S2E5: Motherhood as a Shared Story: Rebecca Thompson’s Path to Healing, Connection, and Family Life

I think stories are the most compelling thing in life, truly. I mean, they can capture experiences in a way that no data can. And you know, I know you've talked about this idea as well. And I like to say that Held Together captures the extraordinary moments in ordinary lives.

Yeah.

And that's what family life is about. It's these small details the day to day. And you know, I'll come back again to this tension between grief and joy and all of it existing at once. And I think the underlying theme of all of it is growth.

Yeah.

So we want to be in relationship with others to watch them grow and to see ourselves grow.

Yes. Hi, I'm Paige Nolan. Welcome to I'll Meet yout There, A place where heart centered conversations are everything. Living what matters is the truest thing, and sharing the journey is the best. Hi everyone and welcome back. When I was planning for this month's episode, I knew I wanted to talk about mothering in some way. And it didn't have to be biological mothering, but I wanted to acknowledge the ways women care for others and the ways we nurture each other and the beauty of family life that impacts all of us. I knew I wanted to talk about these topics, however, I didn't have a specific guest in mind. Cut to My producer, Jen sends me a link to Rebecca N. Thompson's new book, knowing I would be intrigued with it. And Jen was right. Rebecca's new book is entitled Held Together, A Shared Memoir of Motherhood, Medicine, and Imperfect Love. I read it in five days and I knew I wanted to have Rebecca meet us here to talk about it. Amazingly, her schedule allowed for it and I'm so delighted that she was able to join us this month. I'm excited for y' all to hear our conversation and know about this special book because it honors family life and motherhood in a wonderfully honest, vulnerable, and touching way. Rebecca N. Thompson, M.D. is a family medicine and public health physician who specializes in women's and children's health. Her new book, Held Together, intertwines Rebecca's personal journey to motherhood, which was life threatening on more than one occasion, with 21 stories shared by her patients, friends and medical colleagues. In today's conversation, you'll hear how Rebecca came to the idea of writing a book, how she chose to collaborate with the women who shared their stories, and how she crafted this book. The shared memoir aspect of this creative project serves as a pathway to healing not only for every person who was involved in the book, but also for us, the readers. Rebecca And I talk about the power of listening to build trust in relationship. And we explore resilience and how it can be a double edged sword. We also talk about what common ground really is and how this book is a great example of very different experiences coming together to represent something universal. Towards the end of our time, Rebecca shares with us what she's learned from living the message of held together. And she offers us a specific lesson we can carry away from this episode and apply in our daily lives. Enjoy my conversation with Rebecca N. Thompson. I'm so happy to have you here, Becca. Thanks for joining us.

Oh, thanks so much for having me, Paige.

Yeah, and I'd love to start before we get into motherhood and these stories, these beautiful stories of so many different paths to motherhood. I'd love to start with you learning a little bit about you as a person, before you became a mother, before you got into medicine. Could you share with us a little bit about your early childhood dreams or if you thought you would be a doctor, Just kind of set up that path that got you to medical school and led you to this beautiful book.

Thank you so much. You know, I, I didn't think about going into medicine when I was younger. I didn't have family members in medicine, really. Some extended family in kind of ancillary medical roles, but no doctors, nothing like that. I have always loved to write. In whatever other interest I was pursuing, I would come to the writing side of that I found whether in something more literary or in kinds of science, I always went back to writing. But the way that I got into medicine was pretty circuitous. When I was in college, I was an anthropology major, social anthro. So I was really fascinated by life stories. That was a lot of my work. I thought about becoming an archeologist. That was my initial intention. But then I realized that I liked living people more than artifacts and not living people. But I'm not good with sun and heat. It's like, well, that might not be the best career for me practically. That's right. Anyway, when I was a scientist sophomore and a junior in college, I was president of my outing club, leading all these backcountry trips. And that's always been a passion of mine. I've been camping and hiking and traveling with my family since I was about 4. I would say my parents were really great about exposing me to that and they loved that too. So I thought I should learn some first aid to be a responsible trip.

Beer? Yeah. How old were you when you, when you decided to do that?

Teenager that would have been my junior year of college.

Oh, that's so cool.

So what would have been.

Yeah, 21.

Yeah, yeah, probably 19 or 20.

Okay.

I signed up for a wilderness first responder course over spring break of my junior year, just expecting that it was a thing I was doing out of obligation. And I was completely surprised to find that I loved it. I would fall asleep with the textbook open on my chest every night, lying in the bed, trying to read it. I was just immersed in it. And so then I thought, well, maybe this is something I actually would love to do. And I mean, it integrates so many of my interests and essentially, you know, long story short, I went on to become a wilderness emt. In the summer in between my junior and senior years, senior fall, I took a few classes in medical sociology and anthropology to learn about more of these life stories angles, but from the medical point of view.

Yeah.

And think about that path and if it was really something I wanted to do, because it's no small commitment, you know. And then I took my first pre med requirement spring of senior year like a Bio101 equivalent, and did three years of post post baccalaureate night school while working several jobs, including working in a psychology lab, again, more life stories, and working in the editorial department as an assistant at New England Journal of Medicine. So that another tying in my love of writing and words and communication. Medical communication.

Yeah.

So that's the backstory of how I got into medicine.

I always get inspired by the backstory because I find the more and more people I speak with, we all have these seeds along the way. And people who listen to this podcast know that I'm totally in awe of that. The thread that runs through people's lives, you know, it's fascinating.

Absolutely.

And I think as a parent especially, it's important to remember and trust that that's happening in our kids lives and the people we love, you know, their lives, so that we can.

It's a great reminder. Yeah, a great reminder that we got to where we are by not always the most direct or linear paths. And hopefully others will find their way too, including our kids.

