Turning Pain Into Purpose: Jessica Danger on Memoir Writing, Sobriety & Self-Discovery

Jessica Danger believes writing isn’t just creative… it’s transformational.

In this episode, author and educator Jessica Danger joins Renée Adams to unpack the deeply personal journey behind her memoir No Heroic Measures. From navigating sobriety and parenting to writing honestly about real-life struggles, Jessica shares what it actually looks like to turn pain into purpose on the page.

We talk about the courage it takes to write about your own life, how sobriety leads to clarity and creativity, and why having a strong support system can make or break both your writing practice and your personal growth. Jessica also dives into her work with the Dead Reckoning Collective and how building a nurturing writing community helps elevate every voice in the room.

Because writing a memoir isn’t just about telling your story… it’s about understanding it.

In This Episode, You'll Discover:
🧡 Jessica’s journey writing No Heroic Measures 
🧡 How sobriety shaped her personal evolution
🧡 Why writing can be one of the most powerful tools for healing and self-reflection
🧡 The balance between parenting, personal identity, and creative work
🧡 How to write about others with honesty, care, and integrity
🧡 Why community and support systems are essential for writers
🧡 The role of the Dead Reckoning Collective in fostering emerging voices
🧡 How trusting your intuition can guide both your life and your writing
🧡 Why there’s no single path to becoming a successful author

🔗 MENTIONED:
✨Dead Reckoning Collective: www.deadreckoningco.com
✨Jessica's IG: www.instagram.com/mamadanger/
✨Jessica's Website: www.jessica-danger.com/about
✨PRE ORDER No Heroic Measures: www.sfwp.com/books/danger

Transcript

Renée Adams (00:00)
What's up, guys? As you can see, Mara was not able to join us on this episode with Jessica Danger. We had some technical difficulties we are figuring out on our end. But please enjoy my conversation with Jessica Danger. She is an amazing author, an amazing mom, and she gives us the insights into her journey through writing this memoir and becoming sober.

Renée Adams (00:25)
Welcome to our next episode with an incredible guest, Jessica Danger. And I mean, you guys, Jessica Danger, that's just an epic name in general. I just have to say, ⁓ Jessica is an author of No Heroic Measures, a memoir, and she's an assistant professor of English, the director of education at Dead Reckoning Collective.

Jessica Danger (00:36)
Thanks.

Renée Adams (00:47)
and the Joshua Tree Writers Retreat co-founder. know Jessica by way of Stan Lake, who is an author of Toad in a Glass Jar. You can check out his episode number 19 from last year if you missed it. But Jessica, we're so happy to have you on Nose Die. Welcome.

Jessica Danger (01:03)
Thanks for having me. I'm really happy to be here and thank you to Stan for extending the invitation. just such a great guy. So shout out to ⁓

Renée Adams (01:12)
Yeah, shout out to Stan. Yeah, he was such

a cool guest and I second that. Just so cool that, you know, you can make connections like this ⁓ through other people. yeah, and I just wanted to start, I guess, with the fact that you're an author, a writer, so many people that I know and out there, just like the percentage of the population.

share that same desire of wanting to write a book or become an author. And I want to say the genre of memoir specifically can sometimes be a little sticky and a little controversial. yeah, so how did you tell us a little, tell us a little bit about that? Like, how did you find the courage to start? And we'll just start there.

Jessica Danger (01:43)
yeah.

things. Those are just two of them.

Yeah, sure. That's a great question. ⁓ Also, first and foremost, ⁓ I teach a lot of classes. Creative writing is what I, that's my day job and my side job and my passionate ⁓ side gig. And I will always say, anytime someone says, I should write a book, everyone always says, I'm like, yeah, you should actually. I don't buy into the bullshit of like,

I don't have anything to say, no one's gonna wanna hear it. Like you have something to contribute. So I wanna just make sure that that is like the primary foundation of everything that I'm going to say after that. I don't really, I have a hard time like identifying one concrete moment in time and space in which I decided like, yes, I'm going to be a writer.

I just kind of always knew that. ⁓ Even when I was a kid, I was just a voracious reader. And my family really leaned into that. My mom and my grandma and everyone was like, yeah, man, let's do it. know, like my grandma was letting me read things. had no business reading as a child. I got like rough. Yes, yes, thank you.

Renée Adams (03:19)
You

embodied.

Jessica Danger (03:27)
⁓ you know what? That is a high compliment. But yeah, so they just really encouraged it. My mom, both my parents, they were, you my dad has passed on now, but they were both alive then. And ⁓ when I was younger, they gave me a typewriter for Christmas when I was really young. And it was an electric typewriter. It was expensive. Like they really had to plan for that. ⁓

so really grateful for that but I also I always kind of was writing how this book specifically came to be. I tried the first thing I ever published actually was a poem about baseball which like thank god it died in the internet ⁓ and this and then I started I I thought I had to write story I thought I had to it had to be a short story writer.

⁓ I thought in my mind that was like the only way to do it. When I was like in high school, my anytime anyone asked me like what I wanted to do, I said that I wanted to ⁓ move to the middle of nowhere in Maine and become a writer ⁓ because I love Stephen King and also tells you a little bit about my social adeptness. Even then I was like, I want to be left alone with my books. ⁓ But I ⁓

Eventually how the book came to be is that ⁓ I threw a long, long circuitous series of events. I decided I was going to go to an MFA program and I submitted what is now the book to an MFA program. It's Bennington College. It's the best MFA program in, it's ⁓ highly ranked, it's very prestigious. Still am just like counting my lucky stars that I got in.

still very close with the program. But I submitted it as fiction and I got in and it was like so thinly veiled. Like I made the main characters named Jennifer instead of Jessica. And very quickly after my first term at Bennington, ⁓ realized that I had made a mistake. ⁓ And so I owned it to them immediately. I was like, look, I lied. And they were like, we know.

