Scales Of Success Podcast

#34 - Mothers, Memory, and the Myths We Carry with Nicole Graev Lipson

• Marcus Arredondo

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 1:03:08

What stories are we told, and which ones do we choose to tell? In this powerful conversation, Marcus Arredondo chats with Nicole Graev Lipson to explore the evolving shape of womanhood, identity, and the courage to speak truth. From parenting a gender non-conforming child to reclaiming creativity after motherhood, Nicole shares what it means to live honestly in a world that often prefers silence. Whether you're a parent, a writer, or someone rethinking your place in the world, this episode will meet you where you are.

Nicole Graev Lipson is the author of the memoir in essays, Mothers and Other Fictional Characters, a USA Today national bestseller. Her writing has appeared in The Sun, Virginia Quarterly Review, LA Review of Books, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and Marie Claire, among other venues. Her work has been awarded a Pushcart Prize, shortlisted for a National Magazine Award, and selected for The Best American Essays anthology. Originally from New York City, she lives outside of Boston with her husband and children.

Explore Nicole’s Work & Book:
Website: https://nicolegraevlipson.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nglipson/?hl=en

Episode highlights:
(3:46) Teaching gender through Shakespeare
(7:31) How identity evolves with time
(14:58) Parenting without projecting
(18:42) Labels, identity, and social comfort
(22:39) Misconceptions around gender resistance
(26:08) How motherhood reshaped her creativity
(31:00) Writing with urgency and purpose
(43:50) Why telling the truth is activism
(59:07) Writing truthfully with kindness
(53:48) The freedom that comes with honesty
(56:52) Where feminism goes from here
(1:01:55) Outro

Connect with Marcus


Scales of Success 

Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@ScalesofSuccess

—--

Leave a Review

If you enjoyed listening to the podcast, we’d love for you to leave a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts to help others discover the show.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/scales-of-success-podcast/id1773864140


Get in Touch

You can also Tweet @cus with any feedback, ideas or thoughts about the lessons you’ve learnt from the episodes and we can thank you personally for tuning in.


Note: The transcript was generated by AI and may contain errors.

Nicole Graev Lipson: 0:00

So these things that we've been taught, as women, especially to think of as unspeakable, are often just really natural, normal aspects of being human, and the reason why we've been taught to stay silent about them is because they are, for some reason, inconvenient to our patriarchal culture.

Marcus Arredondo: 0:31

Today's guest is Nicole Grave Lipson, an author, teacher and mother, whose work brings beautiful and raw honesty to the quiet complexities of family life. In her memoir Mothers and Other Fictional Characters, nicole explores identity, rage, desire and motherhood with a clarity that's both unflinching and deeply compassionate. She opens up about raising a gender non-conforming child, the emotional cost of telling the truth on the page, and how she reclaimed her creative voice after years of silence. We discuss how labels can both protect and imprison us, and how truth-telling can be the most generous thing a writer or parent can offer. This conversation isn't about having the answers. It's about daring to ask the real questions. Let's start the show. Nicole Grave Lipson, thank you so much for being on Skills to Success. I'm really excited to talk to you, welcome.

Nicole Graev Lipson: 1:16

I'm thrilled to be here. Thanks for having me.

Marcus Arredondo: 1:26

So I want to. You're writing and I will preface this because I tend not to read as much fiction as I want and this is by no means fiction, but there's an artistry involved in your writing that is akin to fiction in that, beyond the words, you're providing a lot of context for your this brilliant mind working, which is super insightful. You talk about a lot of things that I want to dive into Identity, female identity, parents, teaching to some degree, which I'm sort of going to kick off and I'm using sort of as an anchor mothers and other fictional characters, a memoir and essays. Congratulations on getting this published.

Marcus Arredondo: 2:03

I don't know what was entailed, which I would love to dive into as well, but I know it's no small feat, and I want to kick it off by reading just one section here that caught my eye because it touches on a number of different themes, and I'm going to stop talking, but I want to just read this section here as we start, and I'm quoting here there are a few greater joys when you're a teacher than discovering the key that unlocks what you've been trying to pry open. But in the final minutes of class the next day is one student or and then another reads their homework aloud. Time slows and the desk tilts and I understand, without knowing how to stop it, that everything is going wrong. The boys, in the form of girls, giggle and sway their hips and put on lip gloss. The girls, in the form of boys, play football and hit on chicks. Instead of dissolving stereotypes, what we're doing in this excruciating semicircle is reifying them.

Marcus Arredondo: 2:54

And for the context, you had set an assignment to sort of write about what it is from a male perspective and then a female perspective, so that there could be a greater sense of understanding, and the sense here is that it's sort of backfiring. You go on and you come across one particular student who says it was just too hard, he says, to write about this topic. He looks up at the ceiling, takes a breath too hard. He goes on because I think about it every day of my life. All I want is for my brain to stop fucking thinking about it. And I want to go to that moment because this while I haven't finished Mothers and Other Fictional Characters this moment stuck out maybe as much as any other in the book, because there's a lot underneath it and I want to just ask you what are you thinking as I'm reading this? What was your state of mind? And I want to explore this a little bit more. I have several follow-on questions, but I want to kick it off there.

