk about substance use disorder instead of except the exception is myself. I call myself an alcoholic. That's not a term that I use for other people. Some people feel that it casts shame and blame on the person themselves.

Jessica: Instead you're supposed to talk about a person with an alcohol use disorder. And that's fine that I do that. I myself call myself an alcoholic. There's something stark about that language that reminds me of just how dire that was for me. But that's only something I do for myself.

Mike: As you think about this, you started it out this way when you said there, you think about this a lot.

Mike: Is there something you wish you would have said to Mary?

Jessica: You know, I, yeah, I mean, I wish just for the sake of having said it, talking about the elephant in the room, I wish I would have said, you know, have you been thinking at all about the concept of suicide. And I I don't know what she would have said.

Jessica: She was a people pleaser. So she might've said no, just to make me feel better. In which case I probably would have talked about it again because her needing to make other people comfortable was really, really deep in her. And who knows, maybe that was a part of her issue as well. I don't know. I want to be the friend that says the things.

Jessica: I want to be the person that you can rely on to say the hard things. And professionally, that's what I do. I say the hard things in a way that hopefully you can hear them and digest them. And so if only for that reason, I do regret it, but I don't for a moment think that I could have saved her life if I had just said that thing.

Jessica: That's much deeper than one human being and her depression was much bigger than me. It was much bigger than her. She needed and she got professional help. But I don't pretend for a moment that I could have been the hero that could have swooped down. And if I had just said something, I could have changed the past.

Mike: Yeah. But I think that applies to almost everything, right? Just because I say, are you sure you want to have that drink? Or maybe you shouldn't get behind the wheel of the car. It just, it sometimes it just needs to be said, regardless of the decision that they end up making.

Jessica: Oh yeah. Oh, absolutely. For me, one of the things that made me a mandated reporter was being a teacher.

Jessica: And, you know, part of being a mandated reporter is understanding when someone is in imminent peril. And for me, that's kind of an imminent peril issue. Although, you know, it's not like I go around and say, you know, are you sure you want to have that drink? I definitely don't do that. But if someone looks at me and they say, Have I had too much to drink? (laugh)

Jessica: You know, and it's obvious that they have and that they're falling off the chair. Yeah. Then I'm going to say something, but yeah. Well, and to that point, so my parent that is in recovery now had a relapse and it was Christmas and what that meant for the family, for me and for my sister, is that we could not be in that house, and we would not expose our children to that.

Jessica: I had gotten sober at that point. My sister recognizes what growing up around that did to her. And so she and I agreed together that we were essentially calling off Christmas, at least in the form that we had thought we were going to be having Christmas.

Jessica: And it was really traumatic for everyone. But we said, these are our children. It is our job to protect them. And we will not have this be a part of their lives, let alone, you know, Christmas. And so it was awful. It was the worst Christmas ever. But I'm really proud of us for doing it. I'm really proud of us that, you know, these two kids who were not empowered as kids, you know, kids, whatever, these two humans who were not empowered as kids to point at the elephant, you know, we did as adults.

Jessica: And that was this person's last drink. So, in that case, we did change the future. We were the ones who said this is just won't be tolerated and these are your grandchildren and if you want to be around your grandchildren, because there were lots of other times where I didn't do that and I wish I had.

Jessica: And, you know, you hardly ever get to be, I talked about this a lot, substance use prevention and getting someone to the point where they know they need help is like a 100 piece puzzle. And for me, my father was the 100th piece in my puzzle. Right place, right time, right words, right person. And he said, I know what an alcoholic looks like and you're an alcoholic and you need help.

Jessica: And this was someone who hates conflict, hates upsetting me, hates saying the hard thing. And he put all of that aside for me that day. Because he knew I was in real trouble. And I have so much respect for him for doing that. And so on that day, he was my 100th piece. However, pieces 1 through 99 had to be in place before my dad could be piece 100.

Jessica: So on the day that we said something to my parent about the Christmas thing, that was the 100th piece, but there were 1 through 99 in place that had been put there through lots of other ways and reasons and people. And so don't get your hopes up that you're going to get to be piece 100 because that hardly ever happens.

Jessica: But 1 through 99 has to be there and substance use prevention are lots of those pieces. So my hope, you know, you quoted the part of the book where I say that I can't guarantee that my kids will never go down the road of having substance use disorder. Genetically, they're predisposed, and I've done my best to use best practices according to the evidence that's out there.

Jessica: But if they do, then they're starting at piece 32 or 47 or 71, whatever it is, because they've gotten so much of the prevention stuff from me and so much very plain talk around what they're. Genetically what they're up against. So I want that to be part of their thinking when they decide whether or not to try that drug, to smoke that joint, to, you know, whatever it is, to have that drink.

Jessica: I need for them to have as much evidence on the con side of that plate, whether that's, you know, that their brains aren't done developing, that they have a history, that, you know, they're going to need their short term memory in order to memorize all that stuff they've got for that test next Friday. I need all of that to be on the con side and that's all substance use prevention and the stuff that gets people to recovery faster.

