WEBVTT - I Was Told Not to Tell Anyone 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:04.600 Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:06.120 --> 0:00:11.040 I did not tell, not my lover, not my parents, 0:00:11.440 --> 0:00:15.560 and they said I couldn't tell a friend. I remember 0:00:15.640 --> 0:00:19.800 my terror that the psychiatrist would not believe me. I'm 0:00:19.840 --> 0:00:23.120 sure I cried. I'm sure I told him I did 0:00:23.160 --> 0:00:25.759 not want to marry the father and was certain I 0:00:25.800 --> 0:00:29.880 could not care for a child. All of this complicated 0:00:29.920 --> 0:00:33.160 further because I'd unwillingly had sex with a man other 0:00:33.240 --> 0:00:36.400 than my lover, so I never knew who the father was, 0:00:36.600 --> 0:00:39.720 and there was no way to find out. My lover 0:00:40.040 --> 0:00:43.320 was one of my professors. In those days, there was 0:00:43.360 --> 0:00:47.400 no taint of the criminal in such a relationship, nor 0:00:47.520 --> 0:00:51.440 were they unusual. You could not have persuaded me then 0:00:51.840 --> 0:00:54.959 that what I felt was not love, but a desire 0:00:55.320 --> 0:00:59.160 to be him, to seize his talent for myself. 0:01:02.480 --> 0:01:07.440 That's Honor More poet, memoist, professor, and author, most recently 0:01:07.600 --> 0:01:11.920 of the memoir A Termination Honors is the story of 0:01:11.959 --> 0:01:15.120 one woman's choice, the kind of choice many of us 0:01:15.240 --> 0:01:19.240 keep secret, and the way that choice ripples quietly throughout 0:01:19.280 --> 0:01:24.520 a lifetime. It's also a story about freedom, connection, expression, 0:01:25.120 --> 0:01:40.520 and the making of a singular life. I'm Danny Shapiro, 0:01:40.959 --> 0:01:44.040 and this is family secrets, the secrets that are kept 0:01:44.040 --> 0:01:46.800 from us, the secrets we keep from others, and the 0:01:46.800 --> 0:01:54.360 secrets we keep from ourselves. So tell me about the 0:01:54.440 --> 0:01:57.680 landscape of your childhood. Where did you grow up, What 0:01:57.720 --> 0:01:59.720 did it look like, what did it feel like. 0:02:00.840 --> 0:02:05.040 I was born in New York City, the oldest of 0:02:05.320 --> 0:02:10.280 nine children, so I was alone for two years. We 0:02:10.680 --> 0:02:15.320 moved to Chelsea in Manhattan, where my father was in 0:02:16.240 --> 0:02:19.560 Divinity School on twenty first Street at General Seminary. 0:02:20.600 --> 0:02:23.200 I was born in the end of nineteen forty five. 0:02:23.560 --> 0:02:27.400 And then we moved when I was five to Jersey City, 0:02:27.760 --> 0:02:30.519 where my parents had what was then called an inner 0:02:30.520 --> 0:02:36.080 city parish, with a great diversity of people, many different 0:02:36.160 --> 0:02:39.240 kinds of people. And then when I was eleven, we 0:02:39.320 --> 0:02:44.040 moved to Indianapolis, where my father continued that inner city work. 0:02:44.720 --> 0:02:47.399 When we left Jersey City there were seven children, but 0:02:47.520 --> 0:02:49.480 when we left Indianapolis. 0:02:48.800 --> 0:02:49.480 There were nine. 0:02:50.080 --> 0:02:56.040 It was a rather populated and chaotic childhood, but also 0:02:56.240 --> 0:03:00.480 very rich, and the church was next door, and that's 0:03:00.520 --> 0:03:04.760 where I learned my love of language and music, and 0:03:05.360 --> 0:03:09.600 I suppose also an interest in standing up in front 0:03:09.600 --> 0:03:14.240 of people and telling stories. My mother had grown up 0:03:14.280 --> 0:03:16.880 in a very I mean, I suppose you would now 0:03:16.919 --> 0:03:20.320 call a dysfunctional family, but I think that's a kind 0:03:20.360 --> 0:03:24.120 of sterile version of it. Her mother was bipolar and 0:03:24.520 --> 0:03:30.080 alcoholic and an artist and a great beauty, and she 0:03:30.200 --> 0:03:30.680 was brought. 