I mean, it's Googleable, you know, it took minutes to figure it out. ⁓ And it was really through their graciousness and their like willingness to invest in me ⁓ that I was able to turn it around. And then we just hit the ground running. ⁓ And it took forever. It took forever to get the book finished. It took forever. ⁓

Renée Adams (05:51)
I know, right? Yeah.

Yeah.

Mmm.

Jessica Danger (06:18)
to revise it ⁓ in the process of finishing the first draft and picking up what will become the final draft. I got sober in that time frame, which thank God, because it would have been a totally different book had I not. ⁓ So it's long. It's a long, long haul. ⁓ And now it's about to be out in the world. It comes out in May. ⁓

Renée Adams (06:31)
Mmm.

Mara (06:42)
Yay!

Renée Adams (06:47)
Yeah,

I know I'm so excited. So we'll definitely link everything to where everybody can pre-order, order it. So I'm so stoked to be able to connect with you on that front too. Cause I feel like you can definitely connect with people at a much deeper level when you, yes, it's a memoir, but just that's so intimate sometimes. So

Jessica Danger (07:05)
Yeah.

Thank you.

Renée Adams (07:09)
And you mentioned too, this is something that I think is also beneficial just to our audience and sort of, you the topics that we talk about with just numbing less too. You you mentioned you became sober through this process. So, and it was through writing the memoir or were you thinking about becoming sober beforehand or what does that look like?

Jessica Danger (07:20)
Mm-hmm.

geez. No, I can't say that I was thinking about becoming sober beforehand. So the memoir itself is called No Heroic Measures. It's out May 5th. It's coming out with Santa Fe Writers Project. ⁓ It is, in essence, amongst many other things, a memoir of caring for my father while he died of alcoholism.

⁓ We were estranged for a very long time before he went into hospice, almost a decade. We hadn't spoken to one another because he was so unwell physically and mentally and emotionally and spiritually. ⁓ And then one day out of the blue, ⁓ you know, I'm living, I was living this life that I thought I had left everything behind. I had moved, hadn't been talking to my dad.

I had ⁓ jumped several socioeconomic ⁓ tiers. I was working, you I thought we were done. ⁓ There was like a old Jessica and there was a new Jessica. And that was so wrong. That was such a falsity. So ⁓ one day out of nowhere, I got a phone call that my dad was dying and needed someone to take care of him. ⁓

Renée Adams (08:46)
Yeah.

Jessica Danger (08:54)
And so I did. And so that was the process of, ⁓ you know, that's really how, you know, that book in a nutshell. But in the book is everything about, you know, ⁓ learning more about my dad and what made him the person he is. ⁓ And also just, you know, it's sometimes really difficult, at least for me, to...

identify where you might have a problem. If the bar of marking that problem is like really low, you know, I was like, I'm going to work. Like my kids are talking to me. I can pay my mortgage. I'm doing, you know, I'm Yeah. Yeah. And then I was really over-functioning because I, we, you know, we at the time had three children.

Renée Adams (09:29)
Yeah, totally.

You're functioning. Yeah. Yes. Right.

Jessica Danger (09:47)
I was teaching, I was an adjunct professor at the time. My husband at the time owned a number of small businesses that we were running. And on top of all that, I was taking care of my dad who lived an hour away from me. And so I really, it was just like skin of my teeth. Yes, yeah.

Renée Adams (10:02)
⁓ an hour away. ⁓ my gosh. So

how often did you have to go out like every single day you're going out there in the morning and doing the things and then coming back and then going back or what did that look like? Yeah.

Jessica Danger (10:17)
It was almost because for the longest time that I mean I don't I think I'm preaching to the choir when I say our health system is so flawed it is it's so it's criminally flawed ⁓ he fell into this like little gray area of like

Renée Adams (10:27)
Mmm.

Jessica Danger (10:37)
He hadn't worked in decades, so he didn't have any kind of social umbrella to fall in. He wasn't old enough for any of the services that we would normally associate. He was living in a house that had almost literally been condemned two times. There was nothing for him. And for a while, we ⁓ got him on social services, but we couldn't even manage that. Even that system was flawed.

Renée Adams (10:53)
you

Yeah.

Jessica Danger (11:06)
We didn't have any, we had, there was no one else. ⁓ And, you know, I leaned heavily on my mom, despite being divorced from this man for eons, helped me so much. ⁓ Lots of other people helped him. We got there, but all that to say, by the time my dad died and I didn't have anything, it was just, we were just plummeting. I didn't know like what to do with all the time.

Renée Adams (11:22)
Yeah.

Jessica Danger (11:34)
that I had available to myself now. ⁓

Renée Adams (11:37)
Right?

It was overwhelming in itself because before, like you said, it's like, it's all, and we talk about that a lot too, is like the pendulum that swings in extremes, we have this innate human sense to deal with ⁓ life in very extreme ways. And so here you are on this one extreme before having this.

sort of traumatic life event that's happening to you. And now you're swinging to this other where you're like so overwhelmed with all of the things, but also being a mom, a woman, a teacher, caregiver, having to deal with all of those things, but also I'm sure wanting to still be happy and wanting to still find those things, but just navigating all of those things can be so difficult.

