339. Reclaiming Your Voice with Memoir, with Brenda Coffee

Photographer, filmmaker, and author Brenda Coffee discusses her new memoir Maya Blue, how it has encouraged healing, and what exactly "maya blue" represents.

▬

Explore Brenda's website:
https://www.brenda-coffee.com/

Get your copy of Maya Blue:
https://www.brenda-coffee.com/order-book-1

Stop by Brenda's socials:
https://www.facebook.com/brenda.r.coffee
https://www.instagram.com/1010parkplace/#  https://www.linkedin.com/in/brenda-coffee-0b92619/

Transcript

Jennia: Hello, I'm Jennia D'Lima. Welcome to Writing and Editing, the author-focused podcast that takes a whole-person approach to everything related to both writing and editing. When we're writing down our life story, we may look at people and events in an unexpected new way. This experience can also teach us something about ourselves or even change how we view both past and present versions of ourselves. In doing so, we learn how to reclaim our personal narrative. Writer, photographer, and filmmaker Brenda Coffee is here to tell us how she did that while writing her own memoir.

Jennia: Well, it is so great to have you here!

Brenda Coffee: Thank you, Jennia! I'm happy to be here!

Jennia: So your life reads like it is just so exciting and interesting. I mean, it reads like it was made for film or TV (both laugh). But how did you know that you were ready to share it?

Brenda Coffee: I've been writing and keeping notes for decades. But it was more for my own purposes. There are some things that you will never forget, and then there are others you're afraid you'll forget. So I kept notes. And then COVID happened.

Jennia: Ahh.

Brenda Coffee: And I thought, "Well, let's just take a stab at it." And so I started thinking I was ready.

Jennia: Mhm.

Brenda Coffee: And I started writing a part of the book that I thought would be easy. And that was when I was taken at gunpoint in Guatemala. Well, not that I thought was easy. I just, I felt if I could write that, then I could write anything . . .

Jennia: Mhm.

Brenda Coffee: . . . thinking that that would be the hard part. But it just poured out of me onto the keyboard. Because I had not taken notes about this before.

Jennia: Mhm.

Brenda Coffee: It was one of those things you're not sure you want to remember.

Jennia: I can see why. Yeah.

Brenda Coffee: But then when I got to an earlier part where I was writing about my husband and his addictions and the problems that we went through—and that's the part where I had taken a lot of notes—that's when I struggled.

Jennia: Oh, interesting.

Brenda Coffee: And I kind of came to the conclusion that in a lot of ways I felt like I was being disloyal. He's not here to defend himself anymore. And what we went through is well known among certain circles here. But still it was when you've loved someone—and I worshipped him like a God for a long time. I was 21 and he was 34 when we met. And he was glamorous and handsome and raced cars and founder of a public company. And I put him on a pedestal.

Jennia: Mhm.

Brenda Coffee: And so I decided to write about when he fell off of it (both laugh). And that was the hard part.

Jennia: Yeah, I can see that being harder where those emotions are involved. And so you're not just untangling this event that happened to you where you're the only one whose emotions you really need to be balancing and caring for. But now, now you have that added emotional weight of my relationship with this person, even if they're no longer here, and how you feel about that and how you feel about it now compared to how you feel about it then. Yeah, that's just a lot to have to work through.

Brenda Coffee: It was! Plus, writing this was a big "aha" moment for me because it really helped me put things in perspective about the young woman I was then.

Jennia: Mhm.

Brenda Coffee: I was not a pushover and I had very definite opinions, but part of me gave up my voice—

Jennia: Ahh.

Brenda Coffee: —to be with this man. I wanted to be the only woman that he ever wanted. And so I did, pretty much—whether it was adventurous or dangerous or sexual or illegal (laughs), I was there. And in order to do some of those, I swallowed my voice and I pretended like I wasn't afraid.

Jennia: Mhm.

Brenda Coffee: And I realized that at the time, but not like looking back.

Jennia: Right. Well, it's hard, too, when you're living in the moment and you're trying to define what you're like and what kind of person you are versus almost having those immediate reactions to something. Because the want that you have might override logic or even who you know you are, and yet you're acting in a way that's counter to that. Because, again, this want is just superseding everything else.

Brenda Coffee: Well put (laughs). And it in itself is almost like an addiction—

Jennia: Mhm.

Brenda Coffee: —this want and this need. And I was very aware of that at the time. But I have just come to— When I think back about that young woman and what she survived, now I look at it somewhat with my mouth agape.

Jennia: Mhm.

Brenda Coffee: And I'm surprised that I'm still here, that I survived any of it. And I have a lot of empathy for her.