Nicole Graev Lipson: 3:46

Sure, Thanks for reading that. It's always such an interesting experience to have somebody else read your words. Thank you, yeah, so that excerpt comes from my essay as they Like it, where I'm reflecting on I spent many years as a high school English teacher and reflecting on this moment when I had been teaching Shakespeare's play as you Like it to seniors for my senior English elective and was really teaching this text from a feminist point of view and really trying to engage in it with my students through a feminist framework. So it was really thinking about. You know, this play is one of Shakespeare's cross-dressing heroine plays and Rosalind, the main character, has to flee from her uncle's oppressive court and flees to the forest of Arden dressed as a boy and cross-dressing as a boy. The Forest of Arden, dressed as a boy and cross-dressing as a boy.

Nicole Graev Lipson: 4:47

And so I was really trying to awaken my students to ideas about gender and gender stereotypes, and I had given them an assignment to go home that evening and write from the perspective of the opposite gender, of the opposite gender. So this was in 2009, right, when all of the great strides that have been made in thinking about gender had not been made yet, and this was an assignment that never in a million years would I give today, for all the reasons you know that are quite obvious, but in ways that we've been awakened to the greater nuances of gender, and so I thought this was a fantastic idea. I really thought that my students were going to go and like be awakened to all the ways that members of the opposite gender you know might be constrained by gender expectations and and as you read, it didn't work out that way. They came in and they just basically validated and reinforced all the stereotypes in this assignment and the student who who spoke up was basically revealing to me in his own way, as he was speaking, that gender identity was something that he was internally struggling with.

Nicole Graev Lipson: 6:08

And then that becomes sort of the launching, the launching pad moment for the rest of that essay, which ends up being a real interrogation and investigation of what it means to parent a gender non-conforming child, which I have. So you know, I think, you know, I think that hearing that scene read aloud, I think a lot about how we as humans, you know, have to respond to the situations that we're in as best we can, given whatever knowledge and experience we have at that given moment, and I was really interested in that essay and exploring that you know how our understanding of certain things changes over time. Our culture changes over time simultaneously and trying to bring that phenomenon alive through personal experience and personal narrative writing.

Marcus Arredondo: 7:14

Well, there's a couple of thoughts I want to explore. One is and this is a heavier, broader question but how do you think about identity, irrespective of gender? I mean, how do you view it through the lens of a teacher, as a writer, as a parent?

Nicole Graev Lipson: 7:28

Such a good question. I mean I think that identity is very fluid. I mean you know that's a term that we use very often when we're thinking about gender, but I do think it applies to so many different facets of identity. You know my opening, the opening essay of my book Kate Chopin, my Mother and Me. I write about this affair that went on for several years that my mother had while I was in high school and ultimately how that led to the breakdown of my family of origin.

Nicole Graev Lipson: 8:10

And one of the things that I was really interested in exploring in that piece wasn't just female desire. That was definitely a big part of that essay. I was really interested in exploring female desire within the context of a long-term heterosexual marriage. But beyond that, what I was really interested in and exploring is how our feelings about certain incidents or experiences in our life can shift as our own identity changes. And so I was exploring in that piece how, when my mother, when I learned that my mother had an affair, I was an undergraduate college student, immersed in my you know women's studies classes and sort of growing into my nascent feminism, and so the way that I thought about my mother's affair at that moment it's very different than how I thought about it 10 years later, when I married my husband and was sort of you know, sort of caught up in the romance of this new moment and fresh beginning.

Nicole Graev Lipson: 9:23

And you know, sort of caught up in the romance of this new moment and fresh beginning and you know, thinking about my mother's actions as a you know, as a bride, and you know picturing all our happily ever after ahead of me, that identity changed the way I thought about my mom's actions.

Nicole Graev Lipson: 9:44

And then again, once I became a parent I have three children and once I became a parent, I again, you know, my orientation to my mother's actions shifted with the shift into that identity as well. And suddenly this sort of new anger awakened in me and sense of betrayal as I started to think about, well, you know, could I ever do that to my children? And then, you know, sort of come full circle at this point and just having a deeper understanding and compassion for my mother and where she was at her point in life back then. This is all a really long-winded way, I think, of saying that. You know, obviously it's a much more prominent and obvious identity shift, to change from the identity of a girl to the identity of a boy, which is what I've witnessed with my own child. But all of us, I think, undergo these identity changes all the time that shift how we look at our own life, how we process our own life stories and how we encounter the world.

Marcus Arredondo: 11:03

You know. So I appreciate that a lot. I think the fluidity of identity speaks to me in a number of capacities, because I think, on one hand, identity is a terrific mover forward, right, if you can identify something you want to be, some framing around what qualities you'd like to possess, which I sort of link on to as the most sustainable form of identity, sort of qualities you'd like to possess which I sort of link on to as the most sustainable form of identity, sort of qualities you'd like to possess, rather than form fitting into some sort of character. But I've also witnessed, if you become so affixed to a certain type of identity, it can really thwart your ability to grow, and in a lot of ways I think, those who are most capable. All growth requires some form of death. In my opinion, you need to bury. It's not about adding, it's more about removing some part of yourself, and that's not always an easy thing, particularly when it's coupled with memories or emotions of people who share that identity or who know that identity with you. Who share that identity or who know that identity with you, but as it relates to you know, looking at it through the lens of a child, and you do such a remarkable job of shifting perspectives, sort of through different lineages, I mean from your mom to your daughter, your son Lay. So seeing all of these different play out is really interesting. And just to give some context on sort of what I'm thinking about while you're responding to me, is you know, you're coming in as a young girl to see your mom after she'd had surgery on her nose, scene for me to witness Without judgment? You do a terrific job of analyzing the emotional state with the description of actually what's going on, but I don't sense a lot of judgment coming through that. I think there's an analysis of what's going on which I think is really helpful for the reader to really process how all of this is playing out.