Jessica Danger (12:25)
to do.

Yeah,

it really was. And I love that you said like two extremes ⁓ because that's when I started working out competitively. ⁓ Yes, like I couldn't, it was, it originated in CrossFit, yes. And through CrossFit I discovered weightlifting and weightlifting was really like, okay, let's go. ⁓ But.

Renée Adams (12:41)
Ooh, competitively. Is it CrossFit? Yeah.

Yes!

Oh my God,

I just feel like we connected on like a completely different level. Oh yeah, because I have a background. Yeah, I have a background in sports, did CrossFit, competed in my first powerlifting competition in 2024. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yes. Love it.

Jessica Danger (13:00)
really? ⁓ I love when the

Amazing. Oh, I haven't been

on a platform since 2020, but oh, good night, man. It has been, I still, we work out regularly at home. We have a full gym set up in our garage. It's the only thing, well, and the laundry. It's a gym and the laundry.

Renée Adams (13:18)
Yeah.

Jim Tan Laundry. So how did that help? Did that also coincide with, so this was, if this was 2020, that was way before the sober journey?

Jessica Danger (13:36)
Yeah.

Oh yeah, so I got sober in 2019. My dad died in 2013. So 2013, my dad died 2014. I started the writing program at Bennington Writing Seminars. And then I didn't get sober until 2019. I started doing CrossFit in 2012. I know this is a lot of timelines, but really what I want to convey is that they all overlapped.

Renée Adams (13:46)
Okay. Okay.

Yeah,

right, exactly. There's not like one point as like all meshes together.

Jessica Danger (14:12)
And what CrossFit did for me, I know it, CrossFit is a totally different brand now than it was when it originated. at the time, I enjoyed it and I needed something that was like quantifiable. With my drinking and with my grief and everything that was going on, I just was like floating in this like dark abyss of like,

Renée Adams (14:23)
Right.

Yes.

Jessica Danger (14:42)
soul sapping. But when I would go to the gym, I'd be like, holy shit, I just did that. Like I did that, you know, and tracking, you know, my numbers and things like that. It was so cool to see like, this is a concrete thing that I can pour my energy into that like, it there's no hidden denominator in this contract. If I do this, I get this result. And that was really the only area in my life at that time in which I had that. ⁓ And so I

Renée Adams (14:49)
Yeah.

Yeah, kind of the

through line of like, or maybe not even a through line, but a grounding presence for you. And it's so funny that you say the quantifiable-ness of workouts and things like that because I found something very similar in sober curiosity and finding the quantifiable data behind how much I was drinking.

Jessica Danger (15:18)
Yeah, totally. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, we love numbers.

Renée Adams (15:40)
Like once I

saw it, was like, ooh, shit.

Jessica Danger (15:42)
We love being able to

point to something and being like, that's it, it's right there. Let me solve this, yeah.

Renée Adams (15:46)
Yeah, it's not just like a feeling.

Yeah, like, ⁓ man, I don't really drink that much or yeah, you know, I actually kind of work out a good bit, but until you actually track those things to really see, it kind of gives you a different perspective into how your behaviors really are.

Jessica Danger (16:00)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I knew by the time I really did get sober ⁓ and you know, I I it took I needed outside help to get sober, which is not everyone's story. And that's great. ⁓ It's you know, there's a lot of at the end of the day, there's a million ways to get there. This was just the way that I needed at that time. ⁓ But by the time I got there, I knew it was time. And the reason I needed help was because

Renée Adams (16:20)
Yeah.

Jessica Danger (16:36)
I had tried everything else. I had tried everything else.

Renée Adams (16:38)
Mmm. What

kinds of things did you try?

Jessica Danger (16:43)
⁓ Lord, I read every self help book, I chart data, I charted everything that I could so that I could control, you know, if I just get this, then this will be okay. And if I get this system, then I can show up to work on time and, you know, not forget promises I made to my children that morning and I could pay my bills on time, I can balance a checkbook and it never worked. I could have never done any of it.

Renée Adams (16:55)
Right.

Hmm.

Yeah, right.

Jessica Danger (17:10)
⁓ let's see. did life coaching. I did therapy. Big component, big proponent of therapy, go to therapy. ⁓ But I was seeking therapy at that time for different reasons. Yeah. We love my therapist now. We love Pamela.

Renée Adams (17:25)
I mean a lot of other, yeah sure, sure. had a lot going on.

Yeah, I know it

becomes like another family member or something. Yeah. ⁓

Jessica Danger (17:36)
Yes, she's great.

So yeah, you know, and I just I made every promise. I made every deal. I made every bargain and none of them worked. And for me, I just had to absolutely really ⁓ admit to defeat, you know, and just admit like this. cannot do this. And

In retrospect, understand now that so much of it was, mean, cause when my dad died, not only did I have to like unpack the grief of losing a parent, I had to unpack the grief of losing a problematic parent who was unwell, ⁓ who I had by choice estranged myself from and then tried to like earn him back.

by taking care of him. Like, what the fuck? No, like, cool, I'm just gonna get drunk instead. Yeah.

Renée Adams (18:30)
What the fuck? Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's so many, even you just explaining that. Yes. ⁓ my gosh.

Talk about wanting to numb all elements. ⁓ Yeah, yes. Yeah, I totally resonate with that. how, so how, what kind of steps? I mean, I think it probably all compounds. So to say that.

