Please note: Accuracy and availability of IPR transcripts may vary. 00;00;02;00 - 00;00;28;13 J.R. Jamison Jamison: I'm J.R. Jamison. Today on the Facing Project, I'll sit down with memoirist Jill Christman to discuss her latest book, The Heart Folds Early, a story of transformation through tragedy and an examination of the ways in which great loss can make us simultaneously fearful and intrepid. We'll also explore the catharsis of writing and when to know if a story is ready for a universal audience, and the ways in which stories stay with us and reshape us. 00;00;28;15 - 00;00;55;17 J.R. Jamison In The Heart Folds Early, Christman examines the mournful recklessness of the young widow she was against the backdrop of her later marriage in New Motherhood, including the choice to end a half term pregnancy when a routine ultrasound revealed that her baby boy had just half a heart. Courageous, clear eyed, tender and unexpectedly funny, Christman reflects on her life and asks what happens when we're afraid the worst thing will happen? 00;00;55;25 - 00;01;26;26 J.R. Jamison And then sometimes it does. And how do we carry life and death in our bodies and survive with our hearts still intact? Stay with us. I'm J.R. Jamison, and you're listening to the Facing Project. My guest today is Jill Christman, whose new memoir, The Heart Folds Early, is a story of transformation through tragedy and an examination of the ways in which great loss can make us simultaneously fearful and intrepid. 00;01;26;28 - 00;01;30;21 J.R. Jamison Jill, thank you so much for joining me on the Facing Project. 00;01;30;22 - 00;01;55;08 Jill Christman Christman: J.R., thank you for having me. I have been a fan of the Facing Project since the beginning, sharing stories our deepest, truest stories is at the center of what it means to be human, and it may just save us yet. And so I am a listener, and I have been consistently wowed, amazed, and grateful for the way in which you both tell stories and listen to stories on this show. 00;01;55;09 - 00;01;57;12 Jill Christman So it is an honor to be here in person. Thank you. 00;01;57;12 - 00;02;26;19 J.R. Jamison Jamison: Thank you. That means a ton. And welcome to the show. I'm thrilled to have you here as a guest now, and especially after hearing, that. Of course I knew about you, though, that you care deeply about storytelling. Which is one of the reasons why I have you here today. Your new book, The Heart Folds Early, is a story of choice, as you say, and it's also a journey of life and death and hope and fear and deep grief. 00;02;26;25 - 00;02;49;16 J.R. Jamison But it's also about finding the light. The heart of the story is you and your husband having to make the hard decision to end a pregnancy with your son while wrestling with the hope to try again as you reflect on and live with the loss from your past in the ways society and laws create obstacles to choice for women. 00;02;49;19 - 00;03;08;09 J.R. Jamison You say that you had hoped to tell this story sooner, but you were advised that no one wants to hear or read that kind of story. So it went on the backburner for a while. Talk about your decision to put it on the front burner, if you will, and tell this story now. 00;03;08;12 - 00;03;30;03 Jill Christman Christman: Thank you. That is such a beautiful, summary of the book, and I appreciate your careful reading. So I think I want to start by saying that the heart folds early, the title, comes from the biological fact that, in fact, the fetal heart foal starts folding around 4 to 5 weeks and is by eight weeks, fully formed heart. 00;03;30;06 - 00;03;50;04 Jill Christman And if all goes well, it will have folded into four the four chambers that we need to survive. It is also, of course, a metaphor for all we collect and carry in our hearts throughout our lives. And again, you've already alluded to this, but that is both pain and trauma and also joy and hope. Right? All of these all of these things. 00;03;50;06 - 00;04;19;22 Jill Christman So I wrote the book the, the, the core event, happened in 2006, and I spent many years I've written other books. In the meantime, whole books have been written, while this one was being written. And, I had an agent at the time who was sending that version of the book around in 2018, and we kept hearing things back, such as, this book is too depressing. 00;04;19;26 - 00;04;31;28 Jill Christman Nobody wants to hear about dying babies. Also, this would not sell well at a baby shower, which was in fact not something I recommend. I still don’t recommend it. 00;04;32;00 - 00;04;34;01 J.R. Jamison Jamison: I was like, is that the audience? Not sure. 00;04;34;02 - 00;04;54;07 Jill Christman Christman: No it isn't. And and so part of it was part of it for me in 2018 was, you know what? No writing is ever wasted. No work that we do to try to figure out how we want to tell a story is wasted. And so I thought to myself, is this a battle I really want to fight? 00;04;54;09 - 00;05;16;25 Jill Christman Right? I have other things to write. Oh, and also, we were in a pandemic at that point now, and I had two children to raise and children and students to teach online. And I thought, okay, so I put the book to bed, like, not just for a nap like down for to bed, but then I, I remember the moment, and the book starts with, with a prolog that tells the story now. 00;05;16;25 - 00;05;43;19 Jill Christman But I remember the moment we were in an Airbnb in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and I was up before my family and we all knew this was coming. But it was June 24th, 2022 or 2022. And, the news came down that the Supreme Court had returned a decision that that struck down Roe versus Wade. And I can honestly say, I know this sounds like a story that I tell for book publicity. 00;05;43;20 - 00;05;48;05 Jill Christman I can honestly say that I knew that day that I would return to the text. 00;05;48;06 - 00;05;49;23 J.R. Jamison Jamison: Wow. 00;05;49;26 - 00;05;56;10 Jill Christman Christman: And no books ever write themselves like I'm. People say that sometime. Oh, this book wrote themself, and I'm like, come on. 00;05;56;12 - 00;06;00;06 Jill Christman Now, can we please, please try harder to tell the truth. Right? 00;06;00;08 - 00;06;08;03 Jill Christman But this one really wanted to be rewritten from this place. So you start, you get. You handed me a metaphor of fire. The back burner. The front burner. 00;06;08;03 - 00;06;09;00 J.R. Jamison 00;06;09;02 - 00;06;31;16 Jill Christman I mean, I rewrote this book like, my actual skirt was on fire, right? Like it felt like it came from this place of burning urgency. Right? Because if we let, our stories be told for us, or if we let our stories be blocked right. No, that's not a story that anybody wants to read. That's a pretty easy thing to say. 00;06;31;18 - 00;07;00;22 Jill Christman And I realized that, wow, I was not keeping up my end of the deal, right? Yeah, I have the the resources, the capacity. I could tell this story that of a second trimester medical abortion that that I wasn't hearing other places. I, I don't find that story, in contemporary memoir. Right. Yeah. And and so and to be silenced by by that was not no longer an option. 00;07;00;22 - 00;07;04;09 Jill Christman It felt like my responsibility to tell the story. Yeah. And so I did. 00;07;04;11 - 00;07;28;20 J.R. Jamison Jamison: It's almost like others were taking away your choice about getting the story out there. Which choice has become such a central theme to the book. So that's really interesting. Every book has a central emotional question, and one of yours for this book was, how do we carry life and death in our bodies and survive with our hearts intact? 