Marcus Arredondo: 13:07

But from that to fast forward, your daughter watching you put makeup on and sort of witnessing this idea of beauty in the movie of Little Miss Sunshine and it's also with my favorite, which is Alan Arkin. But you're right and I'm going to state it as her self-awareness grows, so does her self-doubt, and she looks to her grandfather, brilliantly played by Alan Arkin, for reassurance. Olive says Grandpa, am I pretty? Grandpa says Olive, you are the most beautiful girl in the world. Olive says you're just saying that Grandpa said no, I'm madly in love with you.

Marcus Arredondo: 13:52

It's not because of your brains or your personality, it's because you're beautiful inside and out. You go on to mention that. It's not just that you can't just completely disqualify the outside, you have to include the inside as well. It's sort of the whole package, and I'm sort of meandering here, but I think I'm bringing it back to really witnessing a child identify whatever their identity is for that time frame, because it will evolve right. I mean as more of the world as their perspective shapes. And there's a tremendous challenge in informing them on how more of the world as their perspective shapes. And there's a tremendous challenge in informing them on how to view the world or process the world without projecting or infuse them with your own thoughts or hesitations. And I'm wondering if you can just explore that a little bit further with me as it relates to your daughter Leigh, who is is non-gender, specific, as, as we have come to understand it, how did you first pursue that as as a parent witnessing it, and how has that evolved to how you're viewing it now?

Nicole Graev Lipson: 14:58

Um, so I often think of it as threading the tiniest needle. So I often think of it as threading the tiniest needle. That's how I often think about it, because I think that a parent Eureka, I know everything, you know, I know what to do at every step and how to tackle every conflict. But unfortunately, the only way that we can become parents is in the parenting right and just trying things and making mistakes and learning from them, which is why I'm convinced I'm going to have to, like, beg forgiveness for my oldest child for the rest of my life, cause they're my, they're my like uh, experiment. And then the others I know better.

Nicole Graev Lipson: 15:55

Um, but you know, I think, as a parent, I I often have to battle myself, battle myself and curb myself from wanting to jump in, tell my children, you know, this is how it is, this is how I see the world, and and really have tried over the years to become, almost to see my role slightly differently than I did as a newer parent.

Nicole Graev Lipson: 16:34

My kids are now 15, 12 and nine and I feel and I don't do this all the time, I don't want to paint it to this portrait of myself always being able to do this, but at my best moment as a parent. I'm sort of a neutral witness to whatever it is that they're exploring and able to be there by their side as a mirror or a reflection back to them of what it is that I'm seeing, without stepping in to change them. Obviously, if I think somebody is doing something dangerous or something, you know, destructive, I will step in, but to be there as a neutral witness and to allow them to follow their own path, make their own mistakes, circle back, you know, and change things. If that's what they want to do, um, and it's, but it's hard, you know, it's sort of I feel like it's a very, very thin path. In a lot of ways, trying to do that, trying trying to prevent myself from jumping in and pointing them in the direction I want them to go in over and over and over again.

Marcus Arredondo: 17:52

Well, and I, and I think a lot of the identity that we as adults tend to try and ascribe to others is really to help ourselves limit the unknowns and how we respond to that potential, that, that perspective person. But it really does serve very little purpose If you, if you start to know someone as they are right. So I do think of this. You know, I think about some of maybe, as you alluded to some of the friends who were seeing Lay, how you could tell that they didn't know whether to say how to address the situation, to bring it up or whether or not to bring it up, and I sort of think you know that's really just to provide comfort for them in a lot of ways, isn't it? It's not, it hasn't very little to do with that individual.

Nicole Graev Lipson: 18:42

Yeah, it's so interesting you say that because you know, again, thinking about gender within the confines of my family's home, I mean my children, no matter which one they are. You know which child it is, my youngest daughter, or my son, or my oldest. I'm not thinking about them through the lens of gender, first and foremost, right Within the walls of our home, with the five of us.

Nicole Graev Lipson: 19:10

They're just, you know they're just us, they're just, you know, and it's really only when we step out into the world, right, that these labels suddenly become important, right, whether it's in the sort of the most literal way possible, right, which is like having to put a gender on a school application, or something like this. You know, just to you know, just moving through the world, and so it becomes really obvious in those public settings.

Marcus Arredondo: 19:43

Yeah.

Nicole Graev Lipson: 19:43

And you know, I think there is something that is very appealing about the comfort of labels, even for kids, as they're trying to figure out who they are Like. You know, I think a lot of kids might take comfort in being like I'm a soccer player. You know, like I'm a dancer. My thing is that I'm musical right, because life is so amorphous and hard to reign in and unpredictable and it is. It does make things feel simpler to boil ourselves down, I think, to these labels and identities, and there are a lot of ways in which the world asks us to do that. You know whether I mean none of my children are on social media, but you know I can say that as a grownup. You know like that via social media, you know it's sort of like what's your brand right? Like if I'm posting on social media as an author, like do beach photos like fit into that?