0:03:30.560 --> 0:03:31.040 Up that way. 0:03:31.360 --> 0:03:34.160 She and my father were determined he had the same 0:03:34.320 --> 0:03:39.960 kind of wasp upper class, wealthy background. They had this 0:03:40.480 --> 0:03:44.120 ideal after the war, he'd been a war hero. They'd 0:03:44.200 --> 0:03:48.040 married at the end of the war, and she always 0:03:48.040 --> 0:03:51.520 wanted nine children, she said, a baseball team or a 0:03:51.560 --> 0:03:55.440 small orchestra. So we were timed more or less every 0:03:55.480 --> 0:04:01.080 two years. They were very open and proud of belonging 0:04:01.120 --> 0:04:02.119 to planned parenthood. 0:04:02.120 --> 0:04:04.000 And you have to remember then that birth. 0:04:03.760 --> 0:04:08.640 Control was illegal in most states, even for married people 0:04:08.720 --> 0:04:12.360 until nineteen sixty five, and then for unmarried people until 0:04:12.480 --> 0:04:15.720 nineteen seventy two. So they were kind of out there 0:04:16.000 --> 0:04:19.000 and they were quite vocal about it. And when my 0:04:19.440 --> 0:04:23.080 second to youngest sister was born, the columnist in what 0:04:23.200 --> 0:04:27.840 passed for a liberal newspaper and very conservative Indianapolis made 0:04:27.839 --> 0:04:31.400 a joke. You know, I understand the Moors belonged to 0:04:31.440 --> 0:04:36.599 plant parenthood, but they just had their eighth child, so, 0:04:36.960 --> 0:04:37.480 you know, and this. 0:04:37.600 --> 0:04:38.560 Was the baby boom. 0:04:38.600 --> 0:04:43.960 And my mother, who was competitive in sports and ambitious 0:04:44.000 --> 0:04:47.479 competitive you know, she wasn't mean and competitive, I don't 0:04:47.520 --> 0:04:48.040 mean that. 0:04:47.960 --> 0:04:48.600 But she was. 0:04:49.200 --> 0:04:52.960 She played great tennis, She climbed mountains, she rode horses 0:04:53.000 --> 0:04:55.960 in won ribbons, and I just think she wanted to 0:04:56.000 --> 0:04:59.240 have the most children, and there was the money to 0:04:59.279 --> 0:05:02.080 do it, she did. So it was sort of part 0:05:02.120 --> 0:05:07.280 of her identity to be this very beautiful woman with 0:05:07.440 --> 0:05:12.120 all these children, whom she seemed to take care of effortlessly, 0:05:12.880 --> 0:05:18.160 and she took great pleasure in keeping that household and 0:05:18.320 --> 0:05:23.320 always reading books and always you know, very smart, interesting, 0:05:23.560 --> 0:05:27.880 literary kind of person. In nineteen sixty four she started 0:05:27.880 --> 0:05:32.599 writing a book which she published in nineteen sixty eight, 0:05:33.400 --> 0:05:36.640 which was a memoir of the life and the world 0:05:36.720 --> 0:05:39.880 of Jersey City, and went on a book tour and 0:05:40.640 --> 0:05:45.159 suddenly competed with my father for the limelight. And she 0:05:45.520 --> 0:05:51.440 was at that point forty five. And then she was 0:05:51.480 --> 0:05:55.200 in a near fatal automobile accident which damaged her liver. 0:05:55.480 --> 0:06:01.400 She recovered only two two years later have contract colon 0:06:01.960 --> 0:06:05.960 cancer which metastasized to the liver, and she was dead 0:06:06.040 --> 0:06:08.440 six months after that at the age of fifty, leaving 0:06:08.520 --> 0:06:10.520 nine child of the youngest, of whom was eleven. 0:06:11.760 --> 0:06:13.559 Tell me a bit about your father. 0:06:14.520 --> 0:06:15.440 Well, he was. 0:06:15.800 --> 0:06:21.080 Very tall and very handsome, and every Sunday he would 0:06:21.120 --> 0:06:26.560 put on glistening robes and speak the liturgy and preach. 0:06:27.480 --> 0:06:32.760 And at home he would tell us stories or read 0:06:32.839 --> 0:06:37.080 us stories, and carry us around on his shoulders, which 0:06:37.160 --> 0:06:39.480 was a lot of excitement. But you know, they were 0:06:39.600 --> 0:06:44.920 very busy parents. You know, there was a kind of remoteness, 0:06:45.440 --> 0:06:51.720 but he had a kind of sweet, charming, funny quality. 