Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio. It's a little over a week into the new year, but I'm still taking stock of the last year and thinking about what I'll do differently for twenty twenty four. Like I said in the last episode, I'm not big on New Year's resolutions, but I do like to think about how to improve my life and how to move forward and be better, just have a better year than
I did the last year. I had a really mixed twenty twenty three, Like I think a lot of people. My book Stolen Youth came out in March, and honestly, it was a hit. My co author and I made multiple bestseller lists. We were all over TV and radio. I toured all over the country for months, and I spoke to so many groups, did so many different events. It really went well. That same month that the book came out, we had about Mitzvah for our daughter. About
Mitzvah is a Jewish rite of passage. It's a religious ceremony that commemorates the child becoming a grown up, and it usually comes with a party about the size of a wedding. Actually it was about three times the size of my own wedding, and it was quite a lot. It was amazing. It all went really great. But the book and the butt Mitzvah, they were beautiful, amazing, but extremely stressful, and it was a stressful time in the last year that I still haven't quite gotten over. Then
we launched this podcast in October. I had had offers to do my own show over the years, but I really never entertained one until this. And look, it's going great. So many of you are out there listening. I hear from you, and I feel so lucky. I'm busy all the time, and it's a good busy, but it's still quite a lot. I had eye surgery in May that forced me to take a few weeks off, but otherwise I have never worked more in my life than I did in twenty twenty three. In a lot of ways,
it was a very very good year. But the truth is that all of that stressed me out, and I didn't sleep that great for a lot of it. I'm not an anxious person. I'm very chill, but i'd feel this anxiety in my sleep about all the things that I needed to get done, and there was no real reason for the stress like I'd wake up in the morning after a night of stressing about something and think that's a really silly thing to be worrying about, and I'd shake it off and I'd go on about my day.
You Know something I think about a lot is that when I was at the lowest points of my life, like when I was unemployed and single and had a whole lot of nothing going on, I was sleeping super well and I didn't worry about anything. I didn't have anything to lose. So then the October seventh attacks happened in Israel, and my sleeplessness and stress they take on a more specific focus. The attacks really rocked my world, as I think they did for a lot of Jews,
you know, around the world. Beyond the horrific images and stories, I'd spend a lot of night thinking about how to raise Jewish children in a world where so much hate is aimed at them. And I go back and forth between wanting to build a fortress around them and wanting them to go out into the world and be themselves with pride and no fear. In side note, I learned to shoot this year. I'm an optimistic person, but I'm not a foolish one. My people have been unarmed sitting
ducks too many times throughout our history. Not us, not this time. I say all this because it's possible to have a universe of good, very good really exist alongside a lot of bad. Life just isn't one way or another. We're all carrying a lot of stuff around with us. For twenty twenty four. I know the things I need to do to comfort myself and calm myself when I get to dark places. For me, for one thing, it's unplugging from Twitter first and foremost. And look again, nothing
is all good or all bad. I love Twitter. I get a lot out of it. I've met a lot of friends through it, see it as my social since I work from home. But I get to where I'm on it way too much, consuming way too much news and minutia, And I used to have arguments on there, but I don't even really do that anymore. It's just the amount of information becomes too much and it's time for a break. So I take vacations where I unplug from Twitter and I spend more focused time with my family.
And this gives me such a sense of calm. Does that mean I never yell at my kids, like no, I yell quite a bit. But being together, cooking, watching movies, all of that it leads to a really great feeling of calm and togetherness that helps me sleep better. The last thing for me is reading fiction. I go through years without reading any fiction because my world is really a world of nonfiction. I'm into the political world and into social and cultural issues, and this is all the
nonfiction space. But when I don't read fiction for a long time, for me, it's a mistake. Nonfiction books are great. I love learning new stuff. I love not fiction also, but the weaving of a beautiful story, immersing myself in someone else's life for a while, it's so good for me. I read two books overbreak and they were just fantastic. I forgot the writer's names, but one was called The Family and one was called City of Thieves. They were both recommended to me by my Twitter followers, and I
really love them. Both books were fantastic, City of Thieves particularly. I'm going to be thinking about that one for a long time. I hope that in twenty twenty four we all can balance the good and the bad and focus on what brings us happiness and calm. That's my wish for all of you, and that's my wish for myself too. Coming up next an interview with Emily's Nati. Join us after the break, Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio. My guest today is Emily's Nati.
Emily is a writer and her substack is called because Ovs. Thanks so much for coming on, Emily.
Thanks for having me.
So there's been this phenomenon on social media of dinks, which means a couple who is dual income, no kids, and the pushback to that has been people commenting that these people will be unfulfilled or alone as they age. And I saw a tweet of yours where you had some thoughts on that, and I was like, Oh, I have to have Emily on to talk about it because I thought it was unique. Tell me your thoughts.
