Embracing and Letting Go of the Labels the Define Us with Alison Wearing

Embracing and Letting Go of the Labels the Define Us with Alison Wearing

===

[00:00:00]

[00:00:00] Kristin: Hello, and welcome to the second chapter podcast. I'm your host, Kristin Duffy, and it is so lovely to be back with you this week. I've been feeling really sad about the irregularity of my episode releases, but I've been completely snowed under with my master's degree work. I Definitely need to have my own episode soon.

[00:00:16] There've been so many changes and I'm really proud to be doing a little bit of what I talk to my guests about every week, living my mantra of always learning. This past week, I had my first experiences as both a script supervisor, and a producer on a film set, so times have been exciting.

[00:00:32] Today, student films. Tomorrow, Netflix. Enough about me. Let's talk about my guest. For this episode, I'm speaking with Allison Waring. Experiencing a big change at age 12, her father coming out as gay in the 1970s, led to big changes in Allison's adult life as well.

[00:00:49] We talk about how she became a writer after failing English in school, how the dismissal of her second manuscript taking the stage, and how letting go of the labels that define us can sometimes show us who we really are.

[00:01:02] Alison: So much of that evolution is about letting go of who we thought we were. It is the letting go of what is inconsequential, what feels essential to who we are, this is who I am, this is what defines me, is often the very thing that we need to let go of in order to evolve and be a fuller version of ourself who's free now to share who we really are. And those definitions I think can not only hold us back from ourselves but hold us back from our own generosity.

[00:01:38] Kristin: Hi, Alison. Thank you for joining me on the second chapter. How are you?

[00:01:41] Alison: I'm well, thanks. Thanks for having me.

[00:01:44] Kristin: It's nice to see slash hear you. I'm going to start from the beginning. I know you've lived and traveled many places all over the world, but I want to ask you a little bit about growing up in Canada .

[00:01:55] Alison: I grew up in a small town that was yeah, I would we were actually, we were called, I think, Normalville by, by marketing people. We were the place, we were one of those towns that tested products. We were so normal apparently except my family wasn't. So that made a few waves.

[00:02:16] It wasn't actually called Normalville, but apparently in the marketing world, we were one of those towns that was yeah, I guess a fairly typical small town in Ontario, which made my family that much more unusual. When we had a little surprise when I was 12, my dad came out of the closet, and these days that's no big deal, but in those days it was.

[00:02:38] It was a big deal because no one, no other dads were doing that, but also we didn't really even have the vocabulary for it in those days at that time. And so it was, it overturned an otherwise, yeah, happy go lucky, fairly normal, peaceful childhood.

[00:02:56] Kristin: So I know you wrote a book about it, but instead of talking about the book first, maybe a bit about, more you as a 12 year old, because obviously you looked back on it in a memoir sense, and of course you're looking back at it now, but what was happening when you were 12? What did that kind of do to you?

[00:03:13] What did it do to your family?

[00:03:15] Alison: Yeah, I was obsessed with gymnastics at the time Nadia Komanech had just been the great hero at the Montreal 1976 Olympics and so I lived and breathed gymnastics and I yeah I would say my parents got along really well. They were great. friends, they did music together, they're both they're both pianists, and so they, it was a very, it was a very jolly house.

[00:03:39] It was I think it, if anything, it it was more of a shock, because I didn't have that kind of, I didn't have any warning that the roof was about to cave in, let's say. And even though my dad had begun to spend time in Toronto, we were told it was, he was a professor at the university.

[00:03:59] We were told he was doing research in Toronto and and he was around less and less, but that again wasn't alarming. He'd always been very busy at the university and so on. I guess more shock than anything. And then just what do you do with that? Even in those days, divorce wasn't common.

[00:04:16] So divorcing under these circumstances I don't have a strong memory of what it did to me in that moment, but I can say I was the following day flying to Germany for a gymnastics thing, and I was. I was being billeted with this German family for six weeks while we did, various things, and I remember writing to myself in a journal.

[00:04:42] I was sitting up on her windowsill, so I guess I was jet lagged. I was also freaked out at what was going on, and and I was writing to myself in this journal about just what that, what did it mean? I remember writing, does this mean Dad loves Peter and Tip, my brothers, and not me? I was just trying to figure out what [00:05:00] does it mean he loves men?

[00:05:01] What, he doesn't what, like, how? We had so little information. And then I remember, so all these questions and things, and then I remember being so terrified that someone would see this that I ripped the pages into little pieces and ate them.

[00:05:17] Kristin: Oh my gosh.

[00:05:18] Alison: Yeah. So it was the beginning of a lot of just, Shame and swallowing.

[00:05:26] Not surprisingly, perhaps I developed an eating disorder not that long after that plagued me my whole adolescence and early into my early 20s. It yeah, just, and then the lies started immediately. They had to what there was no place for that story in my life in my childhood, you, there was no place for that.

[00:05:48] What did I do for the weekend when I saw my friends on Monday? How do I say, oh, I went and visited my dad and his boyfriend and we went to the ballet together and then what, I just would invent. I'm sure that's why I became a writer. I'm not sure. I always loved books, but it certainly practiced the muscle of invention.

[00:06:10] Kristin: Yeah. I'm just even trying, this is very specific, but trying to imagine, because I know we had some strange things that happened in my family, but I remember a couple of times we weren't like, let's sit down and have a conversation kind of family. We just, that wasn't our thing.

[00:06:23] So a couple of times that, major things would happen that my parents would get us together. Is that kind of how it happened? Did you have a family meeting? Was it something that

[00:06:31] Alison: was no family meeting.

[00:06:32] Kristin: Okay.

[00:06:34] Alison: No, I was flying so I was going to Germany the next day and I was nervous and I was sitting in my gymnastics outfit on this stool that we had in the kitchen and I was badgering my mother with questions about was he coming, was dad coming to the airport. the next day to see me off because he was in Toronto.