Jennia: Mhm.

Brenda Coffee: That time in my life made me really strong and able to survive, I think, most anything. And had I not gone through a lot of that with him, I wouldn't have been able to survive what happened to me in Guatemala.

Jennia: Mhm. So you touched on this a little bit, but I'd love to go a little bit deeper into what you learned about yourself as you were writing. Not just who you were then, but even who you are now.

Brenda Coffee: Yes. I was always aware of, like, current events and smart. I'm not sure I was as self-aware then as I am now. Like I said, there were things that I like to say at that point in time, I would cut off my highs and lows and live somewhere in the middle. So I didn't get too excited and I didn't get too bummed out. Which, when you're living with someone who's addicted to cocaine and alcohol, is probably a good thing, because I wound up feeling like I was the adult in the room.

Jennia: Yeah.

Brenda Coffee: And when I would ask him to stop, my pleas fell on deaf ears. But that wasn't the only problem I had at the time (laughs). He was very brilliant, and he invented the first personal computer and the microprocessor.

Jennia: Wow!

Brenda Coffee: He also invented the first smokeless cigarette, and I coined the terms "vape" and "vaping." No one was using those back then. And together we started his second public company to manufacture and market that they— I named it Favor, as in do yourself a favor, do everybody else around you a favor by not smoking those nasty, horrible, combustible cigarettes. It only had nicotine in it, and nicotine vaporizes all by itself, so you didn't need a battery. Or it wasn't one of these e-cigs.

Jennia: Mhm.

Brenda Coffee: But the big question was always whether the big six tobacco companies would let us get away with it.

Jennia: Ohh.

Brenda Coffee: If we succeeded, then it would draw attention to the fact that nicotine is an addicting alkaloid. The only one not controlled by the feds, by the way. And that's because they're also making trillions of dollars—

Jennia: That's right.

Brenda Coffee: —on the tax from cigarettes. But it would become apparent that cigarettes are killing their customers.

Jennia: Mhm.

Brenda Coffee: And our vice president of marketing was the former president of R.J. Reynolds International. So we had it on good authority that how they felt about us and our company and our product. And as I was told, they want you to disappear from the face of the earth, however that might happen.

Jennia: That's so scary.

Brenda Coffee: So I open the memoir, Maya Blue, on page one with a big burly guy who jumps over our gate, and in the process, sets off the alarm, and hikes up the hill to the house and knocks on the door. And when I open it, the first words out of his mouth is, "I have it on good authority that whoever lives here needs a bodyguard and they better watch their step." And because at the time, I cut off my highs and lows, and I was pretty street savvy, and I just went down that middle path, and I just looked at him and said, "You must have the wrong house." He knew that was not the case. And then I slammed the door in his face.

Jennia: Oh my gosh! (laughs)

Brenda Coffee: So from there on out, since we were a publicly held company, the company's attorneys hired a bodyguard for us—the sniper on the San Antonio SWAT squad. And I'm here to tell you that's not a good way to live.

Jennia: No, I would imagine not! I want to talk about that, too—how you wrote about some of these events again, that just seem so far away from the reality that most of us experience, but in a way that their readers would be able to feel like they were there with you or even feel like this was believable.

Brenda Coffee: Well, that's easy to answer, is because it happened! I'm just telling and describing what was happening in the moment and how I was feeling.

Jennia: Mhm.

Brenda Coffee: I guess I have skipped the part (laughs)—a crucial part here should inform your listeners that my husband had learned to make cocaine from scratch. And so the product that he was addicted to, he was making himself.

Jennia: Ohh.

Brenda Coffee: It's a long process. It took him a year and a half. And I go into detail about how that happened and the role that I played in it. But once that he knew that he had 100 percent pharmaceutical C17H21 No4, then he wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Why people would go to such extremes and even die to possess it and use it. And for a really smart man, I don't think it ever occurred to him that he would become addicted.

Jennia: Yeah, I think that's true for most people, really. You have that idea of it's not going to happen to you. And I think that's true for most things, really.

Brenda Coffee: Yeah, I agree with you. We're always gonna be different, or we're smarter, or we know better. But that's the insidious nature of drugs and alcohol is that it just totally messes with your mind. And I've never been an addict, so I don't know, but if I were to guess, I think that whenever the non addict, if you can access that, at the time, that person that you were, when that person surfaces in your consciousness, you just have an immediate ability to discount that—even the topic in general.

