Stories in Life. On the Radio with Mark and Joe.
Mark and Joe interview people with stories that affirm your belief in the goodwill, courage, determination, commitment and vision of everyday people.
Our primary goal is that, through another person's story, you will find meaningful connection no matter your place in life. We intend that the stories we select will be inspiring and maybe help you laugh, cry, think or change your mind about something important in your life.
Stories in Life. On the Radio with Mark and Joe.
An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence - Wisdom Shared from Meg Kissinger
Meg Kissinger, a distinguished journalist and Pulitzer Prize finalist, takes us on an intimate journey through her life and work as she shares stories from her memoir, "While You Were Out." Raised in a family shadowed by mental health and addiction issues, Meg unveils the silent struggles that shaped her perspective on mental illness. Her investigative work on America's mental health system is both a career of advocacy and a personal mission. Her passion is to challenge societal norms and encourage open conversations about mental health.
We've all heard the term "stigma," but what if we reframed it as "discrimination"? Dive with us into a thought-provoking discussion on societal perceptions of mental illness—comparing the bias faced by those with mental health conditions to that experienced by patients with physical illnesses like leukemia or ALS. Our conversation touches on the power of language, the complexity of diagnostic labels, and the evolution of mental health issues through generations. Meg’s personal anecdotes provide a profound insight into how past family secrets continue to impact our views today, urging for a more compassionate and enlightened approach.
Family dynamics can be a source of both struggle and healing, especially when mental health challenges are involved. We explore the intricacies of seeking help, the transformative power of therapy, and the need for self-care when navigating a loved one's mental health journey. Through Meg's authentic storytelling, we witness the strength found in vulnerability and the healing potential of being honest with oneself and others. With a nod to music icons like Bob Dylan and Carole King, we close with gratitude, acknowledging the universal power of storytelling to connect and heal, inviting you to reflect on your own journey of understanding and acceptance.
Welcome to Stories in Life. You're on the radio with Mark and Joe. We share stories that affirm your belief in the goodwill, courage, determination, commitment and vision of everyday people.
Mark Wolak:Our goal is that through another person's story you may find connection. No matter your place in life. The stories we select will be inspiring and maybe help you laugh, cry, think or change your mind about something important in your life.
Joe Boyle:Join us for this episode of Stories in Life.
Bob Dylan:If not for you, baby, I couldn't find the door, couldn't even see the floor. I'd be sad and blue If not for you, the floor. I'd be sad and blue if not for you. If not for you, maybe I'd lay awake all night, wait for the morning light to shine and through. But it would not be new if not For the morning light to shine in through. But it would not be new if not for you. If not for you, my sky would fall, rain would gather too. Without your love, I'd be nowhere at all. I'd be lost. If not for you, and you know, it's true.
Joe Boyle:Hello listeners. Today's guest has spent more than two decades traveling the country to report on America's mental health system for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. A Pulitzer Prize finalist, she has won dozens of accolades, including two George Polk Awards, the Robert F Kennedy Award awards from the Investigative Reporters and Editors and two National Journalism Awards. Our guest lives in Milwaukee with her husband and teaches investigative reporting at Columbia Journalism School. She was also a visiting professor at DePauw University, her alma mater. Her stories on the abysmal living conditions for people with mental illness inspired changes to the Wisconsin law and led to the creation of hundreds of new housing units there. She's with us to discuss her spellbinding memoir While you Were Out an intimate portrait of mental illness in an era of silence. We're happy to welcome Meg Kissinger to our podcast. Hi Meg, hey Joe.
Mark Wolak:Great to be with you, hi, mark. Hi, we want to thank you for joining our show. We have about 20 plus episodes out there. We have listeners now in 29 countries. We're on every continent except Antarctica, but my friend will be there in November and he will listen to a show.
Mark Wolak:And we have small towns across the United States and cities across the world. So it's a great conversation. I'm so glad that you said yes and that you can share what you've learned about mental health. I was struck by the intimacy that was needed to tell this story Joe might have shared with you. I think I shared in a text with you. I grew up in a family of 11 children. I'm the middle child of 11, grew up in the 50s Catholic, heavy Catholic culture. My mother had a mental health issue. My dad had an alcohol problem.
