Tiny Altars: A Midlife Revival, Amy's second memoir went live this week. In celebration, we're releasing a special episode in which Emma Magenta interviews Amy about the story behind the book. Here's Amy's origin story on becoming an author.
Amy Hallberg is the award-winning author of German Awakening: Tales from an American Life. She is a podcaster, story coach, book writing mentor, and the founder of Courageous Wordsmith. A lifelong Minnesotan, Amy lives in the Twin Cities with her husband and two cats.
https://write.courageouswordsmith.com
You can read more about Tiny Altars here.
You can buy Tiny Altars here.
Emma Magenta is a feminist Life Coach who helps people-pleasers, overachievers, and perfectionists stop being so hard on themselves, and start feeling at home in their lives. As a coach, her North Star is radical self-love. She’s particularly effective at coaching highly sensitive ADHD women, because she is one!
Emma loves dogs, long walks in foul weather, Broadway theater, reading, eating, singing, and resting.
https://emmamagentacoaching.com/
Amy Hallberg 0:03
You're listening to Courageous Wordsmith. I'm Amy Hallberg, story coach, book writing mentor and author, and these are conversations with real life creatives. Because if you want to be a real life creative, it helps to know what that looks like for you. Welcome to Courageous Wordsmith.
So, today I have the privilege of being interviewed by Emma Magenta. She is a fellow coach that I just have had so much fun talking with her, and she said, "Could I interview you about tiny altars?" And I was like, oh, let's do it. So today, here we go. Welcome, Emma.
Emma Magenta 0:57
Amy, thank you so much for having me today. I'm so excited to interview you about this beautiful, complex, courageous memoir, Tiny Altars.
Amy Hallberg 1:07
Thank you.
Emma Magenta 1:10
So I would like to start out by asking you, how did you come to write this book?
Amy Hallberg 1:15
You know, the year I turned 40, my teaching career got really, really hard. And I'd always wanted to write before, it just, I didn't know what I would write. And I thought I would write a novel, but I can't tell lies. Ultimate truth teller. And I was about to take a trip to Germany, I was about to take a group of students to Germany for the first time ever, I'd taught German for many years. And my mother in law handed me Eat, Pray, Love, and she was like, "Oh, here, I promised you this," and I was like, "I don't really want it," she's like, "Oh, no, here, take it, take it." I'd heard of it, I just hadn't really thought it was, like, the book for me. And I took it on this trip and it was the combination of, she's writing- basically, she's writing creative nonfiction about her life, about transitions in her life while traveling, and I'm traveling, and so I meant to journal through that trip with those students and instead, I ended up, like, with pink and green and yellow and blue highlighters all over, Eat, Pray Love about everything I loved about that book, which I don't think is an uncommon experience. People read Eat, Pray, Love and decide that they're going to write a memoir. But when I came back from that trip, my career suddenly became exhaustingly hard, like, like really hard, like, they suddenly had me teaching two different levels of German, by which I mean, like German one and German four, say, in the same hour, all day long at two different schools. And during the time when I was supposed to be preparing, I was driving between the two high schools. Like, crazy crazy.
Emma Magenta 2:50
I remember this. I put a little note in the margin- when you first described the situation in the book, I put a little note in there. And the word punishing is what came to me when I read that description.
Amy Hallberg 3:04
Yeah, it was unsustainable. It was done in a very, sort of sanctimonious way like, "Well, we're just doing what's best for the kids," said the people who spoke nothing but English ever. And so it was really hard, and there was a part of me that just felt like, I need to grasp some creative endeavors or I'm going to die. Like, I need to join the church choir even though I have no time. Like, I'm going to use up all my free time doing creative stuff so that I don't die. I was a mom at the same time, too, but that's another thing where you're giving all your energy away. And so I joined the church choir, and a friend in the church choir was like, "Let's take a writing class," and I was like, "I must do this," and I was just, it was like, I became obsessed. She suggested there's a place in Minneapolis called The Loft Literary Center. It's where you can go- anybody can go there and take writing classes. And in some ways, I've modeled my business on The Loft Literary Center in ways that I love it, but also ways that I, that I could be better served as a writer. But, so I started taking these classes at The Loft Literary Center and just, like, became obsessed with, "I must write." And I didn't know what I was writing, I just wrote.
Emma Magenta 4:22
That's beautiful. So what is the significance of the title?