Yeah. And then. So you get yourself to medical school. Was getting married and pursuing motherhood also an obvious dream for you? Like, was that, or is that something that you were really thinking about as it related to balancing motherhood and career?

I wouldn't say that. It was something I sort of thought ahead a lot about in the sense of, you know, some people sort of dressing up or playing bride or wedding or playing mom. I don't remember doing a lot of that. That.

Yeah.

But I'm grateful to have a solid foundation of family. And it was something I wanted to be part, you know, continue to expand that family. You know, coming from my own original family, nuclear and extended and chosen family.

Yes.

And then building that. So finding my people that I really cared about and many of the friends I made in college and especially medical school, I'm still in really close touch with. So building that chosen family and then, of course, being open to finding a partner. And not everybody wants that, but I did, and I actually chose to go to medical school geographically, in a place where a lot of people like to go hiking and do outdoors things. Like, I thought about schools that were in cities, I thought about schools that were outside of cities. And a huge part of my decision was based on going somewhere that the people I met would be more likely to want to go on a bike ride on the weekend than to go, you know, like to a bar, to a show, to a bar.

Absolutely.

I mean, there's plenty of that anywhere. But I wanted the focus to be on, like, more experiential, outdoor type things. So that was a big part of how I chose my locations.

Yes. And then take us a little bit through. You know, you opened this beautiful book with your own story, and your story is woven throughout other women's stories. So I know that story begins when you are in medical school.

Yes.

Or residency, I think.

Yeah, it was. It was residency. So my husband and I met when I was in medical school, and I was just starting medical school. He was just finishing up college. And so we went through that experience together. He's not in medicine. And then by the time we'd been together, around seven years, I was. I'd finished medical school. I was finishing up what turned out to be my first residency. Yeah, I went back later. But that's a separate part of the.

Story that's in the book for the listeners who are intrigued with that. That's in the book.

Yeah. So I'd started out in public health and preventive medicine, wanting to do environmental public health. No surprises from what I've just said, and those kinds of. That kind of focus, and children's environmental health. And I had finished that resident. I was finishing it up and about to start my first kind of attending job, supervisory physician job, out of residency, when we thought, well, that's a pretty good time to think about starting a family. And that is where this all began.

Yes.

Yeah. Yep.

I think the way that the book is structured, where it's your story is woven in with other women's stories. What I'm curious about is how did you track your story? Like, were you keeping a journal at the time that this was all unfolding? And at what point do you start to really track other women's stories? Or are you a journal writer, you know, or just.

I'm not.

Okay.

I'm not at all. So that. It's a really valid question looking back. So the stories of the other women kind of came together gradually in terms of my own, which is the framework, as you've alluded to, for the book, the structure of the book. These events started happening about 17 years ago now. 17, 18 years ago now. I would say I started writing them about 10 years ago. So I hadn't kept records of anything during the time we were going through the things that we talk about, but they were still fresh enough. It's not like it had been nearly 20 years as it has now. There was still an immediacy to the experience. My kids were really young when I started writing. They would have been about five and three or so. And now they're teenagers, obviously, because math and I just. I remembered everything so vividly. I think when we go through these kinds of experiences, or any intense experiences, whether good or bad or oversimplified terms, whether joyous or full of grief or whatever emotions they evoke when they're this intense, they stick with us. And even the visual details, I just. I have a really visual memory, so I'll remember what I was wearing in a very intense time, or what someone else was wearing or the color of the carpet or something like that. And those visuals evoke a lot of the memory.

Yeah, I have that with playlists. So I'll often make.

Yes. Music.

Yes.

And what was playing.

Yeah. And for me. And I think maybe. I don't know if you're like this too, but I think a lot of people are like this. It helps me move the emotion. So I'll create a playlist that purposely makes me sad if there's some grief thing or lifts me up if I'm like, you know, getting excited to go on a trip somewhere. But if I hear that song years later, it's like I can feel that time, like, almost to the point where I can't hear certain songs unless I want to go back to that moment.

Absolutely. Our senses, really, they evoke our emotions. Visceral. That's the perfect word, what you just said. Because, I mean, there's a lot of research about smell evoking Emotion because of the loci in the brain where they're connected. But I think it can be true of all the senses really invoking those powerful memories and images.

Yeah. And as it relates to motherhood, I think so much of family life and living together in a home, I think so much about smell, like the laundry going, you know, how it has a certain smell with the dry, you know, and I. There's so much laundry and it's easy to scent laundry. So I really try to like befriend laundry. And some of that is smell and touch. Like when the girls were really little, I had three kids under three. I would look at the size of their clothes, like as I was folding it and be like, okay, the clothes are not always going to be this small just to be like in it, you know, and try to remember.

I remember taking a picture. Speaking of remembering clothing and visual images, I had one time on the drying rack in our laundry room, I had all these clothes out, the kids clothes, especially those one piece jammies.

Yes.

And they're all colorful and cute. There was, I remember a purple set with elephants all over it. Colorful elephants and flowers. And a tan set with moose all over it and moose feet. And I took a picture of this board of laundry and. And texted it to my husband and said, cutest load of laundry ever.

Oh, I love it.

And that. Exactly what you're saying. You have to, if you can. I mean, oh my gosh. Laundry is the bane of our existence as parents. Right?

It is.

But if we want to find a way into something to appreciate about it. Yes, right.

That's right.

The tactile, the visual of the colors.

Yeah. And the passage of time. You know, it's from onesies to the. The princess dresses or the costume. The Batman costume. And now we're in. I have a ninth grader who's super into basketball. So everything is the jersey. Yeah. And the umbrella.

Bittersweet. You can see the passage of time through the laundry.

Yeah.