00;07;28;22 - 00;07;50;02 J.R. Jamison Did you start with this question and I'm curious you knowing write like the first draft of this. You'd been writing it for quite some time, and then 2018 took it out. And then you rewrote it. So, so backing up all those years ago. Right. Did you start with that question or did it unfold as the drafts unfolded over time? 00;07;50;02 - 00;07;51;12 J.R. Jamison Yeah. 00;07;51;15 - 00;07;59;20 Jill Christman Christman: It's clear that you are also a memoirist because you know how this works. And you know the answer to this question even as you ask it. 00;07;59;22 - 00;08;28;26 Jill Christman I have no idea what my central question was. And that's why I write. Right? So I write toward those central questions, and I hope for them to be complicated and deepened, and I want them to become more true and real as as I write toward them. Many years ago, I was at a conference where I heard the memoirist and journalist Pico Iyer speak, and he put and I was a I was a young memoirist. 00;08;28;26 - 00;08;53;29 Jill Christman Now then, now I am in my crone years as a memoirist, which is pretty great. And for for writing, really. And, what Pico said, was something that I had been thinking about but hadn't articulated. So what he said was, when he is writing a memoir, he writes, towards a question, and if he arrives at a question that he can answer, he knows he's not done yet. 00;08;54;01 - 00;09;17;09 Jill Christman Right. So he returns to the project and he continues to work that until he arrives at a question that is unanswerable. And then he knows he's getting close to the end. And that was the one of the most simple and true things I've ever heard about that. This question about following a question. Right. Yeah. So I think this book ended up with sort of two, tandem questions. 00;09;17;09 - 00;09;44;13 Jill Christman We've mentioned both of them, sort of. But how do we carry life and death in our bodies and survive with our hearts intact? This is not a question I can answer, but I hope that I have made a space where I consider it with as much vulnerability and truth as I possibly can, and open up that space where other where readers who have had completely different lives and experiences than me, can step into it and think about those questions themselves. 00;09;44;16 - 00;09;50;18 Jill Christman I think the other question is, is really simple, and that is, what does it mean to make a choice? 00;09;50;23 - 00;10;24;18 J.R. Jamison Jamison: Yeah, I think to with memoir and I guess maybe narrative nonfiction too. There isn't always resolution. Right? I think we're taught at fiction writers are taught, at least right, that there's a beginning, a middle and an end. There's three parts or three sections, and they're nicely wrapped up with a resolution at the end. But I feel like I've told enough stories with people telling their truths through the work we do at the Facing Project, and also working on my own memoir. 00;10;24;19 - 00;10;44;03 J.R. Jamison But getting to know other memoirists that, right, like you're so, your point so correct around. We may have an idea of a central question, but that may not be a question that answered by the end of the story. And not having resolution is sometimes okay for a reader to find their space in the story. 00;10;44;04 - 00;11;05;26 Jill Christman Christman: Yeah, I, I love the way you say that. And I think also with endings, I think about how with what am I sending my reader back out into the world so that they may move forward into whatever is next for them. Right? In the end, it's not really about the specifics of my story, although I certainly tell it, but it is about the making of a space. 00;11;05;29 - 00;11;27;03 Jill Christman And time and time again, people come to me and they will tell me things about their lives that have like, truly nothing to do with the book. Except for that I made a space that could hold a story that then they can come and tell me, right? And in those moments, I am never happier about the work I've done. 00;11;27;08 - 00;11;29;17 Jill Christman Right? So yeah, you're. 00;11;29;17 - 00;11;31;05 J.R. Jamison Jamison: Creating mirrors and windows. 00;11;31;05 - 00;11;34;03 Jill Christman Christman: Right? I hope so, I hope so. 00;11;34;06 - 00;11;56;03 J.R. Jamison Jamison: Part of the narrative of the Heart Holds Early is this intertwining of the loss of your first true love, Colin, to an automobile accident in 1989, releasing the darkness of sexual abuse you endured as a child by a neighbor, and the realization as you're married and a respected professor and trying to have a child. 00;11;56;03 - 00;11;57;23 Jill Christman Christman: Thank you for calling me respected. 00;11;57;26 - 00;12;00;07 J.R. Jamison Jamison: You are respected. 00;12;00;10 - 00;12;25;15 J.R. Jamison But it was kind of right like that. Even when we think our life comes back together, really, there's always this thin veil between joy and loss and healing and trauma. There's a moment you write about when you were in Ithaca, New York, working on your book Borrowed Babies, and you're pregnant with your first child, your daughter, and you're having trouble falling asleep. 00;12;25;18 - 00;12;38;02 J.R. Jamison You're reflecting on the damage from your past that you were still carrying with you and how that, for better or worse, that construct the way you might be. As a mother, would you be willing to read that excerpt for our listener? 00;12;38;03 - 00;12;39;17 Jill Christman Christman: I would love to. 00;12;39;19 - 00;12;40;11 J.R. Jamison Jamison: Thank you. 00;12;40;14 - 00;13;03;12 Jill Christman Christman: And, I will say just a little bit more about that moment, which was I kind of points back to what we were saying about how you can't necessarily plan these things. I was already doing researched into borrowed babies at this time, which many of your listeners might not know about. So you could look at the book or interestingly, also playwright Jennifer Blackwell right here. 00;13;03;12 - 00;13;07;21 J.R. Jamison Jamison: Turn Pop of Culture co-host. 00;13;07;23 - 00;13;42;04 Jill Christman Christman: [She] wrote a play that was inspired by the book Borrowed Babies. And so, so, what happened in my case was that I was interested. So borrowed babies were. That was my name for these babies who were, at most land grant institutions, beginning in the 40s and then moving forward, 40s, 50s, ending around 60s, 70s, depending upon the school where in home economics departments would borrow babies so that they could be quote unquote raised by the book. 00;13;42;08 - 00;14;04;10 Jill Christman And it was like it was basically an immersive learning project, right? And involving babies. And so this was interesting in a ton of ways. To me, not the least of which was the fact that nobody seemed to know about these babies. And it was so common. And also, complicated morally, like, you might hear, you might hear me say that and think, that's terrible. 00;14;04;12 - 00;14;31;09 Jill Christman And there were also things that were not terrible about it. Right. So it was another story that was complicated in a lot of ways. I made it even more complicated by earning a grant to go to the go to the archives and, landing myself delightedly, happily pregnant for the first time as I was, like, donning the white gloves of the researcher to go down into the archives and learn about this sort of science of motherhood, and recognizing that I had no idea what I was doing. 