Nicole Graev Lipson: 20:54

I'm not sure you know like we're all sort of like thinking about ourselves in these kind of larger, within this larger framework of identity and labels, and reducing ourselves in a lot of ways. And I think it's yeah, as you say, I mean it's a double-edged sword right, it can be liberating or comforting, but it can also be very limiting.

Marcus Arredondo: 21:19

What do you think and I'll move off from this topic because I think this is a relevant conversation I think in today's world, I think increasingly so, but also I think there's a lot of landmines where even people who are interested in exploring this further don't really know how to approach this subject even further, which in some ways seems a little absurd given how much information is out there. But still, in real life conversations, I think it's difficult to broach. And on that topic, what do you think? Those who have more rigid assumptions about identity, maybe that you've encountered within your own circle, however it may be, I'm thinking of certain listeners within this audience group who are both, on one hand, very, very accepting of this conversation and, on the other, some may be uncomfortable about it. What do you think is the misconception for those who are more uncomfortable? What do you think is being missed in resisting this more broad acceptance toward understanding identity?

Nicole Graev Lipson: 22:31

Are you referring specifically to gender identity?

Marcus Arredondo: 22:33

I think that's the main one, but I think it extends further. But let's focus on that one.

Nicole Graev Lipson: 22:38

Yeah. So I think that actually one of the worst things that has happened around cultural conversations of gender identity, particularly when it comes to gender and youth, is that the conversation has been hijacked by extreme ends, yes, of the political spectrum. Um, on both ends. So, you know, on the far right, um, yes, texas, whose, whose son he was divorced and his son declared, you know, that he was a girl and, you know, became a whole legal battle with his ex wife and you know.

Nicole Graev Lipson: 23:35

And then on the far left, you know, the sort of zero tolerance for any questioning whatsoever of you know, like what might bring teenagers beyond gender dysphoria to be exploring gender identity and trying on different genders. And I think what both sides have managed to do is silence the vast, vast, vast, vast, vast middle which includes all of us who might, on the one hand, believe in humans' right to live their own lives with dignity and to make their own choices but, on the other hand, might have questions about how, you know, sort of how fast everything has moved in this arena over the past few years, might have questions about some of the medical interventions you know that have been largely adopted over the past few years, and so I think that all of us, we better serve if we, if we didn't feel so silenced by these like barbelled ends of the spectrum, because I think most people can find common ground around these issues and none of us know the answer. You know, some people think they do, but none of us know the answer.

Marcus Arredondo: 24:56

Well, and I appreciate that quite a bit because I, you know, the one thing that I always focus on is I sometimes have conversations with people who have very strong opinions about controversial topics, but they really don't have any relationships with anyone who's at the center of those controversial topics. And I think, framing it through the lens of your own child, it's a very different thing, because almost anyone can relate to someone they know, someone they love, someone that they are unconditionally supportive of, and I think it becomes a very different conversation. So, anyway, I appreciate that feedback. I don't want to keep you in this state. I want to ask some other questions, because you had mentioned before that becoming a mother forced your creative self underground for a while, and I wanted to just talk a little bit about, as a creative person who has been writing for all of her life. How did motherhood change that writing process? What does it look like now? How are you using it differently, if at all? You know, I'm just curious how that's evolved.

Nicole Graev Lipson: 26:09

Yeah, I love this question and I have lots to say about it. But, yeah, as I write about in my book, you know, writing is one of the through lines of my life. You know, from starting in second grade. You know the sort of like, fell in love with creative writing and um and pursued it. You know, in many different ways, through college and after, and have spent years of my adult life as a freelance writer. You know, in the months um, and, and really going into year, years, um, after she was born, that I think I describe it in the book as a vein being cauterized, um, like it wasn't just like oh, I'm don't have enough time, you know, or I'm so busy. It was really that I felt like, how did I do that before? Who was that person?

Nicole Graev Lipson: 27:15

And I've had a lot of time to reflect on this at this point and I've realized that what cut me off from my creative self during those years, first couple of years of my child's life wasn't being a mother. It was trying to mother and be a mother in this sort of way that I saw the mythic mother with a capital M in our culture, the sort of idealized, you know, sort of self-sacrificing, eternally patient, calm, devoted mother, and I spent a lot of those first couple of years moving through the world, feeling that I was at once myself and not myself, that I was me you know, nicole, who I'd always been, but that I'd also sort of stepped into this fictional character of mother with a capital M, and it was that that was keeping me feeling divorced from my writing self. It was sort of white knuckling my way every day through this persona and feeling like I had to meet this standard. And ultimately, the irony is is that what got me back to the page and what ended up creating this book, mothers and Other Fictional Characters, was also motherhood. But it was a few years later, once I'd sort of recovered from those initial couple of years, become a little bit more experienced as a mother, a little bit more seasoned, more comfortable, more competent.

Nicole Graev Lipson: 29:06

I had something happen to me that was really extraordinary and I don't think it will, it never has. Nothing like this had happened to me before and I'm pretty certain nothing like this will happen to me again which is that I literally it was literally almost like a single moment where I was when my youngest child turned two, and I was overcome with this almost bodily feeling of resolve and determination, like it wasn't. Oh, you know, I want to start trying to get back to my writing. It was like it was like I was suddenly possessed and I thought to myself oh, I'm going to center writing in my life and I am going to work now toward my dream of being a writer in the way that I've always wanted to be a writer, even before I had children. And it was like I knew that I was going to do it, not that I was going to try to do it.