Amy Hallberg 4:25
Tiny Altars. So there was an image that came up in- I just started getting up and writing whatever and I just wrote this story sort of as a side throwaway piece, I wrote about this dollhouse that was given to me, I never asked for it, it was beautiful. And to me the dollhouse represented one more thing to clean up, and I didn't love the dollhouse, but it was beautiful. And I just sort of, you know, threw that little piece of writing in there, amongst many other things, and the part that I thought people would love, they were like, "Yeah, that's meh, but tell me more about that dollhouse," and I'm like, "Really? You want to hear about the dollhouse?" So when my book subdivided, I had images of doll houses, and I had images of birds, and I kind of thought the dollhouse would be about Germany, because I smashed the dollhouse and the Berlin wall comes down, and I just kind of thought, you know, when it's subdivided, there was a German book, and then there was these family stories, and it turned out, no, the dollhouse was the representation of the family stories. The German stories are represented by birds, and birds do great there. But, but this dollhouse wanted- so, it was like, I don't know what this book wants to be even.
Emma Magenta 5:50
Can you tell our listeners a little bit more about this aspect of your two books, which is that they used to be one book, and then you ended up splitting them?
Amy Hallberg 6:02
Right. So I had these mentors and people saying, "You can't fit this all into one book," and I was like, "Damned if I won't. I'm gonna do this." I wanted to pay tribute to my grandmother and my aunt, both of whom died during this period. So I wanted to mark that, right? And I wanted to mark that my German program was dying. And I wanted to do all this- I had all these stories that were coming to me and it was like, they say "Kill your darlings," and I don't believe that. It's just maybe those darlings belong somewhere else for a while. So I just had to write everything, and when it came down to it, everybody was like, "Well, this is really pretty, but somehow you need to streamline," and I was thinking, well, I'll just cut it off sooner or later. And when it finally got to an editor, it turned out, no, I had interwoven two books. And she was like, "One of them is the German story, one of them is the family story, and quite honestly, I don't think readers are going to care about your family story. I think you should write about German stories." So I did that, and like I said, I thought the dollhouse would go in the German story, and it turned out it really didn't need to be there. You don't need an image for the Berlin Wall because the Berlin Wall is its own image. So I kind of just had this dollhouse story just kind of sitting there for a long time and I just wrote the German story and I didn't really know what the dollhouse wanted to be. Well, a friend invited me to go on a trip to Thailand. And in Thailand, they have all these little houses, they're like, altars, right? And I was like, that's what the dollhouse is. It's an altar. It's an homage to an idealized life, and it's held sacred, but you can't touch it. You can't play with that dollhouse. You can't. It's not malleable. It has to be beautiful and perfect and it's held sacred. And I started to realize that this book, much more want to delve into the sacredness and the profanity of my own life back in Minnesota.
Emma Magenta 8:05
In Tiny Altars, even though you have your share of struggles with members of your family, you also end up being a confidant for them. And I'm curious what it is you think about you that made you feel like a safe space to those people in those moments?
Amy Hallberg 8:26
I think some of it has to do with the fact that I am the youngest girl everywhere you look. So I'm the youngest daughter of a youngest daughter. My mom was the youngest of three sisters. I am the youngest of the girl cousins. I'm the youngest girl everywhere you look and, and so I was an observer. And so even though I sometimes was very frustrated with my family, did not feel like they saw me, I saw them very clearly. I was very reverent about them in many ways, and so part of it was sort of untangling like, where am I allowed to complain? Or where am I allowed to- Where am I allowed to see the patterns? I think because I was the youngest one, coming up observing, I saw patterns. And so while maybe they were not necessarily able to listen to me, I developed that skill of being very able to anticipate their behaviors, navigate their behaviors, it's kind of codependent quite honestly. You know, at a certain point, I had to take those skills and go, okay, I'm going to keep them but without the codependent part, right? It's not my job to make them feel happy. But it was a sense of, you know, following my grandmothers around and trying to understand their stories, what made them tick, what made them happy, what made them not happy. And then, you know, later on, my aunt, I just think she needed somebody in the family who was able- willing to do that, because she made some choices that were very-
Emma Magenta 9:57
Unconventional.
Amy Hallberg 9:58
Right. Right. I mean, I'm the generation where the moms divorced the dads suddenly. Not my mom, but a lot of moms, like a lot of my generation, suddenly when we were about 12, a lot of moms divorced dads because the moms were outgrowing the patriarchal roles that the men had always held, and the men weren't coming along. So my aunt left that marriage and I think I was the one who was willing to listen and she needed somebody to.
Emma Magenta 10:25
Yeah. What she ended up doing after she left her husband was amazing. Remarkable. Can you describe a little bit how Aunt Vivian remade her life?