Jennia: Mhm. So going back to you and your understanding of yourself and reclaiming this narrative, when you have any shifts in perspective, such as why you did something at the time versus maybe a more informed, emotionally removed understanding that you might have developed now, did you ever have to walk yourself through some of these explanations? Did you ever discard one and then go back and realize later maybe that was the reason I did it?

Brenda Coffee: I think I knew all along—

Jennia: Well—

Brenda Coffee: —that, in the beginning, I wanted to be the only woman that he ever wanted. The one he couldn't live without. I didn't fool myself about that. What I fooled myself about was giving up my power, which is your voice.

Jennia: Mhm.

Brenda Coffee: And with everything I've been through, I firmly believe that the power of our voice and our ability to talk about what we need or don't need, will do, won't do, plays a huge role in how we get through . . . whether it's going to the grocery store or being taken at gunpoint in another country. The title of my book actually relates to strength and the power of your voice. Maya Blue, the name of the book—

Jennia: Mhm.

Brenda Coffee: —is a real color. And art historians say that it's one of the oldest, strongest, most resilient pigment known to man. It's over 2,000 years old. And when I was in the jungle, they had me in a place where I could see part of an unexcavated ruin.

Jennia: Ohh.

Brenda Coffee: Pieces had broken off, they were all around on the ground around me. And I could catch glimpses of this really vivid blue. It was really quite something. It took me years before I thought about that blue again. But once I started thinking about it, then I did some research.

Jennia: Mhm.

Brenda Coffee: And I realized that I'm using it with the title of my book as a metaphor, not just for my strength and resilience, like the pigment itself, but for everyone's strength and resilience. Because I think if you haven't been through something that's really tested you—

Jennia: Mhm.

Brenda Coffee: —you will be at some point in your life. And having the ability to stay in the moment and not panic, not let your mind go blank is real important. I had one reviewer [that] said that my survival instincts were like Jason Bourne's (both laugh).

Jennia: That's a compliment!

Brenda Coffee: I think so. But I hope no one ever has to develop those. But it is by staying grounded in the moment. Because when I was a little girl, I used to watch all these old black and white B movies from the 50s and there's always, like, some monster that's coming out of the bush and he's coming towards the heroine . . . and all she does is stand there and scream.

Jennia: Mhm.

Brenda Coffee: We're yelling at the TV or the movie screen, "Run run, run!" And she's just— It's like her hands are super glued to either side of her face and she just stands there and screams. That's not being Maya Blue strong.

Jennia: No. That's not taking back your power (laughs).

Brenda Coffee: That's not somebody who has a voice and strength and understands that, "I have to react right now or this may be it."

Jennia: Mhm. Yeah. No, that's a good point too. So it feels a lot like power is being equated to personal agency. Not letting yourself just ride along with whatever is happening or letting someone else dictate what your life will be like and how you'll react. But making those decisions for yourself, and not just making those decisions, but then acting upon them.

Brenda Coffee: Absolutely. And when I was that young woman that would hear something that I wasn't quite up for, a lot of times I would just table it somewhere back here—

Jennia: Uh-huh.

Brenda Coffee: —and I'd say, "Well, now's when you're going to be brave" . . . "Sure, I would love to learn to race cars with you at high speed!" (Jennia laughs) You know, that kind of thing.

Jennia: Mhm.

Brenda Coffee: And it was an adventurous life. And looking back, I probably wouldn't do anything any differently. I know it sounds cliche, but I wouldn't be here.

Jennia: Well, that's true.

Brenda Coffee: That swallowing your voice, also not listening to your little voice and your instincts, I think has contributed to why I'm sitting here.

Jennia: Yeah. Well, I'd like to also talk about how just writing it helped you reclaim some of that power. And so you wrote in a blog entry that your unique lifestyle could make it difficult for others to identify with you. And I would think that having anyone doubt your story or the veracity of anything that you're sharing could chip away at someone's power just because it starts to lead to some of those self doubts or wondering, why does someone feel this way? Why are they acting like this in a review? So I want to know what effect this had on your writing process and sharing your story in a way so that readers would both understand who you were then and now, but also so they would form that emotional connection?

Brenda Coffee: I addressed this, actually, in the prologue because I belonged to a group for a long time here in San Antonio. Actually, it was a Bible study group. And we were together for 20 years until during COVID . . .

Jennia: Mhm.

Brenda Coffee: . . . one of the women in the Bible study group, she approached me and she said, "Did you know that most people don't believe 95 percent of what comes out of your mouth?"

Jennia: Oh wow.

Brenda Coffee: And I had started to talk about my life because I felt safe with this group.

Jennia: Mhm.