Nicole Graev Lipson: 30:15

It was like, come hell or high water, this is going to happen, and I've thought a lot about why, why that happened to me. I had this almost like sudden possession, and it was motherhood. It was motherhood that did that to me. So motherhood, on the one hand, pulled me from my creative self, but it was also motherhood that filled me with this intense resolve to become the writer, the sort of writer that I'd always wanted to be writer, the sort of writer that I always wanted to be.

Marcus Arredondo: 30:49

But what about motherhood? Do you think? Drove you? You know what? What was that lightning bolt that at that moment, because that was your third child that turned two correct? So, you, you, you had some motherhood under your belt at that point.

Nicole Graev Lipson: 31:00

Yeah. So my oldest was, yeah, five, six, seven, yeah, no, sorry, I'm thinking when she was born. Yeah, I had some motherhood under my belt. I think it was a couple of things. I think, first of all, that nothing has brought me in closer touch or more aware of mortality than motherhood, than having children, mortality than motherhood than having children. And you know, I think that there's something about parenting that awakens you to life's fragility and the fleeting nature of time. And so I think that I just had this feeling of like it is up to me to live my life as I most, as my heart most, yearns to live it. No one else is going to hand this to me, and the time is now. I just had that sort of like feeling of, you know, times winged chariot at my back in a way that I didn't when I was younger.

Nicole Graev Lipson: 32:04

Right, because I think we have all the time in the world, when we're younger, to achieve our dreams. And then the second aspect of motherhood that I think was so motivating was motherhood didn't change in any fundamental way what I care about most as a person. What I care about most as a person, you know, I've always been really, you know, since high school or college. I've always been very aware of my own womanhood and my lens of womanhood is just a really central lens in how I see the world. I went to an all-girls school for 13 years growing up and I think that that was really formative in my own identity. And so I've always, you know, really cared about issues pertinent to women.

Nicole Graev Lipson: 32:58

I've always looked through the world in a somewhat feminist lens. It was one thing for, for instance, it's one thing for our cultures, impossible beauty standards. To turn me against my own body as a woman, right, like that was terrible, you know, when I went through a period of disordered eating, you know, in college and a little beyond, um, that was terrible. But okay, right, it's me, right, I can get over it and move on, and I can, you know, sort of critique the culture that gave rise to that.

Nicole Graev Lipson: 33:35

But once I had daughters like looking at their own perfect bodies, perfect infant female bodies and toddler female bodies, the thought of them one day being taught to turn against themselves or taught to hate their own bodies, filled me with such intense rage and was very activating in the sense that I knew that these were also the sorts of things that I wanted to write about. So not only did I want to like center writing and become the writer that I had always longed to be, but I had this very clear raison d'etre for putting pen to paper. D'etra for for putting pen to paper metaphorically, right, like I wanted to write about these things. And you know having a son too, cause I write about the templates and boxes that boys and men are put into our culture as well. These things are like interlocking pieces of a puzzle. Right, it's not just women who have to contend with. You know all these expectations. You know wanting think, I said to someone recently I was like you know, parental indignation is a really strong creative motivator.

Nicole Graev Lipson: 35:16

I found it that it was sure I wanted to fight for my kids and for other children.

Marcus Arredondo: 35:21

Well, I think having kids too actually has helped me in a lot of ways. Look at people as children to some degree that you know they are. We're all dealt a deck of cards that or a hand that we may not be equipped to play. And I always think of a high school basketball coach who once told me you know it's normally the worst basketball players that become good coaches because they have to break down the fundamentals and be technical.

Marcus Arredondo: 35:52

And in a lot of ways, as a parent, you know it's very quick where you realize I've been dealing with a lot of these issues and my son's two and a half now, which is he's at the peak of you know where his frustration is, his highest and his ability to deal with that frustration could not be lower proportionate to his increasing feelings and sensations. And I go through this process where I'm realizing that I need to learn how to teach that. And just because I was facilitating these challenges on my own doesn't mean I ever knew really how to do this. And so, seeing it through the child's eyes, I wonder if you have come to some similar parallel where it's akin to I'm having to break myself down to some degree and build myself back up, more closely aligned to who I've always maybe been.

Nicole Graev Lipson: 36:55

I love the way you put that. Well, I do think that there is something about being a parent that, for me personally, that makes me want to inspire, makes me want to, or makes me aspire to, have as much integrity as I can. I mean, I think, first of all, kids sniff out instinctually any hypocrisy or lack of integrity in their parents. It's like they're built for it. They just have a radar, you know, um, which is why you know I mean most basic example, my, you know I forbid my kids from getting social media, but of course, for my own work I am on social media quite a bit. So they're, you know, they love calling that out right.

Nicole Graev Lipson: 37:43

Like oh, mom, social media is so terrible, then why are you sitting there on instagram? You know, and, and they're right to some extent, but, um, you know, so it doesn't feel good when your kids call out your hypocrisy. Um, and even if they don't call it out, you know when, when we are giving our children advice or trying to help them be their best selves, we know internally if we're not living our lives by those same principles or according to that same wisdom. And I think parenting asks us in many ways to be philosophers, to shape our own philosophies that we want to impart to our children. You know, it forces us to crystallize thoughts that might be partially formed in our minds about our own ethics and our own moral code and how we believe are the right ways to live Right, how we believe are the right ways to live Right, and so it calls us to to task as well in practicing what we preach.

