writing while caregiving — and grieving with eirinie carson
Episode 21
writing while caregiving — and grieving with eirinie carson
Sue Campbell
transcript
Anne Hawley: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Write Anyway podcast from Pages & Platforms, conversations with writers for writers about how we can keep writing and expressing ourselves when the world wants to pull us away. In today's episode, Sue Campbell speaks with Eirinie Carson. Eirinie Carson is a black British writer living in California. She's a mother of two children, Luka and Selah. She mostly writes about motherhood, grief, and relationships. Her first book, the Dead Are Gods, from Melville House, 2023, was critically acclaimed by Oprah Daily, Nylon Magazine, Shondaland, and the Washington Post, as well as winning a Zibbi award. It was also named one of Kirkus Reviews' best books of 2023. And now here's Sue, speaking with Eirinie Carson about the joys and difficulties of writing while caregiving and grieving.
Sue Campbell: Hey, [00:01:00] Eirinie, so wonderful to talk with you.
Eirinie Carson: Oh my goodness. It's so lovely to be here. Thanks for having me.
Sue Campbell: Yes, I'm absolutely delighted to have you. I wanted to speak with you particularly because you have faced some serious obstacles to getting your writing done, and yet you've managed to publish one beautiful memoir called The Dead Are Gods, which I am about on chapter eight. And it's absolutely gorgeous. I love it. And that book is a memoir about the death of your dear, dear friend, your best friend. So you've also written while processing some really serious grief. So our whole goal is to give people ideas and ways to think about getting their writing done in the face of obstacles. So I'd love to dive in with you and talk about writing while caregiving and writing while grieving.
Eirinie Carson: Great. Let's do it.
Sue Campbell: Okay. So. Let's talk about caregiving first. I know you're a mother and you have two little girls. What [00:02:00] are their ages?
Eirinie Carson: One turns four in two days, and then one turns eight in seven days.
Sue Campbell: Oh my goodness. So they're both Tauruses.
Eirinie Carson: no, I actually have one Aries and one Taurus, they like straddle the the star sign cutoff point which is a fun, a fun thing that happened. Yeah. So they're little. They're little, little, which and my writing began when Luca, my oldest daughter, was first born. I'd been modeling forever and I just had this feeling of like, I want her to think of me as more than just this one thing. And so I allowed myself to write in a way that I hadn't really before, and unfortunately the year after I made that kind of pledge to myself, Larissa died and then the book kind of unfurled from, from the point of her death onwards, and I think it's still unfurling now.
Sue Campbell: Yeah, of [00:03:00] course, of course. So Luca was really young when you started writing again and when you, so you were mothering and grieving and writing all at the same time.
Eirinie Carson: Yeah, I dunno how to do one thing at a time. I think that's pretty, that's a pretty like parenting caregiver trope is that we are really good at multitasking. And for me, I think, I mean, I'm sure a lot of it was the desire to not have any quiet, you know, I didn't want to think too deeply. If I was keeping everything kind of ticking over then, then I didn't really have to dwell on one particular thing too long.
Sue Campbell: Yeah. So how did you manage just the, the day to day of caregiving and writing? And you can talk about before Larissa died and after Larissa died, if that's relevant for you.
Eirinie Carson: Well first of all, I, I am not, I'm a college dropout, so I had a lot of imposter syndrome and still carry it to this day about not having a degree and not having an MFA and whether I was allowed [00:04:00] to call myself a writer, I. And so my first thing that I did was take a class on writing at a place called The Writer's Grotto in San Francisco. And at the end of this like six week course, I think that's how long it was we did a kind of a reading. Everyone got to read of something they'd written. And that was the moment for me that I was like, oh, maybe I. I love this. Maybe I want this to be more than just this, this thing I tried. So that was kind of how it started. But now I have I have a writing space that I go to when I really need the time because it is really difficult to factor in writing, especially as writing looks like nothing, you know, it's not like I am toiling in a field. It is like I'm, I'm sat on my laptop on the couch and that doesn't, I, I have this feeling about not looking like I'm actually doing anything, but I am, of course I [00:05:00] am. And writing also looks like reading. It also looks like taking a walk. It also looks like thinking about things. So, I, I kind of had to understand how to give myself permission to explore the ways in which writing is also just being quiet and still, and listening for those, the next steps that you're supposed to take, you know?
Sue Campbell: And that can also be hard when you're a caregiver. There's not a lot of like, space kids will kind of come and see a vacuum and, and fill it.
Eirinie Carson: Mm-hmm. Totally.
Sue Campbell: sounds like you have to, you have to get out of your own house in order to get stuff done.
Eirinie Carson: I do, because even now as we speak, I'm looking, there's some dishes over there that I haven't done. And you know, there, there are things to, to distract me for sure. Yeah. And, and also, I mean, even if I had a three hour window, it doesn't mean that I'm gonna write something brilliant in that time. It, it might just be trash. it's very hard to turn on and [00:06:00] turn off that switch of creativity.