Amy Hallberg 10:37
It is amazing. So first of all, I have to say, I don't think she would have left her life. She was such a beautiful housewife, she was an entertainer, she was a- She worked in the kids' schools as volunteers with my cousins and like, she just was, she was so good at making this beautiful, perfect life. She actually is the embodiment of the dollhouse originally. She lived in this beautiful house, but she lost a child, and I think- It's not the same as losing a child so I really, really want to underline that I have not lost a child and I cannot imagine. I mean, I can, but you know, there's an experience that you can only live through. You live through. But losing my career, I think, was a similar sort of dissociating sort of thing where it's like, I cannot lie anymore. I cannot pretend anymore. And so she just, she, you know, she stayed in the marriage, but it was killing her because she just couldn't stay. So I don't know that she would have done all these things, except that she had something bad enough happened to her that she was willing to pitch it all, if that makes sense.
Emma Magenta 11:41
Yeah.
Amy Hallberg 11:41
So she moved to Florida, she had nothing. The divorce did not treat her well, judges didn't love these women leaving their husbands. They were wild, bad women. And so she went to Florida and she worked. I think she worked at a hotel, and she had just enough money that she could have put down a down payment on a tiny little house and instead she took over the old post office and turned it into a deli, and from there she just she built an entire shopping center that looked like the house that she grew up in, my grandparents' little white house with their little white picket fence. She built a whole shopping center on an island in Florida that recreated that world but in a way that was on her terms.
Emma Magenta 12:28
There's kind of an uncanny moment in the book when you're really at what seems to me, one of the very lowest points in your transition out of your teaching career, when you go to meet with a career counselor, and she has been to Aunt Vivian's store and she actually has like a dream catcher or something hanging in her office.
Amy Hallberg 12:28
Yeah.
Emma Magenta 12:33
When I read that I just felt the- I just got goosebumps. What an amazing kismet.
Amy Hallberg 13:03
Yeah, my aunt was not, you know, I talk about the veil, and some people know what the veil is and some people don't, but the veil is sort of that membrane between this world and the other and, and she wasn't afraid of it, right? So I grew up in this very Christian family but Vivian wasn't afraid of being psychic, of having visions, of having these weird dreams. And so she made it acceptable for me to explore sort of my psychic tendencies to just kind of know things I wasn't supposed to know, and so when that happened, there was no question in my mind that of course that was her sending me messages, that of course she would be aligning this for me, and she would be guiding me along because she knew that I was just a little bit or a lot terrified to leave my job, while at the same time, I couldn't stay. It was, it was really, really awful. Nobody leaves a teaching career in the middle of the year because everything's going swimmingly. You know?
Emma Magenta 14:05
Yeah. Yeah. 100%. So for our listeners, can you connect the dots between what happened with your German program and what was happening in the larger spheres of the field of education and global politics?
Amy Hallberg 14:24
Yeah, I mean, it's complex, and I feel like we found a way to sort of bridge these things in the book. I have a brilliant- some brilliant readers who helped me, because that was not easy. But people want to control education. They want to establish themselves as sort of like, these heroic figures who come in and, and change things and change the world, but they aren't necessarily people who have done the work of finding out what's best for kids, right? We keep propping up a system that is basically a childcare holding cell for you, like 40 kids in a classroom, six classes a day. It's a factory model and it's agrarian, which is to say you get summers off because people gotta farm.
Emma Magenta 15:15
Yep.
Amy Hallberg 15:16
Right? It's not set up for, "What are the best ways for learning?" So people are coming in and they're passing mandates. There's a bill passed, Ted Kennedy was part of this, but it was largely a Republican agenda called "No Child Left Behind," which I like to refer kindly to as "every child left behind," because it's a bunch of testing that correlates to no learning ever. And yet, it starts to prescribe what is to be taught in the classroom, and it leeches a lot of resources away from what would really help, which is lower class sizes, and more adults to go around to give their attention to those kids.
Emma Magenta 16:00
Yeah.