Meg Kissinger:As I was reading, Are you sure we're not brother and sister, mark, that sounds very familiar.
Mark Wolak:Oh, it just was a remarkable story and I was wondering I've done some of my own writing, tell parts of that story, but how did you find the courage to begin that book and do that work?
Meg Kissinger:Wow. Well, thanks for that nice introduction. And yeah, I do feel like when I start these conversations with people I feel like we know each other so well already so we can dive right into it. To me it didn't really feel like courage. I know that's a weird thing to say. It would have taken me more strength or more discipline, I should say, to not tell the story.
Meg Kissinger:You know, I'm a reporter and I think also by virtue of being the middle of eight kids or the fourth of eight kids, you know there's a lot of great material that you come across in your days at home and I was lucky enough to have a job as a reporter where I could go out and talk to people about some of the most intimate matters of their life. And to me this was a story screaming out to be told and it just like not telling it wasn't an option, it was a hurdle. You know you can't just like open up your reporting veins and let it bleed all over the page. You know you take some digging and some hard work, but it never really felt courageous to me.
Meg Kissinger:It felt courageous on behalf of my brothers and sisters. That is courage. You know. It's one thing to tell your own story and to let it all hang out. It's quite another when your sister does it. So I will reserve the mantle of courage to bestow upon my brothers and sisters, because I was in the driver's seat the whole time. You know it was my narrative and so that didn't feel hard for me to do.
Mark Wolak:It's such a well-written story. Once I started it, I could not put it down.
Joe Boyle:I was taken by your. You're a good storyteller, there's no doubt about that. But I think your journalism background gave it so much clarity, kind of a sharper edge, that really worked in your book.
Meg Kissinger:Well, I do. I think that was a big advantage that I had. You know, when I, when I was setting about to write this and I thought, well, what could I bring to the equation? You know what was always mindful of the fact that readers have to benefit. You know, a lot of writers write just to kind of clear their own minds or or, you know, just as a form of therapy, and that's great, nothing against that. But I think, in my, my capacity as a form of therapy, and that's great, nothing against that.
Meg Kissinger:But I think in my, my capacity as a journalist, all these years, my I was very driven by the notion of informing, enlightening readers, and so I was ever mindful of what could readers get out of reading my book that was going to help their lives. So I took this class before I sat down to write the book about how to write a memoir, and I got the best piece of advice ever. This is from a woman named Marian Roach Smith who writes a. She's got a book about writing memoir called the memoir project, and in it she says makes the very clear point that your memoir is not about you. And I was like what do you mean?
Mark Wolak:it's not about me.
Meg Kissinger:I'm writing about me. Nope, she said. What really is important to keep in mind is that your story is about what readers can learn about their own lives because of something that you went through. So nobody knows who the heck some lady in Milwaukee, wisconsin, is by the name of Meg Kissinger. They're not going to buy a book because of that. They're going to buy a book because they want to know what can they learn that's going to help them.
Mark Wolak:Yeah, that is definitely. The takeaway for me from your book is how powerful the story is to let other people maybe self-examine or reflect on their own experiences. So I agree with that. One of the delightful things about your book is how you bring the humor into these really difficult situations. And there was a parallel in my family where the humor would lessen the stress of my mother. So I took that role on. You know, when there was crazy situations I would be the funny kid, try to make people laugh, so the darkness would lighten. You know, I just saw that as such a common parallel experience that I read in your family.
Mark Wolak:And there were many examples of that, I think as I read your book, where siblings would laugh together in spite of how painful it was Sometimes. That's all you got.
Meg Kissinger:Yeah, exactly, and that you know, in a sense, when you think about the great comedians, you know that it's often born out of a very painful private situation. So Stephen Colbert you know one of my favorite comedians. His father and two brothers were killed in a plane crash when he was a little kid and Stephen made it his mission in life to try and make his mother laugh, and so that's what led him to comedy. You know, so much of stand-up routines are all about real stories of some pretty gut-wrenching situations.