Sue Campbell: Do you have any sort of rituals or mechanisms or ways of thinking about it that help you turn that on and off?
Eirinie Carson: Yeah. I love a walk in nature. Like my favorite hike is near my house and it is through the Redwoods of California and it is, i, I, something about it feels like church to me. It like really helps things flow. And if I'm really, really lucky writer's residencies are really where I've done so much of the bulk of my work because you can really be immersed in, in yourself and your time. And the best writers residencies also have people cooking for you. So you don't even have to think about that, which is a real treat. And yeah, I mean that's also really tricky for parents or caregivers because how on earth do you take that time? To step away for two weeks, two weeks is my dream length, 'cause I feel like it lets me decompress fully and then get into the work. But [00:07:00] yeah. How do you do that with, with small children or people who depend on you?
Sue Campbell: Well, that's a great question. I know you were at a writing retreat when we first met 'cause we were gonna be on a, we were on a panel together at the San Francisco Writers Conference, so we were planning the panel and emailing back and forth, and you said you were on a retreat. Why don't you tell us a little bit about that one.
Eirinie Carson: Yeah. I was at a retreat called Hedgebrook, which is wonderful. I think their applications currently are open as we speak this minute. And Hedgebrook is a women and fem people- centric writer's residency on Whidby Island, which is off the coast of Seattle. It's stunning, gorgeous. You are in the woods that each writer, you can have five writers in residency at a time, and each writer gets their own cottage and it has a woodburning stove and it has a mezzanine level with a bed, and it has a desk and it has a kitchenette. And your meals are prepared for you every day at five 30 you have dinner and then you pick [00:08:00] up your lunch for the next day. It is so well thought out. And just really idyllic. And I was lucky enough to be in a cohort with some really dazzling women writers, including the memoirist T Kira Madden, who wrote a really beautiful book called long Lived. Wait. Lone Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls. And she's also working. We both did a memoir first and we were both working on a novel at that time. So that pivot from one genre to the next was prevalent on our, in our conversations. And yeah, I had a really magical time. Really magical.
Sue Campbell: And what was the discussion with your partner like when you said, I need, I need to go away to this writer's retreat.
Eirinie Carson: I'm really lucky that my, well, it's not luck 'cause I picked him for this reason, but he he is very understanding. He's also an artist, he's a musician and so he understands the need to step out of the caregiving [00:09:00] role to access art. And I was midway through final edits for this novel that comes out next year called Blood Fire Baby. And so he just was like this, okay, this is, this is what has to happen. This is, we will make it work. And then I came back from my residency and he went on tour for two weeks. So it was very much. We we're often in this like, dance of making space for each other, which feels really nice and sounds pretty idyllic, but also can be tricky because if you're always making space for each other, how do you have space together? You know? So it's a, it's a work in progress and like a, a growing, evolving thing as I deepen my. Practice and, and become busier with writing. But yeah, he's very cool.
Sue Campbell: Yeah. That's wonderful. Yeah, that's one of the best tips that I can give is like, have a really great support system. . Have good people around you, and if you're getting flack, a conversation needs to happen.
Eirinie Carson: [00:10:00] I think about that. I don't know if you read Maggie Smith's. Memoir.
Sue Campbell: not yet, I've been hearing about it.
Eirinie Carson: It was really beautiful. And she has an essay. She, she separated from her husband, but she has this essay in which she talks about when her writing was getting really popular and she was really busy and booked all the time, and how resentful he was of it and how she realized that it just wasn't, it was making her feel bad and there was this kind of gendered assumption that she needed to be home more, even though he got to leave all the time. And I remember reading that and thinking like how difficult it would be to create with that added pressure of guilt, you know.
Sue Campbell: Yeah. Yeah. I wanna go back to something you said at the beginning about how you gave yourself permission to start writing again after your daughter was born because you wanted her to see you as a writer. And actually almost the exact same thing happened to me. I always [00:11:00] grew up wanting to be a writer and I never actually managed to get my act together. Just in little spurts here and there. But then once I had my first kid, I was like, oh, like if I want him to be able to live his dreams, then I have to do that. I have to model that. So I think some people get really caught up in the guilt of, oh, I should be devoting all of my energy into caregiving. But it seems to me that we both felt that paradox of like, no, actually I have to be true to myself and do what I wanna do to model that for my kid. Is that kind of how you felt, or how was your thinking around that?