Amy Hallberg 16:00
So what was sad for me is that in my district, there were changes being suggested, that I really, truly believed in, but they were coming on top of the mandates. So it was never, we can take away things and do this instead, it was, do all the things, make sure it fits to the other system of, kids got to go to college so you have to give them ABCD so that they have a GPA and ranking. Your comparison to how some other kid is doing in school correlates to nothing, but it's a really, really important data point. Right? So like, piling all these things on and so I couldn't ever get my feet under me and just be. And there was things about that system that need to be- I believe in public education, there were things that I was breaking open, and I was really proud of those things I was breaking open, but people like the status quo and they don't want to break open those things even though those things are keeping kids in boxes, keeping teachers in boxes, keeping all of us in boxes. So re-envisioning things while also hanging on tightly to things that are confining. Extremely confining. And at the same time, I was sort of a canary in the coal mine in the sense that my German program was the first thing to be targeted because German is to some people's way of thinking, not useful. The Cold War was over and the time for German had come and gone. And I would totally disagree because I was teaching all my students skills that transfer to any other language they ever want to learn, and, and teaching them about their own use of English even, and how they learn. I was doing important work that they came in and micromanaged it. It was very confining. That happens a lot of places. The funding is being cut off, the mandates are being added, and I just think there's gotta be another way to be in the world. So there's that piece. The other piece that is important to me is that I taught in a very conservative school district, I grew up in a very conservative school district, I actually grew up conservative. But so as the 2016 election was coming around and we had the Republican candidate who was doing things that- I recognize that playbook, I've taught German for 17 years. And this guy is highly problematic and I was really grateful not to have to be teaching in that district when this guy was coming around. This failed businessman who had been bankrupt and just, you know, reality star guy. There was nothing defensible about that guy and yet, I was going to have students who were all in for him. I was grateful not to have to be teaching during that time of American politics. Let's say that.
Emma Magenta 19:07
Yeah. While we're talking about this topic of how you were sort of pushed out of teaching, does that feel like an appropriate way to put it?
Amy Hallberg 19:16
I mean, I excused myself, but nobody could have survived and thrived in the position I was put into, and in fact, the person who replaced me lasted till the end of the year and left, so nobody could have thrived. So yes, I feel that I was pushed out, but also I left.
Emma Magenta 19:36
Yeah.
Amy Hallberg 19:36
I fired myself.
Emma Magenta 19:38
Yeah. This seems like a great place to ask this next question, which is: What is Minnesota Nice? And what is problematic about Minnesota Nice.
Amy Hallberg 19:50
Minnesota Nice. Do you mind if I actually read straight from the book?
Emma Magenta 19:55
Love that.
Amy Hallberg 19:56
Okay, let me just find that. Let's back up a moment and look at my family culture. We call it Minnesota Nice, the mainstream Protestant version. You may recognize it as doing things right, being good. We don't share uncomfortable feelings, at least not with the people involved. The thing is, if you don't acknowledge your feelings, they come out sideways since the energy is there. In other words, we smile politely while we think, say, or do shitty things. Thus, the correlating phenomenon, Minnesota Passive Aggressive. So you don't ask for what you want, you don't complain, you don't, you know, show your feelings too strongly. If you do, people might feel sorry for you and kind of pity you, but they're not necessarily getting in there with you because they're uncomfortable with it and they don't want to deal with it. So at the end of my teaching career, I experienced that, where, you know, like, people just kind of looked past me and just kind of pretended that I hadn't been shoehorned into this highly inappropriate position. But hadn't that been happening around me all the time? You know, Minnesota is a very white place and yet, it's not that white, it's just the places where I was we're very white centered. And, you know, we'd go to church and we'd sing this song, "Jesus loves the little children," you know the song, you know, red and yellow, black and white, they're precious in his sight, Jesus loves the little children of the world. But we're all white kids in that room at church. You know, I think it may have been Martin Luther King Jr., I'm not sure, who said that Sunday is the most segregated time in America. You know?
Emma Magenta 21:47
Right.
Amy Hallberg 21:47
So here I am at my white Protestant church and there's some things that are really uncomfortable and I sort of sit through them and wonder if this is really okay, and rather felt hypocritical about it, but I didn't have language for that for a very long time, until I grew up and started getting called out on that Minnesota Nice, like, "Hey, what are you going to do about this? This is not acceptable. What are you going to do about it?" And that was painful to me, and yet, hadn't I also been struggling under that same Minnesota Nice in my family, of everything that I was sensitive to that was not okay? So I recognized it, I just didn't understand that I was also a perpetrator of it. Having had it happen so extremely in my school, I started to recognize it more fully, and the interesting thing that happened when I did finally tell people that I was quitting, because I went under the radar for a while just sort of making my plans, but people started to say to me, "I wish I had as much courage as you do to leave, I wish, you know- I'm feeling oppressed. I'm feeling not okay with this system too." Right? So we don't talk about it, but it's there, and we're all feeling it, we just don't know what to do about it so we just kind of sit there and we're just kind of cold and nice.