Jessica Danger (18:47)
you

Renée Adams (18:57)
all of those things that maybe didn't work for you probably compounded into what finally did kind of like your aha moment or navigating this just really intense wave of going from a strange, going to be the caregiver, and then also just grieving so many different aspects of yourself, of your relationships. ⁓ So yeah, like take us through...

maybe what that sort of looked like once things did sort of compound. Was there ever really, is it all just kind of a blur and you're like, how the fuck did I get here? Or how are you feeling? Yeah.

Jessica Danger (19:34)
is. Yeah,

some of it is. ⁓ You know, and I do, I am delicate about some of this just because my children are still so young and that's unfair to them, but it, a lot of it is still a blur, ⁓ which I need to remember that, you know, I'm the type of person that can, I can talk myself into or out of anything.

Renée Adams (19:53)
Yeah.

Jessica Danger (20:00)
And for me, I need a daily reminder of like, no, no, no, no, no. There's no way around this. There's no shortcuts here. You can't use this system. I need to not be smarter than what I already know works for me. ⁓ I think also for me, and it's something that I've really worked on, like honing. ⁓

Renée Adams (20:06)
Yeah.

Jessica Danger (20:28)
I've always been very intuitive even since I was like very little. I didn't trust it though for the longest time because why would I? Like look where it got me.

Renée Adams (20:37)
Right.

Yes, yes. I think we could all understand that and feel that. Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica Danger (20:44)
Yeah, but

like, but now I can see it, you know, now I no longer have an intuition that baffles me. I know now that I can trust it. And so a lot of it is just learning to trust myself, you know, and learning to pay attention to when something feels off ⁓ or too challenging, or if my ego is, you know, really roaring front and center. I have to

Renée Adams (20:53)
Hmm.

Jessica Danger (21:11)
press pause and that's really hard. ⁓

Renée Adams (21:14)
It's so hard. It's

so hard. I love what you said about not being smarter than what you already know works for you. I think we're always, or at least in this time of instant gratification, of always looking for the shortcut or seeing or comparing ourselves to other people.

who seem to either have it all together or have all this success and they think it's overnight when really they've been working on themselves or working on a project or whatever the fuck it is for decades or years or whatever it is and they have found what works for them. And I think people and myself included get frustrated sometimes with like, man, this isn't working or someone told me to do this thing. There's just so much advice and overwhelm.

Jessica Danger (21:45)
Yeah.

Peace.

There's so many things. Yeah.

Renée Adams (22:07)
that like so many things and

it's like, damn, that shit didn't work for me. What do you mean? But it's, think it's a testament, like you said, to, it comes back to yourself, to the grounding to you and listening to yourself, which like is something that develops over time and to get back to.

Jessica Danger (22:25)
Yeah, yes.

And it's not always comfortable. think when people, know, like, when we talk about things like this, it's very like woo woo, which feels like it's nothing. It's just this cloudy. It's the shit is fucking hard to do. This is so challenging. You know, you got to really dig in there and be honest, you know, and that doesn't always feel good. But but now, you know, I've been sober long enough now and

Renée Adams (22:29)
Yeah!

Yeah, yes.

Jessica Danger (22:56)
You know, I'm like I said, I've got a great therapist and all of these things and it does start to feel normal. So I guess I don't know if this resonates with anyone. My advice would just to be like to pay attention and to stay in that moment, you know, and just see what happens, you know, like what happens if I fight that urge to respond to my boss immediately because I want to be perceived a particular way.

You know, like, why do I keep saying yes to social engagements when I do not, I absolutely do not want to go? Why do I feel like I need to be there? You know, ⁓ if, you know, if one of my children are arguing with me and I want to immediately speak over them and argue back, well, why? Like, how can I be listening to this human that I love more than anything on the planet if I'm speaking over them to correct them?

when they're showing this like great moment of emotional bravery in their home where they feel safe with their mother who they love. What am I doing?

Renée Adams (24:03)
Yes. Yeah.

man. How do you feel like that's maybe come out in your parenting? Because I am not a parent ⁓ and I have done work to kind of reparent myself. So it sounds like you've also had to do very similar things. So how do you feel like that has maybe come out on your side of being a parent?

Jessica Danger (24:33)
every, everywhere, all it is, it's out of every.

Renée Adams (24:36)
Every, yeah.

Jessica Danger (24:41)
⁓ Man, my children are great. ⁓ My husband, ⁓ between the two of us, ⁓ the husband in the book is no longer my husband. ⁓ We got divorced, you know, in all of that, ⁓ to the surprise of no one who reads the book. ⁓ He's still very involved. have a great relationship. He's a wonderful father to both of our children.

Renée Adams (24:44)
Yeah.

Okay, okay, yeah.

Jessica Danger (25:11)
but now the, the, ⁓ my husband now he, between both of us, we have four children. ⁓ and so, ⁓ to this marriage, I brought a 28 year old, a 19 year old and a 16 year old. ⁓ and Keith brought ⁓ a nine year old. ⁓ and so I got, I was very fortunate to be blessed with the girl after all those boys, which is so much fun. ⁓ totally.

Renée Adams (25:35)
Different dynamic. Yeah.

You're like, yes, female, some female energy. Cool. ⁓

Jessica Danger (25:41)
them.

yeah, I

mean, and she is like in it. It's so cute. She like plans her outfits and I book her and she loves a good accessory. Yeah, it's so much fun. anyway, all that to say that we have a mixed, messy, blended, complicated family like so many other people do. ⁓ And so we've had to be very cognizant of that. I knew I was sober when we met, thank God. Otherwise,

Renée Adams (25:49)
Yes.

I love it.

Yeah.