Eirinie Carson: absolutely. I think that's really an astute way of putting it, I think. I think I grew up with an artist mum who I. It was funny, I was having a conversation with someone else who grew up with a mum who was an artist, and we were like, God, they were both crazy, weren't they? Yeah, they were both insane. And we were like, did either of them get to do their art? No, they didn't. And we were like, maybe that's why [00:12:00] they had such a hard time because they were endlessly shoving this thing that they loved away to make space and, you know, out of necessity, my mum was a single mother and had to work, multiple jobs to feed my brother and I, but I, and now as she's getting older, she is making more time for her art. And I think I, first of all was in a privileged position where I didn't have to work multiple jobs to feed my children. And I really want to acknowledge that. But I think wanting to be seen by my children as a whole person, multifaceted person, as a person who has interests outside of them who has a life outside of them, so that when they begin to have their own lives outside of me, which hasn't happened yet, but I'm hopeful I will feel bereft, of course, but I won't feel like my purpose has disappeared. I think that, so I think there was a, there was an aspect of like. This is a gift for my child, but it was also a [00:13:00] gift for me.
Sue Campbell: Yeah, definitely. And a lot of the people that I coach, they have a lot of issues around resentment that they're not getting to live the creative life that they wanna live. And they come to me 'cause they're kind of at that point where they have to figure out a way to make that work, and to have those conversations and to learn how to carve out that space.
Eirinie Carson: Yeah. Yeah.
Sue Campbell: Let's talk a little bit about what, just a typical day of your life as a writer and a parent, or a typical week, if that's easier. Kind of every day is different sometimes, but I know, did you, are you finishing up the novel right now?
Eirinie Carson: Yeah, we're like final, final, teeny, tiny tweaks. I just had a really dear friend read the entire manuscript for the first time, which felt pretty vulnerable and we're doing book cover edits now also.
Sue Campbell: Great. So what is that like in the day to day? How are you making that work?
Eirinie Carson: Well, I. I would love to be one of those writers who like wakes at six and descends down the [00:14:00] stairs in a linen dress to her bureau where she writes, you know, I would love that. And like the birds sit on the window sill as she writes the next great American novel. But I'm not, I'm very haphazard, probably mostly because of my children, but also maybe my personality, I don't know.
We won't dissect that too much, but I, I mean, start the day by taking the children to school. And then I try and slap some life into myself with caffeine. And then I typically begin the editing process. And for me that means going through my editor's notes, which are in the margins of my document dismissing the ones that I don't agree with and like defending my choices and making tweaks as and where it's necessary. I've also been reading a lot because there are books that I find really inspiring for the editing process and just, yes, I want to lean into this. I want to sound as, as polished as this, or as vulnerable as this. [00:15:00] And so I am allowing myself time to read during the day, even though I do have guilt about how that looks like relaxing, you know?
So, so that's happening. And then I'm also working on another novel right now. That's about my dad's life, my dad's early life as a Jamaican immigrant in London. And that one is kind of my, when I am waiting for my editor, which in, in the kind of later stages of the publication process, there is so much waiting and it's so glacial and it's so boring. Just waiting for an email to say, okay, I've seen your notes, and I approve. So writing this other book is my procrastination tool,
Sue Campbell: I don't think that's a procrastination. I think that's a brilliant strategy to keep you, to keep you going.
Eirinie Carson: Thank you. Yeah. As someone who isn't very patient, it's definitely like, well, we'll fill the time. That way it feels good.
Sue Campbell: Yeah, [00:16:00] exactly. Well, let's talk a little bit about writing while grieving, and I just wanna leave that as a really open-ended question for what came up for you as you were writing the memoir.
Eirinie Carson: Oh, what a, what a question. I. I have so much to say about this. I, so my best friend Larissa died six years ago. It was a surprise death, which makes it sound more fun than it was. It wasn't, it was a surprise death sounds akin to a surprise party. It's not. It's, it's famously terrible. And, when she died, she died in Paris where she was living, and I was in California, and there was this big gulf and I knew that I wanted to read at her funeral. And so I wrote a eulogy. And from her eulogy came this like geyser of things I wanted to say. I went to Paris for the funeral. I saw her mum, and her mum was so desperate for stories about Larissa. She just wanted anything.
Anything. And I was so, I was not in the place to [00:17:00] give her anything. I just, and it haunted me after when I left, I was just like, I want her to know how much her daughter meant to me and, and how much more than just a friend is such a paltry word for what she was and what that type of friendship is.
You know, it's so much more than that. So, I just kept writing and I never really thought about it as a book. For me it was a very, very much a homage and also a way to collect all of the things I felt were slipping through my fingers because she was dead and could no longer remember them with me.
So it began that way. And then as I slowly realized that actually what I was doing was writing a book. There had to be this other element to it that had to be self-reflection, that had to be vulnerability from me. It couldn't just be a eulogy to my friend. It had to say something greater. And I think it does in the end about the way in which she died was a very specific way that I don't love talking about, but it's been two years since the book came out.