Emma Magenta 23:04
Yeah. We've talked before about how this book is actually- First you wrote one big book, and then you had to separate that book. You'd mentioned to me earlier that this is sort of exactly the opposite of what happened with Goethe, Faust.
Amy Hallberg 23:28
Yeah, so, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is one of my literary heroes. These two books, by the way, the first book is much more about masculine heroes, and this book is very much about feminine heroes, so that's an interesting thing. But one of my heroes is Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. He's a German poet, statesman, scientists, artists, all the things, and he's known for a book called Faust. Well, he wrote one very, very thin volume that I read in college as a German major called Urfaust, which means "original Faust" and it's just a fragment, and I think reading that was fascinating to me, or like, gave me ideas about how you could be a writer, that you don't have to write one version and that's the version that stands for all time. But here's a version and then it evolves, it evolved into a very thick tome, Faust, and then there's even Faust two, and this was like his life's work. I feel like I went in the opposite direction, that I wrote one big giant tome and then it subdivided. And for a long time, I just didn't even know what I wanted to do with what became Tiny Altars. It was because I was currently living into that story and I just didn't even know- You can't see the forest for the trees, I was just too close to it, I didn't even know what it was I was writing, I just kind of kept sort of struggling with the stories and what did those stories even want me to tell? What did those stories want to be in this world?
Emma Magenta 25:04
What is your writing process today? And how has it evolved over time?
Amy Hallberg 25:10
I'm much more willing to give myself the space. I used to, when I would, you know, I'd join these online writing classes and share my writing and people wouldn't like the writing perfectly or, you know, it hadn't quite landed and I would sort of panic and, and get very upset about it and, and sort of do that perfectionistic thing we do, you know, and perseverate. And I knew, I knew, I knew, I knew that I had to write a book, or books, but at the same time, I was like panicking, sort of like, grasping, would it actually get written? And I think that the thing that is true now, and for this book is, at a certain point I came to understand, it will get written because it wants to get written, and because people have literally shown up in my path at the right time to guide me along, different guides, it's like A Christmas Carol, right, the ghost of this and the ghost of that. I literally had a Lutheran pastor that I had known from earlier on in the writing, like, resurface and just ask if we could partner together and she ended up being exactly what I needed to explore that part of my story. And my whole book is that way, this book, people showed up to shine a light. I had my brother's brother in law, I met him in Chicago on a boat trip at the- Chicago had just opened up from COVID and my niece had graduated from the University of Chicago, and couldn't do a real party so we did a boat trip, and her uncle, my brother's brother in law was like, "Hey, you know, when I met you at the wedding, you were really religious. I think you should write about that." And I was like, oh, because see, Minnesota Nice, you wouldn't write about your religion because it might offend other people who are also Lutherans.
Emma Magenta 27:09
Right
Amy Hallberg 27:11
You know, and yet, that's part of the story and the story isn't complete. So I kind of, at this point, let the story inform me and just trust that it's going to keep shifting, but I write where I am, and then I go away, and more stuff will come to me and the story will come out when it's ready to come out, when it's supposed to come out.
Emma Magenta 27:35
That's beautiful. You and I first met through an online discussion of ADHD. You had asked me at one point, whether there were any traces that I could identify in the book, whether there were things about the book that stood out to me as like, oh, yeah, this is a person with a neurodivergent brain. And there definitely were, one of the things that stands out to me in the book is your willingness to go right to the heart of an issue, even though it's uncomfortable. And at the same time that you're talking about this very uncomfortable stuff, these topics that are very deep and very tender, right? These topics around your family of origin, you're talking about hard topics, and you're telling hard truths about them, and at the same time, you're holding so much empathy for the people that you're talking about. You're talking about Aunt Vivian or you're talking about your mom or you're talking about members of your family and I just think that the duality of holding both of those oppositions in dynamic tension at the same time, that to me, is the real marker of how a neurodivergent brain works, is that ability to see multiple sides and experience multiple sides of the situation simultaneously.
