Living Life on Our Own Terms w/ Molly Wizenberg

Heart of the Story

184 This chat w/ bestselling memoirist Molly Wizenberg covers it all: partnership, parenting, writing, teaching, navigating midlife, and taking brave action. At its heart though, it's a chat about following our desire, even when it disturbs the status quo.

About Molly's latest memoir, The Fixed Stars: "At age 36, while serving on a jury, author Molly Wizenberg found herself drawn to a female attorney. Married to a man for nearly a decade and mother to a toddler, Wizenberg tried to return to her life as she knew it, but she felt that something inside her had changed irrevocably. Instead, she would discover that the trajectory of our lives is rarely as smooth or as logical as we’d like to believe."

Covered in this episode:

• Why The Fixed Stars had such a big impact on Nadine
• How to develop self-trust even when the path forward is unclear
• Why we must not abandon ourselves
• How to grow as individuals within a partnership
• How Molly and Nadine (both mothers and teachers) prioritize their writing time
• How to become an emboldened writer even when we're afraid
• What Nadine's and Molly's mid-life journeys have looked like
• The impact of books on their lives and on the mainstream conversation around women and mid-life
• Mid-life body empowerment
• The brave action they've taken this past year

About Molly:

Molly Wizenberg is a memoirist, essayist, and teacher of personal narrative writing. She is the author of The Fixed Stars, a Stonewall Honor Book and a 2021 finalist for the Washington Book Award in biography and memoir. Her previous books, A Homemade Life and Delancey, were both New York Times bestsellers. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, The Washington Post, and Bon Appétit, where she was a columnist for three years. She also cohosts the weekly comedy-and-food podcast Spilled Milk, where, with co-host Matthew Amster-Burton, she’s been chewing on-mic since 2010. In other lifetimes, she wrote the James Beard Award-winning blog Orangette (2004-2019) and co-founded the Seattle restaurants Delancey and Essex. Today she writes the newsletter I’ve Got a Feeling, which a very astute person once described as “a chronicle of enthusiasms.” She teaches writing workshops online and around the world.

Newsletter: https://mollywizenberg.substack.com/

Website: https://www.mollywizenberg.com/

Current workshop offerings: https://www.mollywizenberg.com/upcomingworkshops

Podcast: https://www.spilledmilkpodcast.com/

Instagram (though I’m not there much): https://www.instagram.com/molly.wizenberg/

About Nadine:

Nadine Kenney Johnstone is a holistic writing coach who helps women develop and publish their stories. She is the proud founder of WriteWELL, an online community that helps women reclaim their writing time, put pen to page, and get published. The authors in her community have published countless books and hundreds of essays in places like The New York Times, Vogue, The Sun, The Boston Globe, Longreads, and more. Her infertility memoir, Of This Much I'm Sure, was named book of the year by the Chicago Writer's Association. Her latest book, Come Home to Your Heart, is an essay collection and guided journal that helps readers tap into their inner wisdom and fall back in love with themselves. Her articles and interviews have appeared in Cosmo, Authority, MindBodyGreen, Good Grit, HERE, Urban Wellness, Natural Awakenings, Chicago Magazine, and more. Pulling from her vast experience as a writing, meditation, and yoga nidra instructor, Nadine leads women’s writing and wellness workshops and retreats online and around the U.S.

Find out more at nadinekenneyjohnstone.com

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