Meg Kissinger:It's a kind of, I think, a human instinct to. You know, you can't hold that tension inside of your body forever. It's got to blow in some way and I think one of the most appealing ways is just with some humor. So, yeah, my brothers and sisters are some of the funniest people I know, and that was another selling point for me. When I was considering how to write this book is I just felt I kept thinking about my readers and like, oh, these poor people, they're going to have to go through yet another, you know, calamity. So I wanted to kind of treat them along the way, like, you know, hansel and Gretel on the path with their little cookie crumbs. You know, you want to be treating your readers all along the way with little moments of joy or some kind of break in the tension.
Mark Wolak:Well, you succeeded there, thank you. Tell us a little bit about what you've learned since the book has been published. What's your experience now that it's published and out there and being read by many?
Meg Kissinger:Yeah, oh, my God, it has been quite an experience. So the book came out a little more than a year ago and I'm not making this up, you guys, when I say that I feel like every day is Christmas, and by that I mean I'm hearing from so many people reading this book. Literally every day I get an email or a Facebook message or Instagram. You know, I think the only means of communication I haven't gotten are like smoke signals and homing pigeons, but that's probably next. But anyway, people are reaching out and they're sharing their stories. You know, which is great in the window by bearing witness to what our family went through with the hopes that it would help other people to feel comfortable to tell their stories. So it's been amazing.
Meg Kissinger:I find myself in conversations all the time I'm going to. I never say no to anybody. I'm my joke is kind of off color, but I call myself a book club slut because I just say no to nobody. And so these conversations are awesome. You know, I'm sitting in people's living rooms or on Zoom people I haven't ever met and we're having these very tender, precious conversations, and it's just.
Joe Boyle:Every word is music to my ears, therapy for them and you.
Meg Kissinger:Yeah, but I mean, mostly we're just trying to, we're giving voice to what we didn't used to be able to talk about, and you know we didn't have the language for. You know, it just feels amazing to me that people are. To me they seem through either as a kid or how they've been muffled forever and they just didn't know how to to talk about this. I'm so glad that that people are finding their voice, and if my book is helping them do that, that's, I'm very honored and privileged.
Joe Boyle:How do you see things changing in the country with regard to how people are dealing with mental illness, how the government's dealing with it? You know, on a state level maybe, you're probably an authority on that to some degree.
Meg Kissinger:I guess. So I guess I'm an authority. I'm only in that I've been following this with a reporter's eye for all these years. How it's changing is that we're talking about it, which is really how it began. We are still quite far behind on where we need to be, especially when it comes to care that's available. So the demand for mental health care way outstrips the supply. So there's not nearly enough practitioners and people who you know, true mental health professionals of which, by the way, I always found it to be shocking that people would call me in the newsroom again, you know, just frantic, looking for help, and I thought, well, wow, what an indictment of our system that people are calling a newspaper reporter because they don't know where else to turn. It's that broken? Yeah, it's that broken. So I think we're kind of finally getting this. You know, people are definitely talking about younger generations. Bless their hearts they are, they have no compunction and there's just no shame about sharing their stories. So that gets the ball rolling.
Meg Kissinger:But then, where we are, you know, in terms of policy and availability. So it still is quite a challenge, quite a struggle. Insurance companies, even though we've we've passed the Mental Health Parity Act, you know, back in 2012 or 2010, I guess. And they just last month the Biden administration, you know announced these measures to strengthen it. We're still not. It's still much too difficult for people to get care paid for, you know, for the same kind of deadly diseases that would be no brainers, people with cancer or diabetes. So there's a lot, a lot of work to be done in the world of mental health advocacy and for it to really be a system, because maybe you've heard me say this, joe, but a system is defined as entities working together in common purpose. Nothing about our mental health quote care is a system. There's just not enough coordination.
Joe Boyle:I saw your piece on CBS Mornings and you brought that up and it resonated, made sense to me.