[00:06:52] And then and then I wanted to say, why does he have to have an apartment in Toronto? Why doesn't he come home very much anymore? And I was clearly pushing for something. I Don't, I've I, to be honest, I've reinvented that conversation in my mind because I don't remember exactly. What I said, I remember the feeling when I was recreating it in memoir, and the moment we dip into memoir, and we're dipping into unreliable territory, we feel we remember clearly, but what the increasingly the research says that the, that we simply don't that memory is what they said, it's plastic in the sense that it is changeable and it is, there's a plasticity to memoir to memory, particularly those memories that we access, you.

[00:07:39] Most often the ones apparently every time we pull it up, we file it away slightly differently because we're, it's now it's almost as though it has the hue of our present gaze now on it. So it changed slightly. And I'm saying this is what I did, but when I was writing the scene, I did what I call this sort of psychic scuba diving down into that moment, and I, something I teach when I teach memoirs, is these access points to memory Can come from tactile memories, from smell, we all know elicits memory and so when I was recreating that moment when I was writing it as a scene, I remember just feeling into that the nylon of those gymnastics, those the kind of Adidas sports things we wore, there was nothing natural in any of those fibers.

[00:08:29] And I remember the zipper, zipping it right up to my neck. I remembered the feeling of the stool. I remembered the linoleum of the floor. I remembered that we had this really ugly mustard yellow dishwasher. And then. I, crawling into those details, suddenly it popped that my mum was unloading the dishwasher.

[00:08:51] That I remembered. That the entire conversation took place with her back to me as she unloaded the dishwasher. And I was hammering these questions. The one I remember just wanting to know is, was he going to be at the airport? And why did he have to be in Toronto so much? And then I remember her saying, there's a lot about your dad you don't know.

[00:09:12] I, Of course said, like what? And then what, and then it, the, I hadn't remembered exactly what she said until I was in that scene for a long time, just pulling out those details it really is like scuba diving into memory. And then I remembered her saying, do you remember that time you came back from Toronto and told me that dad had taken you to a gay bar?

[00:09:37] Kristin: Interesting.

[00:09:38] Alison: Yeah. And that, that, so that was the extent of the family conversation. thEn I cried and I had questions and I had no idea what it meant, but I knew it was bad. All I knew was that it was bad because it was the worst thing you could say about someone in those days. Like in my world, growing up in the schoolyard, that was the worst insult.

[00:09:56] All of the epithets that we threw around, that was the worst [00:10:00] one. So I just knew my dad is now the worst thing. That's all I knew, but I didn't really know what it meant.

[00:10:06] Kristin: oh, I just think thank goodness times have changed.

[00:10:09] Alison: Thank goodness times have changed,

[00:10:11] Kristin: But even, even, even now when divorce is more common or, having, all different types of parents, different sexualities that are much more out in the open and rightly it's still when you find out something about your parents or when your parents split up, it's, I feel for the most part. It's always going to be shocking to find out something you didn't know about your parents or to see your parents that you thought loved each other no longer together or, whatever that is.

[00:10:35] It just doesn't help that it happened to be the 70s and that people were far less open minded about things than they are today.

[00:10:43] Alison: yeah, they sure were.

[00:10:46] Kristin: So you mentioned in addition to a very ugly mustard yellow dishwasher, you mentioned becoming a writer. So what was the path from 12 year old gymnast and, when this all happened, making up these stories to what led you to eventually becoming a writer?

[00:11:00] Alison: Yeah, I should probably back up because it was I think I loved book, I began to read very young. In fact, I was pulled out of kindergarten and put into grade To I guess, because I could read I was almost, it really felt like a punishment. I was discovered, someone found out. That's how it was.

[00:11:23] That's how it was framed and and I always loved books I always I would, I, when I was very young, I would say seven, eight, I would wander the fields behind my house and I would think about the titles of these books that I was going to write, and I never got beyond the title I put a lot of thought into those titles and so it was in my room as a child, I had all these Nadia Comaneci things on the walls, but I also had a book, I also had a little library, I made little those little checkout, uh, slips that you had at the library for each one of my books, even though no one ever, no one who was going to take these books, I don't know, but I made little things

[00:12:04] Kristin: pocket,

[00:12:05] Alison: Yeah, the little pocket with the due date in the back.

[00:12:08] Kristin: Oh, those were the days.

[00:12:10] Alison: Yeah, I know. So sweet. So I always had this thing for books, but I but it was actually really beaten out of me in high school because I failed high school English. I didn't feel like I had a creative I was, I did a lot of music, but I didn't do I fell out of love with books when I started to have to analyze them, to be honest.

[00:12:31] That, I, it just took the joy out of it. I just didn't get why I had to, why that was English class. It was, it, the way that I wrote about it went in I can't remember, I wrote about it in, Maybe that book about my dad was for me, it was like loving frogs and then being told, okay, now we're going to dissect them.

[00:12:51] Everyone that you love, we're going to put formaldehyde. on a little cotton ball, kill it, and then start opening it up and looking at plot, character, foreshadowing. It just killed it for me. I'm just, I just am not a fan. Or rather I guess just to say it didn't work for me. I get why it works for some people and I actually now do love talking about books and pulling apart what's working, but I hope that I do it in a way that doesn't. And there is no question it's all about how it's done. And I'm sure there are brilliant English teachers who would have inspired me, but I just happened to have ones that, that I think were, they had a pretty stultifying effect. And so I, and then I failed. So I never thought of myself as being a writer or even qualified.

[00:13:42] I. absolutely felt unqualified. And I never took an English class at university or nothing after that. But when I was living I was a traveler though. And I was really, and I took a, I wrote copious letters. Just thick letters to anyone who was willing to receive them. And and I most often traveled alone.

[00:14:02] So I wrote a lot, I didn't talk to anyone. I wrote letters and one of the, I was living in Czechoslovakia right after the revolution and working as a, just because I happened to be in the right place at the right time. I ended up teaching English in parliament in the first democratically elected parliament in what was then Czechoslovakia, and now the Czech Republic in Prague.