Amy Hallberg 29:15
Thank you. And I mean, it was my hope that that was visible, not in your face, but that as you come along, when I finally am like, "Oh, I am neurodivergent," people are not like, "What?" "Like, it's been there. But part of the reason that it feels so important to me, and to honor the younger me even, is that I think that neurodivergence gets weaponized. We trot that term out for the worst of neurodivergence. And of course, there's also the worst of neurotypicality, but we don't talk about that, right? Or at the same time, it's your superpower, as opposed to just, this is a way of being in the world. You know, I would say not only am I ADHD, but I'm probably- well no, I am highly highly sensitive. So for example, the way you and I met where I was like, "Oh, she's one of my people. Hi, I'm Amy!" That's not natural for me. I didn't say hi to people I didn't know, I got really uncomfortable and hid, right? And like, would just feel all the feels in my body, physically, of, so yeah, in these uncomfortable moments, and then feeling it fully and not knowing what to do with that afterwards. So I love that you recognize that and part of what I want to do with this book is to give, you know, there's so much othering happening in our country right now, intentionally, and around the world. And claiming this as, there's nothing wrong with me being neurodivergent. Who I am, everything that I have ever been praised for in my life has to do with the fact that I have this particular brain that functions in this particular way. Along with all the struggles that I've had. All of it, it's all part of who I am and I want to normalize that for people.
Emma Magenta 31:12
I could not agree more that that is how neurodivergence works. I think a lot of people tend to want to, I don't know, like, compartmentalize their neurodivergence, often some separate part of themselves, and one of the things that I've come to understand is that's ableism. That's, that's an uncomfortability with acknowledging the way that your neurology- like, that's who you are, like, we are our brains, like, if our brains are structured and wired in a particular way, that's going to impact every single part of our lives from the moment that we're formed in the womb until the moment we leave this earth. And certainly part of my journey as an ADHD'er and part of what I work on with my clients is this work around recognizing that your ADHD isn't something to mend, it isn't something to fix, right? It's something, it's something to tend. It's like a garden. It is the source of your challenges, of course, but it can also be the source of just the most useful, beautiful, valuable, meaningful traits that you have as a human being. I really honor what you're trying to do and where you are at this point in your journey.
Amy Hallberg 32:51
Thank you so much. You know, what's interesting is- and I don't know if this is ADHD in particular, although it could be, there's a lot of shaming around ADHD'ness, I describe myself as a hummingbird child.
Emma Magenta 33:09
That's beautiful.
Amy Hallberg 33:10
Thank you. There were things in my childhood that, like, there were these hard stories and these sad stories and even like- And there were people in my family who were traumatized, like, like, literally my grandmother, my maternal grandmother, not the one who features most prominently in this book, but literally, her mom died when she was, say, 12, her father married somebody else who just wanted all the money, then he died. And so she was basically left orphaned and penniless, and at the same time, my mom went to the cemetery, up northern Minnesota, and realized that my grandmother also lost all the people closest to her in the flu pandemic. Like, cousins, best friends, all these people, loss upon loss upon loss, and then went to live in other people's houses to get an education because she was very bright. And then she was a teacher, lived in other people's houses again, finally married my grandfather. But she didn't like to tell stories and the stories were always so sad. So so sad. And I learned to tell stories in a sad way, and to hang on to those sad stories and really hang on to them. So I didn't want to write about my childhood. It doesn't shock me now, it would have shocked me then that I've written two books that hinge so fully on my childhood stories, and so the truth is, you write these hard, sad stories and it's like there's a dragon almost, like, protecting this stuff, right? Like, you know, like, the good stuff because you keep the good stuff hidden because somebody will get that good stuff and they'll, like, somehow distort it or do something bad with it or whatever. So like, instead, you just front everything with these sad, sad, sad stories and so I didn't want to write about it. Like, it would just made me depressed and sad and trigger all this stuff. What I discovered is if you write all that sad, bad stuff, eventually you get bored, you use the stuff up and you sort of settle down and then you sort of start to write into some other stuff that's kind of interesting. So, as an ADHD kid, I think the biggest thing for me- And then, yes, you're right, like, my mind flits and floats and whatever, I just have ways of capturing, "Oh, here's a sentence." I capture things places, you know?
Emma Magenta 35:31
Yeah. Yeah.
Amy Hallberg 35:32
There's a notebook, I capture it. I capture it, I have Post-it notes, I have all these ways of just capturing it and trusting that- And you just keep kind of consolidating, consolidating. But it's also permission to tell the really hard, sad stories, knowing that there's other hidden stories behind them that are fascinating, and, and really good, and even the hard stories start to sort of shift on you. There's a story I wrote about a cousin who took me down in the basement and drew pictures and said, "What's this?" And I would tell him, and then he'd change the story on me. And that was really traumatic for me as a little kid, and then my aunt, like, instead of telling her son to stop being an asshole, she's like, "If you'll shut the fuck up-" she didn't use those words but that's basically what she said, "If you shut the fuck up, I'll buy your paper dolls," you know, "be a good girl, stay quiet." That was really, really traumatic for me as a little, little kid. Once I was able to process some of the other stuff, I think it's one of the stronger stories in the book because it's like, well, what, what did that bad experience- What strengths did that bad experience build in me that are actually my very best? I can twist stories like nobody's business. Okay, that's the story. How else are we going to frame it? How else are we going to frame it? How else are we going to frame it?