So my thoughts were, well, first off, the dank thing. This isn't to say it about all double income no kids families. These are like, specifically the ones that are on TikTok in what feels like a gigantick coat.
Right, it's a great way to phrase it.
My life is so amazing because my kids don't wake me up at nine am, and I can have all this money and I go eat fancy dinners and all these things that I still do with children, that right here saying I was never supposed to be able to do. But my thought was, and sort of over the last year, I've had a lot of experience with death, and I kind of felt like, look, if all you're doing to be fulfilled at the end of your life is making people that are required to be there, that's not really
being fulfilled. Like, there's plenty of people who have kids whose kids will not be there and they're dead, And there's certainly plenty of people who don't have kids who will be surrounded by love and all love this wonderful stuff as they exit this life. And so for me, I just felt like people were saying that the only way to have a good life or to have a good death was to have children, and you just need to have a good life really, not not necessarily just kids.
Right, I'm not having kids to be like there for me when I'm bored in my older age. I fully agree with that. I'm obviously very pro having children, but the idea that they fulfill you or will be your companions as you get old. Rubs me the wrong way. I know very fulfilled and happy people without kids, and I know miserable parents. I also don't like the whole
making kids your whole life. You want to have a life when they grow up too, And the thing is that I want my kids to go out into the world and have their own lives and not, you know, not be my like little caretaker as they get you know, as I get older. So I really loved that you mentioned that about a year ago you had a traumatic near death experience. What happened and what's changed in your life since then.
So I had I had one of those Chicago MD or Chicago ER kind of like should be a primetime television special, and I went to the emergency room for what I thought was food poisoning and it ended in Chicago, well in Nashville here, you know, Nashville.
Okay, okay, but I get it.
Yeah, So I watched Chicago MED so that was what was in my But it was one of those where I went to the ar thinking I was having food poisoning and I ended up having a ruptured topic pregnancy and was rushed into emergency surgery. And had to get blood, and at one point they actually called priest. They said, are you Catholic? Are you Christian? Do you have some belief system so that we can call somebody in case things don't go the way they are, so they can
give you last row. And I was not in a position to say yes, because I thought everything was still fine and dandy. And my husband was like, oh my god, yeah, yeah, priest in here, and so that kind of gave me a different perspective. I woke up the next morning thinking what have I done with my life? What does it look like? What am I doing with my life? What
is my job right now? And how do I change that and make it better so that I wake up in the morning and I feel like I'm fulfilled, and I feel like if I do get hit by a bus or a bike messenger, which is right, I always thought I was going to die when I lived in.
The city, Like what if I do, Yeah, people show up at my funeral and Hilde actually miss me.
So it did change my perspective quart of it.
Yeah, I think about that a lot, not just the bike messenger part, but you know, the spending your time here in a way that is you know you're not going to regret anything when you go, and that you know that we do only have so much time here, which I guess leads me to a question that I always ask people is do you feel like you've made it? Especially after what's happened to you.
I don't think I ever will fill that I've made it. I had a crazy imposter syndrome, and I'm amerd or I'll tell you I'm a writer, but I've had all these bylines, so I actually have a crazy imposter syndrome.
So I don't think I will ever feel like I've made it, but I did in that conversation about the Dinks when I was talking about I feel like if my kids can make it, If my kids get to the point in their lives for they are successful enough to afford therapy for all the things I've done to them up until that point, that is when I think I will feel like I will have been successful in my life, and then I can, like one my husband and I moved to Marguerite Deville and play pickleball and
collect ceramic cats or whatever I want to do. You love it like twenty years of my life, you know, But that's when I feel like I'll have made it, I think.
How would you define imposter syndrome for people who might not know what that means? I know very well what that means, because I think there's not a writer out there who doesn't suffer from it. But how do you describe it?
It's sort of of this feeling that all the success that you've had, all of the things that you've done in your life that look good on paper, that really everybody's just been fooled, that you're you're so incredibly good at fooling everybody, and one day this house of cards is just going to come down around you, and people are going to see you for the loser and the faker in reality, Like if I truly was able to fake all of that to write a point.
Like the most successful ever, you'd be like, they're just a billionaire running like your own you know, evil layer And yeah.
But you know, it doesn't change that. I wake up in the morning and I'm like, who am I? Why do people care that they know my name when they see me out somewhere? But yeah, you just basically recognized.
Do you get recognized lot? Like do you live a public life?
My kids get recognized all the time, and now that's also recognized. I seen you on the internet. They're like, I've seen that kid on the internet.
