I’ve been thinking a lot lately about resilience. All around us, disasters are occurring. Hurricanes, wildfires, heat waves. An administration that doesn’t respect facts, science, or basic human decency. A Resistance that is strong but fighting against forces that feel large and unmovable. It’s all feels like too much sometimes. Like what I should be doing is getting on the streets and shouting but what I want to be doing is eating Chinese takeout and binge-watching Stranger Things.
So what is resilience? Really what it is is adaptation. Adapting when circumstances change, when your life takes a sudden turn you didn’t expect. From Psychology Today, “Psychologists have identified some of the factors that make someone resilient, among them a positive attitude, optimism, the ability to regulate emotions, and the ability to see failure as a form of helpful feedback.”
I feel like everyone I’ve interviewed thus far on Side of the Egg exhibits resilience in some form or another, but perhaps none more so than Abby Maslin. When I first wrote to her, I had to preface it by saying that I was not actually stalking her, but the truth is, I’ve been following her story since 2012. That summer, Abby’s husband was walking home from a baseball game when he was violently attacked by three men with a baseball bat. At the time, my husband and I lived in the same neighborhood in DC, and even though crime is not uncommon in big cities, somehow we had been living in a bubble, and the attack reminded us that no one is immune to the effects of violence.
As a result of the attack, Abby’s husband, TC, suffered a traumatic brain injury. Abby became his caregiver (while also mothering a two-year old), and writes extensively about how TBI altered their relationship, family dynamic, and future. The article she wrote for the Washington Post after giving testimony at the trial of her husband’s attacker is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever read, full of so much grace and wisdom. Who has that kind of thoughtfulness while going through the most difficult time of their life?
Abby has a memoir coming out through Dutton Books called Love You Hard, about life after TBI. She was kind enough to speak to me about writing as a busy, working parent. She says some pretty incredible things here about the urgency of writing amidst the impermanence of life. Her philosophy of modeling purpose for her children is inspiring and something I want to take to heart in my own household. I can’t thank her enough for giving her time and wisdom to us.
Here is Abby.
How old is your child/are your children? Do they have out of home childcare?
My kids are 6 and 1 now. My son, the 6-year-old, is in first grade this year and he actually comes to work with me every day since I’m a third grade teacher at his school. It’s great in a lot of ways since we get to spend so much time together, but it also means I never have a moment alone. My daughter, Rosie, is home with either a nanny or grandparents during the day. I was lucky to be able to spend last year at home with her, but I was definitely ready to return to work.
What is a typical day like, schedule wise?
My days start really early: 4AM on a day when I’m being disciplined. I’ve come to realize getting up this early is the only way I can effectively juggle all the parts of my life. I get up, do yoga, then try to write for an hour or two. On a good day I check off all those boxes. But there are certainly a lot of days when I’m hopping out of bed at 6AM, freaking out about everything I still need to get done. Those early hours of the day are pretty sacred to me though. The quiet house, the first cup of coffee, the fresh writing brain – I cherish them all.
The rest of the day is chaos. Getting to school, teaching all day, attending meetings and planning for the next day. Teaching is so involved. There’s never a day I make it all the way through my to-do list. Things settle down again around 8PM when my kids are asleep, but I go to bed early. I can’t imagine what it’s going to feel like when my kids are older and involved in sports and other activities!
How do you turn to your own creative work? And how do you find the energy and time to make space for your own endeavors?
This is the million-dollar question, so forgive me for not being able to answer briefly! I’m beginning to accept that finding the balance between parenting, working, and writing is a process, not an outcome. In other words, it’s not a thing I’ll ever be able to check off my list and be done with. My own children see me as busy and productive and purposeful, and I think that’s a good thing. I want Jack and Rosie to be purposeful people: kids who understand they have something to offer to the world, so they can begin figuring out what to do with it. I can’t think of a better way to teach this than to model it myself. I was really lucky to have two parents with big passions of their own. They were constantly pursuing their own ideas and deepening their careers. But they were also home for dinner most nights, and the most defining moments of my own education were had sitting around the dinner table listening to them talk.
