S2 E11: Making Time for Creativity with Marla Taviano

[00:00:00] This is a Dauntless Media Collective Podcast. Visit dauntless.fm for more content. I think probably I should go easy on myself and enjoy those moments of giddiness that I do feel sometimes when I am being creative, when I'm making poem art, when I'm remembering something from my childhood, when someone is inspired by me.

[00:00:29] But what I told my kid, I said, how about you just do a little bit each day? And so, yeah, try to make time for a little bit of creativity. We can, for the most part, make time to be creative and I think we really need it. Like I really think that we kind of are going to explode or implode if we have too much creativity bottled up inside of us.

[00:01:27] Hello Deconstructionists, this is Maggie, the host of our podcast where we'll collectively share our stories and experiences of leading high control religion along with what it's been like for us to find new practices that help us feel good and confident in ourselves. I hope that hearing these stories reminds you that your deconstruction is valid and most of all that you are not alone on this journey. You are good, you are loved, and you are worthy just as you are. Hello Deconstructionists.

[00:01:56] My guest today is Marla Taviano who's a repeat guest on the podcast. Usually I read a little like bio for people but instead of reading a bio for Marla, I'm going to read a poem of hers which I'll probably do throughout the podcast. So Marla, the first poem I'm going to read is from What Makes You Fart and it's called My Aesthetic and I thought what better way to introduce Marla than a poem she wrote called My Aesthetic. So it goes like this, writing books people are embarrassed or afraid to share on social

[00:02:24] media with scandalous words in the title like sex and fart and heretic, which cheeky word will I choose next? So Marla, thanks for bringing all of yourself to the podcast. Thanks for being here again. Welcome. Thank you for having me. And the last time we were on together, you started by reading a poem that I wrote about pooping. So I feel like this is a pattern and I love it.

[00:02:51] Well, I mean you did just come out with a book that is called What Makes You Fart. Yeah, I did do that. I feel like it's just, I don't know, it's like it's wrapped up in the way that you do your work. It's like let's be goofy and fun and silly and push a couple boundaries and laugh along the way. Okay. I love that you said that. And let me just tell you this first. Let's talk about you for a second. Okay. I re-listened to our podcast episode.

[00:03:18] I always listen to the podcast interviews that I do just one time, only one time. But it's always interesting to me because a lot of times they'll come out a few weeks later, sometimes a couple months later. I don't really remember what I said. And for the most part, I enjoy listening. It might be a tiny bit cringy every once in a while. But I listened to our interview earlier this week on a walk and I was so moved.

[00:03:46] Like I was just at one point in the walk, I put my hand up in the air like I was praising somebody. And I was like, yes, yes. I don't know who was talking me or you or what was going on, but I was like, oh. So also, and this is a habit. I try not to do this. I almost exclusively listen to podcasts when I'm walking in my neighborhood. I don't clean the house. My kids do that. I have young adult kids that live with me. I don't run errands.

[00:04:16] They do that. I don't drive to work. I work from home. So just sitting and listening to a podcast in my house doesn't make a lot of sense because I'm usually writing or doing something that I need to concentrate on. But when I'm walking, I listen to podcasts. And I try not to pull out my notes app and jot down what I'm listening to while I'm walking. I have tripped in potholes more than once. I almost hit a parked car, like ran into the parked car because I'm so focused.

[00:04:45] But I thought, okay, I can't waste listening to this interview with Maggie and then forget what we talked about because my point was don't talk about the same things, Marla. Talk about something different. Don't repeat yourself. So I'm just going to read you the notes that I took. Okay. I'm scared. Straight down on my notes app on my walk. No, it's fine. And I didn't trip. I don't think. Yeah, it was great. Okay. Actually, I'm not going to read it straight through because I got to make a couple comments.

[00:05:15] But okay. What makes you fart origin story? So I told that already. I don't need to tell that. And I say that I'm rewriting the book. And I did. I rewrote it. I republished it. So that was fun to hear that I was thinking about doing that. Then I did it. I told you about the word whole farted. And I jokingly said that I should copyright it. Guess what? I did. I trademarked whole farted. One of my kids told me to do it. And this is a kid who before wasn't going to let me write about her in a book.

[00:05:44] And then she changed her mind. I said, what made you change your mind? And she said, I realized that nobody reads your books. That's right. And this kid wants me to trademark it. So I am in the process of doing that. Okay. I talked about how my body is a newish thing for me. I talked about how I went to so much church. I helped people get to heaven. I look back through my 62 journals. I have four books that serve as my receipts that I was a true Christian. I collect James Dobson books.