00;14;31;13 - 00;14;37;00 Jill Christman So it was sort of this collision of the personal and the academic. Okay, sorry, that was maybe a little bit long for the preface. 00;14;37;00 - 00;14;40;03 J.R. Jamison Jamison: No, it's great. 00;14;40;05 - 00;15;04;19 Jill Christman Christman: Lying in bed that first night in Ithaca, ears pricked to every voice, and bang from the street below each fan clank and refrigerator hum from within. I thought about how fear morphs and expands. I had so wanted to be done with the abuse for my childhood. I mean, look at me for sake. I was a professor, married to a good man who loved me, rich with the friends I adored. 00;15;04;24 - 00;15;31;02 Jill Christman Hadn't I made it through? Hadn't I made it out? How damaged could I be? Right. Pretty damaged. I was only just beginning to let down my guard enough to recognize that there are some things we carry with us all our lives, always, no matter what. Sure, we learn the weight of them. We know which shoulder best bears them up and when to shift the burden to our hips, but we bear them nonetheless. 00;15;31;05 - 00;16;00;22 Jill Christman Colin's death was a tragedy I would never put down and the loss of my childhood, not all of it, but the too early theft of my belief that the world could be a safe place. A just place was another. Just because I built what looked like and could even feel like a well-functioning life, held up by real and healthy relationships, didn't mean I could trumpet a squeaky clean bill of emotional and psychological health earned through the power of the written word. 00;16;00;24 - 00;16;34;04 Jill Christman That's exactly what I've been doing. “Writing dark rooms saved my life,” I told whole auditoriums full of people. Maybe it had. Maybe even literally here I was, after all, and pregnant on purpose. But I was a fool to think the specter of my abuser with his sharp, dirty fingernails in that dark garage would ever vanish. I could crawl away from the futon jammed in that creepy corner, the sign posted on the ceiling that read, are you stoned or stupid? 00;16;34;07 - 00;16;58;29 Jill Christman I could leave behind my fear of him and the intrusive memories that had haunted me in my 20s. Yes, I could do that. But I built my defenses up too high and too strong to ever lay them down. In other words, I realized I was going to have to learn to live and to mother inside all that I'd constructed in response to that abuse. 00;16;59;01 - 00;17;00;17 Jill Christman 00;17;00;19 - 00;17;09;04 J.R. Jamison Jamison: Talk more about these moments of fear and hope and what they taught you as you've become a mother. 00;17;09;06 - 00;17;15;10 Jill Christman Christman: Thank you. That was the first time I read that section out loud. So thank you for that opportunity also. 00;17;15;12 - 00;17;19;18 J.R. Jamison Jamison: And thank you for, for reading. You did a great job. So I would have known that was your first. 00;17;19;20 - 00;17;22;01 Jill Christman Christman: I'm an excellent reader. 00;17;22;04 - 00;17;24;19 J.R. Jamison Jamison: You are. I've seen you read before. You absolutely are. 00;17;24;19 - 00;17;44;23 Jill Christman Christman: I’ve been practicing for a long time, and I recommend to everyone out there listening that you should read out loud. When you're writing, you should read your work out loud when you're reading. You should read out loud sometimes. Read out loud to each other. Yeah, this is a gift that we have, so let's use it. Yes okay. That was an aside. That was an educational aside, but I believe in that. 00;17;44;25 - 00;18;16;04 Jill Christman I think that this pull between fear and hope is essentially my life's work. As a writer, as a teacher, and certainly as a mother and as a young writer. And I like to talk about this. I think it happens less now. I was really defensive because creative nonfiction was just starting to be a thing back in 1995, when I went to grad school and I was in a fiction program because there was not a nonfiction program. 00;18;16;07 - 00;18;39;13 Jill Christman And what I would hear, although I wrote my first book, a memoir under the cover of Darkness and Fiction, I would write stories for workshop and then write a memoir on the side. Because I didn't really know that it was a thing that was available to me yet. And now I know that I think that we're raising up a generation for that this is available to them, and that is good. 00;18;39;13 - 00;19;05;06 Jill Christman That is progress. Yeah. And in a couple places you're I mean, we think about hope. That's hope for me. Yeah. And, I would get defensive again as a young writer about my writing somehow being quote unquote therapy writing. Right. And, and I would say, this is art. This is my art. My art is as artful as your art. 00;19;05;06 - 00;19;30;26 Jill Christman Right. And I would I would and I would adamantly, deny that it helped me at all as a human being, that it was in any way healing to me that that it helped me. But it was actually here in Muncie. I was at a local high school, and they had read my book, Dark Room, and I had come in on an author visit and a young woman who's like, face I recognized from the mirror. 00;19;30;26 - 00;19;39;05 Jill Christman Frankly, I don't know how else to say it, and looked me right in the eyes. I'll cry as I tell the story because I have never forgotten it. And she said, did writing Dark Room help you? 00;19;39;05 - 00;19;40;24 J.R. Jamison Jamison: Wow. 00;19;40;27 - 00;20;06;02 Jill Christman Christman: And I could not lie to her. Yeah, right. Like whatever professional facade I had been putting up was broken down by this one question from this 16 year old. Well, and I said, yeah, it really did. It really did help me. And I told her how it had helped me, and I told her I hoped that she would write her own story and that she would find that same healing. Yeah. 00;20;06;05 - 00;20;26;10 Jill Christman And I hope that she did. I don't have a follow up for that story. Yeah, I just know that in that moment, I decided to stop lying about it. And so back to your really good question about, that tension between fear and hope. I've never met a secret that helped anyone except possibly a perpetrator. 00;20;26;14 - 00;20;54;10 Jill Christman Yeah. And as a mother, I fail and forgive myself and fail and forgive myself every single day. And I think really consciously about not raising my children to live inside the fear that I have for them. I mean, speaking of Colin’s death, right? Once you know that someone you love can be gone, then that never leaves you. 00;20;54;10 - 00;21;19;23 Jill Christman You carry that with you. You carry that knowledge in your bones. And so I can't I can't not know that. Right. And, of course I have fear. I, I live with that. And, I just show up every day and try to be as real as I can, you know? So I tell them sometimes I'm like, I know I have overcorrected as a mother, I get that. 00;21;19;26 - 00;21;36;28 Jill Christman Yeah. Right. Yeah. And here is my story. Know my story. Know where I'm coming from. Tell me when you think I could back off right. Like I don't know what to do. Except for have these conversations I think. I think one thing about the heart folds early is that it really looks carefully at all the things we carry with us. 00;21;36;28 - 00;22;00;02 Jill Christman Right? Yeah. And so, I hope that I am not carrying unexamined things with me at this point. And that's the gift of being a serial memoirist, right? I've thought hard about the way my own child sexual abuse has, has affected my parenting. Right. And so but but it's not gone. It's still here. 00;22;00;04 - 00;22;06;19 J.R. Jamison Jamison: Right. Yeah. [Music] 00;22;06;21 - 00;22;33;18 J.R. Jamison It makes me think about the writers you're teaching. So you're an educator as well. And you also edit the nationally acclaimed River Teeth, the Journal of Nonfiction Narrative and Beautiful Things. So thinking about this young woman, right, who looked you in the eye and asked that question, what advice do you give to writers about mining deeper veins of pain to tell universal truths? 