I think the most honest answer I can give is that I always feel that I should be doing more. If I had my way, I’d be writing more (there are about a dozen article ideas I’ve been sitting with over the past few months). I’d be a more skilled teacher. I’d be the kind of parent who packs homemade granola bars in my kids’ lunch. I’d be more committed to the environmental goals our family made this year. Instead, I’ve got to find peace with what’s reasonable and give myself credit for doing a good enough job in all of those areas.
My own children see me as busy and productive and purposeful, and I think that’s a good thing. I want Jack and Rosie to be purposeful people: kids who understand they have something to offer to the world, so they can begin figuring out what to do with it.
What does your “space” look like?
For years I convinced myself I was better writing at coffee shops and public places, but that was really just a lie to help keep me immersed in baked goods and hot lattes. (editor’s note: guilty) The truth is that I can’t write with any noise at all. I have a yoga room in the house that is big and quiet and serene, but I’m actually most productive sitting upright at my husband’s desk or cross-legged on the couch. The other lie I’m trying to dispel for myself is that I need that perfect, prolonged environment to write in. It’s pretty rare that all the factors come together just right, so I need to learn how to take advantage of a free 10 minutes to write here and there. This “getting the environment just right” myth has robbed me of too many valuable writing hours!
I take a lot of comfort in knowing that other writers struggle with this too. The author, Anne Lamott, likes to write in 45-minute stretches and then take a 15-minute break. I love this idea. The saying that keeps me motivated is simple: “To be a writer, you have to write.” How that looks or where it takes place is pretty irrelevant. The goal is just to do it.
What kind of supports do you have that make it possible for you to write?
My husband, hands-down. He clears weekends, takes the kids on hikes, cooks dinner, and does anything else I need to make it possible for me to have hours-long stretches of writing time. Besides him, I count on my 4AM alarm : )
Tell me about your memoir and your journey to becoming a writer.
My memoir LOVE YOU HARD is being published by Dutton Books (an imprint of Penguin Random House). It’s a book I started about 10 months after TC’s attack and which I’m still wrapping up the final pages of. It’s taken four years to figure out exactly how to tell this story and that’s mostly because I was still living it for so long, but I’m very grateful to my literary agent for finally ripping it from my hands and helping me to put it out in the world.
I always loved to write and as a kid I was constantly writing short books and plays, but that love abandoned me as I went through school and found fewer and fewer opportunities to write about things I actually cared about. It wasn’t until TC’s injury that I found ease with writing again. My blog about our experience post-brain injury was my personal journal. Through it, I found access to all the complex and wrenching emotions I was struggling with.
Now the writing work feels more urgent than ever. I just turned 35 and have come to realize that my writing life is just an extension of the late-bloomer syndrome I’ve suffered from my whole life. I wish I would have taken my writing more seriously earlier, but now that this passion is alive in me, I don’t plan to let it go again. The biggest lesson I’ve learned from TC’s injury is the impermanence of life. I don’t want to take for granted the time I have here to do this special work.
How did writing help you to cope with everything you had to deal with after the attack—the medical, the physical, the emotional, the financial, the procedural? And how did you find time to write in the midst of everything else you had to deal with?
It’s funny – I was a trained therapist (that’s what my master’s in in) who was resisting therapy. The few times I went to therapy after TC’s injury, it just felt so terribly vulnerable. I’m not good at admitting when I need help (actually, I’m terrible at it). So writing my experience down instead of sitting in the therapy chair allowed me to feel I still had some control over my life, and that was important given how out-of-control everything was at the time. I would write late at night – 1AM, 2AM – in those quiet hours after a long day at the hospital or after talking to detectives – that’s when I let everything free. It was never a chore. In fact, I slept better after giving myself that small release.