Mark Wolak:Yeah, the journey you know for systems. I participated in that for quite a few decades. I started out as a teacher in residential treatment, so you, know, going from this crazy family to going into a crazy environment like that. That was in the seventies. What I my big takeaway from that is that we did not not know how to differentiate angry kids, behavior problem kids, from children who really needed deeper intervention, a real mental health intervention.
Mark Wolak:Just recently in the last year, we interviewed Dr Will Deichel as part of our series and he shared quite a bit of information about what schools can do, and I've been watching what schools are doing today, which is much better than what we used to do. So I do think there's progress, but I do think the struggle is being more comfortable as a community or as a culture around mental health being just like any other health issue, right.
Meg Kissinger:No, that's right, I'm just you're. You're hitting on something really good there, so I don't mean to interrupt you because I I just think it's it's. We still have quite an. I believe that most people, you know, have a kind of a baked in prejudice against people with mental illness. We're looking for a reason why, you know, we're looking for someone to blame, you know, in the ways that we don't when that diagnosis is again like leukemia or ALS or something. I mean I suppose we look for environmental causes or whatever, but we're very quick to assign is somebody being a jerk or are they depressed? It's hard to tease that out. I don't know how you do that, but well, this was just my little kind of nerdy semantic discussion, so apologies in advance.
Meg Kissinger:We often talk about the stigma of mental illness, and indeed people with mental illness are treated in a different way.
Meg Kissinger:But I think when we talk about stigma which the word stigma comes from, stigmata, which means the markings on the hands and feet, you know, of Christ, and so the implication there is that the people with mental illness are stained, so it's a way to kind of set them apart, whereas if we instead discuss it in a way, that is discrimination, it's how society, education systems, healthcare systems, everyday people discriminate against people with mental illness. To me, that amps up the discussion and makes it a lot more urgent and a lot more like people are more willing to examine their own approach. So you know, when you think about somebody in your family, or maybe somebody that you're in a classroom with or whatever, and they're just being a jerk, well why, you know are they depressed and you know is it hurt people who are hurting people. So how can we look past just dismissing them and turning away from them to seeing them as more full-bodied, full-blooded human beings in need of our compassion and understanding?
Mark Wolak:Exactly. Yeah, I really like that, meg. I think that notion of having it be more a healthier observation as opposed to a shaming or blaming label, I really like that. I think that's significant in helping people see things. Because I spent so many years in education, I've been really paying attention to how are we thinking about things differently and some of the work of the cellular memory of trauma in the human body has really brought some wonderful things into in. For example, in minnesota, early childhood programs where you know we do an assessment of the adverse conditions children are living in right, and there's an assessment made of that for children who are presenting some issues.
Meg Kissinger:well, if that the the the questions of the ace. Yes, yes were they? Were there violence in the home? Yes, have you ever seen? Yeah, has anybody in your family been incarcerated?
Mark Wolak:although, yeah, yes, and um, you know, I think that's really an advance forward in recognizing because I've talked to my siblings some of the conditions we were raised in. We would have been removed from the home Totally and not subject to the conditions.
Meg Kissinger:I've taken that age test and flunked it. You know they say that the higher the score, the more likely you are to be suffering from depression or anxiety. I mean, it's an empirical it's meant to be an empirical measure, right To tease out who is in need of services. Yeah, that's exactly what we need.
Mark Wolak:The other thing is I think we're lessening the shame. I don't know for sure. My mother hid her mental health issues from us. I have to tell you this story we were. She went into a nursing home at 85 years old 84, 85 years old and we're sitting around the table with the doctor who has done her intake and he said to the family now we're all adult children, your mother has been struggling with a borderline personality disorder and it was the first time in our lives we heard that language. There were decades of concerns, right and experiences with her, but we never had a name for it.
Mark Wolak:And today I think I hope we would be more open and and help the younger generation, like meg was saying you know is uh is doing much better than we yeah, well, you know, I think one of the things that would have happened is we wouldn't have tried so damn hard.