00;22;33;24 - 00;22;57;26 Jill Christman Christman: Yeah. So thank you for that question. As part of the publicity for this book, I've been thinking about this a lot because one thing that publicist, Cassie, if you're listening, do is they they place companion essays. Right. And if if Jill Christman, the writer, is known for a thing, it's that she goes after the hard stuff. Right? 00;22;57;27 - 00;23;29;12 Jill Christman And and if one thing I've learned as an editor, which I love, by the way, I kind of we sort of stumbled into adopting, I mean, the best nonfiction magazine in the country here to Ball State. And, I have I have found something that I think you probably already knew in your work that it brings me more joy and satisfaction to help others put their stories out into the world than it does my own. 00;23;29;15 - 00;24;04;28 Jill Christman And so that is wonderful. So one way I help as an editor is actually a really simple question. I have two, so these are my best editing tips. So get your get your pencils ready. When I'm reading nonfiction for the magazines, often there's a moment where I can where I see that the writer is flinching, right. There's a moment where they've gotten close to something that they need to say, that they're trying to say, and I can almost feel them see it on the page and be like, well, I'm out of here, right? 00;24;05;00 - 00;24;28;28 Jill Christman So in those moments, writers, I would ask you to stay, don't go. Right. Stay in those moments. If you don't know the answer that's fine. That's the process right. Yeah. Linger in the uncertainty. This is something that another editor taught me once about my own work and I've never forgotten it. He just wrote in the margin linger in the uncertainty. 00;24;28;28 - 00;24;56;13 Jill Christman And I was like, oh, that's it. So that is a piece of advice. But back to the other essays. So, I mean, I can refer people out. Just in the last couple of weeks, I've, I've put some of my most vital lessons about writing the hard stuff out into the world as mini-essays. So one is about the idea of tacking, which is a sailing term, so you can find that that came out on Writer's Digest, so you can look it up and, tacking is a nautical term. 00;24;56;21 - 00;25;10;27 Jill Christman It's impossible to sail directly into the wind. Right? We can't sail directly into the wind. We either capsize or we go backwards, or we go nowhere at all. Right? Same is true in writing. When you're when you're trying to write a hard thing, you can't go right at it. You have to tack. So how do you do that? 00;25;10;27 - 00;25;28;13 Jill Christman You might try different points of view. You might try changing scenes. You might try a kind of different mode of thinking, like maybe you're going to use psychology, maybe you're going to use numerology. I don't know, right? But what are ways that you can kind of moves that you make progress towards that hard thing you're trying to say without going over. 00;25;28;16 - 00;25;58;27 Jill Christman There's another one, that's coming out in a magazine called Assay: A S S A Y. I think next week. And it's, it's an idea I call writing the tooth. And it's really simple. So I have a pair, I have a pair of teaching objectives for my students that are a little bit harder to measure, but I believe in them deeply, and that is that I want my students to pay attention, pay close attention, look closely, and also be curious. 00;25;59;02 - 00;26;21;20 Jill Christman Right, and these things will help you tell your stories. And so writing the tooth is about an assignment that I give where I have them, choose an object or something, some kind of artifact that is associated with their story. No internet, no research. All that can come later. All you, all you're going to be doing is writing and using all the senses you have available to you to examine this thing. 00;26;21;23 - 00;26;35;22 Jill Christman 30 minutes. And they're like, what if I get bored? I'm like, no, no, keep looking. Look harder. So that's another. That would be another one. So tacking, writing the tooth, I mean, I could go on. I've been teaching writing for 30 years now, but that's probably enough. 00;26;35;22 - 00;27;03;16 J.R. Jamison Jamison: Yeah, I mean, that's great advice even for people who aren't writers as they're trying to process their own maybe past experiences or trauma. Of course it'd be great. You know, if they use writing as a tool to work it out. But I think those tactics, if you will, are helpful universally for people to work through their own trauma. 00;27;03;18 - 00;27;04;05 J.R. Jamison Well. 00;27;04;08 - 00;27;20;08 Jill Christman Christman: And I think I would just add there, we don't need to figure it all out at once. Right. And we don't need to if we're working on something hard, it's not the only time we get to tell the story. We get to return to the story from that new perspective and tell it again and figure out what we need to know now from that thing right at once. 00;27;20;10 - 00;27;47;12 Jill Christman Something I ask my students a lot is why here? Why now? Before the manuscript, there is silence. The manuscript breaks the silence. Why here? Why now? Like you've shown up to this story for a particular reason, it's your job to figure out what it is, and also that the biggest stories are in the smallest things. Probably my most if I have a famous essay, we I've just come from the AWP conference where 12,000 writers, if they know one thing about me, they're like, oh, you wrote The Sloth. 00;27;47;18 - 00;28;12;18 Jill Christman So I have an essay called The Sloth, at a magazine called Brevity. And it's it's written it's about the time of Colin’s death and going to Central America to grieve. And just a moment in a shower where I looked up in the jungle and saw my first three toed sloth above me in the shower, and. And what that helped me to understand about the larger grief that I was experiencing. 00;28;12;19 - 00;28;14;08 Jill Christman 00;28;14;10 - 00;28;54;02 J.R. Jamison Jamison: I want to keep on this topic of giving ourself permission and choice, because it's such a core thread theme of the book, and it's so tightly woven as the part of the story of The Heart Folds Early. I want to go back to some scenes in the book that connect to this and kind of your journey, I think as a as a person, a processor and a writer, there's a moment in high school when a teacher tells you that you can move in with her to get away from a really awful, misogynistic boyfriend, and that gave you permission in a way, right to leave. 00;28;54;04 - 00;29;18;14 J.R. Jamison And also, there's a moment when Colin tells you your birth mark that others had made fun of is beautiful, and that gave you permission to see yourself as something else. And then there's the permission of choice, right? To be a mother, to have access to life saving health care, to choose your future, but also that of your son who had only half a heart to want to stay on this topic. 00;29;18;14 - 00;29;23;28 J.R. Jamison Tell me more about this theme of permission and choice, and how it's been an important part of your journey. 