Brenda Coffee: And, for the most part, I've not talked about either what went on with my husband Phillip or what happened to me in Guatemala, because it is so far outside the norm. And anyime I've tried it, there's this look that I get. Like—

Jennia: Yeah.

Brenda Coffee: —"Eh, are you putting me on?" And so I just learned, other than the people in my life who've been through this with me since I was in my 20s—they I really trust and they know—then I just don't bring it up. But this Bible study group, I thought, gosh, where can you feel safer? (laughs)

Jennia: That's what you'd think, yeah (laughs).

Brenda Coffee: That's what one would think. But obviously my life was something that they could not identify with. And I get that, I do. It's a lot to take in. But the fact that they thought it had to be a lie . . .

Jennia: Ahh.

Brenda Coffee: After that conversation with her, I think I was stunned for a few days, and then I got really depressed and cried.

Jennia: Mhm.

Brenda Coffee: I felt, how could this group that I love so much and has played such a key role in my life for the last 20 years, how could they think that I've been lying to them?

Jennia: Yeah.

Brenda Coffee: And then I think I went through all the stages of grieving and I finally got angry, really angry and upset. And so I talk about that in the prologue—that I realize what you're about to read is a lot.

Jennia: Mhm.

Brenda Coffee: And I understand that. But I hope that my story gives voice to yours and gives you strength for whatever that you've been through. Or maybe something that's been uncomfortable for you to talk about. It's not just for us to talk about—sometimes we can say something that makes someone else uncomfortable. Or, if it's some kind of a family problem, then it's an inconvenient truth.

Jennia: Mhm.

Brenda Coffee: And so I'm trying to make sure that the reader understands all the different reasons for maybe not sharing your truth. But ultimately this is the most important power you have.

Jennia: Yeah. So you're setting an example right there from the beginning. Not just what it's done for you, but how they can do the same.

Brenda Coffee: Hopefully (Jennia laughs). Hopefully. But at the time, you know, you were asking me how it affected me— It's not something that you can just— Like, if I would meet another woman and say, "Oh! We've got a lot in common, I think she'd be a great girlfriend. Would you like to go to lunch with me?" This is not the kind of thing that you're gonna share with somebody.

Jennia: Mhm.

Brenda Coffee: She'll say, "So what does your husband do?" (both laugh)

Jennia: Right (laughs)

Brenda Coffee: "Well, he makes cocaine at home. That's his hobby." That's not something you're gonna share.

Jennia: Right.

Brenda Coffee: And so it hampered how I lived my life. I always had secrets that I had to keep. And—

Jennia: Yeah, which is hard because you might feel like no one really knows you because there's so much that you're holding back. And even that balance, of, what do I reveal? What do I not reveal? So you're constantly in decision-making mode instead of just in the moment.

Brenda Coffee: You're rarely in the moment. Because you're being someone that you're not.

Jennia: Mhm.

Brenda Coffee: That's very perceptive of you. After I escaped and the cab driver that was with me in Guatemala, I came home and— My husband had died a couple of years before and I was seeing, what I now call "the boyfriend from hell." And I told him what had happened and he said, "I don't feel at all sorry for you. What did you think was gonna happen, traveling in that part of the world by yourself?" And he turned around and left me there. And at the time I thought, "Oh no, what if he's right? Is this my fault?" Because women who are abused in some way, I think it's the natural tendency for a lot of people to say, "Well, how were you dressed? What were you doing there"—

Jennia: Mhm.

Brenda Coffee: —"in the first place?" like he did. At that point in time, I swallowed that story.

Jennia: Ahh.

Brenda Coffee: Because I thought, well, maybe this isn't something that I want to share with people—

Jennia: No, he deserves that nickname (laughs).

Brenda Coffee: Yes (both laugh). So it was after that, my relationship with him, that I came to the point where I realized, "You already know what you need to do."

Jennia: Mhm.

Brenda Coffee: "You need to share your truth. You need to be who you are and own your life and what you've been through. And you're probably not seeing the right kind of man," (laughs), "You need to look elsewhere for men."

Jennia: (Laughs) Yes! Well, this has been such a fantastic conversation. And what message would you like to leave listeners with?

Brenda Coffee: I think sometimes being introspective can be painful.

Jennia: Mhm.

Brenda Coffee: I think maybe that's why a lot of people navigate that path with a therapist. But I think being introspective and coming to own your strengths and your flaws, I think that's a good thing.

Jennia: Yeah. Well, thank you again. I think that is sage advice.

Brenda Coffee: I appreciate it! Thank you very much.

Jennia: You're welcome!

Jennia: And thank you for listening, and be sure to check out the show notes for additional information, including all of Brenda's links. Thanks again!