[00:14:25] And I wrote a really thick letter about what I was doing to a professor I'd had. I'd studied political science and music, weirdly. And I wrote to my politics professor and he wrote back saying, just, clean up a few sentences and send it to the Globe and Mail, which is a newspaper in Canada.

[00:14:46] And so I did and they published it and they published it as an article and I'll never forget. Then the byline said, Alison Waring is a Canadian writer living in Czechoslovakia. And I read that about 600 times. I'm a [00:15:00] what? Yeah.

[00:15:07] That's how It started.

[00:15:08] Kristin: sometimes it takes somebody pointing it out before you to actually realize it. Because if it's something you're doing, you're writing letters, that's that's casual. I don't know. I mean, I feel like this is something I don't want to say as a hobby, because it is part of what I do, but at the same time.

[00:15:23] I'm, when people suddenly say, Oh, because you're a journalist or because you, as an interviewer, and I'm like, Oh yeah, that is me. I am doing, journalism and things, but it takes somebody sometimes saying that to go, Oh yeah, I am a writer. I wrote this article that was once a letter, but it's yeah.

[00:15:40] Alison: Yeah. So that's how it started.

[00:15:43] Kristin: So what was your first book?

[00:15:46] Alison: tHat was by then I'd written a bunch of newspaper articles about travels that I'd done and then a few in, I guess I'd published some short stories in literary journals and then quite a long non fiction piece about a trip that I made to Serbia during the war, to then Yugoslavia during the war.

[00:16:05] And that won a big award and it it was a big yeah, it was a big kind of step for me. And right, and it was the first time that I realized that I had this it married both passions, both travel and writing. In a way that I felt that I had something to offer. It wasn't just me talking about things that had happened to me or it went beyond political analysis, that piece.

[00:16:33] It really was about humanizing a people who'd been dehumanized and as war so often does. And so I think I was inspired just by the power of that, that I had this I could really do something that was. I don't think I thought of it as service in those days, but it felt like I was doing good in the world by doing that kind of writing, and so my, my, I was really ready for a larger canvas. I'd done these short stories, short articles, and then this one was a long piece. It was the long form essay, which is such a beautiful form, but it's gone so out of style because we don't have, we don't have attention spans anymore.

[00:17:13] Kristin: was just going to say attention spans. I thought you were really leading toward we don't have, that particular type of paper or

[00:17:20] article, but it is

[00:17:21] Alison: everyone wants it. Oh yeah, no one wants a long form essay anymore. They used to be 20, 30, 40 pages, and I loved that form. That anyway so it was one of those, this piece that I wrote, and I was looking for now a larger canvas, almost like a, now I was wanting A full mural size work or something.

[00:17:42] And the place that I settled on, and I knew I wanted to travel somewhere. All my pieces had been about travel to that point. And so I decided to go to Iran. And it was a series of things I had, I was living in Montreal, I had a number of Iranian friends, I'd lived in the Middle East before, and I had a A real affinity to that part of the world, and not beyond an affinity, a fascination, and a real respect yeah for places that were so complex and so complicated and so often overly simplified, I felt.

[00:18:20] And So Iran felt like a really beautiful subject matter because I was, I knew so little about it. It was so extremely painted in the mainstream media as, in those days it really was seen as a place of just basically pure evil. It was just this fundamentalist nation and all the stories coming out of it were just horror stories and my experience in other places had led me to believe differently that in all of these places that we see, um, that we see, particularly with this sort of cruel two dimensional judgment, I always just We just longed to see the color in those places.

[00:19:08] These places that we paint in black and white so often are so rich in color. And so I went to Iran with that idea. I had no idea what I was finding, but I was prepared to find anything. And it could have been the classic horror story of, Western woman being, I remember having a few nightmares before we went.

[00:19:25] I was traveling with a male partner. I was going to have to be in full hijab when we went. aNd my Iranian friends actually were the least supportive of this idea because they had left Iran during the most violent, its most violent time post revolution, when people are being hanged in the street and gunned down and they had escaped over the mountains.

[00:19:45] And so they just could not understand why I wanted to go. And And so I was nervous going in. I had no idea what we were going to find. And then from the moment, really, we got on the bus in Istanbul, [00:20:00] we took this three day bus that eventually ended up in Tehran. Or in we got off early, but it ended up in Iran.

[00:20:06] And from, but the moment we got on I just, it was exactly the kind of surprise. That, that I had hoped. We had a whole range of experiences. But for the vast majority of the time, we met one extraordinarily kind, hospitable, generous fun-loving, sweet person after the next.

[00:20:29] And I'd already experienced Middle Eastern hospitality, which for anyone who's traveled in the Middle East is already, you'll just never be treated with greater hospitality anywhere in the world. In my experience. In the Middle East, but Iran was in a category all its own. They took it to a new level.

[00:20:44] We just would get off a bus, and I was invisible because I was in hijab, but my, the guy I was traveling with, he actually could blend in, but he had eyeglasses that were much unusual for Iran and those in the moment people heard us speaking English. We were just surrounded by people, one of whom offering us tea, one wanted to take us on a tour of the all the architectural sites in the village, one wanted us to meet the mayor, one wanted to take us for lunch, one was just saying, okay, we'll first go on a tour with you, then we'll have tea with you, then we'll meet your mother, and it was just day after day like that. It was, so I wrote a book about that, which I went in knowing I wanted to write a book about it. So I took copious notes, but I didn't know what kind of book it was going to be. I had no idea. Know just that I wasn't, I didn't know it was going to be as funny.

[00:21:33] As it was, so many people have commented on that, just how much they laughed and laughed through the book, because we were taking on just one crazy adventure after the next, one of which was this, we're invited to dinner, we're in the middle of the desert, there's nothing around Someone heard us speaking English.