00;29;24;02 - 00;29;33;10 Jill Christman Christman: Yeah. Thank you so much again for that beautiful summary. I was like, oh, I put all that in, 00;29;33;12 - 00;29;59;20 Jill Christman I love the question. I love what it brings us to in the text. I don't want to put out too many spoilers, but for example, the English teacher question and and I can report that she has already read the book, and been in touch. I came to understand, because I was pursuing this question of choice that we talked about earlier. 00;29;59;22 - 00;30;27;10 Jill Christman I had thought about what happened. So when I was in high school, my mom had to leave the state before I was finished, and I was going to work that summer at a summer camp that I ran. And so my option was to live with this much older boyfriend, and I thought I had consented to this relationship. Again, I was 17 years old. 00;30;27;10 - 00;30;42;10 Jill Christman I thought I had consented to this relationship, and the very first night I woke up in the morning, he wanted me to make him biscuits and gravy and was enraged. And I was like, I am sleeping in this and this five in the morning. 00;30;42;10 - 00;30;43;15 Jill Christman Yeah. 00;30;43;18 - 00;31;06;16 Jill Christman And so I was again, 17 years old. Right. And, and I thought that things were going to get violent. I could feel the violence in the air. He went to work and it did not get violent, but I thought, I, I need to reconsider what I, what I have done. The only place I knew to go as to my high school, because that was what was left. 00;31;06;16 - 00;31;25;06 Jill Christman Right. And I went there and my teacher, Carolyn Chase, said, oh, well, you can come live with me. I've got a spare room. So people say, oh, they're in my high school English teacher saved my life. My high school English teacher saved my life. Yeah, right. She'd heard she'd already done it in a lot of other ways. 00;31;25;06 - 00;31;26;24 J.R. Jamison Jamison: But, I mean, it changed the trajectory. 00;31;26;24 - 00;31;54;05 Jill Christman Christman: Changed. I mean, I, I was able to to to chart my path out of that town, onward to college and onto the rest of my life. Yeah. Right. Yeah. In ways that very possibly I would not have been able to do. But for this gift of what she gave to me and I didn't recognize it fully until I was writing this book and thinking about what it means to consent, what it means to make a choice. 00;31;54;07 - 00;32;01;26 Jill Christman She gave me the power to make a choice, because before I didn't have that. And once I had that, I was like an I'm out. Yeah. 00;32;01;28 - 00;32;03;27 Jill Christman Yeah, like I'm going to college. 00;32;03;27 - 00;32;05;13 J.R. Jamison Jamison: You saw the future ahead. 00;32;05;14 - 00;32;06;05 Jill Christman Christman: Yeah. 00;32;06;08 - 00;32;30;23 Jill Christman Yeah. Which I didn't have before. And and I think that that that's true with, with Colin. He loved me in a way that I had never been loved before. And and with a love that was so powerful that even when he was gone, I again, I guess it was a feeling of responsibility. I felt the responsibility to love myself the way he would have. 00;32;30;23 - 00;32;46;08 Jill Christman And I have carried that again. These things that we carry with us, right, that we recognize we're carrying with us, and they're not all bad things. Right. In this case, I carried his love for me. I was like, oh, I see you see in me, and you're not here to do this anymore. But I will do it. I will do it now. 00;32;46;09 - 00;33;11;06 Jill Christman I'll take over. And I did and I have, yeah. All these years. And then as to the question of, my capacity to choose life saving health care, I mean, that's complicated. It's complicated in this country right now. It was complicated then. That was in again in 2006. It was, abortion was legal in Indiana up to 22 weeks. 00;33;11;06 - 00;33;43;23 Jill Christman At that point. I was 19 weeks pregnant when I was told that the baby I was carrying, that his condition was, and I quote, incompatible with life. So our choice was very specific to us. And I'm hoping we can make these questions as complicated as they need to be. Before I distract myself with that part of the question, I would like to say that even though that it was legal at that time, and it's certainly not now, I had to leave the state in order to get the care that I needed. 00;33;43;26 - 00;34;08;09 Jill Christman And, and ended up going to Chicago and, and I am a white woman who is a professor. Who is trained to do research, who knows how to make phone calls and access resources, who has health insurance, who had family, who had people to help take care of me, who had everything. I can't think of an advantage I did not have. 00;34;08;11 - 00;34;14;22 Jill Christman Yeah. And I almost couldn't find the care that I needed in 2006. 00;34;14;25 - 00;34;38;03 J.R. Jamison Jamison: You capture this moment in the book, and I pulled an excerpt that I'll read. I didn't send you in advance and ask you to read, but I'll I'll read. It's short that it's kind of speaks to this moment. So when you're having to make this hard decision to in the pregnancy with your son, you write, there are many reasons to know, to be prepared, to be ready to intervene. 00;34;38;05 - 00;34;59;04 J.R. Jamison And there's the biggest reason of all, because we never know what we'll choose in a situation until we're standing with our noses pressed up against it. We think we know, but we don't know until you're the one making the decision in that moment and you're making a decision no matter what you do, even if you do nothing at all, you do not know. 00;34;59;06 - 00;35;16;04 J.R. Jamison What do you wish people who make and pass laws understood about these crucible moments that women and pregnant people have to face, and kind of this, right, like privilege and not privilege and access and not access. What do you say to that? 00;35;16;06 - 00;35;19;06 Jill Christman Christman: Yeah. Thank you. You're also a beautiful reader J.R. 00;35;19;06 - 00;35;22;00 Jill Christman That's lovely. So thank you. Thank you. 00;35;22;02 - 00;35;24;00 J.R. Jamison Jamison: I've had a little bit of practice. 00;35;24;02 - 00;35;28;18 Jill Christman Christman: So everybody at home, be practicing your reading. 00;35;28;20 - 00;35;55;01 Jill Christman Yeah. My answer to that question is actually pretty simple. I knew this before and I know it more strongly now. I, I think in that I think I would have said again, I referenced my resources that at the point in my life where I was, I, I would not have chosen to get an abortion. I thought about a lot of scenarios and I thought I could handle that. 00;35;55;01 - 00;36;20;29 Jill Christman We could handle that as a family. Right? I didn't know about this one. Right. I didn't know that I could be in my 19th week of pregnancy expecting a healthy baby boy. And learn that, if he were to survive, which was unlikely, he would he would suffer. And at the time, the oldest, any child with his condition had had arrived. 00;36;20;29 - 00;36;45;17 Jill Christman That was early teens. Right. So we made a decision based on that new information that I that that had been unimaginable to me. Right. And so while thinking about imagination, I think we bring this to, to the, the not just the conversation about access to health care and reproductive rights in this country, but to all kinds of choices. 00;36;45;17 - 00;37;10;20 Jill Christman Right. And I hope this book is about all kinds of choices, because what I realized at the root, and I don't think we think about this enough, is that an imagined choice is not a choice. A speculative choice is not a choice. I would do this or I would have done this. That's not real. That's imaginary. Right. 