Jessica Danger (26:14)
He would have been like, you later. ⁓ But we had to be very mindful of all of these things. know, like he has an ex, I have an ex, there's kids involved. Like we really wanted to be respectful ⁓ and intentional. And that's only because of all of this work we've both done. My husband is a gem of a human. He's like, I want to be as good as him when I grow up, man, he's a gift.

Renée Adams (26:44)
Yeah.

Jessica Danger (26:44)
⁓ And so I'm really fortunate that I have a partner now that ⁓ not only like allows for that and encourages that but participates in that. ⁓ And so that's been really life changing for me, know, like having that like safe encouraging landing spot like get out man. I feel like can do anything. Yeah.

Renée Adams (27:07)
Yeah, I'm sure it does wonders for you just

as a person ⁓ to have someone that you feel so safe with. It does wonders. It's like fucking magic.

Jessica Danger (27:15)
Mm-hmm.

Yes, yes, yes, it is. It's a real back to the loop, though. But yeah, I, you know, I, all of the tools, excuse me, all of the tools that I've gained in sobriety are most constantly applied, first and foremost, to my family. And for that, I am eternally grateful. You know, I'm constantly questioning my motivations.

Renée Adams (27:22)
You're like, it exists. Yeah, I know, magic exists in this world.

Jessica Danger (27:47)
I'm constantly questioning my role in situations with them. I'm questioning, like, am I coming into this with an expectation or am I coming into this with just, like, ⁓ open hands to help, you know? And I see my children doing that out in the world on their own. ⁓ And, you know, I get these little glimpses from them all the time about just, you know,

Renée Adams (28:02)
Yeah.

Jessica Danger (28:15)
Like just little things, like, you know, every morning I pack a second lunch for one of my children because their friend is going through life stuff. And I pack little joke cards in my kids' lunches every morning. And this child's friend likes the joke cards. So I'm like, easy, done. We're packing them lunches too. Because they knew, this will be a nice thing to do.

Renée Adams (28:28)
Mm.

Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica Danger (28:45)
for someone else and I know my mom will do it. And now that I'm sober and present, I know I can ask my mom, I know my mom will remember, I can count on my mom to care for me in this way. That's enough, I'm done. I don't need to do anything else after that, you know? That's always enough.

Renée Adams (28:59)
⁓ yeah. Yeah. It's such ripple.

It's such ripple effects, too. You know, I think that's just something that I'm hearing. And when I'm talking to people like yourself is, yes, there's a wellness aspect to you and your growth and what you're doing in this life. But it really is a ripple effect. And it trickles down to

people that you interact with, your children, you see that ⁓ reflected back to you. So not only are you able to be present for them, but you're also setting an incredible example.

Jessica Danger (29:44)
Yeah, yes, thank you. I hope so.

Renée Adams (29:46)
Yeah, yeah.

mean, yeah, that's like what you want is, or at least I would think if I had kids, I have nephews and my brother, my sister-in-law, I think have done exceptionally well at parenting and they're just two pretty good humans. And I'm like, okay, if I were to have kids, I would hope that they would just be like decent human beings, you know?

Jessica Danger (29:51)
Yeah.

They usually come out just fine.

Renée Adams (30:11)
Yeah, right, right. ⁓ my gosh. ⁓

Jessica Danger (30:14)
One of the really cool things

too, after the book, you know, when we first got our ARCs, it was important. I wanted my children to read it before anybody else did. But I didn't want them to read it before I knew I was finished with it because I didn't want that emotional input. And that is like, man, I choke up even just thinking about it again.

my children read my book and engage in conversation with me about that. My 19 year old son ⁓ is a cook. He's so talented and he's so just like lit up about it. ⁓ And my dad cooked a lot. And so there's a lot in there about what he cooked, how he cooked it, things like that. ⁓ My 19 year old makes dinner for us one night a week.

And one night after he finished reading the book, he mimicked one of my dad's recipes as a surprise for our dinner. And like, I know it was just, oh, oh, was shaking. was crying. I was a wreck. Yeah. I know. Plus his little heart man.

Renée Adams (31:21)
shit. Wow. How was that? Were you like, ⁓ yeah. Yeah. ⁓ my God. Whoa.

What was the dish?

Jessica Danger (31:40)
He made a ham and split pea soup, yeah, from scratch and with no help from me. He just studied, he read and reread the section of the book in which the soup was in. He like Googled a couple of recipes. He phoned a friend. ⁓

Renée Adams (31:47)
Yeah.

I know for

those of you who are old enough to remember, what was that show? How to Be a Millionaire, or Something Becoming a Millionaire. What is it? You know what I'm talking about? Where you have to phone a friend.

Jessica Danger (32:08)
Thank you. Yeah.

I'm remembering the charts on the bottom. See their answers. So funny. So just, you know, such a... And it really helped them because they never got to meet my dad. ⁓ My, you know, my children never met him. My oldest son met him. You know, he knew him. But my younger children never met him. My husband never met him. I mean, he was not a part of our

Renée Adams (32:12)
Yeah. ⁓ I'll have to look it up.

Mmm. ⁓

Jessica Danger (32:37)
lives. And I would answer their questions like honestly according to whatever age and emotional awareness they had at the time, but they didn't know. And it was important to me because there's a lot in there also about them, you know, and I tried to really be fair to them.

Renée Adams (32:55)
Yeah.

Jessica Danger (33:02)
And it was important to me that they felt it was fair and that they were comfortable with it, ⁓ which they were, you know. ⁓ So it was a wonderful experience with them.

Renée Adams (33:11)
Yeah.