Jessica: So it does dual duty and so I'm I'm all in either way.

Mike: That's great. You know, there's a book in there.

Jessica: (laugh) I wrote i!

Mike: You can call it the puzzle, the next one. Well, and speaking of which, and by the way, for the listener, I asked Jess if I could ask her this ahead of time because there's a superstition that happens with authors. But you're writing, you're writing a new book.

Jessica: Well, so I'm, the way I like to talk about it is I'm very much researching a new book.

Jessica: So the research, so the way nonfiction writing works is the way nonfiction publishing works is you have to do a heck of a lot of research to write a proposal. And in my case, because they include a sample chapter, and they include chapter summaries, and they include all this other stuff, they're usually around 80 pages long.

Jessica: For the Addiction Inoculation, I did a full year of research before I even attempted to write the proposal. I have to get to a certain level of expertise before I can even talk about it. And then there was a whole nother two years of research before I could finish the book. So I'm researching and almost done with the proposal for a book that I'm, you know, I'm really excited about that.

Jessica: My editor knows about my agent knows about. So Gift of Failure came out 10 years ago and the kids in that book who were, you know, middle school, high school aged are now emerging adults. And my kids are emerging adults. And so I'm writing about emerging adulthood and parenting. You know, parents have a bigger role, I think, in their emerging adults life than we've really ever seen before societally. So that's what my next book is about. It's about parenting emerging adults and helping them through some of the stuff that they have to deal with in you know, these days.

Mike: I think that's terrific and well needed. I can't wait. And then you get to the [inaudible].

Jessica: Well, and the nice thing also about doing all this research is it's for me too.

Jessica: I mean, you know, I wrote The Gift of Failure because I had two teenagers and I wanted to understand how over parenting affects motivation, engagement, and learning. And I did that and I learned a ton. So if I had never written that book, I still learned a ton. I wanted to know what best practices were for educators and for parents around substance use prevention. So if I had never written the addiction inoculation, if I'd never sold that book, that's okay. It's still all for me. So I'm looking at my resource library for the next book and there's, you know, I'm looking at shelves and shelves and shelves of books.

Jessica: So the nice thing for me is I have nothing to lose in this process. I'm learning no matter what. And, you know, I can write articles about it. I can talk about it when I'm out speaking. So, for me, the book is the frosting, and I love writing, and I love the process of writing, and I love talking about the process of writing, but it's, for me, it's never really been about the books.

Jessica: It's about learning how to be the best possible parent I can be according to the research that's out there and saying, I'm sorry, and explaining why I'm changing what I'm doing, whether it's, you know, my parenting around alcohol, which we did change between my oldest and my youngest. And there are lots of topics.

Jessica: I mean, if you were to look at my bookshelves, I'm in a room that's pretty much all bookshelves. It's my office. And there are lots of topics. There's two entire bookshelves of books on a topic that I was going to write about. And I learned as much as I wanted to learn about it. And I just decided that I didn't want to write that book.

Jessica: So that's cool. I learned all the stuff I wanted. If you had asked me a couple of years ago what I was going to write about, I would have said teaching kids about ethics. And I'm looking at those bookshelves right now. And I'm really glad I read them all. And that's just not the book I wanted to write at that time.

Mike: That's great. Well, anything you write, I'm really excited about because it's terrific.

Jessica: Thank you.

Mike: And leads me to ask you to have another conversation. Jess, thanks so much for being with us today and for being kind enough to write the article about Mary. I thought it was terrific because we get criticized on both sides that you, you hear the, you hear buck up deal with it.

Mike: And then you hear, Oh, you all, you all are a bunch of snowflakes.

Jessica: Right and the one person, you know, interestingly, the one person I was really concerned about with this piece the people were her family, her mom and her sister. And so before I hit publish on this piece, I called her sister and I said, because her sister's picture was going to be in my social media feed.

Jessica: And I just didn't want to upset her. And so, and we talk about this all the time, by the way. But I texted her and I said, just so you know Mary Moore's picture is going to be in my feed. Just in case you know, I just don't want you to see that and not be prepared for it. She's who I care about most when it comes to talking about her sister.

Jessica: And so if she were to say something to me, you know, I didn't show her the piece ahead of time, but she trusted me. But if there was something that really, really upset her in the article, we would have talked about that too, because that's part of talking about the elephants.

Mike: Yeah. And it helps her as well.

Jessica: Uh huh.

Mike: For those of you who listen, you know that there's links to not only the article, but all of Jess's work, podcasts, attached to the podcast. And there's also a link to the previous podcast on our podcast.

Jessica: Oh good. (laugh)

Mike: If that's not too much, we hope any of you can listen in anytime you're able. And anytime you're able, we'd love to hear from you.

Mike: Until next time, stay safe. And if you love somebody, have a conversation, even if you don't have the right words.