00;37;10;20 - 00;37;33;19 Jill Christman And so we really need to understand that we can't be making choices for other people because the permutations of circumstance are endless, absolutely endless. And, and and so yeah, an imagined choice is not a choice. 00;37;33;22 - 00;37;36;07 J.R. Jamison [Music] 00;37;36;10 - 00;38;06;21 J.R. Jamison Jamison: I also want to emphasize that you wanted to have another child and, and Mark tried and tried and there were miscarriages. And spoiler alert, I don't want to give away too much of your book, but spoiler alert you did end up getting pregnant and had a son, Henry. There's a lighthearted moment in the book, so sometimes, right, these conversations can feel heavy, but there's a lighthearted moment in the book where you're taking an at home pregnancy test, and I'd love for you to read that if you're willing. 00;38;06;23 - 00;38;38;06 Jill Christman Christman: Thank you. And thank you for the invitation. And again, if we could bring my publicist into the room and she would appreciate that, I will tell you that I'm a I'm a very funny person, actually, just by nature. And because we have hard things happen to us. And when we're dealing with those, in fact, for me, my philosophy on life is that when I can laugh, laugh because I know the other stuff is going to be waiting for me and the publicist, would want you to know that there's much about this book that is funny. 00;38;38;08 - 00;38;52;06 Jill Christman It is not a slog. It's going to take you to some dark places, but it's going to bring you up and give you light in the air, too. So I hopefully this is one of these moments. And it does involve some. Yeah. I look carefully at the world. 00;38;52;11 - 00;38;53;24 Jill Christman 00;38;53;26 - 00;39;28;12 Jill Christman By spring 2007, Ella was three and a half and I was investing in home pregnancy tests as if they were Microsoft stock. I was able to laugh at my prior naive wonderment four years earlier, when I passed over the double packs of pregnancy tests at Walgreens. Why would anyone would need two? Now, I was a regular at the dollar store, where I picked up a few alphabet workbooks for Ella, and then hurried over to the health and beauty aisle, avoiding the off brand toothpaste and bubble baths, but clearing the shelves of the stacked white boxes of $1 00;39;28;13 - 00;40;06;17 Jill Christman ovulation and pregnancy test kits 20 or more at a time. Sure, I'd had to play chemist and pee into a little plastic vial. Use a dipstick, but it was worth it for the freedom to test at will five days before my period, if I wanted. I'd sometimes collect urine a reckless six days before the period I hoped would never come was due to arrive, just in case. I used first morning pee naturally, and sometimes I would dig into the bathroom trash basket later in the day to extract the negative stick and then hold it up to the window, turning it like a prism in the sunlight, hoping to see a rainbow. 00;40;06;21 - 00;40;35;19 Jill Christman Was that another line ever so slight? This was nuts. I know, but also. But although I was acutely aware that pregnancy did not necessarily equal baby, I needed to make progress. I wanted a baby. So on those crazy making mornings, I wanted two undeniable lines on the damn stick. Even now finished with pregnancy, I sometimes feel a pull towards the test kits and the drugstore. 00;40;35;21 - 00;40;59;20 Jill Christman What a strange compulsion. I equate my need to test to a recovering gambler's desire to buy scratch off lottery tickets at the gas station. Despite the fear, despite the worry, despite the looming 40 weeks that I would need to cross, double lines on a stick felt like a victory. A burst of dopamine that felt ever so fleetingly like hope. 00;40;59;22 - 00;41;24;14 Jill Christman Look, honey, I won! In May, when the coveted lines appeared on the dollar store kit. I celebrated by splurging on a double pack of the fancy kind you can soak midstream to write “pregnant” in a happy egg shaped window. I spelled out “pregnancy” two days in a row with the goofy joy of a little boy writing his name with his own urine in the snow. 00;41;24;16 - 00;41;47;19 Jill Christman And then I pried the sticks apart to see if the double lines hidden beneath the plastic were darkening with each passing day, indicating the desired uptick of hCG in my urine. And then, since this was silly science and I was supposed to know better, I called Doctor L's office and scheduled a blood test. The news was good. I was pregnant for the fifth time. 00;41;47;21 - 00;42;22;09 J.R. Jamison Jamison: Thank you for reading that. I. I agree with your assessment and your publicist's assessment, and I'm sure your editors assessment as well, that there's a balance in the book of hard and balance of light. And I think that's a great excerpt that shows while you were facing one of the hardest moments in your life, you could still find the humor in the small pieces of life that make up our everyday existence. 00;42;22;12 - 00;42;47;14 J.R. Jamison And light is kind of a theme in your book, too, and you talk about how you tell students to find the light. You talk about the movement, where there was, Angel, Divine Grace, who had visited you. And it was find the light switch right to turn on the light. Find that light. I'm curious to know we're living in pretty dark times. 00;42;47;17 - 00;42;51;12 J.R. Jamison What lights are you finding? What gives you hope? 00;42;51;15 - 00;43;21;09 Jill Christman Christman: Yeah. I feel like we are. We are working to find these places. So let me give you my most honest answer. I mean, I'm in a public radio station. Public media gives me hope. People coming together to share and tell stories give me hope. Young people give me hope. Like a lot of hope. Like I find a lot of hope in my children and my students. 00;43;21;11 - 00;43;49;00 Jill Christman Every day. I, I think that most people give me hope right when I have a real conversation looking across this table at you. That gives me hope, right? Like, I know that there are people who are using their gifts in this world to make the world a better place. So this is something I teach my students. 00;43;49;00 - 00;44;02;00 Jill Christman I say, locate your gifts. They're all going to be different. Find your gifts and then use them for good. Right? And I see a lot of people doing that. So these are things that are that are helpful to me. 00;44;02;02 - 00;44;06;25 J.R. Jamison Jamison: Sometimes we are the light. Yeah. Right. And finding that and. 00;44;06;25 - 00;44;26;08 Jill Christman I know it's I know the Divine Grace story is a little wonky, but it's true. So she was coming to me through a medium, and this was when I was, struggling. It was an in, dark time after Colin's death, and I was working through, childhood trauma. And what she said specifically was, you're in a dark room. 00;44;26;11 - 00;44;44;14 Jill Christman You need to touch everything in the dark room. How will you know when you're done? And I was like, what, Divine Grace? No, I don't I don't know, I guess I guess I will. How do I do that? Right. But I, I had felt like I was in a dark room trying to touch everything in the dark room so that I could get out of the dark room. 00;44;44;16 - 00;44;58;24 Jill Christman And she just said so simply, why don't you turn on a light? And I just that that that guides me in life and and in my writing. Right. Because turning on the light is within our power, right? And I think we forget that sometimes. 