Meg Kissinger:Yeah to try to fix something you know sure, the thing about labels, which, you know, I find great comfort, uh, in some in, in some ways in in a label and that it gives you, you know, the peace of mind of knowing, like, you're not making all this stuff up. You know so obviously, in mental health you're talking about a cluster of symptoms. So, because there's no x-ray or blood test or whatever, they rely on descriptions of behaviors and responses to stimuli or whatever, and so it's imprecise. But you get a label, let's just say it's bipolar. You know, you get a label, let's just say it's bipolar. So you know. Now you know that this is what many people who are struggling with bipolar, this is what they look like, this is how they behave. So, phew, that's like a, that's a relief, and maybe you then can get medication and treatment that will address that.
Meg Kissinger:The risk, though, I think too, is that when you begin to put labels on people, is that it's that can be a little too tidy for how human beings really act and react. So I have kind of a tortured relationship. I mean, I'm trying to figure out how I feel about that. There was an excellent book a couple years ago by a reporter by the name of Rachel Aviv, who writes for the New Yorker, and her book is called Strangers to Ourselves, and she talks about this, about when we give someone a label of, say, bipolar or schizophrenia, are we kind of marking them for life? I'm saying it much more crudely than she beautifully knew.
Joe Boyle:Categorizing them.
Meg Kissinger:Yeah, yeah you know. But. But the flip side of that to have nothing you know and not being discussed is untenable. That's how it was, though, in our house too, mark, like I never heard the words bipolar until I was a full-on adult, well out of the house, but that's what half of my family had. You know I tell this funny story, not in the book, but you know, homer, my dad was a wild man. I mean, I loved him very much and he was a lot of fun, but he was also very unpredictable. You know very erratic behavior. You know hugging you one minute and slugging you the next, and you know it was just chaotic. We just didn't know how to deal with that guy. This was many years ago, I think. My dad, too, was like in his eighties, and I remember my older sister calling me up and she said to me are you sitting down? She's like I have amazing news.
Meg Kissinger:She's like I have amazing news, dad has bipolar and I was like, yeah, like no shit, sherlock. Anyway, nobody ever officially said that, because we didn't know how to talk about it. We, just those people, were acting very, you know, like strongly in one way or another, either too happy or too sad, and quickly swinging between both of those poles. But the words bipolar were, I don't think, ever spoken in our house.
Joe Boyle:And now it's time for Stories in Life. Art from the heart, Deep thoughts from the heart. Deep thoughts from the shallow end. Each episode, we bring you a poem, a song or a reading, just for you. This is a passage from While you Were Out, by Meg Kissinger. That is what writing this book has done for me. It gave me a framework for confronting my demons, staring down my past to make peace with it.
Joe Boyle:For so many years I had identified myself by my family's tragedies, stuck in the mindset of the daughter of two lovable but deeply troubled souls the sister who lost two siblings to suicide. More than wife or mother, or now grandmother. More than a reporter or professor or friend, I was defining myself by events in my life that I had no control over. I watched in gratitude as my siblings came forward, one by one, to share their stories of resilience and recovery, trusting me to tell our family story in the most public way.
Joe Boyle:Each of us has tanked at one time or another. We have all been dangerously close to losing control, feeling waves of sadness that we could not explain or will away, but we each found ways to cope Eventually. We even I, the one who has spent a whole career writing about other people's mental illness, found power in asking questions and telling our stories. No more if anyone asks this was an accident. Now, if anyone asks this is what really happened, Slowly the chokehold of those human traumas have begun to loosen. That's not to say that we don't struggle from time to time, but we are no longer ashamed to admit that.
Carole King:So far away. Doesn't anybody stay in one place anymore? It would be so fine to see your face at my door. It doesn't help to know you're just time away. Long ago I reached for you and there you stood, holding you again could only do me good. How I wish I could. But you're so far away. One more song about moving along the highway. Can't say much of anything. That's new.
Mark Wolak:The other thing that I was kind of struck by is this behavior we have as families, where we're close and then we're distant, trying to find our own space, and you grew up with siblings who, I'm sure, tried to do that. I have siblings who tried to do that. I think it's part of the need for people to have their own definition of self and in families that are so enmeshed around issues of the parents or issues of a parent, it's hard to find your own journey, find your own definition of self, and I picked that up in your book as you were describing the journey, your journey and the journey of your siblings trying to find this space where they could just be them, be who they are, and not with all the burdens of the parents. What are your thoughts about that?