[00:21:49] Someone else invited us. We were taken off to this family compound. We walked in. It was all very serious. And, we're just introducing people. And the next thing I knew I'm being just pulled by the arm by the woman of the household who just was desperate to play ping pong with me. And we spent the rest of the evening playing ping pong in our hijab.

[00:22:12] Kristin: It is really interesting to hear you, just saying places you lived in places you traveled. Because I do feel like, as you rightly said, we have these misconceptions or preconceptions about a place that's been war torn or a place that, Middle East in general, I feel like so many North American or European even, we have this sort of, this opinion and that does not involve next thing you know, we were playing ping pong in our hijabs or it doesn't involve so much of what actually happens when you meet the people at the place.

[00:22:45] And there's so much going on in the world now that, we're generalizing whole areas of the world and it's, when you really meet people, that's when everything sort of changes.

[00:22:56] Alison: Yeah. And that's what I felt like I was trying to do in writing was humanized. People who've been dehumanized and introduce, take people out of this political lens through which they are always seen and none of us fall under any category, there is no such thing as a single American, a single Iranian that stands for everyone.

[00:23:18] I mean that we know that and yet we do it constantly. And we say things like the Palestinians and then we show something horrific, and we make judgments about that. And it's. It's so desperately unfair.

[00:23:33] Kristin: Yeah. We don't want to be categorized and yet we do it to other people all the time.

[00:23:37] Alison: Mm-Hmm. always. Yeah,

[00:23:39] Kristin: So your second book I believe is the book about your dad. Am I

[00:23:44] Alison: right?

[00:23:45] Yeah. I wrote two about my dad, but one, that's the first one that's about him coming out. Yeah.

[00:23:50] Kristin: so is that, was that something that you had trouble getting published?

[00:23:54] Alison: No, on the co Oh. Oh, wait a minute. E, e. Okay,

[00:24:01] Kristin: Basically, the reason I'm asking, this is a big change in your life. And of course

[00:24:04] Alison: Yes, no I now know what you're asking. Yeah I didn't at first, but I now know the question. Okay so after my first book, the first book did really well. I came out of the gate soaring. I didn't have any of the big rejection things that writers face when they, so that many writers face.

[00:24:20] On the contrary, I had just every door open. And then I went to write my second book and I I, a number of things had happened. And I'd had I had a child, my first, my only son we had moved to Mexico, we moved back and forth so many times, we were constantly on the move for a while, for many years, and And I kept trying to write and losing the thread and trying to write and losing the thread and I started about, I don't know, there were two definitely novels that I got quite far into that I abandoned.

[00:24:54] Then I was trying to write short pieces but it was before the days of electronic submissions so I just had [00:25:00] all these stories that were just ending up on shelves, I just never sent them or if I sent them we didn't ever return address or it was just chaos, total chaos. And I was getting. Nowhere. and then I finally had a period of time where I got a studio outside the house and I started to show up there every single day and write and I was really clear on this book project and I created what I felt was my great magnum opus.

[00:25:26] And it was this big. Brick of a book. And this was eight years after my first book had come out. So eight years I had been basically actively writing and having it go nowhere. And then eight years, finally, I had this book. I submitted it, waited for, the first time I published a book, it just, It was life changing.

[00:25:50] It was, tons of money. There were translations and it was a big thing. So I was okay, it took me eight years, but at last, here it comes. And it was rejected. And summarily rejected. And with basically the only note from the editor being, this is three books trying to be one. That was the, that, and it was in, in that it was, she was hoping for a bigger book, but she didn't mean in length.

[00:26:16] It was devastating. It was beyond devastating. I don't even really I can hardly even still go back there and touch that time. It was it just felt like complete decimation. I just, I had no idea. How to stand up. I just, if I can't even do this this is the one thing that I had going through all of that.

[00:26:42] At least I was writing. It wasn't going anywhere, but I was a writer. I was a writer. I was a writer. I was a writer. This thing that I'd been good at. And it completely failed. And it wasn't a rejection. Please, tweak this and work on this. It was, this thing This is three books trying to be one.

[00:27:02] Kristin: And that's not a lot to work with, really.

[00:27:04] Alison: No, it wasn't a lot. No, it wasn't a lot. And I'd, yeah, anyway so before that had come out, while it was still in progress, I'd been invited to do a reading from the work in progress. And I had done a reading, but it was this ridiculous, by then I was doing some music. So my partner was a singer songwriter.

[00:27:23] I was singing with him because I'd done music all my life. So I, I had been doing that. And and I'd also been doing a lot of dance. We were living in Mexico and I was, I don't know if I was studying choreography at that time, but I was doing a lot of dance anyway. And so when I was asked to do this reading, I, they said, look, you can do it.

[00:27:41] I said, the book's not done. It's still a work in progress. That's fine. Do whatever you want. So I took whatever I want very liberally and and I turned it into this bizarre, truly bizarre reading where first I started, it looked like a regular reading. I was on, at the podium, and I was reading, but I was recording what I was reading, and then once that was on a tape recorder, a cassette, there's dating myself.

[00:28:06] So then once that was finished, then I had two cassette players, one on either side of me. So when that was recorded, then I played it. that text back, and I sang over top, through the words. It wasn't any text to what I was singing. And then that was recorded over on the second tape recorder.

[00:28:24] And then I played that back. So first you heard the reading, then you heard the reading with the music, then I played the text and the singing, and then I did this bizarre improv dance thing. And then there was a friend of mine in the audience who was a poet. He's in a wheelchair and he, I pulled him up and he and I did this.