00;44;58;24 - 00;45;19;29 J.R. Jamison Jamison: Yeah. And as you write, love is light. Light is love. Yes. Right. I thought that was so beautiful. This is your fourth book. And there are consistent themes across all of your writing of grief, loss, birth, love and strength. How is the journey of writing The Heart Folds Early been different from the other books you've written? 00;45;20;01 - 00;45;50;19 Jill Christman Christman: Yeah. Thank you for that question. I actually have a good answer because it has been really different. First of all, I was just telling the story in Baltimore at the writing conference because my first book, Dark Room: A Family Exposure, which deals with my childhood and with losing Colin, took me 2 to 3 years to write and was published by the first place I sent it right, thus setting up false expectations for the remainder of my career and writing life. 00;45;50;20 - 00;45;51;14 Jill Christman Yeah. 00;45;51;16 - 00;45;54;03 J.R. Jamison Jamison: Which all writing is full of rejection. 00;45;54;03 - 00;45;54;29 Jill Christman Christman: Yeah. No. 00;45;55;02 - 00;46;02;02 Jill Christman But mine started with no rejection. I had to publish, I wrote a book. I sent it out there like, this is brilliant. And I was like, thank you so much. 00;46;02;02 - 00;46;04;07 J.R. Jamison Jamison: My career has kickstarted. 00;46;04;09 - 00;46;13;20 Jill Christman Christman: And indeed it did. And then the world came around to teaching me some real lessons about life. So yeah, so this one took me a long time. So I learned patience. 00;46;13;23 - 00;46;15;15 J.R. Jamison 00;46;15;17 - 00;46;45;15 Jill Christman I learned also something really key that was different about this book than say Dark Room, my first book. And I counsel my students and in all all the different places where I do my teaching that in general, and I believe this in general. When you are working on your story, you get to do that alone. There is not a direct pipeline from your laptop to The New Yorker that's going to, like, put out what you're right, right. 00;46;45;15 - 00;47;01;08 Jill Christman So you can be like, if in your mind your mother has entered the room, you can say, excuse me, mom, it's time for you to go right. If, if I'm thinking of all kinds of examples and then editing myself because I am not. 00;47;01;08 - 00;47;03;16 Jill Christman In the room alone. 00;47;03;18 - 00;47;21;09 Jill Christman All of the people that come in the room to judge you, to censor you, you can say goodbye. I need this space to myself. Right. And so I think that as a young writer, I spent a lot of time shooing people out of the room. Because here's another thing. You think you know, the thing that's going to offend somebody or hurt somebody or enrage someone? 00;47;21;13 - 00;47;39;06 Jill Christman I have never been right. And I live among memoirists, and I know people who tell the story over and over again. The thing that is going to do that, it might do that, but you don't know what it is, so you might as well not worry about it. So but this book was totally different. I welcomed everyone into the room. 00;47;39;09 - 00;48;00;15 Jill Christman I was like, we are going to have a conversation. It is going to be complicated. I was like, mom, come in. Folks who have very different political ideas than I do, come on in. Right. Really important. My children, who I am always writing toward in some future where I might not be. Come on in. 00;48;00;15 - 00;48;04;06 J.R. Jamison Jamison: Yeah. Although there were a few years you told them to skip in the book. 00;48;04;08 - 00;48;10;19 Jill Christman Christman: Well, see, that's because I was so aware of them there. I'm like, here, nobody needs to hear the story of their own conception. That's disgusting. 00;48;10;25 - 00;48;12;24 Jill Christman Right? If you're the kid. 00;48;12;26 - 00;48;43;16 Jill Christman Like so, I mean, and there are a lot of places where, I wasn't really doing this to be, like, super edgy or whatever, but I do. I break down that fourth wall and I do I do talk to a lot of the people I've invited into the room through, and that was completely different for me. And I think it comes from being really confident as a teller of my own stories, but also feeling like in many ways, the, conversation has been defined for us, and I wanted to be able to let it be more complicated. 00;48;43;22 - 00;49;09;07 Jill Christman So, for example, I chose this was not a miscarriage. I chose, to end the pregnancy because I did not want my son to suffer. Yeah. And even then I said my and and often I say our because often, our partners are left out like obviously it was my decision fundamentally, right. And my husband Mark understands that we understood that together. 00;49;09;07 - 00;49;26;28 Jill Christman But also it was our decision. This was our family. We had a child in the family already, right? Like so. So I think in many ways men have been left out of the conversation in that way. Right. We were in that together. And so, but I would go to write that and think, oh, is this this is maybe not the feminist thing to say, right? 00;49;27;03 - 00;49;58;27 Jill Christman I need my body, my choice, which I believe. And here is Mark, his baby also. Right. Also part of this conversation and this decision. So I didn't want that to flatten out. Also made the choice. Grieved deeply grieved for years. Right? Yeah, I was I mean, I still I, I, I, I, I suffered right. And I could grieve and suffer and also simultaneously not feel regret for the choice that I'd made. 00;49;58;29 - 00;50;21;25 Jill Christman Yeah. Right. So I wanted all of these things to be part of the story. And in doing that, another, another group I let into the room were those who had had similarly devastating diagnoses, in utero and had made a different choice because I did not want my choice to reflect on their choice. Yeah, right. Their choice was their choice, and ours was ours. 00;50;21;25 - 00;50;32;14 Jill Christman Right. And so, that was the thing that was different for me in this book that I, that I felt like I wanted everybody to come in and and be there with me. 00;50;32;14 - 00;50;52;02 J.R. Jamison Jamison: Yeah. And I do love how you broke down the fourth wall. There were many times as I was reading and you were inviting other people into the room, and I felt like I was being invited into that space too by, by by your writing. Right. And so there's this into intimacy in your prose that's reflective and straightforward. 00;50;52;02 - 00;51;01;15 J.R. Jamison And as we talked about a minute ago, sometimes humorous or funny, who are writers or other members who have inspired you to write in this way? 00;51;01;17 - 00;51;31;05 Jill Christman Christman: Yeah. So many. Well, the humor part, I mean, I feel like I have to back up and first say that I was in school as an undergrad, the University of Oregon, and then getting my MFA at the University of Alabama in a time where there weren't memoir classes, there weren't nobody, like, we weren't learning how to do this, but what what gave me, I think one thing we're always, looking for is permission to tell a story. 00;51;31;05 - 00;51;45;12 Jill Christman So before we get to the humor part, like, I remember where I was when I first read, Maya Angelou's I know where the I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and I and I thought, you can say that where you do, you get to say that? 00;51;45;17 - 00;51;45;29 J.R. Jamison Jamison: Permission. Right. 