Yeah, mean, I'm sure it's writing a memoir can be, as we said at the beginning, tricky in a lot of different ways, but it's not just you and your perspective. There are so many other...

Jessica Danger (33:28)
Great.

So many, all of them, millions of them.

Renée Adams (33:32)
Yeah, perspectives to consider and

you want to tell your point of view, but you also, yeah, you have to be considerate, ⁓ I would imagine, to just other people's emotions and how they're going to take that.

Jessica Danger (33:41)
Yeah. Yes.

You know, I mean, it's hard. I can't, this is not my line. ⁓ I cannot remember who. We'll have to Google it. It's not me, I'm calling somebody else. They said the only person that should look like an asshole in your memoir is you. Like, it's not my job to make anybody else look like a total jerk, you know? ⁓ My job is to reflect this version of this story

Renée Adams (33:57)
Yeah.

Mmm.

Jessica Danger (34:18)
as I experienced it in a way that hopefully resonates on the page. That's my response. We have to be accurate. We are responsible for adequate fact checking. And you know what? That was a lesson for me also. It's so difficult to fact check your life. And I was wrong about things. It was amazing.

Renée Adams (34:26)
Right.

Oh, yeah, how do you, so how do you even do that? Do you get

like multiple sources? Like, do you remember it this way or how do do that?

Jessica Danger (34:50)
Well, there were a gazillion drafts of this memoir before it got picked up. And so a lot of that was sorted out in that drafting. And yeah, I did, I researched a lot of it on my own, you know, Facebook, my days, speaking of old days, my journals, you know, I'm ⁓ always been a compulsive note taker, ⁓ which serves

Renée Adams (35:00)
Okay.

Mm. Mm-hmm. Ooh, yeah.

Jessica Danger (35:19)
us well if anyone wants to be a writer. ⁓ You got to pay attention and you got to find a way to remember those things. So I would go through old journals, you know, I still have all of his medical records, his estate stuff, his hospital notes, his calendars from his house, ⁓ which has already served me well because someone already said, ⁓ you know, you got this part wrong. And I was like,

Renée Adams (35:26)
Yeah.

Wow.

⁓ no, no, no.

Jessica Danger (35:48)
Hold

please. Yeah. It's time Sam. There's a date here. ⁓ But all that to say I still didn't have it. know, even editors need editors and I was really fortunate that I had ⁓ a great editor, Sam Adams Sergani. He's got a great book out right now. ⁓ He was a gift and he was so generous with his time.

Renée Adams (35:51)
have the receipts. there's a date. Wow.

Jessica Danger (36:15)
and his attention and asked a million questions, absolutely did not make me do anything I was uncomfortable doing, ⁓ which is, you you hear stories of that all the time in this industry of like cutting things that were beloved or like adding things that you didn't want to add. I didn't, you know, there were certain things I just was, I was not going to include. And he was like, that's fine. You don't have to.

Renée Adams (36:42)
Yeah.

Jessica Danger (36:44)
And then little things like I got the date wrong in one chapter because I referenced ⁓ Beauty and the Beast coming out on VHS. ⁓ And he was like, no, that came out in this year. And I was like, You say so. Yeah. So little things, you there's you're you're going to miss something. And even now in the final

Renée Adams (37:00)
Okay, yeah, yeah. Right.

Sure.

Jessica Danger (37:13)
version, the final file, which is when it's done and can't be changed. It's out in the world. Someone the other day was like, did you know? I'm like, I'm like, okay, well, it's there.

Renée Adams (37:23)
Damn it. Yeah, it is what it is. Sorry. Yeah.

well, and is there so, I mean, it's such a large undertaking and it seems like it is something that is innate to you. You've been an avid reader and a writer for essentially, I would say probably your whole existence. So are there any kind of quirky things?

to get you in the mindset to write or is it, ⁓ or at least maybe in the earlier stages with writing the memoir, just your writing vibes in general, is there anything that you do to kind of get in that mindset?

Jessica Danger (38:00)
Yeah.

Yeah, great question. Excuse me. ⁓ It used to be totally different when I was writing this book. It was literally just note taking, things like that. And then I desperately wanted to make sense of it. ⁓ So I started taking everything I was feeling and everything I was noticing and I started blogging. You know, this is how long it was. So

Renée Adams (38:33)
Mmm.

Jessica Danger (38:37)
had an ancient blog. And I really, that's all I was doing with it was I just wanted to, the cool thing about memoir and personal essays is that you already have this thing, which sometimes you don't always want. It's this experience you never asked for or this life change that you didn't see coming. You already have it, it's there. don't have any options. But what you can do is use the writing.

to, okay, I was going to say like make it what you want, but that doesn't feel right. What I think is a better way to represent it is that you can take this thing and work with it in a creative manner until you can own it and inhabit it. Like this is the beginning, this is the middle, this is the end. ⁓

Renée Adams (39:13)
Mm.

Jessica Danger (39:35)
And that was really meaningful for me. So anyway, blogging. ⁓ Now, not so much. ⁓ We have, you know, I'm a full-time faculty member at a private college here where I live. ⁓ So during the school, you know, the school semester, I really do not get a lot of writing done anymore. ⁓ When I do write, I have to like go, I have to leave the house.

Renée Adams (39:56)
Mmm, yeah.

Jessica Danger (40:04)
No one can interrupt me. I can't look around and see something that, you know, the laundry needs to be folded. There's a dish on the counter. You know, I can't. Yeah, my husband can. My husband can sit and he's a poet and he can sit in the middle of everything and just type away, be interrupted and come right back to it. I'm like, how do you do that?