[00:28:46] And then he was my muse, and I can't remember, it was so strange. Anyway, people loved it. No one I think really knew what to do with it, but the response was overwhelming. It was just beautiful. And one of the people in the audience said to me, I see a one woman show in what you're doing, and if you ever want to work on it, call me, and I just thought, oh, he just didn't get it, I'm just, I'm a writer, I just doing really animated readings, and I'm, my book is my new book, my great magnum opus is going to come out, and then I'm going to be on tour, and I'm not going to be doing crazy things like this, I'm going to

[00:29:24] Kristin: I'm not going to be dancing over my

[00:29:26] Alison: No, exactly. Yeah, I'm, I'm doing, I'm a writer. I'm not, what are you talking about? So I turned them down, but when this manuscript got rejected. I then, I was so desperate. I was desperate to do something, to be something to make something of this thing that I had worked all these years on.

[00:29:49] I had to do something. It was total and complete desperation and humiliation. I couldn't have been more humiliated. I [00:30:00] had nothing left to lose. And so I went back to him with basically with my tail between my legs saying, what was your idea again? and and so we put together what became my first one woman show.

[00:30:13] And, but I was so uncomfortable I was still clinging to this identity of I'm a writer that I used to say so I did this performance, but I didn't even know I was. I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know, for example, when people laugh, am I supposed to stop wait for the laugh, or do I just talk over it?

[00:30:33] I was so inexperienced. But I signed up for these theater festivals, and I still remember, and I got into a couple of them, that's the beauty of fringe festivals, you can be completely inexperienced and still get drawn, alongside a really experienced actor and you're both on the same stage.

[00:30:49] So I was drawn for a couple of these festivals, and And I remember being backstage before my first show, my first formal. I'd done it in someone's garden just as a sort of one off to get my whatever to figure out how to do this. And then the next thing I was on stage and I had a seven day run or something.

[00:31:06] And the house manager came to give me my five minutes. And I panicked because I thought, Oh my God, this is a theatre festival. I need to go out there and tell the audience that I'm not a, I'm not an act, I'm a writer. And this is just a, it's a reading without the book. That's what I was calling it.

[00:31:27] I couldn't even get the vocabulary right because I was just not there yet. And this is the crazy thing about labels. Is that we think that they define us and for a time they do, but definitions are all limiting. Most labels I think, keep us from stepping into the fullness of who we actually are because we are never just one thing.

[00:31:49] And the moment we say, I'm a writer, may my being so set on I'm a writer. Actually just kept me from being a fully creative being who, could do all kinds of things, one of which happened to be writing.

[00:32:01] Kristin: You just summed up the whole, the second chapter concept in one little paragraph or mini paragraph, because I do feel like, of course it's all about change and sometimes it's very clear cut. I was this, now I'm this. But it's very rare that I talk to someone who's like... Oh, I was that, and now I'm completely something different.

[00:32:21] Even if it's something completely different, it tends to be this thing informed that thing, or I wasn't happy, but I learned this during this time. And I think, even as somebody who is an actor, who's a trained actor, but because you can't, only the highest echelon of actors makes all their money from acting.

[00:32:41] So there's a lot of actors I know, including myself. Who of course have other jobs, but also when somebody asks what you do to say an actor, because people will say, what have you

[00:32:51] Alison: Yeah. exactly.

[00:32:52] Kristin: What have I seen you in? And if you don't have a good answer for that, it's so awkward. I, I do a lot of other things, so it's like verbal diarrhea the second someone asks, but I absolutely agree that to narrow yourself to one label is saying you can only do one thing, which is obviously what you were doing at that point.

[00:33:08] Alison: Yeah. Yeah. And I think it, it keeps us from stepping into the beautiful complexity of being human, which is that we're always changing and how beautiful that things are constantly. Ideally, we're constantly evolving. And so I love not being able to answer the question. To me, that's the, a beautifully truthful answer.

[00:33:29] And yeah. And it did keep me because I, so when the house manager gave me my five minutes, I asked him should people be told I'm not an, I'm not doing theater. He's clearly seen a lot of nerves before shows, but he just said the last thing he said was enjoy. that was the most beautiful thing to be said because I thought, oh, enjoy that I know how to do. I can enjoy myself and I've always loved to tell stories. So I'll just enjoy telling a story. And that's, and so I went out, determined to just enjoy myself. And the moment I stepped out there, I thought, Oh my God, how long did it take me to get here?

[00:34:08] I have never felt more fully alive than I have right now. But I still remember, I still called it a reading without the book for, Oh, probably at least a year and I did. Many shows in that year. And and I remember being at the Halifax airport, actually and I had a, I was just taking a care of, I had a carry on because I had all my props that I was carrying with me.

[00:34:32] Yeah, I think I got stuck. Maybe I was flying to Halifax. I think I was in Toronto airport flying to Halifax and I got, security opened it up and I, my props were really weird. And so I wanted to know, what is this? What is this? And I said, I'm an actor.

[00:34:47] These are my props. And I remember it was the same kind of thing as reading my byline. She's a Canadian writer. I walked out of the, I remember the smile, this just, okay. plastered on my face. I'm an actor. [00:35:00] I just found it so funny. I found it so funny. I'm an actor. I'm traveling with props. I can't believe I just said that.

[00:35:07] I can't believe actually that's true. That's what I'm doing now. I actually travel around the country acting. It was

[00:35:15] such a revelation. But but I, then I moved to Stratford, Ontario, which is the theater town And yeah, it was the most boring thing in that town to be as an actor, everybody's an actor. it was again one of those times where I just thought, yeah, these labels are so limiting, they're just so unhelpful, actually.

[00:35:34] And, yeah, and now when people ask, I don't really even know what to say, because the default for me is still writer just because it was, It's the seed of everything that I do, and so it still feels right to, I guess I'm most settled when I have to fill out a passport application, let's say.

[00:35:54] That's my default, but I also now teach and I, and to me, teaching is also something I had to step into because I'd failed English. What was I doing teaching writing? I'd never taken a writing class in my life. And so once again, I had to step into that being an okay thing to say or be called.

[00:36:16] Mostly it's someone else calls you this thing first. You have to say, woo, is that really? IS that really who I am or can I be that or what does that mean? And yeah, and once again, it was in the verb that I found the, it wasn't the label teacher. It was teaching where I found my home in that because I was so comfortable doing that as well and so enjoyed it.