0:06:52.480 --> 0:06:52.640 You know. 0:06:52.640 --> 0:06:55.200 It was a lot of fun until things start to 0:06:55.560 --> 0:06:56.560 fall apart. 0:07:00.800 --> 0:07:18.080 We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets. 0:07:19.520 --> 0:07:22.440 When Honor goes off to college at Radcliffe, which in 0:07:22.520 --> 0:07:26.240 nineteen ninety nine became part of Harvard, she has a 0:07:26.240 --> 0:07:29.000 boyfriend and she tells her mother that they're planning to 0:07:29.040 --> 0:07:32.440 have as she would have put it at the time, intercourse, 0:07:33.720 --> 0:07:37.080 her mother, by way of offering advice, tells her just 0:07:37.120 --> 0:07:40.680 don't come home pregnant. By this, her mother does not 0:07:40.840 --> 0:07:45.760 mean don't you dare, but rather protect yourself, your body, 0:07:46.000 --> 0:07:51.320 your future, use birth control. In college, Honor majors in English, 0:07:51.520 --> 0:07:54.080 but she spends all of her time in the theater department, 0:07:54.720 --> 0:07:56.840 specifically theater administration. 0:07:58.200 --> 0:08:01.640 I had a secret wish to be a writer, and 0:08:01.720 --> 0:08:05.640 I had taken a writing class and the professor announced 0:08:05.680 --> 0:08:09.000 my story as the best of the semester, and it 0:08:09.040 --> 0:08:12.200 was actually the beginning of my writing. And I was 0:08:12.240 --> 0:08:14.600 also writing, but not studying poems. 0:08:14.640 --> 0:08:15.040 I was a. 0:08:15.000 --> 0:08:20.240 Secret writer, and the girls produced and stage managed the 0:08:20.280 --> 0:08:26.520 boys plays, and there was no support for me to 0:08:26.840 --> 0:08:31.080 be one of the artists. I couldn't imagine it. Basically, 0:08:31.520 --> 0:08:36.119 the girls did the housework and the boys did the performing, 0:08:36.240 --> 0:08:40.160 much like at home. But you know, I was very 0:08:40.200 --> 0:08:45.240 good at it, so it was gratifying. And my memories 0:08:45.280 --> 0:08:49.319 are not awful, except for the ones that were awful, 0:08:49.400 --> 0:08:52.360 you know, except for on reflection, you look back and 0:08:52.440 --> 0:08:54.800 you see what was really going on. 0:08:55.360 --> 0:08:58.680 Right, you just use the word reflection. I kept on 0:08:58.840 --> 0:09:06.040 experiencing the past and the present, like overlaying transparencies. And 0:09:06.520 --> 0:09:09.439 another guest on this podcast at one point a couple 0:09:09.440 --> 0:09:12.280 of seasons ago, said, when you bury a secret, you 0:09:12.360 --> 0:09:13.080 bury it alive. 0:09:14.000 --> 0:09:14.840 Oh interested. 0:09:15.320 --> 0:09:18.640 I just kind of loved that idea because it feels 0:09:19.000 --> 0:09:21.440 very true to me. But in a way, there's a 0:09:21.480 --> 0:09:26.839 way in which two our pasts can be secrets from ourselves, 0:09:26.920 --> 0:09:30.120 or secrets we keep from ourselves, or ways in which 0:09:30.160 --> 0:09:34.640 we don't get until we can until whatever seem opens up, 0:09:34.679 --> 0:09:39.600 and then there it is, it remains somewhat obscured or inaccessible. 0:09:40.520 --> 0:09:44.000 Well, when I got to the Drama School, I had 0:09:44.040 --> 0:09:46.800 quite a lot of confidence. I mean, the productions we'd 0:09:46.840 --> 0:09:51.760 done at Harvard had gotten rave reviews in Boston newspapers. 0:09:52.559 --> 0:09:54.800 There had been a review in the New York Times. 