Yeah. And then, you know, you asked about the other women too. And over time. So if you just took one. So each story, the other 21 women is a self contained vignette, if you will. But they're long, they're substantial. But each one is self contained within where it intersects with a point in my own story, it's placed there. And each one of those, the whole project took 10 years. But each chapter, each woman's story was a collaboration with her over several years, typically. And so the way that these were crafted, there was a lot about memory but what it really was was storytelling and oral history. So we would. I had a little handheld recorder, and if she's local to me, we might go for a walk or meet at a coffee shop. If she's not, we might have a phone call. Many phone calls across time zones. There were people all over the US And a couple in other countries as. So we would have to navigate the time changes and such, but over time, we would get these recordings. I would transcribe each one and then think about that story that she'd been willing to share in talking with me. In addition to. If she had journal entries herself or old messages she'd sent to friends and family to update them during some particular issue going on, a challenge in her life. Everything she was able to give me, I tried to take it and weave them together to create the most compelling version of her narrative that we could, using her words. But I tried to sort of write it, if you will.

Yeah.

Creating a narrative arc, deciding where to start the story, how to end it, all of this. And then I would give it back to her and say. And highlight and say, you know, this part. Am I getting this right? I feel like I'm missing something. Or could you flesh this out? Could we talk about this on another call? Or could you write me one paragraph on this topic and then take that and try to, again, create a cohesive tone to all of the stories, but preserve her voice as much, which.

I think you did a beautiful job doing that. Thank you. And it's so well crafted with the placement of the. Because there's so many different ways that people come to family life and motherhood and, you know, really learn how to attach and connect and also deal with loss. It's all of that.

Yeah.

So did you have a moment where you could see the structure of this book or in your own journey of. Let's call it just a fertility journey to. To arrive to motherhood. Was there a moment that you thought, wow, I really want to bring along these women who have really helped me. Because what I found in the book is that these women really helped you, you know, as. As you were going through. Starting with Deborah, I think, was the first.

Yeah, she was my obstetrician. That's right.

Yeah. And she. Her story runs through it, and then the book ends with her, which is so beautiful.

Thank you.

So it's. And then along the way, you know, then you become. In your second residency, you become holding space for family med women going through that at the same time that you're still on A path to motherhood.

So it was a big leap of faith.

Yeah. To be going through it and then also be a guide for other people going through it, I just thought was remarkable. So I want to understand about the resilience and the choice in that moment. But before we do that, I want to understand, was there a moment in your mind where you were like, oh, I could see how this all fits together and you were ready to confront it and really look at it again?

Yeah. Now, after that second residency in family medicine and focusing on women's health, I had completed that and I was into my first attending job.

Okay.

Which I loved. I love taking care of individual people and families, and especially when it comes to children's health and prenatal care and women's health and preventive care and sexual health and supporting all those complicated, difficult conversations. I love that. But I realized a few years into that that it wasn't sustainable for me to work the hours that I was working in that kind of a setting while my husband was also working full time. And now we have two young kids at home. And so I thought, okay, I need to pull back from this and find what's next for me clinically.

Yeah.

And as I was doing that the summer after I left that job, not quite knowing what I was going to do next clinically, I thought, well, I want to write something, because I've always loved to write again, I want to write something, create something that would help other families. And given that public health background, it's like, I want to help a population. If I'm not in the moment helping individuals, you know, the family medicine side of things, how can I use the public health lens to help a wider population of people with these. These kinds of challenges? So I thought about what might I be able to write. And I. I'm also a lactation consultant. And I went into that to counter the idea that is, I think, too prevalent that you have to do things certain way. You have to breastfeed, you have for this long and this way, and this is what success looks like. And I. I don't believe that I wanted to be. I prefer to say I was an infant feeding consultant.

Yes.

And meeting people where they are.

Yeah.

So at first I thought, well, maybe I'll write a book about that to support new families. And so my impulse was to collect short, you know, vignettes and little sidebars about those experiences to reflect the themes. And very quickly, I realized I was drawn to the vignettes.

Yeah.

I just wanted to write all Those. So then I.

And the complexity, too. Becca, I feel like you're very good at dealing with all the complexity of our stories.

That's the. That's my favorite part. The hard parts are the best. That's where you dig in and get the real compelling, interesting, meaningful parts and do the work. And so I thought I could write, collect, you know, from women that I'd worked with over time, their stories about this to help support other women. But really, almost immediately, I realized that was too limited in scope. I didn't want to only preserve and share stories about early parenthood. I wanted to help people understand the complexities of families.

Yes.

So, and a few of the patients I had worked with over the years, both during my residency and in my attending practice beyond that, really crystallized that for me. Several of them are in the book.

Yeah.

So that would include, for example, Anna's story, Aaron's story, Kelly's story. These are people I had known throughout my residency. And many of them also then followed me to the community clinic that I went to after I graduated and came to see me at that practice. And those are the people who made it clear to me that this book wasn't a book of birth stories or pregnancy stories or fertility. Because fascinating as those stories are, that's just the beginning.

Yes. Yes.

So then I thought, well, let's talk to them about if they would like to participate in, you know, collecting some of these longer, deeper stories that show the bigger context of their lives. And that's how this began.

And did you know you would include your own story and open with it?

Yeah. Yeah. When I first started, I never thought of it as an anthology. It's not an anthology because I didn't just ask people to give me a written story and then I would lightly edit it. I wanted to collaborate with these people to really craft each story.

Yeah.

Really intentionally, as you've alluded to. You know, have it follow a narrative arc and, like, be a self contained entity and be able to stand on its own, but also be told in an intentional way.

Yes. Yes.

And not just linear.

Yes.

Usually not at all linear.

Yeah.