Yeah, that's definitely. I feel like i'd recognize your kids if I saw them, for sure, I would do you. You know, it's funny that you say the therapy thing, because I feel like parents usually feel like they're not making any mistakes, Like I can't even imagine what my kids would tell the therapist, like she was a perfect mom, Like it could not be better a plus, you know. So I think it's so funny that you like, uh,
imposter syndrome your parenting. Maybe because your kids seem very very happy, and you know, I bet that they would say quite nice things about you to the therapist MP or.
Maybe I've done something that I don't know, you know, like somewhere along the line they're going to say, you know, she put she put this one thing that we did on the internet and everyone thought it was so cute, but it was really super embarrassing. So now she's ruined my life. And now I teach yoga.
I'm aving by the river, not yoga yoga. I'm terrible.
Yeah, so you never know, I don't.
Know, yeah, I mean, you don't ever know. I I do think about, like, what are my kids going to complain about? Like, because you know, compared to like my childhood, they seem to be having just this like amazing life, and I you know, I can't even imagine what they have that they're going to hold against me. I'm sure they're going to find something.
Like.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not naive. I just always wonder like, oh, what's it going to be? What is it going to be? Did I give them too much?
Like?
Oh, she just loved us too much.
She was constantly loving us too much. She kept telling me she loved.
Me right, and like anybody notes how embarrassing.
Yeah, exactly. She she cooked with us, She taught us how to cook, She taught function as adults. Why didn't she have a child. I don't know. I don't know. They're gonna be like years from now, they're gonna be like all my friends got xboxes at age six, and I was being told to go outside.
That's true, they might say that, but like I'm ready to defend that stance. You know, yes, you're not getting the xbox at age six, so you you moved to Nashville. But you moved I want to say before the pandemic.
Right, it was just after the pandemic.
Oh, it was just after the pandemic. Okay, so you were part of the great migration. How's it been.
It's been amazing, so amazing that we actually purchased a house here. We didn't think that we love it, stay here. We like you guys, we were stuck in a city. We were in Chicago and downtown and everybody was very nervous and tense and yeah, and we couldn't eat outdoors, we couldn't go to the mall. We couldn't do a thing. We took one step down here and walked outside, and there's crowds that we hadn't seen crowds in a year.
Were you like, you guys are all going to get COVID?
I was like, why isn't anyone wearing masks? And then I was like, oh, because that's really stupid. Yes, yes, right, m So we we moved down here just after the pandemic, and we thought we would rent a house for a while and we go back to Chicago to raise our kids where we were raised. And we got a year in and we were like why would we leave this place?
Right?
Yeah, and our old neighborhoods in Chicago are now overrun. We would have had a migrant shelter just down the street. We would have had our jackings all over. My husband somebody that he went to high school with was running a drug house two blocks from where we were living at the time.
Nice and where to go? All right, maybe you.
Know the drive through down the street. We found a good school for our kids here. I don't have to homeschool them because I'm not worried about what they're going to learn in school.
Huge. Yeah, huge? Have you made friends?
Some friends? Some friends? We have a couple friends. And then we moved into this neighborhood where everyone is really determined to be our friend, which is really hard because I'm I have an introvert.
Are you okay?
And everyone is just really determined that we should be a part of the social culture here. Yeah, that's great. And so they're forcing me to become friends.
Forcing you to enjoy your community.
Terrible people, terrible, horrible people who put on parties and parades and halloweens.
And yeah, We're going to take a quick break and be right back on the Carol Marcowitch Show. On the show, I've interviewed a lot of people who have, you know, made the moves, and we've been sort of honest about, you know, pluses and minuses and making friends and starting over in adulthood and all of that. So what's been kind of the biggest challenge for you?
The biggest challenge here is finding a community. I think they call it the third place. You know, you have home, you have work, and then you should have some third Yeah, and in Chicago we had that. We had a neighborhood bar, we had a church, we had places that my husband grew up in the same neighborhood that we lived in. So we had sort of a ready made community there.
And making your own community, it turns out, is really hard and finding a new place, finding a new place that you can go to to hang out, finding a new church was really tough here. It took us about a year. So it was that initial loneliness I think of moving to a new place. You have no roots, nothing to fall back on, Like, was it the best bar in the world. Were they the best friends in the world. I don't know, I get that.
Yeah, a local bar, Yeah, I know what I need a local bar. I've been doing this all wrong. I have like looked for other things, but not a local bar. And I think you're You're absolutely right, that's what I should have.
But rest they know your name?
Yes, well, restaurant I have that we have as we have a few restaurants where they know our names. But that's really interesting. You know what else is really interesting is that I know you're a Catholic, right right about that? Okay? So yeah, I always thought you're saying, you know, finding
the right church. Like so there's all these sects of Judaism, and you know, so being a Jew is like, you know, you're finding the right like you know, first your your kind of domination and then within that, like the right place. And then I think that's probably also true for Protestants that I always assumed for Catholics it would be like all the churches would be relatively the same. Is that correct?