0:09:55.640 --> 0:09:59.400 I was kind of a star. So I had a 0:09:59.400 --> 0:10:02.360 lot of confident. That's when I got there. And although 0:10:02.400 --> 0:10:06.880 there had been sexism, what we didn't have a word 0:10:06.920 --> 0:10:09.640 for then, the thing of the boys directing and writing 0:10:09.679 --> 0:10:13.560 and the girls doing the stage managing and assistant directing 0:10:13.600 --> 0:10:16.920 and so on, it was nothing compared to what the 0:10:17.000 --> 0:10:22.560 Drama School was like, which I didn't understand quite The 0:10:22.559 --> 0:10:32.680 theater administration department was run by New York professional theater 0:10:32.920 --> 0:10:38.280 people who happened to be not sexist, so I didn't 0:10:38.320 --> 0:10:42.480 feel the sexism there, but the entire sort of esthetic 0:10:42.679 --> 0:10:47.960 of the place in terms of how women were treated 0:10:48.520 --> 0:10:52.000 that there was, you know, one or two directing students 0:10:52.040 --> 0:10:57.200 who were women, one playwright who was a woman per year. Actresses, 0:10:57.240 --> 0:11:01.880 of course, you know, because actresses were necessary. But it 0:11:01.920 --> 0:11:06.400 was a very patriarchal situation, and it was a little 0:11:06.400 --> 0:11:09.680 bit disguised by the fact that Robert Brustein, who was 0:11:09.760 --> 0:11:14.400 the Dean, was known as the quote unquote red Dean 0:11:15.160 --> 0:11:18.760 because he had written a book called Theater of Revolt 0:11:18.800 --> 0:11:22.360 about you know, avant garde theater in New York. However, 0:11:22.440 --> 0:11:27.320 he was actually quite conservative in ways having to do 0:11:27.440 --> 0:11:30.360 with men and women and having to do with race, 0:11:30.480 --> 0:11:34.520 and having to do with various other things. So you know, 0:11:34.720 --> 0:11:38.559 it was sort of a culture shock. The phrase I 0:11:38.600 --> 0:11:41.199 want to use is put in my place. It wasn't 0:11:41.240 --> 0:11:44.439 exactly that simple. I mean because, as I said, the 0:11:44.440 --> 0:11:48.120 theater administration people were very supportive of me, except that 0:11:48.160 --> 0:11:52.559 wasn't what I wanted to do. The biggest secret was 0:11:53.400 --> 0:11:57.560 that I had a whole life, a whole inner life, 0:11:57.600 --> 0:12:01.120 and a whole beginning to be a life, and a 0:12:01.200 --> 0:12:05.040 whole life with my body that you know, we didn't 0:12:05.040 --> 0:12:07.560 talk about those things then. I mean, think about a 0:12:07.600 --> 0:12:10.440 world where there had been no consciousness raising you know, 0:12:10.520 --> 0:12:14.080 there was now, but that was for our mothers so 0:12:14.400 --> 0:12:17.800 we were sort of on the verge of the sexual revolution. 0:12:18.679 --> 0:12:23.720 The Vietnam War was happening, which put more emphasis on 0:12:23.800 --> 0:12:26.360 the boys because they were in danger of being drafted. 0:12:26.960 --> 0:12:30.679 Although I became a second wave feminist when I came 0:12:30.720 --> 0:12:34.479 to the drama school, you know, I was sort of bifurcated. 0:12:34.520 --> 0:12:37.200 I mean, part of me wanted to write, had this 0:12:37.320 --> 0:12:39.240 dream of writing, but the other part of me was 0:12:39.240 --> 0:12:42.160 definitely going to get married and have kids and the 0:12:42.200 --> 0:12:42.719 rest of it. 0:12:47.520 --> 0:12:51.199 This picture of a future was simply that a picture. 0:12:52.160 --> 0:12:55.439 It wasn't a desire necessarily, nor was it a plan. 0:12:56.120 --> 0:13:00.600 It was an abstraction, an inevitability. It was what women did, 0:13:01.440 --> 0:13:05.040 except that Honor didn't want to be a mother. She 0:13:05.160 --> 0:13:09.000 assumed she'd have babies, she assumed she'd become a mother. 0:13:10.720 --> 0:13:14.359 So in April of nineteen sixty nine, when Honor discovers 0:13:14.480 --> 0:13:19.240 that she's pregnant, this abstraction becomes all too real and 0:13:19.360 --> 0:13:22.959 deeply at odds with what she most desires, which is 0:13:23.040 --> 0:13:23.760 to become a writer. 