So while I knew I would always include our family story at first, I was like, well, does our story go at the beginning so the reader knows that, or does it go at the end because it's kind of a culmination and it ties into other people's stories? And I did have a moment only partway through the process. I was actually waiting to meet up with one of the women with Stacy, who's In the book, I was waiting to meet up with her after she dropped her kids off, and we were going to either work on her story or just visit. I don't know. She's a. She was a friend outside of that. And I remember sitting in this parking lot waiting to meet her, and I realized, wait a minute. If I group these stories on where they kind of intersect with ours and where they've made me think about things differently in my own story, I could pause at intervals. I could tell part of my story and then include a story or several stories on that theme, that era of our lives and our struggles, and how much more powerful would that be? And so the idea just came to me really suddenly while sitting, waiting to connect with one of these women, and I went with it. And that's. I've been so grateful for that. It's what makes it feel really unusual and so rewarding.

Yes. And another experience I had as a reader, as it relates to that, is that we heal through each other's stories. And you really talk about this in the book, that when you are going through your own healing, you're impacting everyone around you is healing through your healing. And I just. The way that it's structured is. Yeah. It embodies that message, actually.

Well, thank you for finding that in it, because that was our intention. Absolutely.

And so I mentioned this earlier, the word resilience. You decide to pursue this second residency, and it's a big decision, and it's time, and it affects you financially and energetically. And you have a child. I think you have your son.

Not yet.

You don't have your son yet. He was.

We didn't quite know. We were. I like to say we were 20 minutes pregnant with him.

Okay, so you're pregnant.

And I had the opportunity to. There was kind of a sudden opportunity to step into a residency. I like to say that the baby was planned, but the residency was a surprise.

Yes.

So we had been just cleared after medical complications to try again. Yeah, literally, like that week. The week before. And so, as it turns out, the day that I decided, I got this offer, you know, to do the residency, and I took this leap of faith to say yes to it. I found out a few days later. I was able to test and find out that I was pregnant with who turned out to be my son, born nine months to the day from when I accepted that residency position.

Amazing. So talk to us about how you found the resilience to make that decision. What you've learned about resilience. Resilience is a big theme in my work. I'm in conversations with women all the time and it comes up all the time. So I want to hear what you've learned about it and see and share maybe how I've. If that lines up with. I have a lot of thoughts about this with women and resilience.

Me too. We could talk about that for an entire question itself. I think resilience is very much a double edged sword and there's so much that's powerful about it and encouraging and inspiring. I do think we can fall into the trap, if you will, of expecting resilience or celebrating it too much, to the point where we say, well, if someone isn't pulling herself up enough, then we're blaming her for not rallying, not rising to the occasion, whatever metaphor or cliche you want to use. And so I just want to be careful about it because I really value the ability to, you know, get through things for myself and for others. I value it, I respect it, I want to honor it. But for me, I think what I've come to is that the much. And I'll use the word resilience unapologetically for sure. But yeah, the subtlety of it is that what it really means to me is persistence.

Yeah.

And that's where I prefer to focus.

Yeah.

And yeah.

And it sounds like the women to whom you've witnessed, you know, you've been a witness in their lives, they have shown you that.

Absolutely. And this whole project is an exercise in trust and persistence.

Yes.

I mean, can you believe not only did I do this. Sure. Great. Thank you for acknowledging. But like these amazing women stuck with this project for 10 years and I mean, I'm so grateful to them. It's been truly the most rewarding thing I've done.

It is like family life. I mean, it's trusted and persistent. You have to persist.

Yeah.

But I think there's this quality about, like you said, what looks like or what we deem resilient because the culture holds a certain standard and decides what's resilient and what's not resilient. I find there's an undercurrent of guilt in women's lives.

I was just thinking about where.

Yes. Did you find that?

Yeah.

Tell us more about that and your practice.

Oh my gosh. So many, so many thoughts. That's, that's where we get to holding people responsible for things they can't control. Right. And, oh, so many, so many complexities in that. I think that we can recognize that things don't go as we wished all the time. And we can pivot and try to make the best of those without simplifying, oversimplifying what's going on. And so say, well, you know, this meant that I had to change how I was doing something, or maybe more importantly, how I was thinking about something, how I framed it, and what we define as success and failure and all of that.

The definitions are huge. To go back to the definition and ask. Ask, how am I defining that? And is that definition wide enough to include my experience right now?

Right. Because it really. It can make people feel like they're to blame for things that really were not in their power. And even afterward, you know, we can control how we react to things, but that doesn't mean they're still going to start going our way. In the end, I think this comes to. I think one of the biggest themes of Held Together, and a lot of your work and your conversations in general, it's about. All these stories are about growth and change.

Yeah. I find with how hard we are on. We are so hard on ourselves as women. And so how guilt intersects with resilience. And the conversations I have with women is, it sounds like I shouldn't have fallen apart. My kids saw me crying or, you know, my husband expects that I can just do it all with having no pause or no breakdown or need for recovery, or I expect myself to do it all with no recovery. And to me, it goes back to that idea of what you said earlier, that there's only one way to be resilient, and that's if you just rise above it. Rise to the occasion. But sometimes rising to the occasion looks like sitting down in the occasion, you know what I mean?

Where it's like, rest is okay. Rest is resilience. Rest is resistance.

Yes. And emotion is part of being resilient. I think we get the notion that resilient means I'm transcending the emotional response and I'm just powering through. And really, resilience is meeting the emotional moment, you know, with the best.

Yeah.

That you have.

That makes me think about. You mentioned Devorah's chapter and how, you know, we do meet her at the beginning. She's my obstetrician through all the complications. And in her story near the end of the book, she talks about a really, really difficult thing that happens to her as a young adult. I try not to give away too.

Much, you know, I like that you're doing it that way. Yeah.

Yeah. So she talks about this, and she Talks about how she wants to present that to her kids. This plays a lot into what you were just talking about. How is it okay to fall apart in front of our kids? She wants her children to understand that this love, this experience, this connection was so important to her that losing it really, really did change her. She doesn't want her kids to think that she's uncomfortable showing them how much it meant to her, or even worse, that it didn't mean this much to her if she holds in her feelings. So she really uses that as a way to raise her own children in honor of the legacy of this relationship that she wishes she could still have.