The biggest lesson I’ve learned from TC’s injury is the impermanence of life. I don’t want to take for granted the time I have here to do this special work.
What else besides writing helped you to move through the grief and trauma of what happened? From where and whom and what did you draw your strength?
I drew the bulk of my strength from TC himself. Thinking about the man that he was, the one he’d worked so hard to be, the one I respected the hell out of, kept me in fight-mode. I was not willing to disappoint that man. He was my role model, the person I needed to become in his absence. I also drew an incredible amount of strength from my son. Jack was only two at the time, but he was my light. Within 18 months of TC’s attack, my mom was diagnosed with cancer and my dad passed away. It was a dark time and Jack was sometimes my only connection to the lively, vibrating world outside. He was my ever present reminder of joy and lightness. I have no doubt his existence saved TC’s life as he lay dying that night, but it also saved me.
And, in an admittedly clichéd white girl response, I must also credit yoga for returning me to myself. We process trauma on both an emotional and a physical level and through yoga, I have worked through a lot of physically embedded pain. Mostly I love the yoga mat because it’s a space I occupy all alone – a place with no kids, no responsibilities, and no thoughts other than the present moment.
What are you working on now and how is it going?
Right now I’m wrapping up my memoir and then I have some decisions to make. I have a few ideas for another non-fiction book, but I’m also interested in writing a novel. Mostly I’m excited to start a fresh project – one in which my personal life is not the primary subject!
What are you reading now?
Mating in Captivity by Esther Perel. It’s a fascinating read about intimacy and desire in long-term relationships. I’m giving a talk next month about intimacy in the caregiving world, so I’m in research mode right now. The two are at such odds. I want there to be hope for couples who have been through a situation like ours. We’re not talking transparently enough about the ways that illness eats at intimacy.
Any advice you think you could offer writers?
Let me be as frank as possible: if there is a model writer out there, it is certainly not me. I’ve tried a lot of techniques to discipline myself as a writer (setting page goals, words per day goals, etc.), but I haven’t stuck with any of them. I’ve tried taking a sabbatical in the woods to write (I just panicked instead), I took a year off to write (I got pregnant instead). If there is a way to avoid writing, I will find it.
Carving out that early morning time has been my biggest success by far, because, as I’ve discovered, if you don’t make the time, no one else is going to make it for you. Beyond that, when I’m feeling stuck or frustrated, I ask myself this: how would you feel if you never got a chance to finish this project? If my life ended suddenly or if I was told I no longer had the option to write, could I live knowing that this project died inside of me, without a chance to set it free in the world? I know that’s a bit of a fatalistic hypothesis, but it’s also motivating for me. We get this one chance. I’d regret it forever if I wasted it.
Carving out that early morning time has been my biggest success by far, because, as I’ve discovered, if you don’t make the time, no one else is going to make it for you. Beyond that, when I’m feeling stuck or frustrated, I ask myself this: how would you feel if you never got a chance to finish this project?
What’s the funniest/cutest/weirdest thing your kid has ever done?
I know I’m biased, but I really do believe I have the most entertaining 6-year-old on the planet! Jack is forever having dance parties in his underwear, sneaking into the kitchen to make “cocktails” (a dessert-like concoction made in an ice cube tray), and making pets of all the unfortunate creatures he digs up in the backyard.
One of my favorite Jack moments happened a few months after TC’s injury, at Easter. In an attempt to be a thoughtful, super supportive aunt that year, my sister bought an Easter Bunny costume and wore it to surprise Jack. Instead of being delighted, he was terrified. But for months after, he would go searching around the house and the yard looking for her, hoping she’d come back. “That Easter Bunny come to MY house!” he would remind us.
She still wears it every year.
Thank you, Abby! Your words are inspiring, but more than that, your resilience is a model for all of us. Fred Rogers said to look for the helpers, and in these difficult times, I cannot have enough strong role models to look to. I look forward to reading your memoir!
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