Meg Kissinger:Yeah, that's right, we did all go in different directions. We all had different kind of talents or areas we needed to go and figure things out. So you know, just going down the line, like my sister Mary Kay is an artist and she got I think she got a lot of relief or um helped her figure things out through her arch Jake is kind of the organizer, he's like run some support group meetings so he's very and he's never met a 12 step program that he didn't want to be a part of Um, and so that was helpful to him. I had yeah, I had my journalism.
Meg Kissinger:So you know I was very fortunate to have the chance to go out and ask total strangers about these very intimate details of their lives and I was doing kind of my do it yourself mental health class and then my sister Patty is a is a scientist, billy's a musician, and then my sister Patty is a scientist, billy's a musician. My sister Molly the baby, the family, the hippie is like all about the outdoors, so she's all about kiteboarding and windsurfing and yoga. You know these are all great ways to kind of establish yourself and figure out your world, which is that was helpful and at various times or another. We all had to go away and separate from the family to figure things out. You know, I'm 67 years old, I'm still figuring stuff out. And then finally, finally, you know getting advice from a therapist. You know doing. I just started this thing, emdr which is eye movement, rapid eye movement.
Meg Kissinger:It's desensitization for people who have experienced trauma, like why the heck it's taken me six or seven years to get my butt into a therapist's office to get any kind of sustained treatment for trauma? I don't know, but I'm grateful for that. It's just helping me see things in a new light. So yeah, you know family systems are complicated and you have to. You know it's hard to figure things out in the fray. I'm a big fan of doing what you can, you know, in terms of, like, getting distance and getting better clarity through whatever means?
Joe Boyle:that is Do you have any advice for people that at our age come to the conclusion like, oh yeah, you know what, I do need help. What's that first step? What do you do when you get to that point? Where do you go?
Meg Kissinger:Sure. So help for yourself because you're struggling, or help for the person in your family, either, or because you're struggling or help for the person in your family, either or. Well, I would say, if it's help for someone in your family who is clearly suffering, acting out you know, you're suspecting that they might be either very depressed or very anxious, or maybe bipolar you can offer them. I think, like what I did. I'll tell you what not to do. Which is what I did as a kid, when my sister, nancy, first started showing signs of her very serious mental illness, was to be angry with her and just to think, like, why are you acting out and being a brat? And you know, like making mom and dad mad. And so I was, you know, acting out of anger and I would just steer clear of her.
Meg Kissinger:And, as I write about in the book, I never had the chance to say I'm sorry, you're suffering. I didn't look at her as somebody who was sick. I looked at her as somebody with a pain in the neck. So I now know you know so many years later that that's what was happening. So I guess my advice to people who are going through that in their families is to try and find that way, to look at them through the eyes of compassion and somebody who's struggling and not well, you know, in need of help, and offer that in the most compassionate way, they might not take it. You know my brother, danny, who clearly, you know, for years had bipolar. He would become very angry if you suggested that he had a mental illness and needed help and he took that as a great insult. So you know, you can offer help but that doesn boundaries for yourself.
Meg Kissinger:And just to know, like you can't, you can take, you know take a horse to water, but you can't make them drink as the old barnyard expression goes yeah, and I think just not to become wrapped up in their illness to such an extent that you start going down with the ship. You know you have. To such an extent that you start going down with the ship, you know you have to.
Joe Boyle:I heard someone say yesterday protect your peace, and that made sense to me. It's you got to protect yourself before you can protect anybody else. You know.
Meg Kissinger:Yeah, absolutely, and there are a lot of great organizations out there to help people. So the National Alliance on Mental Illness has some very good family support group meetings. I think faith-based groups are finally getting a little. I was going to say religion, but that would be a pun. You know they're getting a little wiser about the need for them to minister or to reach out to, you know, families who are struggling. I guess my best advice would be don't beat yourself up about it and don't internalize it. Don't take it on all by yourself, because nothing good comes from that and finding connection with others.