Marcus Arredondo: 38:54

Yeah, yeah. What's your, uh, what's your writing process? Now, like I mean, is it a, is it a daily thing? How do you, how do you approach it?

Nicole Graev Lipson: 39:01

Um, I've never been one of those writers who's like okay, every morning, from you know nine to one, I sit down and write.

Nicole Graev Lipson: 39:10

Or, you know, occasionally, when I'm on a deadline, I will give myself certain word count. You know goals, but I I think of myself a little bit as a binge writer. I often, if I'm in the middle of a project, in the middle of an essay for instance, I become like pretty swept up in it and will try to fit in writing literally wherever I can. I'll neglect other tasks. I'll look up at my clock from my computer and be like, oh, my goodness, it's five minutes till I have to pick my kids up at school, like throw on sneakers and my pajamas and stumble out of the house like a weirdo. So that can go on, you know, for a while and I'm in the middle of a project. And then I sort of come back to the real world when it's done and, you know, pay my bills and two things that I need to do that I've been neglecting, and then, when I'm back in a writing project again, I'll lose myself and, yeah, forget to shower.

Nicole Graev Lipson: 40:15

So, I, I wouldn't. I keep a notebook. Yeah, um, I keep a notebook. It's, you know, mostly to like write down little snatches of things, that lines that come to me, or, um, or especially when I'm in the middle of a writing project, you know just little ideas or something that I want to remember and I often it's partly like a like a commonplace book you know, like where I write down quotes from things.

Nicole Graev Lipson: 40:47

I'm reading that I want to keep track of as well. So it's like a little bit of a reading log in some ways, but it's not like a diary or regular journaling practice per se.

Marcus Arredondo: 41:00

What's your reading practice?

Nicole Graev Lipson: 41:07

I always have a book that I'm in the middle of and I try my best. It doesn't always work, depending what's going on with my kids, but I really try my best to read for like an hour every night before I go to sleep.

Nicole Graev Lipson: 41:20

Of course, that's always the time when, like my oldest will have been avoiding me and writing me off like all day long, and then we'll like show up by my bedside just being like hey, like so ever thought about how weird it is that like ducks, just, you know, and I'm like, oh god, and I have to force myself to put the book down. But I love reading. It's really, it is my happy place to be in a book and I pretty much read exclusively just hard copy books. I don't. I haven't gotten into the Kindle or e-readers at all, and yeah, that's, that's my like window in the evening.

Marcus Arredondo: 42:03

Is it fiction that you're primarily reading? Are you reading poetry? What's your diet?

Nicole Graev Lipson: 42:08

I think the largest majority of my reading is nonfiction, but literary nonfiction, so memoir, essay collections, but also fiction as well. But I do love imaginative nonfiction.

Marcus Arredondo: 42:26

Well, in your book. I mean, these essays are highly, highly personal and I'm curious, how do you reconcile, I mean, I think to a large degree, these themes, these points get lost if they're not honest, and brutally honest at that, you know. On that note, how do you approach? I mean, because you've talked about, you know, your mother's infidelity You've talked about, when you were taking a creative writing class later in your life, moments of passion that can potentially take over. How do you reconcile that? Is that something you do? You have any? I'm, I'm putting myself in your shoes and I and I wonder, man, I, I don't know if I want to put this on paper, but there's something really powerful about it. There's nothing if it, you know. Going back to identity, if this is you, there's, there's no apologies necessary for you, you know. But I'm just curious, what you're? Do you have any? Do you want to comment on that?

Nicole Graev Lipson: 43:23

Oh sure, I mean, I could produce a dissertation for you actually, if you had time.

Marcus Arredondo: 43:29

I'm very curious about this because there's a lot of personal stuff.

Nicole Graev Lipson: 43:32

Yeah, well, I knew from the beginning, once I realized that I was writing a book, because I didn't know at first that I was writing a book A few of these essays were originally published as standalone pieces in literary journals.

Nicole Graev Lipson: 43:46

Yeah, you know what? What drew me to the page when I was writing was this desire to crack through the ready made stories, the sort of surface stories that we tell about ourselves, right and and sort of to use myself as a case study in this endeavor, and and so To not write truthfully about myself would be to jeopardize the entire endeavor. I mean, the whole point was to, you know again, brush away these fictional lives that we, that we that we lead somewhat unwittingly, you know. And so I really did want to drill down to the deepest truths underlying some of my surface experiences. So I knew I needed to do that, but I also really wanted to do that. Moving through the world in ways that are not honest, that are not truthful, takes a psychic toll, and all of us, I think, live our lives in some degrees right, we absorb fictions, whether we're man, woman, anything in between.

Nicole Graev Lipson: 45:12

But I think for women, you know, there is um a larger psychic toll in some ways, um, broadly speaking, um just because there are so many ways that we are kind of pushed or encouraged to reduce ourselves, um to erase our own complexities, um to step into these templates that were were offered Um, and so in some ways I wanted to tell the truth and be honest, because I felt really burdened by carrying on this sort of charade in front of myself if that makes sense, and I've given this a lot of thought because if I were to imagine the places in the book that people would be like, oh wow, like she's going there, you know, like I know what, I know what places those would be.