It's beautiful. It's a beautiful way to end the book, too. To meet her in the beginning and go through all the moments and to meet her at the end in that more intimate way.

I loved that you get to see how she became that person, I like to say, who was able to care for me exactly as she would have wanted to be cared for herself.

Yes. Yes. And why do you think that doesn't happen more in the medical field? Like when. When you were describing how she attended to you, I mean, it was just this whole other energy, it was this whole other presence that she brought to you that you needed something so badly in that moment. And, yes, her care saved your life, but her presence and the space that she held help you to heal. I felt like at a very.

I agree.

To help you even to continue pursuing motherhood.

It was all about listening. I think listening is the core of our connection, has always been the foundation of our connection. And when she and I first met, as you saw, I had gone through a lot of things already in a very short period of time, and. And it was going to get worse, but it was already a little tricky. And many times. Every time, pretty much until that people had. Almost every time, there was one other person who really listened before her. You'll see that. But she's the one who sent me along that ended up having me meet Tvorah. But almost everyone else had either dismissed me or at least minimized my concerns.

Yes.

And. Or outright said, like, they didn't think what I thought was happening was what was happening. And it turned out those were the things that were happening. And it put me in a really dangerous situation for them to have ignored me.

Yes.

And so when I met Devorah, I felt like she and the other supervising physician that she was working with that day because she was a senior resident, like chief resident running the emergency room, obstetrician. Consult service. She was the first person to really listen and take in what I was saying without superimposing her own assumptions. Right at the beginning of our conversation of my presentation of my story. And that persisted.

Yeah.

So when later I'm going through a different complication, I'm still working with her. There's a time where she says to me, oh, I say, I think this is what's happening. And we've already been through the initial round of things that everyone else blew off. And she believed me. And then she helped me with and saved my life. Quite literally.

Yes.

And the next thing happens, and I'm like, I think it's this really rare thing. And she's like, oh, Becca, it can't be that thing. That would be too rare to. And especially for all the other things, that can't be what's happening. But although she says that her actions don't reflect.

Yes.

In any way. That she's dismissing me. She says that to me and we kind of laugh about it. And then she does exactly what needs to be done to consider the possibility of the thing that I said.

Yes.

It turns out it was that thing.

Yes.

But she never had to agree with my assessments. She didn't have to think, oh, yeah, we're definitely following that path now. Just because you suggested it. But she truly heard what I was saying, and that was what was missing.

Yes. It made me think of the word respect. And I find that in this book that you've created, too, there's such deep respect and reverence for someone's personal experience. And even though she's coming at you with her scientific mind and what she's seen and all the things, and it is super rare, but you have your intuition and you have your experience, and it was the right amount of respect offered to you. And then you did the things that you needed to do, and then it turns out that your intuition was spot on. I'm interested in this difference between intuition and fear also, like, are you, having gone through what you've gone through, do you feel important, more trusting of your intuition? Do you find, working with patients, how do you guide them to trust their intuition? What are your thoughts on.

Yeah, that topic. That's a fascinating whole realm. I think intuition is something that we gain over time from experience.

Yeah.

And when we start out, we may have it from time to time, but doubt it more because we don't have enough experience to back it up.

Yeah.

And I think intuition is not a kind of mystical thing.

Yeah.

It's. It's Just informed in a way that we are synthesizing the years of knowledge, the observations, the stories we've heard over time. And we're not always doing it consciously.

Yes.

We can't always pinpoint an outline of how we came to the conclusion or the feeling that we have about what's happening. But it's informed. It's not because we're.

It's like magic, like dropping down. Yeah.

I was just gonna say we're not being dropped a message. That was exactly what I was thinking. It's nothing, Mag. Nothing mystical. It's the cumulative effect of experience and listening.

Yeah.

But I think we have to be open to. We have to be listeners.

Yes.

Because it's very easy, even as clinicians, to dismiss our own intuition when it doesn't quite fit the algorithms.

Yeah. It also makes me think of this newer idea that I have around intuition. I've been talking a lot about this. I ran a couple of. Facilitated a couple of groups last week, and that was. The topic was intuition. So I heard a lot of women tell me examples. Your point about it comes from experience. I think it also comes from the experience of yourself. It comes from self knowledge of like you knew something was off because you know you and you know how you feel when something was off. And that was so rare that that would happen to you.

Right.

For those of you listening, we're purposely keeping you engaged in this book. Like I. Because I don't like when podcasts tell you everything about the book.

Book.

Because then I'm like, then I don't want to buy the book. So you'll have to go buy this book and read it.

And it's more fun to discover it on your own. It's. Yeah, of course we want you to be surprised.

So we're being. We're shrouding it in mystery. But it is like, whoa, how is that happening after all these other things have happened? But you know your own body. And I think that's so powerful what you said. All of that information, even back to when we were talking about music and smells and senses earlier.

Mm.

It's all stored in there of how you synthesize information. So your intuition is true for you. Straight out of self knowledge.

And then you're learning to trust yourself.

Yes.

That's another element of trust.

Yeah.

Well, and trust yourself, but leave room for the evidence. You know, we do talk quite a bit about that in the book, and there are several stories that really demonstrate this tension between the unknowable and kind of the rational, scientific And I think the best summary of all of that is to say that they really can both exist. We can hold both of those things at once. And I think, I think Tina's story is an especially powerful example of that. As an engineer, how she's always been super rational minded and logical thinking and going down the steps of expected things to do and plans, and then something happens that just completely shatters that for her.

Yes.