Mark Wolak:You mentioned that you have a lot of people asking for you to share your story and share your book, and that's building connection for people, too, as a resource. One of your chapter titles was Be Wounded by the Stories you Tell. I would say that for me, I avoided feeling the wounds, feeling the pain, for a long, long time. It took me decades to just be honest about the pain that I had as a child, that I carried with me as an adult, you know. Another insight from your book is how healing love is, and Neil who has said to me just be you, just love you, you know, and it's such a great message. More about that with us today, sure Well yeah, I stole that line from the Pope.
Meg Kissinger:By the way, pope Francis is the guy who this was at a ceremony he was honoring some journalists from the Vatican and that was his observation was that the best storytellers allow themselves to be wounded by the stories that they tell. And I found that to be very true over the years in my reporting. You know I was fortunate enough to be writing at a time when local newspapers had a lot more resources than they do now. I've been gone from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel now for almost 10 years and I miss it every day. You know it was a great way to have to make a career. I was lucky enough to be able to spend a lot of time on the people that I was writing about. And you can't, you know, I think you can't. The more you know somebody, the more inclined you are to really care about them. And that was a problem for me epically, like I just thought, like I couldn't look at them as my friends because they were subjects of my stories. But at a certain point, you know, like that tipped the scale tipped In the case of this one woman that I relate in the book.
Meg Kissinger:Her name was Georgia Rawlings I first started writing about her as she was just a hot mess and she was living, you know, in these one beat up hell hole after another and writing these stories about the god awful housing conditions. Georgia became kind of my guide. Well, the more I got to know her, the more hilarious I found her to be, and just delightful and engaging. And as it turned out, she and I are from the same hometown in the Chicago area, so just what are the odds of that? And then on top of that, she knew my sister, nancy, who had died. So you know, I was like, oh my God, like after a while, georgia, I'm not going to write about you anymore in the newspaper because you are my friend now, and indeed she was. It hurt me to see. You know the ways that she and others like her were treated, and I think that's OK to be driven. You know the ways that she and others like her were treated, and I think that's okay to be driven. You know, journalistically, to be driven by outrage and wanting to paint the picture or write about people in such a way that it lends them humanity, and so that's what I really try to do with my writing. But yeah, it's, I think, when you honest with yourself and you allow yourself to tell your to be authentic.
Meg Kissinger:You know these, there's a lot of, I think, a lot of attention these days and the value of both awesome authenticity, authenticity and the other big hot buzzword that I love is vulnerability, you know. So it takes a lot of courage. Like I don't think I could have written this book, you know, when I was 47 or 37, you know it took me to be, you know, have, first of all, to have amassed all these stories that I did over the years, but also to get the kind of the vulnerability that comes with age. And you know I've lived a good, full, long, you know good life, and so I have this. Like I don't really care what other people think about me, I'm just going to tell my story the way that it really happened, which you know is kind of shocking. Some of the stuff was pretty alarming and that's why when I went to each of my brothers and sisters and said, listen, I want to tell our family stories, but I want to tell it the way we know it to be, and it's not going to be sugarcoated, it's not going to be filled with any kind of euphemisms.
Meg Kissinger:I'm going to get the police reports. I'm going to get the medical records. I'm going to scrutinize the court files. I'm going to get the police reports. I'm going to get the medical records. I'm going to scrutinize the court files. I'm going to interview all the first person, you know the people directly impacted by this and I'm going to tell the story the way I would write an investigative piece for the newspaper. Only it's going to be book length, so it's going to be quite detailed. And you know, again, all props to them and bless their heart. You know they were very much on board with that.
Meg Kissinger:But that's what we need to do. We need to just be real. You know, tell the story the way it really happened. And is some of that going to reflect poorly on you? Yes, I write in the book about how my mother called the police on me because I was so out of control my senior year of high school. She didn't know what to do with me and she picked up the phone and called the cops. Like, is that something I'm proud of? Absolutely not. You know, I'm horrified, but it was the reality. You know she didn't, yeah, so anyway. So that's my big's, my big long way of saying keep it real.