So I'm like, I think I. I think it's okay to discuss. She died from substance use. My father struggled with substance use. He is now sober. And that kind of mirror and losing someone I loved deeply, but keeping someone alive that I didn't know well at all was such a, a poignant portion of the grieving process and really understanding my resentment and my dad for using as long as he did and somehow making it into old age, and resentment at Larissa for using and never telling me.
And so yeah, I think so much of writing this book was, catharsis and, and excavation and a desire to understand which I think is most people's writing journeys regardless of, of genre or topic. And for me, it really helped me grieve. But I will say, Sue, that it turns out writing a book about grief does not summarize your grief in a tidy bow. It will still be there after publication. It will still be there after every reading. Because the thing about writing a book about grief is that everyone wants to tell you about the people they've lost. And that is a really heavy thing to hold. And I think that was something that was really unexpected for me. I was like, oh, I didn't realize I was gonna be the ambassador for death, but here we are.
Sue Campbell: Yeah. Yeah. How has the experience of losing Larissa and writing the memoir impacted the novel that you are just finishing up, and then the one that you're writing now, if at all?
Eirinie Carson: Hmm. Oh, so much [00:20:00] so. Bloodfire Baby, the novel, is about a postpartum woman being haunted by ghosts. Which I also was a postpartum woman being haunted by ghosts. So there was a lot of overlap, and I think in the postpartum journey, I'm, I'm sure you would agree, there's a lot of grieving, there's grieving for the, the loss of the person that you were like, will she ever come back?
Or is this just me now? And and grief for the type of mum you thought you were gonna be and the one that you are, you know? So for me it made sense to follow on a book about grief with a book about postpartum psychosis and ancestral trauma. And yeah, and then, and then from there, a book about my dad who I think I was avoiding a lot, even in the writing of The Dead Are Gods , it took me a long time to confront that link. And so it was really, it's been fascinating to have conversations with him about his life and [00:21:00] been fascinating to write from a fiction perspective where I can make up a narrative for periods of my life that are blanks really.
Sue Campbell: and I would imagine it's also because real people are much harder to understand and make their choices coherent. It's all right when you're fictionalizing it and you have to put it in a story arc it's, it's almost like this easier way to process your experience with him, maybe.
Eirinie Carson: Absolutely. Absolutely I am. My dad also suffered a series of aneurysms like four years ago and I think four or five maybe. But in, in recovering from that, which he was able to do, a lot of his memory has gaps. And so there are things that I would like to know that he will never be able to tell me.
And so once again, in this kind of cathartic way, I'm like piecing a story [00:22:00] together for my own you know, satisfaction.
Sue Campbell: Well, that's some of the benefits of being a writer. There aren't a ton of them sometimes.
Eirinie Carson: No, there really isn't. There really isn't. It's a lonely old, lonely old work. But yeah, that is a nice part.
Sue Campbell: Yeah. Well, is there any other, just parting takeaways for other writers out there who may be writing while caregiving? They may be writing while grieving, they may be writing while doing both. Just words that you wanna impart to them that might be helpful.
Eirinie Carson: Yeah, I think read as much as you can on grief and from parents, parent writers. I also think that there is no right way to write. You just get it out. You just put it down. I write in my notes app all the time, especially like if I'm on a playground and I have a thought and I want to get it down, I will scribble it down, because even in that way it's, [00:23:00] it's sacred and it counts, you know? And then later on I can play with it and mold it. But I think finding whatever avenue you can to write, even if it doesn't look how you imagined it would
Sue Campbell: Yeah, you don't need the linen dress in the 6:00 AM Wake up time.
Eirinie Carson: I don't think anyone does. No, we're not doing that. It's not Mary Shelley. we've got busy lives and finding little corners to plant things in is, is all we can do.
Sue Campbell: I love that so much. Well, Eirinie Carson, thank you so much for your time. I wanna give a shout out to The Dead Are Gods again. I'm about eight chapters in and I'm gonna be finishing it up quick 'cause it's very, very compelling and it's just pulling me through and it's really beautiful. And it's just making me think of all of my close friendships, and making me wanna reconnect with people because you don't have the chance to reconnect with Larissa now. And I feel like that's something poignant we can all take away, is to really treasure [00:24:00] those relationships. I'm really looking forward to the new novel. Give us the title of the new novel one more time.
Eirinie Carson: The new novel is called Bloodfire Baby, and it comes out I believe February '26.
Sue Campbell: Okay. Fantastic. Thank you so much, Eirinie.
Eirinie Carson: Yay. Thank you, Sue.
Anne Hawley: Irene Carson's award-winning memoir, The Dead Are Gods, is available wherever books are sold. Please support your local independent bookstore if you can. Be sure to rate and review our show where you get your podcasts. And thank you for joining us. We'll see you again soon for another great conversation to inspire you to write anyway.