0:13:25.080 --> 0:13:28.920 Getting an abortion was in nineteen sixty nine illegal, so 0:13:29.320 --> 0:13:33.719 it took some doing to figure out how to get one. 0:13:34.320 --> 0:13:37.160 And on the other hand, our brothers were getting out 0:13:37.200 --> 0:13:39.120 of the draft, and it was. 0:13:39.240 --> 0:13:41.040 An equivalent of that for women. 0:13:41.600 --> 0:13:51.319 There was none of this anti abortion, anti choice rhetoric, ideology, philosophical. 0:13:50.720 --> 0:13:53.080 None of that was in the culture. 0:13:53.559 --> 0:13:56.280 So it was like instant I knew I wanted to 0:13:56.320 --> 0:13:59.719 get an abortion. I wanted not to be pregnant, and 0:14:00.320 --> 0:14:04.640 I had money. I was privileged and white, and I 0:14:04.760 --> 0:14:10.480 was seeing a therapist and had heard about this thing 0:14:10.520 --> 0:14:15.320 called a therapeutic abortion, which is an exception for the 0:14:15.360 --> 0:14:18.520 life of the mother. And I had heard that the 0:14:18.559 --> 0:14:21.960 life of the mother included emotional health. And I had 0:14:22.000 --> 0:14:26.920 an emotionally ill grandmother, so I was familiar. 0:14:26.480 --> 0:14:28.520 With my genes. 0:14:29.680 --> 0:14:34.880 And I just talked to this psychiatrist and got the 0:14:34.920 --> 0:14:36.800 prescription for a therapeutic abortion. 0:14:37.560 --> 0:14:40.360 And you told the psychiatrist that you were sure you'd 0:14:40.440 --> 0:14:40.960 go crazy. 0:14:41.680 --> 0:14:44.080 I mean, he was no idiot. He was the head 0:14:44.120 --> 0:14:47.400 of the Child's Study Center at Yale. His name was 0:14:47.440 --> 0:14:52.680 doctor Albert Solned. Decades later, I was asked to speak 0:14:52.720 --> 0:14:56.360 at Vasser and I was introduced at the end to 0:14:56.800 --> 0:15:00.360 this man. It was Albert Sulnan that I I said, 0:15:00.400 --> 0:15:03.440 Oh my God, I have never gotten to thank you 0:15:03.480 --> 0:15:07.080 for saving my life. I didn't feel I was lying, 0:15:07.520 --> 0:15:10.760 you know. I mean I was exaggerating, perhaps, but I 0:15:10.760 --> 0:15:14.320 didn't feel I was lying. I knew that there was 0:15:14.360 --> 0:15:17.200 no way that I could be a mother. You know, 0:15:17.320 --> 0:15:19.880 my mother had had nine children, and I thought, well, 0:15:20.160 --> 0:15:22.760 she had one child and she ended up at nine, 0:15:22.960 --> 0:15:23.960 what's going to happen to me? 0:15:24.160 --> 0:15:24.400 You know. 0:15:24.640 --> 0:15:27.880 So that's kind of magical thinking, but one does think 0:15:27.920 --> 0:15:28.360 that way. 0:15:28.680 --> 0:15:30.040 So we think back through. 0:15:29.880 --> 0:15:32.480 Our mothers if we were women, says Virginia Wolf. 0:15:32.520 --> 0:15:34.600 So you know I wasn't going to do that. 0:15:38.320 --> 0:15:42.200 To complicate an already complicated situation. Honor does not know 0:15:42.200 --> 0:15:45.920 who the father is. There are two possible men. The 0:15:45.960 --> 0:15:49.760 experience puts Honor in an emotional pressure cooker. She writes, 0:15:50.480 --> 0:15:53.000 no matter how many times I did the mouth, I 0:15:53.040 --> 0:15:57.320 couldn't sort it out. You know, I think so much 0:15:57.480 --> 0:16:03.000 of our lives, as we moved through them, at some 0:16:03.160 --> 0:16:09.480 point involves forgiving ourselves and coming to terms with all 0:16:09.480 --> 0:16:13.000 the selves we've ever been, and in one way or another, 0:16:13.720 --> 0:16:16.760 making peace with those selves, understanding those selves. And so 0:16:17.320 --> 0:16:19.680 if you're saying to a psychiatrist, I was sure I'd 0:16:19.720 --> 0:16:23.120 go crazy, that wasn't a lie. It was something that 0:16:23.840 --> 0:16:26.200 you knew that you needed to say to get a 0:16:26.200 --> 0:16:29.840 therapeutic abortion, but that twenty three year old young woman 0:16:30.960 --> 0:16:35.080 was trying to save her own life, which is then 0:16:35.160 --> 0:16:37.440 what you say to doctor Soulnett all those years later. 