Mark Wolak:Yeah, thank you, though that's a, that's a great message for all of us.
Joe Boyle:Do you have any projects on the horizon?
Meg Kissinger:You know, joe, it's really funny. This book is is taking me in places that I didn't know I would be going. I am now, as I mentioned, I I speak at multiple book groups. You know, just almost every week I've got two or three book groups that I'm talking at. But these days now I'm also doing a lot of some training and I'm actually doing something coming up with both Kohl's department stores and Target in beautiful, beautiful state of Minnesota, and Target in beautiful, this beautiful state of Minnesota. So corporations now are starting to pick up the mantle of educating their employees about, you know, ways to live with people who are struggling with mental health. So, you know, I'm kind of on a lecture circuit now. That's great, going around talking about the need for you need for us to better understand one another.
Mark Wolak:That's great. That's just remarkable. But I think one of the reasons that's happening is because of how authentic your story is and how vulnerable your story is. People can connect with that, just like we did Enriching lives. Yeah, like we did enriching lives, do you? Did you have something that you wanted us to make sure? We asked you today that you'd like to to share or do you? Think we, how did we do?
Meg Kissinger:You did great guys. No, I really I think I think we covered it all. I mean, that is the the the through line of the whole thing is, you know, why I wrote this book was again to bear witness, to say this is what happened to this one family in this one spot in time. You know, here we were in the suburbs of Chicago in the 60s and 70s and this is what it was like 70s and this is what it was like, and I'm telling you this story because maybe it'll help all of us understand how we can do better by people who suffer. Yeah and so, and I think that that's what people are responding to, and I was delighted to get an invitation to speak to you guys today and I'm just grateful, I'm grateful for the platform of that and all you people in Antarctica listen up, pay attention and help those who are suffering.
Mark Wolak:You know, technology has really changed our reach in terms of communication, and so we're watching. Where are our listeners listening to us, and it is truly all over the world. We always ask our guests about music. Joe gets to do that.
Joe Boyle:I always ask everybody it's like you know, when you're relaxing, what are you listening to?
Meg Kissinger:Oh man. Well, because I struggle with attention deficit so I can't have any lyrics, I'm sad to say. You know, growing up in the day I was, course, like a huge bob dylan fan, and another minnesotan right, carol. You know, carol, I love, I love carol king, I love all that kind of folk music stuff. But I do listen to classical music if I'm just trying to chill out.
Joe Boyle:We we usually uh work a little music into each episode, and also we have art from the heart.
Mark Wolak:We'll surprise you with something there as well.
Meg Kissinger:Well, I appreciate all that you guys do, and it's you know what a treasure it is, so thank you.
Joe Boyle:Yeah, you're welcome. If you're ever in Minnesota, let us know and we'll get together.
Mark Wolak:We could meet you for a beer when you're at Target.
Meg Kissinger:Oh, that'd be great. I love us know and we'll get together. We could meet you for a beer when you're at target. Oh, that's great, I love beer.
Bob Dylan:I love beer well, thank you meg, it's been a real pleasure this was wonderful yeah, thank you so much, guys.
Meg Kissinger:You are wonderful. Have a great day.
Bob Dylan:Thank you, bye, bye. When evening shatters and the stars appear and there is no one there to dry your tears, I could hold you for a million years To make you feel my love. I know you haven't made your mind up yet, but I would never do you wrong. I've known it from the moment that we met, no doubt in my mind where you belong. I go hungry, I go black and blue, I go crawling down the avenue. I know there's nothing that I wouldn't do To make you feel my love.
Joe Boyle:The music from this episode was Bob Dylan's If Not For you off the New Morning album from 1970. We also had so Far Away by Carole King off her Tapestry album from 1971. And we wrap things up with Bob Dylan's Make you Feel my Love from his Time Out of Mind album from 1997. We hope you enjoyed this episode. Please join us again next time on Stories in Life on the radio with Mark and Joe and visit our website at storiesinlifebuzzsproutcom or email us at storiesinlifepodcast at gmailcom.