Emma Magenta 36:50
Right.
Amy Hallberg 36:50
So you start to recover some of those painful stories and realize, yeah, that's where the gold is.
Emma Magenta 36:57
Yeah. I'm curious about whether you think there's any link between your neurodivergence and whatever neurodivergence there may have been in your family and this quality of psychicness that you've experienced, and I think you said that your aunt Vivian also had some experience with that, had that quality.
Amy Hallberg 37:23
Yeah. I mean, there's got to be. So neurodivergence, what that means is that your brain doesn't work the ways expected. Right? That's literally it. And so your neurodivergence and my neurodivergence aren't even the same. There's going to be similarities, were like, "Oh, yeah." But I literally am not capable- I mean, I guess at this age now, I am capable of fitting in. I take it back. But I am wired to see what I see and if you tell me that I don't see what I see it just pisses me off. That was a source of, almost, anxiety or whatever. So like, you know, it's a taboo thing or whatever.
Emma Magenta 38:08
Well, that's kind of what was so troublesome to you, I think, and you tell me where I'm wrong, about that situation where your cousin was drawing the picture and then telling you it was something different.
Amy Hallberg 38:18
Right. Don't gaslight me. I mean, we didn't have (unclear) but he's gaslighting me, right? And I, for a long time, really struggled with Christianity for the same reason. They're like, here's the way it is, and I'm like, well, that's great and I'm all for being a good Christian girl but at the same time, I can't ignore this other stuff, and so somehow I need to find a way to incorporate all of it to make all of it right. And that gets really heavy. I feel like that's actually a parallel to what I was talking about with education. At a certain point you have to start saying, it's not infallible. Some of its valid and some of this stuff we just got to put down because we have outgrown it and it isn't serving us anymore.
Emma Magenta 38:17
Yeah.
Amy Hallberg 39:03
But that psychic ability is golden and when I start channeling- And I'm not like one of those channels that just, you know, sits down and calls things in like, I'm not a psychic medium in that sense. But when I channel something for you and it comes through, you should listen because it's going to be good. And my aunt taught me to honor that. And so, you know, she wasn't afraid of it, she was subversive, and so did she live her life perfectly? No, she lived a really hard life, in which she made a lot of decisions that were not easy for her or the consequences which were really difficult. And she had a very challenging death, but, but she taught me that everything doesn't have to be perfect and everything doesn't have to be all straight and neat and good in order to be worthwhile in life.
Emma Magenta 39:51
What a legacy. So how did you decide what stories and memories to include in these books and what to exclude? How did you curate these stories?
Amy Hallberg 40:00
I mean, well, first of all, I interwove them all together into one ginormous thing.
Emma Magenta 40:12
Right. At first, there was no curation.
Amy Hallberg 40:15
There was no curation it was, it was I'm going to weave it all in and it was, it was kind of, you know- I think about that episode on Friends where Rachel gets two recipes and she does sort of, like, a trifle with meat in the middle. You know, like, there's all the layers of all the stuff.
Emma Magenta 40:32
Yes, I love that story. We quote that episode all the time.
Amy Hallberg 40:36
Oh, my gosh, like, it all fits but I didn't understand how it worked to write thematically, like, I needed to train myself as a writer and so part of it was that I needed to spend that much time getting to know narrative craft, not as a reader, but as a writer. How do you construct these things? So that and trial and error, I mean, like, having readers- You know, it's scary to share writing with people, and you better get good readers, because otherwise, they're just going to start proofreading your stuff, which- not helpful. Fixing your grammar, stuff like that, not helpful. Fact checking, not helpful. What is helpful is to go, "Ooh, I really like this piece. Could you tell me more about that? I'm really curious about this person, what do they look like?" You know, like, so people- readers start to help you to see what is good or not. And then, once I had the German stuff shuffled away, you know, and that was published, I was able to just start thinking about what this was. It took me- I mean, I published German Awakening in October 2018 and here we are, and it's four and a half years later.
Emma Magenta 41:47
Yeah.