And out of that she comes to have experiences that she can't explain with her rational mind. And I think, I hope that the reader will trust her as she learns about her story initially enough to say that when we come to that point and Tina is experiencing things that don't make sense, the reader is like, yep, doesn't make sense. But I believe you.

Yeah.

And because I know this person, for, gosh, almost 20 years I've known Tina, and it's a very accurate depiction of who she is. And I love it that both of those things can coexist.

Absolutely. So what do you find now that you have gotten to the point where you're raising your own kids? I mean, that's the story. You know, you get to the point where you're a mom to two children and now you are shepherding women and listening to stories about how they arrive to family life and then you support family life. What is it that keeps people engaged in family life, wanting family life? Why is family life so special, not just to you, but to all of us? I mean, you've seen it and I see it in my job too. It's so sacred and special. What do you think that is? What is the quality of that experience for people that drives them to get through all the things we get through, to stay in it, to pursue it, to find it?

I think stories are the most compelling thing in life, truly. I mean, they can capture experiences in a way that no data can. And, you know, I know you've talked about this idea as well. And I like to say that Held Together captures the extraordinary moments in ordinary lives.

Yeah.

And that's what family life is about. It's these small details the day to day. And, you know, I'll come back again to this tension between grief and love and all of it, grief and joy and all of it existing at once. And I think the underlying theme of all of it is growth.

Yeah.

So we want to be in relationship with others, to watch them grow and to see ourselves grow.

Yes.

You know, I say toward the end of the, very near the end of the book, in thinking about these There are a lot of metaphors through the book about gardening or the seasons, a growth of plants.

Yes.

I will say I am not a gardener.

Yeah, but you're the. The connection to nature is there. Yes. Yes, for sure. I loved that.

I definitely am not a gardener. I love plants, but I want them to be just growing in the wilderness, and then I go into them. I don't. It's not. I'm not a cultivator of plants. Just kind of probably from a time perspective also. But there's an important theme in the book about. At the beginning, my husband and I are building a kiwi arbor in our yard, and it's something to do and be productive with our hands. And it becomes a metaphor for a lot of our story. And I reflect on some of this and why it's a relevant metaphor at the end of the book. And I'm thinking right now about in family life, it's the same idea. So we're digging holes to plant this garden. We're breaking up chunks of dirt and soil, and we're disrupting something. We're breaking something. And knowing that, trusting that we will come there and plant something different, and we have to give something up in the name of becoming something else and becoming stronger.

I was having a great conversation with one of my first real mentor therapist characters in my life named Greg, who I've probably mentioned on this podcast before. And we were talking about the sacrifice of motherhood, and he was the one that pointed out to me the connection between sacrifice and sacred.

Oh, yes.

And I just. I go back to it. I talk to people about it when I'm in my own coaching. Just to have that switch in your brain, like, oh, my gosh, those two things go hand in hand. It's like love and loss. But there's something so powerful about the word sacred and the word sacrifice that feels like weightier, because love and loss, we say I love you all the time. We use love as a word in language like. Like all day long. So it loses some of what love really is. But the word sacred, it doesn't come up as often. So that's what makes me think of breaking the land, you know, and breaking whatever we need to break to get a bigger idea of what's possible and. And what is sacred in our lives.

And it's about bringing things in with intention.

Yes.

And that's part of being sacred, too. And. And that's why I think one of the things that's so important to me about these stories is they are not at All. All about biological families. Yes. They are very much about who we choose to be part of our family, how we choose to build our families biologically, adoption, surrogacy, those kind of more traditional routes, if you will, but also how we create families from the people around us, and that it's just another form of community, but even closer.

Yes. One of the moments that was very subtle in the book, and I don't even know if you were. I mean, it was like this long of a little moment. You're on an airplane and you get good news, you know, so just like this big. I won't say what that good news is, but you have this moment of looking around, this ordinary, all the other.

People around me, and the moments, they. How my life had just changed and pivoted and no one around me knew anything about it and they couldn't see it. And I wondered. They were all going about their days, getting their snacks out on the airplane and putting away their devices, and everything had changed for me without causing a ripple in their lives.

Do you live that moment? Does that change how you look at strangers? Does it change how you approach your patients?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's the entire book.

Well, I highlighted it because I got a rush of memories of moments like. Like those twins were born six weeks early. My water broke. I delivered at Cedars here in West Hollywood. And I just remember all the nurses coming in and out. My girls were in the nicu. And every shift in LA is so enormous. You know, you have people all walks of life through that hospital. It's an enormous, you know, renowned hospital. Just looking at people's faces and thinking, how do they know I had two. I have two babies. I wanted to, like, tattoo it on my forehead, like, okay, I have two babies. I'm in charge of two humans.

You must have loved the part when in Anna's chapter, her daughter is in the.

Yeah.

And she goes out to the store and she's like, how can the people around me not see, like, that guy is stocking produce. How can he not look at me and see what's happened? And she says something like, I was so raw, so defenseless. I felt like I should be see through. Through.

Yes. Oh, it's so beautiful. And it's like that with the hard things, too. In my own life, in my clients lives, like, we'll have these incredible conversations. They're telling me things they can't tell anybody else. That person hangs up the phone. I hang up the phone and I'm like, that woman is just Gonna go about her dinner, go get a burrito for lunch. And she just told me like this just life changing thing about the truth about her marriage or the truth about how she feels about the worry that she carries for her son or whatever it is.

Yes. That's the extraordinary and the ordinary. That's it right there.

That made me think of it. Yeah. I felt like this. The fact of bringing all. All the different types of stories like you said, and how we arrived to family on our own terms and what we deem as family, it just is such an invitation for compassion and respect for people. That's how it changes me. I just look at humans and be like, everyone is living a story. Everyone is living. That's what I love. Yeah, exactly.