Renée Adams (40:11)
Yes, distractions.

How the fuck do you do that? Yeah.

I need like complete solitude also. feel like quiet, some music or something. Yeah, yeah.

Jessica Danger (40:31)
Yes. Yeah. Totally. Sometimes

I can't even do music because I'll be thinking about the music. And then I need to, it just needs to be quiet. Sometimes, you know, if I am writing at home, I've set, you know, set some time apart. I'll move my stuff. I'll go sit at another place so I'm not at my desk. And one of my kids will come home and they'll be like, Mom,

It's so, it's so quiet. This is so weird. They're like, they're like whispering, you know, in their own house. Like, ugh, get away from me.

Renée Adams (41:04)
Yeah. Get away. can't. No, I totally get the whole like the music thing

too, because there will definitely be some times where I am locked the fuck in and I will have something in the background that has lyrics in it. And even that I'm like, nah, nah, you're mixing with my words in my head. I can't do it. ⁓

Jessica Danger (41:20)
Yeah.

It's true. Yeah,

and you know what, there's great little residencies. That's part of why we started the Joshua Tree Writers Residency is because we, Keith and I understand that you can't always get away. You know, we are both working writers and we have small children and we have lives that we cannot just walk away from for three months, you know? ⁓ So it was really important to us that we

Renée Adams (41:49)
Right.

Jessica Danger (41:54)
⁓ to offer that space back up. It's family and pet friendly. So you can come out for one week at a time with your children and or animal or without them or just the animal or whatever. ⁓ So that you can still try to get some of that creative work done without greatly disrupting all of the people that rely on you.

Renée Adams (42:19)
Yeah.

Jessica Danger (42:21)
despite I think still the kind of common misconception that writers just work in this bubble only when they're inspired by this magic and then poof, it's just done. No, you have to prioritize this, you have to plan this, you have to study your industry, you have to be really honest about what you're making and the quality of what you're making. I mean, it's just like anything else.

Renée Adams (42:46)
Yeah. Yeah. So do

you feel like sometimes it's a little glamorized, like, ⁓ I'm a writer and I can blah, blah, blah? Or do you feel like there's definitely some truth to that? Yeah.

Jessica Danger (42:58)
mean, Yeah.

I think sometimes it is maybe romanticized. ⁓ But I also think that that is like maybe a romanticization by someone who just enjoys writing, which is enough. That's enough. Just like it versus someone who is aspiring to be a working writer. ⁓ I'm not sure that those are the same things. Maybe I'm wrong. ⁓

Renée Adams (43:04)
Mmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

No,

I mean, I kind of like that distinction too. I think that it's encouraging for people to understand that you also don't have to become an author or really do in the terms of successful writer, of having a book or having something produced where you can just write and that makes you a writer. But tell me a little bit more about ⁓ the retreat. So how often do you...

Jessica Danger (43:50)
Yeah, totally.

Renée Adams (43:57)
facilitate that, what does that look like?

Jessica Danger (43:58)
Yeah.

So it is, we only have one person or couple or family unit in at a time. It's not huge. The house itself is not huge. The property is huge, which is great. Yeah. And it is juried. You have to apply. It's a $25 application fee. And you have to supply references.

Renée Adams (44:12)
Gotcha.

Jessica Danger (44:27)
Because Keith and I really are the only ones that working on it every day on our own. It's really not, I mean, it's like skin of our teeth. Like if you reach out on Instagram, it's us. It's like we use all the social media managers. ⁓ We had someone one time ⁓ ping us on Instagram and then email us and then follow back. I emailed forever ago. like, you did not though. I'm reading this one person.

Renée Adams (44:39)
Yeah, right. Yeah.

Like, I would know because it's me.

Jessica Danger (44:57)
⁓ But anyway, so you apply with a writing sample and a couple of references. ⁓ And then the space is yours. We're very rural. We are eight miles outside of Joshua Tree. I mean, it's in Joshua Tree, but it's outside of like Joshua Tree proper, ⁓ which is like the very tourist centric part of Joshua Tree.

Renée Adams (44:58)
Yeah.

Jessica Danger (45:25)
And I mean, it's dirt road. It's real quiet. It's a dark sky community. It's there. Yeah.

Renée Adams (45:29)
You want quiet. This is where you gotta go. ⁓

man, that sounds so lovely.

Jessica Danger (45:38)
Excuse me. Yeah, we love it. It's not for everyone. It's not we've had some people ⁓ Look it up and then decide ⁓ you know what it's not for me ⁓ Sometimes you know if you if you're not familiar with the desert it is like There's you know, it's like desert dark ⁓ And it's quiet and sounds carry

Renée Adams (45:43)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There ain't nothing

out there.

Jessica Danger (46:04)
You're not like popping back into town for a quick cup of coffee. You're making it there Which we love Keith and I love ⁓ but not for everybody ⁓ But yeah, it's just we're on Instagram at Joshua tree writers retreat we have a very minimal website Joshua tree writers retreat comm ⁓ And you can reach out on either one of those ⁓ sites for an application ⁓ And we'll just send it on over to you

Renée Adams (46:10)
Yeah.

Yeah, we'll definitely link everything to where they can find you, order the book, do the Joshua Tree retreat if that's something that you're interested in. ⁓ And really before we wrap up too, I did want to touch upon just the Dead Reckoning portion. So how did you get involved there? Dead Reckoning is so cool because that's of course how I found Stan and just love it. Like just the whole.

Jessica Danger (46:48)
here.