Amy Hallberg 41:48
So it took time to just sort of sit with stuff. And sometimes I would try to pack things in because they fit and then it'd be like, energetically you can- You get to a point where you can read and you can go, "It's too much stuff, and these are similar, but they don't belong together." And you just- It's a trial and error. It really is. And you have to give yourself time to feel into it and you have to give yourself time to work with writing partners. I don't think anybody does it alone. I mean, maybe, but I don't. And you start to get a sense of what that book wants to be. You know, the book starts to tell you its rules.
Emma Magenta 42:23
The book starts to tell you its rules. I love that. So that's a great segue to my next question, which is, do you have any suggestions for other people who are beginning a writing journey and maybe want to write a memoir or want to write a book?
Amy Hallberg 42:41
Yeah, I mean, well, first of all, I would love for people to join us in Courageous Wordsmith community for real life writers.
Emma Magenta 42:51
Yeah.
Amy Hallberg 42:52
Yes, I would, but I would say-
Emma Magenta 42:55
I was hoping you'd mention that.
Amy Hallberg 42:57
Yes, people should join us there. And what we do there, a lot of what we do is just create space for people to show up and write, and, you know, you can start to map out what it is you want to do, you can start to say, "Well, what are the images that are calling to me?" You can start to read books, you know, like, Eat, Pray, Love I mentioned. How is my book like Eat, Pray, Love? How is my book nothing like Eat, Pray, Love? There was a book I read, it was Memoirs of a Geisha by, I want to say, Arthur Golden, back years ago, and he had these beautiful divider pages that look like origami paper and I love that so much. There are section dividers in Tiny Altars that look like wallpaper.
Emma Magenta 43:44
Yeah, I noticed that. Beautiful.
Amy Hallberg 43:47
So anything can be an inspiration. So you just start sort of grabbing up these ideas and getting yourself some little containers where you can just kind of throw these things and put them in there and write these things, and you know, just write the fragments and don't get too attached to the order things want to be in too quickly. So you sort of toggle between the forest and the trees and you just keep going and you let the book, and you let the readers guide you. And if somebody tells you they don't like something and you're like, "Dammit, that belongs in the book," then it probably does and you just haven't arrived yet. That could be true too, you know?
Emma Magenta 44:22
Right.
Amy Hallberg 44:23
So that's also useful information.
Emma Magenta 44:26
Yeah. What are you working on now? Are you working on another book?
Amy Hallberg 44:33
I have a title. The title is pretty, I don't think you should just start with the title just for the sake of, but this book has a title and I know what it wants to do, but I don't have the content for it yet because I've just emptied out everything I have into Tiny Altars.
Emma Magenta 44:53
You emptied the bag.
Amy Hallberg 44:54
I did. It's, you know, it's, the tides wash and the tides wash out, and then you know, there's full moons and new moons and things like that too, right? Like, you know, like, it's seasonal and whatever. Right now I just know that the book is called Mother The Crone: Sisterhood For The Ages. And it probably has some tie-ins with nature but I think it's more to this thing of Gen X, we were sort of this little sandwich generation and we were supposed to be there for our mothers and we've been supposed to be there for our daughters. And really, the only generation that we can heal is ourselves, and how do we start to heal ourselves and become empowered in ways that are really nurturing for ourselves, so that the world can experience our fullest gifts and so that we can help others find their healing paths? Without imposing it onto them like previous female generations that were stuck in patriarchy, but just shining a light and creating space for women to really embody who they fully are, and maybe men, I don't know, but it starts with, I think, the mothers, and giving the mothers permission to be fulfilled as people unto their own right so that we aren't reliant upon the other generations around us to do that work for us. Because it's really a heavy lift if we do it that way.
Emma Magenta 46:33
That sounds so intriguing, Amy, and I can't wait to read it.
Amy Hallberg 46:38
And you will read it just as soon as I know what's in it.
Emma Magenta 46:44
Amy, thank you so much for taking the time today to talk to me about these two remarkable books, Tiny Altars and German Awakening. It's been a pleasure.
Amy Hallberg 46:55
Oh, it's been so much fun and I can't wait till the next time we talk, Emma.
Thanks for listening to Courageous Wordsmith. Today's episode featured Emma Magenta. You can read about her and check out her links in the show notes. Backstage at Courageous Wordsmith my editor is the talented Will Quie and my producer is the wonderful Zoe Wood. If you enjoyed this podcast, you can help it thrive and grow. Please tell your friends and sign up for my email so that you'll hear about future episodes. And if you're feeling the call to write, join us in our free community for real life writers. You'll find these links right on this page. You can learn more about me and my books and my work with book writers at amyhallberg.com. I am Amy Hallberg and until we meet again, travel safely.