0:16:38.120 --> 0:16:41.280 So that process, what did it feel like? 0:16:42.600 --> 0:16:46.960 I was told not to tell anyone, which I took 0:16:47.000 --> 0:16:50.640 to me in any person, including you know, the family. 0:16:51.280 --> 0:16:54.160 I mean, I would not have told my parents. 0:16:54.560 --> 0:16:57.320 We'd never talked about abortions, so I couldn't be sure 0:16:58.080 --> 0:17:01.880 what they would do. I didn't think I could argue 0:17:02.200 --> 0:17:06.280 my position very adequately, so I was told not to 0:17:06.320 --> 0:17:10.080 tell anyone. And the sense I had was that although 0:17:10.200 --> 0:17:15.760 this bad legality as a process, Connecticut was you know, 0:17:15.800 --> 0:17:19.280 it was the site of Griswold versus the state of Connecticut, 0:17:19.359 --> 0:17:24.920 which finally allowed birth control for married people just maybe 0:17:24.960 --> 0:17:29.760 three or four years before my abortion, and I think 0:17:29.800 --> 0:17:31.840 that he was scared, you know, you didn't want to 0:17:31.840 --> 0:17:34.880 lose his license. He you know, he didn't want to, 0:17:35.000 --> 0:17:38.760 like have to defend in court what he'd done, despite 0:17:38.880 --> 0:17:41.200 you know, the psychiatrist and the this and the that. 0:17:41.520 --> 0:17:44.960 I mean, what was communicated to me was somehow if 0:17:45.000 --> 0:17:47.440 I told anybody, I might not get the abortion. 0:17:48.119 --> 0:17:49.920 And that was where your fear resided. 0:17:50.720 --> 0:17:54.640 Yeah, I really did not want to be pregnant. As 0:17:54.680 --> 0:17:57.440 I try to explain to people who don't really understand 0:17:57.760 --> 0:18:01.320 or didn't live through the sexual Revolution, a time when 0:18:01.320 --> 0:18:03.960 everybody was sleeping with everybody all the time. 0:18:04.440 --> 0:18:08.240 You know, it's actually wild, you know. So it felt 0:18:08.280 --> 0:18:09.040 like part of that. 0:18:10.080 --> 0:18:15.720 And when I would reach these markers in which I 0:18:15.720 --> 0:18:19.399 would realize I probably wasn't going to have children, I 0:18:19.520 --> 0:18:22.880 had no regrets, you know, I really didn't. And when 0:18:22.920 --> 0:18:25.800 I said I always get sad in April, it was 0:18:25.880 --> 0:18:29.199 really sort of thinking it in my seventies. 0:18:29.520 --> 0:18:31.600 I wonder if that's why I get sad in April. 0:18:31.640 --> 0:18:33.520 I always thought it was just the change. 0:18:33.200 --> 0:18:36.600 Of season, and then it would be sad, not so 0:18:36.680 --> 0:18:42.080 much that I didn't have children, but about the passage 0:18:42.080 --> 0:18:42.600 of time. 0:18:42.720 --> 0:18:43.640 About who was. 0:18:43.640 --> 0:18:47.440 That young woman who didn't have a care in the world, 0:18:47.960 --> 0:18:54.480 who then suddenly had a real care and suddenly had 0:18:54.520 --> 0:18:59.560 to make a decision, and who had a rather jolting 0:19:00.320 --> 0:19:06.159 confrontation with herself. Her It's like, oh, I have a self, 0:19:06.240 --> 0:19:09.520 Oh I better protect this self. That was really what 0:19:09.720 --> 0:19:13.879 was at stake, and that was really what I came 0:19:14.000 --> 0:19:18.440 to consciousness of I didn't like to say, oh, now 0:19:18.480 --> 0:19:20.520 I have a self. It wasn't like that. It was 0:19:20.600 --> 0:19:23.840 just I had made this decision. I knew that I 0:19:23.880 --> 0:19:27.960 could somehow take care of myself in a way. Not 0:19:28.080 --> 0:19:31.280 that I didn't have ups and downs in life, but 0:19:32.280 --> 0:19:36.280 it was a real decision for myself on my own, 0:19:36.560 --> 0:19:39.840 and in that sense, it was a gift that I 0:19:39.920 --> 0:19:42.920 was told I couldn't tell anyone, even though that made 0:19:42.920 --> 0:19:43.600 it lonely. 