So we kind of have unofficial internal denominations. So there's that a more liberal type of Catholicism that kind of popped up in the sixties and seventies, and then.
We have sort of a more vagemination or it's just this kind of liberal you just have to know it when you just have to know it when you see it. There's a lot of elbaters and acoustic guitars and everybody loves everybody. It's very very I hate to say the word boomer because people get mad about it when I say it, but it's boomer.
I see boom. Okay, okay.
Then there's very orthodox traditional Catholicism with the Latin Mass, and where we came from in Chicago, we were more on that side, but then we went to the Latin Mass here and it was one of those where people came from long distances to get to the church. So really they got there, they went to Mass, they left, there was.
Nothing got it.
Were inviting and then we ended up Ultimately we ended up at the cathedral. It took us about a year. We just decided to try the downtown cathedral one morning and the lady who was sitting next to us gave my kids little holy cards and they introduced themselves. And now we are. I bring my kids, they sit in the front row. I always say, you know, I have to be I have to be evangelizing to them or they're going to forget their religion.
Absolutely. Yeah, nobody's going to do it for us. Nobody's going to.
Do so I've got to sell it. I've got to sell it to my own kids first before I sell it to anyone else. And so I try to make it as fun and exciting as possible. And yes, we're disruptive because all my children are preschool aged or younger.
But I said, if we're going to be disruptive, at least to be entertaining, right, And now we've become like we're there front and center by children know, all the bishops and everybody by name, and it was just a really warm and welcoming environment that brought us in and gave us that thing that we were missing.
That's great. Yeah, And it's not a show, you know, it's not like a production. It could be interrupted. It's not like I just don't like the idea of religious services being like and showtime. Here's what we're doing. You know. I think it's okay to have reality and humanity get in there. And and you know, kids being noisy or whatever, like, what are you going to do that they exist like them?
If you don't have kids, your religion is dying.
Oh yeah, that's like millennials are.
Less religious than their parents and is less religious than their parents. And by the time you get to our kids, who I guess are gen Alpha, there's going to be nothing left for them.
So conservative Judaism, I'm looking at you.
Conservative Catholics.
Yeah, neflis.
In generals, there's like nothing left. So there's nothing that makes their lives different by being Catholic. And so for us, we tried to make their lives different and better by being Catholic. And so yeah, if you don't have that, if you don't have them feeling like they belong and feeling like they have something to say or reason to stay, it's just.
Yeah, and feeling comfortable and familiar in those spaces. I think it's, you know, so important. Once again, all sects of Judaism. I'm looking at you. So, what would you say is our biggest cultural or societal problem in America? And do you think it's solvable?
I think we don't know how to have fun anymore. Hmm, I think it's solvable. I think we think of fun as vices, so we're interesting as sex, drugs, gambling, rock and roll. Yeah, we don't think about it as just going out in our backyard playing with our kids, right, and we've sort of stopped having fun as a society. Like if I go out and you'll understand this, I love Michelin Star restaurants, say you love it, yeah, and I will go and have a four hundred dollars tasting
menu dinner. And I've done this all over the world and people will be like, why the would you spend eight four hundred dollars on a meal? I was like, this is the only meal I'm never going to get that. This happened, right, and it's amazing.
Remember it, Yeah, I'll remember it.
It's a show. It's something that is so different. I'm not doing this every day. I'm not cooking Posta at my house and charging people four hundred dollars for it. It's an experience. And so I think we've stopped having those experiences. We only get them through our phone, we only get through Instagram. Like we have influencers who go and have those experiences.
Yes, and tell us about them, yes, right.
About them, and we don't think like I could make a reservation, yes as Letelier in Paris, and I could go there and I could eat there, and I could tell my friends about it and feel like I had it once in.
A day time experience really interesting. Yeah, so Americans should have more fun.
America should have more fun, have an experience. Do it, go run like a weirdo in the park, do something that great, Yes, do it.
Don't be afraid, Yeah, be fearless. I love it. And here with your best tip for my listeners on how they can improve their lives.
Stay with your family more. I think the best thing I ever do in my life is cook with my family.
Mm hmm.
You learn things about people being with them. And I say this as somebody who hates other people. I have a cat right here. This is the happiest I'll be. People always ask, you know, why don't I ever see you where I'm going? Or why don't I see you when I'm at some conference? Was like, because I'm in my hotel pretending that I'm not at a conference. I just feel like people could benefit so much from human contact and cooking alongside somebody, going to a movie with
people and being loud, going to the park. People just live your life like a human and humans need other humans. That's all.
Yeah, family humans, not like stranger humans.
Like stranger humans. That's weird. Thank you.
So much. Emily, thank you. This is really great. Loved having you on and we'll talk to you again soon. Thanks so much, Thanks so much for joining us on the Carol Marcowitch Show. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.