00;51;45;29 - 00;52;10;10 Jill Christman Christman: And and I think this is what I fundamentally the questions I hear from my students, not in this in this few words really are, can I say this? My answer is always yes. And then, how do I say this? And then that's where I try to help in some, you know with some ideas. But fundamentally it's so, so, so many, so many, so many folks have inspired me in that way. 00;52;10;13 - 00;52;36;20 Jill Christman And including again, way back then, The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston and also how, different kinds of stories are part of our stories, our cultural stories. Recently, I'm a big Lauren Slater fan and so and, and her books both bring in science and psychology, but also play with metaphor, and and can be often very funny. 00;52;36;22 - 00;53;03;18 Jill Christman Danielle Trussoni, who wrote a great book called Falling Through the Earth, which is about, her dad was a tunnel rat in Vietnam. And so she's combining her own story about how the war came home to her, with also going to try to go into these tunnels in Vietnam. And so I'm really just interested and I would be remiss if I did not say, that I continue to learn, from my students. 00;53;03;18 - 00;53;25;12 Jill Christman Right now, I have “grandstudents.” Right. But, Ashley C. Ford, Somebody's Daughter. I know that on this very show you had, Brittany Means, to [sic] Hell If We Don't Change Our Ways. Right. Alysia Sawchyn is about to come out with a new book. So my students, are also the reason I do this. They they encourage me. 00;53;25;12 - 00;53;29;01 Jill Christman I am so, I am wildly proud of the work. 00;53;29;01 - 00;53;34;04 Jill Christman That they just wildly proud. Yeah. Like bursting my buttons, as my father used to say. 00;53;34;06 - 00;54;05;08 J.R. Jamison Jamison: What I'm hearing you not say, but say is that other writers and their words give us permission. Yeah. To expand the way that we approach the world on the page. And that's really exciting because that's choice too, right? So that gives us permission and choice. After writing this book. And you said it was a different journey for you than than your past ones. 00;54;05;10 - 00;54;31;26 J.R. Jamison It's now out in the world and people are interacting with it. You're doing interviews just like today. And I know anytime I write something new, I have new questions that come to me after people who have interacted with the writing talk to me about it and how it impacted them, and it makes me view my writing differently and gives me maybe permission to write in a different way. 00;54;31;29 - 00;54;45;22 J.R. Jamison So I'm curious, are there other kind of questions or themes that are arising now within yourself now, in your writing, or in things that you're playing around with in your mind that you might want to approach on the page? 00;54;45;23 - 00;54;55;03 Jill Christman Christman: Yeah, well, right now I'm writing fiction because I just wanted to do that. 00;54;55;07 - 00;55;00;20 J.R. Jamison Jamison: Yeah. Like you have the right. It's permission. You have the permission and choice to do that. 00;55;00;28 - 00;55;07;20 Jill Christman Christman: And I'm also I'm thinking about. 00;55;07;23 - 00;55;31;25 Jill Christman As someone who to return to the question that you asked about about fear, and hope slash love right. I was, talking to a writer, Diane Gottlieb, the other day in an interview, and she mentioned the fact. So. So I was, as a teenager, lived in a marijuana growing community in Washington State Road, my horse to a one room schoolhouse. 00;55;31;25 - 00;55;50;29 Jill Christman And for the record, I could ride the horse and read at the same time controlling the horse with my legs. This is a special skill that I have. And one thing she was asking me about was, how about kind of these binaries that exist in my work that I hadn't thought about quite this way, and that when I was answering her, I realized something. 00;55;51;02 - 00;56;14;25 Jill Christman So she said, how is it that you're so you're so fierce, right? You've got such kind of clarity and ferocity. And I was like, oh, I want to thank you. When I often feel like, oh, I'm wrestling this fear. Right? And I think I thought about when I was writing Dark Room, I thought a lot about how deep grief and like, the real work of grief. 00;56;15;02 - 00;56;39;28 Jill Christman Right. So that's not just going through a hard thing that's doing the work with the hard thing. Yeah. So I want to make it I want to distinguish there - burns like a space in our self, like, I can almost feel like the space. Right. So like it you have to do the work. And then I feel like there's this, the, that I have a place in me that can hold so much joy because it has been opened up. 00;56;39;28 - 00;57;08;12 Jill Christman Right. So I kind of knew that going into this one. But this one, what I was realizing in this conversation with Diane was that holding the fear and working with the fear that I have has opened up a similar space where I'm just like, bad ass. I just like and I like that, you know? So I'm really enjoying that phase of my writing and life where I was like, oh yeah, this is not a fearful crouch. 00;57;08;12 - 00;57;17;12 Jill Christman This is something else entirely. This is a place of like pure power. So I've been kind of feeling my power. Yeah, yeah. 00;57;17;14 - 00;57;29;07 J.R. Jamison Jamison: And power gives you permission and choice. Yeah. Right. Which is like goes back to the main theme. Yeah. What do you hope readers take away from The Heart Folds Early. 00;57;29;09 - 00;57;58;19 Jill Christman Christman: Yeah. Thank you again I, I would like to drive this point home. An imagined choice is not a choice. So every time you hear yourself saying, I would do this or I would do that, or they should do this or that, just take a pause, linger in the uncertainty. So that's one thing. I also hope that this book now, today in 2026 and maybe in the future. 00;57;58;21 - 00;58;17;01 Jill Christman Is a book that will hold out a hand to someone when they need it. And say, I walked that path and now you are walking it with me and we are together in this, so I hope that it will. 00;58;17;04 - 00;58;22;19 Jill Christman Do that real work of of holding out a hand. 00;58;22;21 - 00;58;30;11 J.R. Jamison Jamison: That's beautiful. Jill Christman, author of the memoir The Heart Folds Early. Thank you for joining me on The Facing Project. 00;58;30;14 - 00;58;38;28 Jill Christman Christman: Thank you J.R. My my heart is full. And for all the work you do every day to make the world a better place. Thank you, thank you. 00;58;39;00 - 00;58;49;19 J.R. Jamison Jamison: The Heart Folds Early is out now everywhere books are borrowed and sold. Learn more about Jill Christman and her work at jillchristman.com. [Music] 00;58;49;21 - 00;59;15;14 J.R. Jamison Jamison: Thank you again to Jill Christman for joining me on today's show and to her publisher, the University of Nebraska Press, for providing a complimentary copy of The Heart Folds Early. To listen to past episodes of this program, visit Indiana Public Radio dot org slash The Facing Project, or find us on your favorite podcasting app, or on YouTube, or in the NPR network, or just ask your smart speaker to play The Facing Project on NPR. 00;59;15;16 - 00;59;39;24 J.R. Jamison To continue the conversation about this episode. Find us on Facebook and Instagram at Facing Project. The Facing Project is recorded at Indiana Public Radio at Ball State University in beautiful and Wonderful and Evergreen, Muncie, Indiana, and is produced by the amazing producer and audio engineer extraordinaire Sean Ashcraft. The show’s distributed nationally through PRX. I'm your host, J.R. Jamison. 00;59;39;26 - 00;59;45;21 J.R. Jamison And until next time, I wish you the courage to share your own story and the empathy to listen to others. [Music]