[00:06:14] People get mad about my protest art. And you awarded me superlative awards. Yes, I did. For a number of journals, which is now, I think, 66. And James Dobson books, which is 70 some at the time. And I try to get rid of them as they come in. I don't want big stacks. But I currently have a whole bookshelf full and then a stack on the floor. I said that I was ambitious. And I'm going to pull up this. No one can see it but me and you. But this sweatshirt that I have is a pink sweatshirt.

[00:06:43] It's the only pink thing I own. And it has the word ambitious in red. And I had it on. But it's 72 degrees here in South Carolina. And I was sweating. So I had to take that off. And now your shirt says Phenomenal Woman. It does. It says Phenomenal Woman. Then I went on a little John Piper, Jim Dobb, vent rant. And I told God that I would go out here and love people until you take me down. And that I want to leverage the Christian stuff inside of me in a redemptive, cool way. And that I am the happiest I've ever been.

[00:07:12] And as I was writing this, the other note that I put in all caps, I am totally going to make poems out of our convo. Like, I thought this is some poem stuff right here that we talked about. So watch out for that. There might be a poem coming with your words in it. We'll see. Oh, my God. I would love that. Yeah. Our first conversation is one of my favorite episodes. It's one that I always point people to if they're looking for an episode to start with on my podcast. It's episode 16. If anybody hasn't listened to it, you should go listen to that first.

[00:07:42] It's called Committed to Your Wholeness with Marla Taviano. And your book Hole had just come out, which was the third in her trilogy, which is jaded. No, Unbelieve, jaded, and then hole. Yeah. Is that the right order? Yeah. Yep. All of them are fantastic. And yeah, it's cool to see that all the things you said, here's what I'm doing. Here's what I'm working on. Here's who I am. They're still true. You have done these things. You have continued to work on these things. Yeah, you're pretty badass, Marla. Thank you.

[00:08:12] And I did not feel like that at all this week. So that was really actually good. That's probably why I was throwing my fist up in there. Like, oh, okay. Doing it, yeah. And so I think it's good to look back. And we can talk about this more. But I turned 50 next year. So this, I think, we're in December 2024 right now. I think this is going to air, you said, in January 2025. And I got this big idea to do 50 podcast interviews in 2025.

[00:08:42] And yes, to talk about my books and stuff like that. But I mostly just want to go back and talk to people that I already talked to and friends. And I don't, I'm in my house a lot. I don't get out a lot. And most of my friends are around the country and the world. And so once upon a time, I went to 52 zoos in 52 weeks with my family. I was very young then. I was like 32 or something. But I thought, you know what? I could do something big again. And this one I can do from my dining room table.

[00:09:12] I don't have to actually go out in the world. And instead of small kids, I have big kids who take care of all the details of my home while I do the work at my desk. So yeah, I've been just doing a lot of looking back at my life and my childhood. I'm in this really cool spot where, so I was born in 1975.

[00:09:41] And I'm going to turn 50 in 2025, which means I'm straddling the year 2000. Like half of my life is before 2000, half is after. And I'm brainstorming. I want to write like this memoir in verse of my childhood in the 80s. And I was thinking like how calm and mild and nothing really happened to me. That's what I thought. And as all these memories are coming back, I was like, oh, shoot. I kind of forgot about, I mean, some of this stuff is kind of bad.

[00:10:10] Some of it is exciting. Some of it's fun. So I'm going to be writing about that. I'm reading books that I read when I was a kid. The poem art is all about that. Like I take my poems and I glue them on illustrations from kids' books that I read. Amelia Bedelia, Frog and Toad, Strawberry Shortcake. And yeah, it's just bringing up a whole lot of stuff. So we'll see. I mean, this year might do me in.

[00:10:39] All this remembering and talking and thinking. And I don't know. We'll see. If I know Marla like I think I do, nothing will do you in. It will make you grow and bloom and blossom, but nothing's going to do you in. You're good. You've got it. Yeah. And what you and I, one of the things we talked about in our last talk was that people say like, aren't you afraid? What's going to happen if you don't pray anymore?

[00:11:07] Or if you don't believe in God and these things, I'm like, do you know the things that happened to me when I was a Christian? Like so many things. And so I'm not really worried about that because I have been through a lot. Yeah. Still here. Still breathing. Still standing. When you look back at the episode that we did a year, not quite a year ago, but almost, and some of your other older episodes, what do you notice?