That's. I hope it's that moment like on the airplane where you maybe for this, you read a story and then you set it down, you look around you and you realize, oh, I have no idea what's happening with all these people. But. But now I'm curious.

Yes.

And that makes me more compassionate.

Yes. I don't find enough moments where our news cycle and like our media is really emphasizing common ground. And that's why I knew I wanted to have you on this podcast, because I think that's a big theme of the conversations I'm trying to drive and offer in this podcast.

Thank you for that. Yeah.

Just where are we more alike than we are different? And you did. That's a big part of this book.

That is such a huge issue in our society is comparing ourselves and finding ourselves unworthy and inadequate. And I want these stories to be an antidote to that, because these kinds of stories and hoping that they motivate other people to share stories with the people around them, this is how we compare, to find what we have in common.

Yes.

And that is what stories can do for us.

Yeah. And that is everything. That's literally everything. And I think as it relates to healing, because so much about this book is a journey of healing, your own personal healing. But all the, you know, just bearing witness to all the other stories, it's just to. To find that common ground, even for like two minutes in your marriage or like one second with a colleague at work, like I always tell people like a fourth of an inch, like whatever, that little slither of common ground, just to step into that in and of itself is a choice to heal.

Yes. Because it doesn't have to be a literal common experience.

That's right.

It's not about having the common experience. You read these stories Most of them. I think any given reader would feel like, well, that exact thing is never going to happen to me. And yet when you read these stories, you really do see yourself. I think I did. In every person.

Yes.

And see some of the same fears and longings and wonderings.

Yeah. Yeah.

And that's why they're so universal.

Yeah. So you came up with a perfect title, in my opinion. I think I told you this. Yes. Before we started recording. You had me at shared memoir. It's like that, that line in Jerry Maguire. You had me at hello. I'm like, okay, she's got me. I think there should be more memoirs that are shared memoirs.

So I hope so. I hope this inspires more because I want to read them all. I couldn't find anything like this when I was doing it.

Yeah.

I still haven't found anything like it in that way. And I want them all. I want to read them. So please keep someone else. Write more of them.

Yeah, exactly. So did this come at during the middle of the writing the book? During the after, but held together and tell us what it means to you.

Thank you. Well, backstory wise, I guess I would say I went through a bunch of different working titles and felt all through the probably nine years of the 10 years now. This isn't quite our title, but it's fine for now with different titles, subtitles, different variations. I knew it early on it would be either something like a community memoir or a shared memoir of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, motherhood, medicine and something. Something. You know, we had the basic idea and the rhythm of the title, but Held Together, I think really came through when getting close enough that I had to pick something. I mean, we don't always get to pick our titles. A lot of authors don't for sure. And so I was really grateful. My editor, my agent are just. I've had a really wonderful team and I appreciate them and I'm grateful that they not only wanted my input on the title, but really pushed me to find it.

Yeah.

And to come up with it.

Yeah.

And so the way that what this came from, I think it goes back to the my anthropology days and those life stories and medical anthropology classes that I took. But I'm not sure that I like created it, but I feel like I came to it somehow in college in one of those programs thinking about how friends that I met back then would often have a really life altering identity forming story that I probably didn't learn early on in that friendship, but after time that person, they would share it with me. And I came to realize many people had one of these stories that they held onto a little too tightly, if you will.

Yes.

Or extra tightly beyond, you know, more than other stories. At least I won't judge that it's too tightly or not tightly enough. That's not for me to judge. But they held these stories very tightly and as I say in the introduction, fearing the power they contained in waiting to be told. And once that person offered that story to me, I felt like then we had this whole new level of the relationship to explore and to appreciate together. And talking with some of these people and sharing that idea they like. Oh, yeah, that kind of does happen. I hold onto the story and then I offer it. And so I wanted this book to be about those kinds of stories that we guard. But then once we offer them, once we. Now we're holding them too tightly, but then we hold them out.

Yeah.

And we offer them. And then the book itself holds them all together as something greater than the sum of its parts.

Yeah.

Because our individual stories can be beautiful, but they have so much more meaning when we gather them and they can reflect on and weave into each other.

Yeah.

And then of course, there's just the idea that as women, as mothers, as people, as families, we're always trying to hold things together, even when they're falling apart.

For sure. That's absolutely the truth. And what I love about the title and what I love about the heart of this book, there's a story strength to it, like Held Together, like we're stronger together, that kind of idea. But you don't go into the sentimentality, you know, of it. Like it is touching. It is, for sure, heart based and all those things. But there's a strength in it and I really appreciated that. I think the title captures exactly what it is.

Thanks.

So I want to. Just for my. For my people who are creatives and have a book in their mind and all that. But can you tell us what your hope is for the book and how it's this process of. You've been talking about it a lot. I'm so grateful that you gave us your time.

Oh, and thanks for the invitation. I really see this as a book that is passed from one friend to another.

Yeah.

It feels like a book you want to hold again, held right. You want to hold it in your hands. They did such a beautiful job with it, the design team. I just, I love the COVID the whole thing. It's just an experience to hold it. And I envision one person taking this book in her hands and just pressing it into the hands of a friend and saying, you have to read this because of this story or because of whatever, like just imploring her to read it. And so I envision it being shared, you know, one book at a time. And very much a long vision for that. I tried to write it to be very evergreen without kind of dating this kind of technology or that kind of event. There are historical events in it that shape people's lives, but those are things that we all want to know and learn from. They're not sort of things that will feel dated later when we read the stories. Yeah, so there's that. I just. I hope that everybody who reads it and who it resonates with will understand that it would just mean so much to all of us if you would take it, the link, the book, whatever, and share it with a couple of friends or family members that you think would feel the same. And that's how I hope it will grow.

Yeah.

And then I hope it will get into medical schools and nursing programs. I'm working on that as well.