0:19:45.640 --> 0:19:48.240 I want to talk a little bit about shame because 0:19:48.240 --> 0:19:52.440 it comes up, and it comes up for all of us. 0:19:52.640 --> 0:19:55.800 I think if we're thinking and we're you know, feeling 0:19:55.840 --> 0:19:58.840 back into the selves that we were. You write at 0:19:58.880 --> 0:20:01.440 one point about being in a zoom meeting. I think 0:20:01.480 --> 0:20:05.920 with this biography group that you're part of, and everybody 0:20:06.040 --> 0:20:08.960 was talking about what they're working on and what their 0:20:09.000 --> 0:20:13.080 subjects were, and you know, you really you have this 0:20:13.160 --> 0:20:16.000 kind of like hot flash of shame. We just kind 0:20:16.000 --> 0:20:17.000 of don't want to say. 0:20:16.760 --> 0:20:17.560 It, right. 0:20:18.080 --> 0:20:20.720 I'm wondering, and there are other places where shame makes 0:20:20.720 --> 0:20:23.480 in an appearance, and I'm wondering whether that surprised you 0:20:24.359 --> 0:20:26.640 or where that resided for you. 0:20:28.160 --> 0:20:33.280 I resided in the same place that leaking during menstruation resided. 0:20:33.440 --> 0:20:37.800 You know, it's shame of the body, shame of I mean, 0:20:37.800 --> 0:20:40.639 what I've come to call it in the process of 0:20:40.920 --> 0:20:43.639 publishing this book and talking about this book is I 0:20:43.640 --> 0:20:47.800 think it's a cultural silence about the inner lives of women, 0:20:47.880 --> 0:20:51.679 including their inner physical lives, and we're just not you know, 0:20:51.720 --> 0:20:55.879 it's just not in the discourse. That's why for me 0:20:56.320 --> 0:21:01.800 the Democratic Convention, when those four women told their abortion stories, 0:21:01.960 --> 0:21:04.280 I thought that was a sea change in the culture. 0:21:05.400 --> 0:21:09.320 I mean, that was extraordinary. This idea of a cultural 0:21:09.359 --> 0:21:12.680 silence has come upon me in the last month as 0:21:12.720 --> 0:21:17.879 I've traveled. What I'm talking about is the shame of 0:21:18.400 --> 0:21:21.720 admitting I have a female body in a context in 0:21:21.800 --> 0:21:25.760 which I don't feel entirely. It's not that I don't 0:21:25.760 --> 0:21:29.800 feel welcome, but I feel other. So that's the shame. 0:21:29.920 --> 0:21:32.639 And it's what I discovered in writing the book, really 0:21:32.960 --> 0:21:38.320 is that this decision I made was a moment in 0:21:38.400 --> 0:21:40.199 my inner life. I mean, it was a kind of 0:21:40.240 --> 0:21:45.119 opening to my inner life and the interior of a 0:21:45.119 --> 0:21:50.320 woman's imagination and the interior of her body are linked. 0:21:51.280 --> 0:21:55.720 And are we going to allow this conversation to take 0:21:55.760 --> 0:21:56.760 place or not? 0:22:03.040 --> 0:22:24.199 We'll be right back. When Honor's memoir comes out, she 0:22:24.320 --> 0:22:27.400 goes on book tour, traveling in the country to talk 0:22:27.440 --> 0:22:32.280 about something that had previously felt verboten, nearly impossible to 0:22:32.320 --> 0:22:36.240 talk about. This could have been daunting, it might even 0:22:36.280 --> 0:22:40.160 have felt undoable. And yet what Honor discovers while she's 0:22:40.200 --> 0:22:44.639 on the road is the beautiful, alchemical, communal response to 0:22:44.720 --> 0:22:49.600 truth telling. As Audrey and Rich once wrote about Emily Dickinson, 0:22:50.520 --> 0:22:54.080 it is that which is under pressure, especially the pressure 0:22:54.119 --> 0:22:59.280 of concealment, that explodes into poetry. And by poetry here, 0:22:59.760 --> 0:23:02.080 I'm mean profound human connection. 0:23:05.200 --> 0:23:08.240 When I was working on the book, and women would say, 0:23:09.200 --> 0:23:12.439 what are you working on? And I'd say, you know, 0:23:12.480 --> 0:23:14.560 a book about my pre row abortion. 