Nicole Graev Lipson: 46:11

Right, you mentioned one of them, right? So you know, talking in one of the essays really openly about, um, this kind of sudden and overwhelming attraction I had to this younger man in a poetry class in the midstream of an otherwise happy, healthy, long-term marriage. Um, you know, I would imagine another place in the book that would raise those kinds of eyebrows is when I like admit to wanting to flee from my children, like not forever, but yeah, these got very strong urges to escape from my family into solitude. And the thing about examples like this is that on the surface they might seem like really taboo or, you know, sort of shocking, but if you think about it, I think we'd be hard pressed to find anyone in a-term marriage who has not at some point found themselves attracted to somebody else. I know for a fact this isn't scientific research but pretty much every single woman I'm friends with who has children has talked to me about wanting to flee from them from time to time.

Nicole Graev Lipson: 47:34

So these things that we've been taught as women especially to think about, to think of as unspeakable, are often just really natural, normal aspects of being human, and the reason why we've been taught to stay silent about them is because they are for some reason, inconvenient to our patriarchal culture, and the mechanism by which we are kept silent is shame, right? I think it's very. Women would be very ashamed to admit that they want to flee their family. Sometimes. That's not something we're supposed to feel, right, yeah, and so I sort of started to see speaking these truths as listen, like I'm not standing, I mean I'm not walking down the Washington mall with like a protest sign, but I felt like it was like my own form of activism and saying you know, these things are non-unspeakable, they're actually really normal and I'm going to speak them and I'm glad I did, you know.

Marcus Arredondo: 48:51

Was there any trepidation about getting this out? Were you nervous about this being published and being seen by the broader world or, you know, by some of the subjects who were included? Did they get to see it beforehand? You know, I'm just curious about the how the sausage is made a little bit.

Nicole Graev Lipson: 49:06

Totally Much more concerned about the actual people in my life than the broader world.

Nicole Graev Lipson: 49:11

Yeah, and you know, I I sort of I mean a few things, like I had a few guardrails in place, one being, you know, things from craft elements that I had in place to kind of like interpersonal approaches, but from a craft, from a writing craft lens. You know, I was always really careful when I was writing that I was only writing from my own embodied experience what I, Nicole, you know, could see, touch, taste, hear, smell, with my own senses. And while I think, you know, while I felt it was okay for me to imagine my way into what you know my daughter might be thinking or feeling, or my husband, it was not my place to claim that I knew what they might be thinking or feeling at any given moment. I'm just presenting my side of the door, but beyond that, I think I always was really cognizant to that. I was writing with kindness, and when I think about kindness as a nonfiction writer, as a memoirist, I'm not thinking, I distinguish it from niceness. I'm not trying to sugarcoat anything. I'm not trying to present anyone in, you know, through rose colored lenses all the time, but I'm trying to have real, uh, regard, um and respect of who the people in my life are and seeing them with wholeness and respect, and also turning that same lens on myself simultaneously. And then interpersonally.

Nicole Graev Lipson: 51:01

If there was anything that I was worried about, anything that I, as I was writing it gave me pause, I always talked about it with the person at hand, and one thing I will say is that I didn't, I didn't broach these topics with my loved ones in the sense of like, here I'm writing about this, read it, you know, and let me know if I have your blessing.

Nicole Graev Lipson: 51:29

I mean, I think as memoirists we talk a lot about permission, right, like, do we have somebody's blessing, do we have someone's permission? I ended up finding it a lot more meaningful to talk with my loved ones about the thing itself first, as opposed to the fact that I was yearning to write about the thing Does that make sense it does? I was yearning to write about the thing Does that make sense it does? And so I was really honest with my loved ones. You know about what I might've been grappling with. And then those conversations nine times out of 10 were really nourishing conversations that brought us closer together, because they were honest conversations that I probably would have been intimidated to broach if I didn't have this sort of external motivation.

Marcus Arredondo: 52:26

Sure.

Nicole Graev Lipson: 52:27

And so I feel really lucky in that way. But I do want to say and this is a thought that I recently occurred to me, but I think it's a really important thought I'm very hesitant and reluctant to kind of give any concrete advice to other memoirists, other writers, about how to do this, because I, for instance, I'm in a marriage that can tolerate some complexity, and many people are not, and I I wouldn't have written about this if I had thought that doing so would blow up my life in some horrible way. I knew it wouldn't, you know, and um, and so I.

Nicole Graev Lipson: 53:19

I just want to say that, to point out those circumstances, and I feel really grateful to have those circumstances, but it's not safe for everyone to just walk around speaking their truths. Sure yeah.

Marcus Arredondo: 53:33

Do you feel a lightness after having published this, that you know that this is out there, so to speak, that this truth of yours is now in perpetuity? You know, among your legacy presented to the world?

Nicole Graev Lipson: 53:48

You know, I I do in some ways. I mean, I don't, I'm not a celebrity, right, it's not. It's not that I feel like I personally, nicole, owe the world my truth in any way, um, but I do find a great deal of joy and pleasure in hearing from readers, um, who connect with my book, who, um, who have felt a lightning in their own lives by seeing some of their experiences reflected or validated in these ways. And as much as you know, as much as I, you know, it brings me joy that they feel unburdened. You know, as I said, like I wrote this as an unburdening as well. There's like a great, there's a sort of just great pleasure in these connections and finding community through the telling of truths to do so a little bit in their own lives as well, in whatever shape you know that takes in their own lives, whether they're writers or not.