[00:36:40] And so I could enjoy teaching or coaching, all of these things that that we end up doing.

[00:36:46] Kristin: It is funny because it was my hundredth episode and I spoke to a collection of women that I had spoken to in previous episodes. And one of the things I said to them was, it was just so funny because I tend to say I don't want to interview too many coaches because I get a lot of people who have changed to being life coaches.

[00:37:07] Which I think is a wonderful thing. I just want a broader range of people to speak with. But then as I looked around that meeting, there were a couple of women that I had interviewed that were life coaches or midlife coaches or those kinds of things. But then I realized each and every one of us did our own teaching and coaching in a different way.

[00:37:25] There's somebody who works with gardeners and helps them to plan their garden. There was, someone who does yoga and womb massage, but also does some coaching around that. So It just looking around this space of, I don't know, nine women or something, it made me realize we get to a certain age where we do know a lot.

[00:37:43] We've experienced a lot. And one of the natural things I would say as women, maybe as people in general, but I would especially say as women, as we want to start giving that back

[00:37:53] and whether you choose to call it coaching or whatever that is, it happens.

[00:37:58] Alison: Yeah. And once again, I would never have, there was no such thing as a writing coach when I was starting out writing. So it was a term I resisted a lot. I also found it silly. It still conjures the image of me standing there blowing a whistle, but right! Faster!

[00:38:19] Kristin: We left, but I'm also a triathlon coach. So I actually do that

[00:38:23] Alison: oh wow, okay,

[00:38:24] well that's impressive. Wow. Oh, I love that. Okay.

[00:38:27] triathlon coach. That's really amazing.

[00:38:31] Kristin: Yeah, a lot most of my things go together and then there's just, randomly I also coach triathlon.

[00:38:38] Alison: That's beautiful. Oh, I love that. Yeah. So yes I think that's one of the most beautiful things now that it does feel like a giving back or a nurturing, of Of other people's stories. And once again, I fell into that completely by accident. I was invited to, to facilitate a workshop at a pretty prestigious it's like a retreat in Mexico and I felt completely out of my league.

[00:39:07] I was teaching alongside other Paul Muldoon who wrote the poem for Obama's inauguration. In addition to being whatever he is Pulitzer Prize winning Irish poet, no, I felt so out of my league once again and I, it's the best to feel out of, that is just my Now my favorite sensation because that's when they're really interesting stuff happens and so that first happened I started teaching there realized, oh, I may have failed high school English but I got a lot to share with people and it felt really, people really got a lot out of it and I enjoyed it and so then I would start, I would perform and then give a writing workshop the next day.

[00:39:48] And so then the two things started going hand in hand and then I started doing my own retreats. And then I was, for a time, primarily teaching and just performing on the side. And then COVID struck [00:40:00] and I was leading, like so many people, just a crazily mobile life before COVID.

[00:40:05] I was just constantly on the move, teaching, performing, teaching, performing, teaching, performing. And then and so then I was locked down like everybody else. But weirdly, I had been compiling. Every time I taught, I'd end up saying, The same things over and over again at the beginning by way of introduction because people have the same series of obstacles, challenges when they write memoir, no matter whether they're a beginning writer, whether they're a novelist on their third book, whatever it is, that was fascinating to me that the same series of questions tended to come up at every single workshop.

[00:40:40] And so I had started in a friend's attic to record The myself answering these things. So I had this assembly of all these recorded videos and then I'd been writing texts to go with them with the idea that I would create an online course eventually. But it happened to be ready. Ready the week the world tipped over and we all got locked down.

[00:41:02] I was ready to go out the door. I'd taken a course on How to, create an online course, then a course, and how to market an online course. And I was almost out the door, and boom! Everything got shut down, which at first felt like the world's worst timing. I just thought, you've got to be kidding, I've been working on this for two years, and no, it's disaster.

[00:41:22] But then very quickly, within six weeks, I realized, oh no, not disaster actually, the opposite of disaster, the timing could not be better. And so this course, which I'd envisioned. As maybe having 100 students in my 1st year, that was my goal had 1500 students in the 1st year and I. It was like being in a rocket ship and suddenly I had to incorporate and become a CEO and a manager.

[00:41:51] I had to hire a team. Me as a CEO, that is still the funniest sentence on earth. It especially for people who know me well, but it was again, this out of really, that was the last thing I was ever Great. Ever expecting to do, be, become, have to figure out. And I found myself in CEO school and was the Yeah, I've become the CEO of this company, which partly runs an online course but we also do writing retreats in Tuscany and Canada and that was another reinvention, whatever that is, three and a half months ago.

[00:42:27] It that just, yeah, completely caught me off guard. I wouldn't have dreamt of that one.

[00:42:34] Kristin: So you're great at telling your story, but you're not so good at marketing this online. Is it Memoir Writing Inc.?

[00:42:41] Alison: Yes, that's it.

[00:42:43] Kristin: You're like, I have this online thing that people can totally do. It's this thing. I'm not going to say what it's called, but I'll tell people it's called Memoir Writing Inc.

[00:42:52] Yes, that is another interesting way you can see what Allison's up to as CEO.

[00:42:59] Alison: I'm also that I also facilitate I don't just I'm not just in boardrooms.

[00:43:03] Kristin: I don't get

[00:43:04] the impression from you that you're just

[00:43:06] hanging out in boardrooms.

[00:43:08] Alison: Yeah, no, as a CEO these days, when you have a company, it just happened. It just happened. And then post pandemic it's changed form again because we're not all inside and locked down and looking for ways to spend six months.