I was gonna. I think that's a great hope for it. I was thinking that and reading it. Like, there really is a lot, and we didn't talk about it today, but there's you. We could do a whole podcast on the intersection of motherhood and medicine and what women who work in the medical field and as doctors and are also mothers, what their motherhood brings to medicine. You know, the exchange between that I think is.

And I try to make it to be. It's. Write it to be really, really accessible on that level. So while if you do have any kind of medical background or interest in reading medical stories, you're going to enjoy those parts, I think even more so as a reader with even no background in medicine other than having been a patient or your family, you know, as we all become from time to time. The way that I've written this, I hope that it lets people just feel immersed in it in a way that they don't even realize that they're learning about what it's like to go through those kinds of medical experience. There's no jargon. Any unusual things are explained in the context in a way that feels like you don't really notice you're coming to understand what it means as you read it.

And do you feel just. This is more of. On the personal note, I know that you're open hearted. I mean, you were already open hearted arriving to the process of writing the book because you went through everything that you went through and you were so devoted over time.

I try. I try.

Yeah. So was there anything that surprised you personally about how this book changed you and how you arrive now in your life, in family life, in your professional life?

Well, I hope that getting these stories out there is just the beginning of that, because listening to them and hearing each woman's story, in a way, you know, I knew all of these women beforehand in some way. Whether as my patient I met in clinic a handful of times or as a friend going back decades, I knew something about all of their stories. But the surprise was when we sat down and really made that time to listen again. We're coming back to that theme, like Dvorah's story of listening and making space for the details. It was amazing how much I hadn't known.

Yes.

I didn't assume I knew everything, but it was just a whole new level. And so I hope that that made me even more aware of that and more open to those kinds of interactions, even in small moments. Now I hope that I can allow that space, even if time is more limited.

Yes.

Because I'm able to kind of channel that energy a little bit more. And it's great. If we have larger amounts of time to connect with people and really sit with them, that's wonderful. And we should make more a priority of that when we can. But. But we can still carry this attitude of being open hearted and open minded and listening just to understand, not to judge, not to help or correct anything in this person's life, but just to be a witness.

Yeah. Gosh, that's beautiful. That's a lesson that we all could use. It's not modeled very often. I. I have and I'm still learning.

We're all learning all the time.

My kids are constantly redirecting me. Even one of their friends, Becca, who I love. This was years ago. We're driving in the car and Becca was having drama about some way that she felt about another friend in the car. And she's real extroverted. And I love our friendship. I've known her since she was 5. And she tells me the drama and I immediately jump in to solve it. And I'm like, you could think about it this way. And she's like, Paige, I don't want to hear your opinion right now. Which was so great because it's not even my own daughter. And I was so humbled. And I'm like, oh, that's right. Even without that. Yeah, I thought about that.

You know, a lot of advice these days to, you know, ask your kids when they come to you with a problem, or do you just want to be listened to? Do you want me to help you solve this? Like, ask them what they're looking for and they'll tell you. Yeah, it's good advice. I've heard it in many settings and I try to remember it.

Yeah, well, you really did a great job. This is such a gift. It's an offering. I loved reading it. I loved that we got to connect in this month of May and celebrating and honoring all the ways that we nurture each other. Not just biological moms, but all the.

Many ways to be a mother.

That's right.

Many ways to be a mother.

That's right. What I appreciated the most about this book, Held Together is how it shines a light on how imperfect and challenging and complex the journey of motherhood and family life is. The stories in the book also reveal how meaningful it is to take that journey and to share it. Rebecca reminds me how vital it is to share heartfelt stories of family life. When we share a story, we can collectively tap into the sacred ground of love and growth that we all walk. As Rebecca says, our stories literally hold us together, and I think they keep us on this path, walking alongside each other, which is the only way forward when life gets hard. Rebecca's words about listening and making space for the details of our stories really stuck with me. Making this space isn't necessarily about time, although it can be. It's more about an attitude of openness within whatever limited time we get with one another. There's so much we don't know about each other. To me, that's exciting. We can be curious. We can learn more about each other and experience a depth of closeness we didn't know we could have. Every woman, every parent, every person has a story that's the truth that connects us all and reminds us that compassion is the key to accepting and enjoying one's family life. Thank you for this conversation, Rebecca, and for offering this book with your personal story alongside these 21 voices. Held together is the product of a long, thoughtful collaboration, and you've treated each person's story with reverence, and that invites us to treat our own stories with reverence and share them vulnerably when we have the space to do so. This is how we stay strong together. This is how we grow together. I hope one day there'll be more shared memoirs in print, but until then, you've helped me to realize we're living a shared memoir with any ordinary act of care and nurturance, we can create an extraordinary sense of belonging to our shared humanity. Your work, Rebecca, helps me to believe that if we keep doing this caring and nurturing and showing up with the resilience of a mother, it will become the story of how we healed our world. If you would like to learn more about Rebecca's work and or order the book held together, please check out the Show Notes. Okay y' all, that's it for today. I will meet you here again soon. Thanks to each of you for being here and for listening. I'm so grateful we get to share life in this way. As always, full Show Notes are available@paigenolan.com podcast. There you will find a full summary of the episode, timestamps and key takeaways, and any resources mentioned in our conversation. If you enjoyed this episode, I'd love if you would leave me a rating and a review. You can do that by visiting Paigenolan.com Love your review. Really do help people to discover the show. And if you know someone specifically who would enjoy this episode, I'm so grateful to have you all share. I'll meet you there with your friends. Lastly, if you have any questions or comments, or if you would like to share any feedback with me, please email to meet me thereagenoland.com I would love to hear from you. Thank you to the team that makes this show possible. Podcast production and marketing by north no Podcast Network Music by Boyd McDonnell Cover photography by Innis Casey okay y' all, that's it for now. I'll meet you there again.