Okay.

Renée Adams (46:59)
vibe of dead reckoning and what they represent and veterans and everything like that because my husband was in the military. So yeah. ⁓

Jessica Danger (47:09)
So Keith was, know, Keith is the co-founder. ⁓ It's Keith and Tyler Carey.

Renée Adams (47:13)
⁓

my gosh. Wow. Okay, I'm just making that. I'm like just making that coral. Okay. Okay.

Jessica Danger (47:16)
my husband. Yeah, that's okay. We don't have

the same, you know, we don't use the same legal last names, spanking Mary. That's, that's him. But yeah, Keith, Keith and Tyler were already doing this. It was already up and running. It was so super successful. ⁓ Before I even met them. ⁓ That's actually how Keith and I met, ⁓ which is so cute because

Renée Adams (47:24)
Yeah

That's your, yeah.

Such a great story. love that. Yes.

Jessica Danger (47:47)
I love it

every time anyone asks us like how did you meet them like on Instagram Long story short I had posted something about teaching I I've been teaching for 16 years 17 years now in August And so I posted something about a student that was graduating

Renée Adams (47:52)
Alright.

Jessica Danger (48:09)
and how they had invited me to their graduation party. It was like a backyard cookout that their family was hosting and teaching is just so special to me. I'm blown away constantly by the fact that I get to talk about books and talk about people that read books. I cannot believe that people pay me to do this. ⁓ And so I posted it and weeks later, ⁓ someone reposted it and it was like,

the closest I've ever become to become like being viral. And Keith's dead reckoning was one of the people that that reposted it. And so the next morning, I was like reaching out to everyone. And Keith was like, you know, we need someone this is what we want to do with education. Like, would you be interested in talking with us about that? And I was like, yeah, man, totally like

Renée Adams (48:40)
Yeah.

Jessica Danger (49:01)
I have my family's a military, you know, my brother and sister-in-law were in the Air Force and like this, would love to do this. I do a lot of work on like on writing about grief and writing about trauma and all of these things. So it lined up really ⁓ naturally. And then we very quickly realized ⁓ in the process of talking about teaching together that we want to do a lot of other things together. And now we're married.

Renée Adams (49:13)
Right.

Yes! ⁓ Just that ignition, yeah.

Jessica Danger (49:31)
So, a trip. ⁓

Renée Adams (49:32)
The power of writing, incredible.

So

the education too, so I know I've seen a couple things on there you do I know monthly ⁓ Topics and things that you can sign up to to write on different topics and things like that. Is that something that you coordinate or

Jessica Danger (49:45)
Yeah. Yes.

Yes, you know, to his credit, ⁓ I just started this new faculty, the full-time faculty job in August. ⁓ And Keith has totally, 100 % taken over the education ⁓ for dead reckoning while I was like, I can't do this. I can't be on and start this new job. And he's like, thank you. it's so hard.

Renée Adams (49:59)
Okay.

Yeah.

I mean, good for you, though, too, for saying like no to something, because that can be very difficult. Yeah, yeah,

Jessica Danger (50:21)
I want to do all of the things and I want to do them so

Renée Adams (50:21)
yeah. Yes.

Jessica Danger (50:23)
well and I want everyone to know that I'm doing them so well.

Renée Adams (50:25)
Yes,

yes, God, I feel you there. So saying no, that's very powerful. So I commend you for that.

Jessica Danger (50:31)
Yes. Yeah. Thank

you. And you know what? To his credit, he encouraged me to say no and then took that workload on for me. There's a big difference between saying no, thank you and having someone somewhere in your orbit that will pick that up for you versus saying no, thank you. then, well, three weeks later, you're still doing it, but now you're doing it tired and resentful.

Renée Adams (50:40)
Yeah.

Yes.

Yes,

yes, yes, yes, exactly. Yeah, it comes back twofold to kind of bite you in the ass. No, that's so nice to have someone who actually support, it's a support system. ugh.

Jessica Danger (51:00)
Yes.

Totally, yeah. But they do,

so he has a great course schedule planned for the rest of the year. Starting in February, we have two classes a month. Last year we did one class a month. This year we have two classes a month. And even though Dead Reckoning, Dead Reckoning Collective only publishes the work of veteran authors,

Our education branch is open to anyone. So anyone can take these classes. They're all held virtually. And they're wonderful. I'm teaching a class with another instructor on writing about addiction. We have journaling, intro to journaling. We have an intro to memoir, if that's interesting to anyone. We have a class on how to become a freelance journalist, how to pitch your work to magazines. ⁓

Renée Adams (52:05)
Wow,

Jessica Danger (52:06)
how to set settings. ⁓ yes.

Renée Adams (52:07)
very in depth, like our breadth of different topics. That's so amazing. Yeah.

Jessica Danger (52:11)
It really is. it

really is. And it's so cool to have all these other people that are really passionate about what they're teaching come in and like light that up for somebody else in a way that you might not otherwise get. So I'm really looking forward to that.

Renée Adams (52:26)
Yeah.

So many exciting things for 2026. I love it. Yeah, we're busy. We're busy women. ⁓ So yeah, again, I just thank you with that being said for taking this time to talk with us and talk with Nose Dive and talk to our audience because I think your story is just very inspiring and I hope that it inspires our audience to

Jessica Danger (52:31)
We are busy.

it's my pleasure.

Renée Adams (52:55)
to write more, to read more, to take that leap, to ⁓ learn more about themselves.

Jessica Danger (53:03)
Thank you so much for having me. I hope you guys have a wonderful week.