[00:43:20] So I'm doing more, a lot more live in person things now connected to it but it is just. Funny. I, it's so interesting talking through this whole trajectory. I don't, it's, this has been a really beautiful interview and thank you so much for focusing a podcast on this very thing because we we so often talk about, where you are now, what, we celebrate the end game, the end point but I really appreciate talking through all the muddy

[00:43:50] really messy, uncomfortable stages in between that were the reason we got here. They were there. There's no escaping the muddy, messy, terrifying moments when you don't know who you are or what you're doing or what's ahead. And so thanks for doing a podcast on that. It's been actually really interesting talking through that.

[00:44:14] Kristin: For me, I feel like No matter where you are, you still, you can be like, Oh, I feel like I'm having some success with what I'm doing, but nobody gives you the instruction manual, especially when you're doing something creative or when you're doing something freelance or you're doing something when you're doing anything.

[00:44:32] I don't know. You could work for a company and they tell you your next position is going to be whatever, but you still don't have to choose to do that. So It just interests me so much because I feel like, and I've said this so many times and so many people in the show have said it, but there's this whole thing, this antiquated idea of having one job, one career.

[00:44:50] And we just don't do that anymore. But I think there are these sticking points where it's like, can I do that? Is that something I should do? And just hearing that [00:45:00] other people have done it in so many different ways is so interesting for me. And I've been told for people who listen, it's interesting for them too.

[00:45:07] So I'm glad that you're enjoying chatting through it and it's just really interesting to hear. Another thing that you didn't actually mention the name of, or we didn't mention the name of was the memoir that kind of led to so much of. memoir coaching and memoir teaching and everything. But the one about your father that we started with the beginning is Confessions of a Fairy's Daughter Growing Up with a Gay Dad.

[00:45:30] So I'm going to steal this question that I heard someone else ask you, but how did your dad feel about it? Especially the title, which is not. I don't want to say, it's, it's a little offensive.

[00:45:41] Alison: It's funny, it's offensive nowadays, but so much is offensive nowadays that even my father says, I'm not even sure if I'm allowed to be gay anymore. Is that word allowed anymore? that's a separate topic, but That the whole sensitivity and the offense Olympics but the the title is not actually in any way meant to be offensive because, and I say it in the prologue that, that fairy was, it, to me, it sets the story in an era because in the 70s and 80s, they called each other fairies.

[00:46:11] It was a term of endearment. anD I liked the ambiguity of the title. I liked that it could be a a fairy story. It could be a fairy tale. so there's nothing offensive to me or frankly to my father about the title. What's interesting now is that now that Offense is currency.

[00:46:31] People take offense because it feels like it gives them power. So I am getting more people becoming offended, which is so interesting because I say, the person who's being called a fairy. Isn't offended.

[00:46:46] Yeah, so that's another conversation. But my dad had no issue with the title. He thought it was hilarious and thought it was very appropriate, as did his friends who lived through, who were the pioneers, I hasten to add, of this movement.

[00:46:59] Kristin: Yes.

[00:47:00] Alison: were the people who afforded the liberation that others are now appreciating. Those people were very delighted to call themselves fairies and they celebrated the term. And it was and is a term of endearment. Of course, things change. But I don't believe in the sanitization of language. I think language, historical language is vital in the same way that historical documents are vital.

[00:47:25] They remind us where we started and where we have come. And erasing them doesn't actually, erasing history, Doesn't doesn't ultimately serve us. It that list is what I believe. But knowing history and being able to contextualize history allows us to understand the present. We cannot fully understand the present if we don't know where we started, where we've come from.

[00:47:51] So my dad was initially a little bit uncomfortable.

[00:47:53] It's this book began as a one woman show and he was, he went to the preview or the first, the, I guess it was opening night and and he was very uncomfortable with it. Imagine you're being portrayed on stage by your child. I don't know any parents who would feel

[00:48:09] Kristin: Yeah. It doesn't matter what the situation is.

[00:48:11] Alison: Yeah. Yeah, and so we had a few conversations about that, but he actually became not involved in the book itself in an active way of writing, but when I was midway through the writing about 80 or 180 pages into the writing, and I felt as though I had told my story from my perspective as a child. My family came out, my dad came out when the country was coming out, so we were part of a larger movement, unbeknownst to us at the time, no one was aware that's what was happening.

[00:48:42] We were all these little families in the dark, but at some point, yeah, it became this, the gay liberation movement that launched things around, in the Western world. And And so it felt important for me to weave that historical backdrop into my family's story, but it was very much backdrop.

[00:48:59] It wasn't, as I say, we weren't cognizant of that at the time. So I was trying to figure out how to do that, and I had some questions about just certain historical events and things. And so I went into Toronto to ask my dad a few questions and to ask if he could recommend any, What I should be reading.

[00:49:17] I was planning to go to the gay archives or whatever they're called now, the LGBTQXXXXXX in Toronto and do some research and read some, contemporary novels and things like that. And in response to one of my questions, he disappeared to the basement and came up with this box and said you might find this helpful.

[00:49:37] And it was unopened in his basement for 30 years. And when I opened it, it was just this mass of diaries, journals, letters, newspaper articles, clippings which he had been compiling for the two, for two years. Really from the time that he started exploring that possibly he was a [00:50:00] gay man until he ended up with his partner, his, now husband, of 43 years.

[00:50:05] So that box, to make a long story short, that box ended up, I ended up weaving those things into the book so that the second, so the first part of the book is called The Way I Saw It, and it's my story in my words, and the second part of the book is The Way He Saw It, and it's his story in his own words.

[00:50:23] So I compiled I took snippets of all those things and created this collage of his experience in his words at the time, which is so valuable because it's one thing to reflect back on a life. But this was his words in the moment when even he did not understand what was happening to him, or why. And it's very powerful reading, and it took me a long time to figure out what to do with all that material, but at one point I realized, no, it just has to stand entirely on its own.