Nicole Graev Lipson: 55:00

Yeah, and I will say that, you know, maybe even more than feeling like, oh, I've put this out there, that feels like an unburdening, I feel like I am much more able to move through the world in honest ways. Having written this book because you know to, to, to, to be honest and to realize like it's, it's okay, like nothing horrible happened, you know gives you confidence to continue to do that and to be like okay, I can. And and it's funny because I find myself sometimes now just like saying stuff like almost a little impulsively, you know, like in social situations, because I'm a little bit less filtered and um, and being like, oh, maybe I'm going too far with this honesty thing. I can see this.

Marcus Arredondo: 55:57

I can see how that happens. I can definitely see how that happens. I'm curious. So we're coming up on time, but I want to ask one last question before we close. Where do you see, as someone who came through an all-female school who's had a feminist perspective, where do you see feminism which I actually don't hear that word all that often, quite as much anymore where do you see that going into the future, especially now in 2025? I mean, we saw some pretty staggering consequences. From Me Too, I think you've alluded to sort of the polarity in how some of those consequences are being interpreted by our political system. But I don't even want to talk about politics really. It's really about the human side of this that is most interesting to me. Where do you see feminism going?

Nicole Graev Lipson: 56:52

Well, you know, we're witnessing a really frightening moment in the US right now and a real, you know, sort of pushing of reductive archetypes more than ever, you know and I follow the news and the sort of pro-natalist movement and all these ways right that women are being pushed towards you know, really outdated modes of womanhood and motherhood.

Nicole Graev Lipson: 57:28

So, you know, I think we have a lot of work to do, think we have a lot of work to do, but I'm really, you know, I'm really that's one of the reasons why I was really happy to do this podcast and really happy to be talking with you as a man is I just think that so much, so much of our dialogues whether it's about, you know, feminism or any other issues, happen in echo chambers these days and I I've been thinking so much about, you know, books like mothers and other fictional characters, books that might be branded, for instances, like motherhood books, how they have so much to say to men as well.

Nicole Graev Lipson: 58:14

No, and I don't, I'm not, I don't just mean my book alone. My book has come out with a wave of really um, interesting, um, books, um, that come at the experience of motherhood and womanhood from different angles, and I've often thought to myself what a disservice really the publishing industry does by kind of siloing and marketing these books so much to women, and how wonderful it would be if the sort of art that people are exposed to was just broader. Right, that, like, the conversations that they were tapped into were broader. I'm sure that there are many interesting, important conversations that I myself am not privy to because I'm a woman and I would just love to see some of that siloing breakdown. Yeah, I'm actually. Maybe you can help me with this.

Nicole Graev Lipson: 59:23

I had this whole idea because a friend of mine sent me a photo of her husband reading mothers and other fictional characters in back and she's like he can't put it down.

Nicole Graev Lipson: 59:37

And then that's happened a few times, right, like, like people are like, oh, like I'm making. You know, my husband read it. I'm like he's really loving it and I think it's so wonderful, right, that women readers would want to share share this with their male partners. And I just think, oh, I was thinking I was. I was like I want to collect these photos of men reading mothers and other fictional characters and I think I'm going to start an Instagram series um the men of mothers and other fictional characters and just try to normalize that like you can read books that aren't marketed to you explicitly, right, and that there's nothing shameful about being a man reading about motherhood and that seems. But I can't tell you how many comments I've had that were like oh yeah, I bought this for my wife and I've said mothers and other fictional characters is for everyone, you should give it a try too.

Marcus Arredondo: 1:00:49

Well, you're sort of taking some of the words out of my mouth because I will say I don't think I'm your targeted demographic, although I should not be excluded from it, and I have read a lot of things, some of the words out of my mouth, because I will say I don't think I'm your targeted demographic, although I should not be excluded from it, and I have read a lot of things out of obligation, including starting to do this one, and I could not put it down. I'm not I'm about three quarters done, but I think it's beautifully written, or emotional muscle, so to speak, because I think there's a lot of subject matter and there's juicy subject matter. There's also really challenging subject matter, but I found it to be very thought-provoking, really thorough, very honest, and I think it does a terrific job of. I loved how you included you've included everything from metamorphosis to Shakespeare, uh, countless other references that I'm founding I'm happy to go back crime and punishment.

Marcus Arredondo: 1:01:45

You know I'm I'm pulling out some of these references. It's like wow man, I haven't read a lot of that in a while and it is uh, it's also a good on-ramp to pulling some of those books and dusting them off. But thank you so much for being on. Is there anything, any closing thoughts or any questions you think I might have missed that you'd like to address?

Nicole Graev Lipson: 1:02:06

No, I mean I think we covered a lot of great territory, and thank you so much for having me on and for your kind words about the book. I'm glad you're enjoying it.

Marcus Arredondo: 1:02:20

Thanks for listening. For a detailed list of episodes and show notes, visit scalesofsuccesspodcastcom. If you found this conversation engaging, consider signing up for our newsletter, where we go even deeper, on a weekly basis, sharing exclusive insights and actionable strategies that can help you in your own journey. We'd also appreciate if you subscribed, rated or shared today's episode. It helps us to attract more illuminating guests, adding to the list of enlightening conversations we've had with New York Times bestsellers, producers, founders, ceos, congressmen and other independent thinkers who are challenging the status quo. You can also follow us for updates, extra content and more insights from our guests. We hope to have you back again next week for another episode of Scales of Success. Scales of Success is an Edge West Capital Production.