0:23:15.119 --> 0:23:16.000 And there would be a. 0:23:16.000 --> 0:23:19.400 Moment, and then she would tell me, I mean, this 0:23:19.440 --> 0:23:22.760 is ninety eight percent of the time she would tell 0:23:22.760 --> 0:23:26.439 me her abortion story. And then there would be another 0:23:26.520 --> 0:23:30.480 beat and she would say, you're the first person I've 0:23:30.520 --> 0:23:33.240 ever told the latter maybe eighty percent of the time, 0:23:33.280 --> 0:23:39.200 but so shockingly frequently that it caught my attention since 0:23:39.280 --> 0:23:43.760 the book has been published. It's the lift driver, It's 0:23:43.880 --> 0:23:46.520 the woman sitting next to me on the airplane, who 0:23:46.640 --> 0:23:49.880 overhears me talking to a friend with whom I'm doing 0:23:49.960 --> 0:23:53.240 a gig, and I'm using the word abortion rather loudly, 0:23:53.280 --> 0:23:55.560 and she notices that everyone in the plane is kind 0:23:55.560 --> 0:23:59.000 of looking strangely at me, and she leans over and says, 0:23:59.560 --> 0:24:02.960 thank you for what you're doing. It's like that, you know. 0:24:03.040 --> 0:24:07.080 It's reading at a bookstore in Minneapolis, where my sister lives, 0:24:07.160 --> 0:24:10.080 and all of us, many of us, go back to 0:24:10.119 --> 0:24:14.919 her house afterward. In all the conversations, virtually all the 0:24:14.960 --> 0:24:18.439 conversations after the readings have to do with women sharing 0:24:18.560 --> 0:24:22.920 their experiences. And then we go back to her house 0:24:22.960 --> 0:24:25.760 and it continues. And these are women who know each other. 0:24:25.800 --> 0:24:27.480 I mean, these are a. 0:24:27.480 --> 0:24:30.600 Community of friends, and they're saying things that they've never 0:24:31.520 --> 0:24:36.680 told anyone before. And so what I have come to. 0:24:38.440 --> 0:24:41.280 Is that every woman. 0:24:41.800 --> 0:24:45.600 It's not about oh they had such a terrible time. 0:24:46.160 --> 0:24:49.600 Oh it hurt the next day. I mean there's that too, 0:24:50.240 --> 0:24:55.600 but it's more I wanted my life, I wanted my freedom. 0:24:55.880 --> 0:24:59.719 It was completely shocking to me that so many people 0:25:00.040 --> 0:25:05.840 shared my exact experience. So that was when I started thinking, 0:25:06.359 --> 0:25:10.000 a thinking, calling it a cultural silence, and I just 0:25:10.119 --> 0:25:11.080 knocked on the door. 0:25:11.840 --> 0:25:12.920 That's how I feel. 0:25:13.160 --> 0:25:19.920 And it's been stunning and very moving to me that 0:25:20.359 --> 0:25:26.240 women I've known, even women in my community of friends, 0:25:27.080 --> 0:25:30.120 I may have known they had an abortion, but that's 0:25:30.200 --> 0:25:32.680 different from what was it? 0:25:33.480 --> 0:25:35.639 What was it that made you decide to have an abortion? 0:25:35.800 --> 0:25:39.439 What was it like to get the abortion? How did it? 0:25:39.720 --> 0:25:39.920 You know? 0:25:39.960 --> 0:25:42.480 And then they always talk about how it affected their life. 0:25:42.560 --> 0:25:44.439 I wanted to be a writer. I was not going 0:25:44.520 --> 0:25:47.720 to let this stand in my way. I had plans, 0:25:48.680 --> 0:25:50.840 you know. I had a plan to spend a year 0:25:50.840 --> 0:25:54.719 in Europe. I had a top fellowship in history at Columbia. 0:25:54.800 --> 0:25:57.840 I was going to study with Henry Steele Commager. Did 0:25:57.920 --> 0:26:00.040 you think I was going to have a baby instead? No? 0:26:01.320 --> 0:26:04.480 You know, it's sort of or the lift driver. I 0:26:04.560 --> 0:26:06.720 you know, I raised two children. I had a son 0:26:06.760 --> 0:26:10.119 at seventeen and a son at you know, twenty three, 0:26:10.240 --> 0:26:13.440