[00:50:52] It speaks for itself. And then the third part of the book is called The Way She Saw It, which is my mother's story, because of course that's a fascinating story all its own. And it's very short, but it's deliberately short. It's almost written in prose poetry, that's how I think of it anyway. And then the last part is The Way We See It Now, which is I was 12 when my dad came out, and it completely, of course, upended my world, and my son was 12 when this book came out, and having a gay grandfather was as normal as having ketchup on a grilled cheese sandwich.

[00:51:28] If that's what

[00:51:29] Kristin: that normal?

[00:51:30] Alison: ketchup on. It wasn't our family. Ketchup on whatever you put ketchup on.

[00:51:34] Kristin: to say like chips, french fries.

[00:51:36] Alison: okay, French fries. Yeah, that's a better, that's a better analogy. So it, it was so beautiful to see what's possible in a single generation. There was just, it was an absolute non issue to him, his friends, his world.

[00:51:49] And that's what's possible when, in a single generation that is possible is an extraordinarily beautiful thing.

[00:51:56] Kristin: I think not only that is beautiful, but the fact that so often we don't get to know our parents that well. I know my father, I have so many questions for him, but he's not around anymore. And to be able to have that kind of, sharing amongst your family, no matter what it's about.

[00:52:11] I think, we all see our parents for the longest time as humans or not humans, that we can barely imagine them as real people, let alone ask them important questions about their life. And when they talk about things, you go, Oh,

[00:52:23] And then one day you go, oh, I can't ask those questions anymore.

[00:52:27] And I wish I could.

[00:52:28] Kristin: So valuable thing to have for your family, for your son. It's incredible.

[00:52:34] Alison: Yeah. And it, it was quite incredible too. I was reading his journals

[00:52:39] and he was pretty explicit. Yeah.

[00:52:43] Kristin: Yeah, I don't know if I want to read my dad's journals, but...

[00:52:46] Alison: It was strange, but it, but by that point I was reading him almost as a character anyway, so I was writing him as a character, so it really, and it did happen so long before, and I think the key actually was by that point there were no secrets.

[00:53:01] If I had discovered this after he had died and I'd know nothing about it, that, the corrosive nature of deception and secrecy, That would have bored a hole into me, I'm sure. It was all out in the open. When my dad came out, he blew the closet doors off his hinges. He spared no detail. There was nothing hidden and he was so happy to be out of the closet that I remember feeling at times, could you just tone, I don't need to know, I don't want to know how cute you find that guy.

[00:53:35] I really... It's really not needing this level of detail, but it meant that there was nothing hidden. It was really beautiful in that way. And so reading his diaries, even though, yeah, it was piecing together how much of it had happened when my parents were still married and when before I knew and all that stuff, people asked, weren't you angry?

[00:53:56] And I said, no, I was heartbroken for both of them. But I wasn't angry. There was nothing really to be angry about. If anyone has ever wondered what that experience feels like, to feel like you've got this, I don't know, like this serpent inside you that is absolutely desperate to emerge.

[00:54:19] all you want, you're cheering for that person. You just want them to be free.

[00:54:24] Kristin: And even if it led to sometimes you thinking, Oh, I didn't need to know that you thought that guy was so cute. I'm sure seeing your father that happy, and obviously he is and was 43 years of marriage, all the rest.

[00:54:35] Alison: Yeah.

[00:54:36] Kristin: It's

[00:54:37] yeah, it's all part of it. I could ask you about a million other questions, but instead I'm going to just ask if you brought a quote for me today.

[00:54:47] Alison: Yeah, I did. And yeah, I had two and I wasn't sure, but I think in light of our conversation, I'll lean into this one by Clive James, which is, I thought that I [00:55:00] was vanishing, but instead I was only coming true.

[00:55:04] Kristin: I thought that I was vanishing, but instead I was only coming true, I feel like that touches on. So many things we talked about between your father's story and us talking about labels and talking about the muddy waters of life, and I love that and I've never heard that one.

[00:55:21] Alison: That's beautiful, isn't it? And the vanishing, it's important that it's vanishing not I thought I was lost. But in fact, I was coming true. I thought it was vanishing because to me so many of the Of so much of that evolution is about letting go of who we thought we were and how, how that the vanishing is part of the emergence because it is the letting go of what is inconsequential, what feels essential to who we are, this is who I am, this is what defines me, is often the very thing that we need to let go of in order to evolve and be actually a fuller version of ourself who's free now to share who we really are. And those definitions I think can not only hold us back from ourselves but hold us back from our own generosity.

[00:56:18] Kristin: Yeah. I think holding on so tightly to who we think we are is only hiding parts of ourselves from the people we care about or the world as well.

[00:56:29] Alison: Yeah, and I guess I like to believe that when we are fully, when we're, when we're doing what we feel, when it just feels, oh, this is who I am like this, that first time I stepped off the stage and I just thought, oh, this, I was just, I've been waiting my whole life to be here.

[00:56:46] It's not actually an ego trip. It's actually when there's when you are so transparently, able to let whatever it is that comes through us come through, it ends up being generous to an audience, like when a person or generous to whoever is around. And it to me the great irony about acting and teaching to is.

[00:57:07] It's when we get out of the way that we... when we become good at what we do or it's no longer about us being good at what we do. We're just this, we're this vehicle for something that ends up nourishing other people. We're just a vessel. And that feels that feels generous and at the same time, completely liberating.

[00:57:29] Kristin: iT's been really interesting hearing how you've gotten to where you are now. More importantly, all the steps a few of the steps that got you here. And I'm really glad because I do think you've become a vessel to share a lot with us.

[00:57:43] Alison: Oh, thanks

[00:57:43] So much.

[00:57:44] Kristin: yeah, I know that where you are now is not where you're going to stay.

[00:57:47] So please keep me posted on everything that keeps happening.

[00:57:50] I will make sure that your information goes into our show notes. Thank you so much for joining me. I loved hearing your story.

[00:57:56] Alison: Oh, I loved being here. Thanks for your really heart centered questions. I appreciated that too. You have a beautiful manner. Yeah, this is a lovely interview. Thank you.