[00:11:34] Or like when you look back at your life, even when you're like thinking about what it felt like in the moment versus now looking back, what are some of the big differences that you feel like you notice about how you experienced it then and how you view it now? And I have a follow-up question, but I'm going to start there. Okay. So let me make sure I understand this. You're asking me the events that I went through, how I saw them then and how I see them now looking back. Yes. Okay.

[00:12:02] I was just thinking about this, maybe this morning, all of the times that I, when things happened that were good and I gave praise to God and things happened that were bad and I blamed Satan, like it was spiritual warfare. This is Satan attacking. I mean, I can laugh about it now, but I was so dead serious about it.

[00:12:25] Like I was so serious and just thinking, um, I write a lot of poems about giving God credit and not blame and thinking how nice that is for God, that anything good that happens, God gets all the credit and glory and anything bad must be Satan. Nevermind that God could swoop in and save us from Satan. If you felt like it, you know, or could change some of the things that are happening in the world.

[00:12:55] So that's a big one. That's a big one for me where I'll look back or even like not giving myself enough credit. Like if something went wrong, I blame the devil or myself, but I was made sure not to ever give myself credit for things because I'm just this lowly worm. So anything good that comes from me is just God, like gushing himself through me, this empty vessel that's God is coming out. And I don't know how it wears the line.

[00:13:23] If I did something that was like half good, God was just not like having a good day or I got some of myself mixed in there and mess that up or, or what. But, but I definitely now it's, I don't know. I don't know if I believe in a God or a higher power, but I definitely don't give that higher power only credit and no blame. And I do take a lot of that credit myself and blame and also realizing that there's stuff

[00:13:53] that happens in this world. That's not, it's not my fault. It's out of my control. And it's out of a lot of people's control. And I have a lot of privilege, relatively speaking to a lot of people who they too have prayed and prayed and prayed for God to answer. And God didn't answer. Like my ex-husband survived a massive heart attack when he was 34. A friend of mine, her husband died from a heart attack around age 34. Am I a better Christian?

[00:14:22] Am I letting God use me in a bigger way or is she a better Christian because now she has a story that she could glorify God with? I mean, what the hell? It's like, it's a mess. And I, I don't, I mean, I, I don't want to just like rain on everybody's parade, piss in the pot, whatever, when they're talking about God and all that he does. But sometimes I feel like, I feel like doing that. Yeah. I'm, I try to let people believe.

[00:14:50] I mean, obviously people can believe whatever they want to believe, but I try not to feel like bothered by other people believing in God unless it's causing harm. Yeah. And then I have no qualms about saying that there's a problem with it. Yeah. I think your poems and our conversation was helpful for me to think about, like I had felt this, God always gets the credit and none of the blame. But to read some of your poems that say it so explicitly was really helpful for me to

[00:15:20] put words to it that, yeah, we always give him the credit and we never give him the blame. And I think you said like, there's nothing God can do to get blame. There's never a scenario where we will blame him. Okay. My follow-up question to that is when you look back at your 50th year, what do you hope that you see? Like if you listen to this episode or look back at your life, I don't know, a year from

[00:15:49] now, five years, 10 years, whatever, however long you want to, you want to pretend. When you look back, what do you hope you see? Oh, wow. Oh man. Okay. So my big dream and I don't like, I try to have big dreams and then also be realistic. I don't really know where the line is there. And I've always been someone who is like, I don't care about money. Money's not important, but I do care about money.

[00:16:16] It is important because I can't really do my dreams if I don't have some of it. So right now I write for other people as my main source of income. And then my books sell like tiny bits of money. And I have so many books that I want to write. And a lot of them are poetry. Some are not. Some I want to re-release. Like when you're talking about how do I view things differently?

[00:16:43] What makes you fart that I re-released this year and I originally wrote in 2017. I did a big overhaul because I didn't put any of the stuff in there. There wasn't a lot about God in my fart book, but there were some things and there were things about my ex-husband. So I redid all that. I have a few other eBooks out in the world that I would love to just go through and change,

[00:17:10] like not change the story of what happened, but either add some reflection or rewrite them. I wrote a book in 2006 called From Blushing Bride to Wedded Wife. And in 2013, I think, like I said, that book went out of print and I got the rights to the book. And I didn't have a document. So I retyped like this, the whole entire book. Oh, wow. But I edited it a bunch and I put notes at the bottom.

[00:17:40] And recently, it's on Amazon. It's called The Wife Life. It's the redo of it. And Amazon had this program. And Amazon sucks. But my books, a lot of them are on there right now. And they had this thing where you could just get your book available as an audio book. And again, this is one of those things with AI and stuff. I'm very hesitant. But no one is ever going to make an audio book of my wife life from 2013. So I was like, what the hell? I'll just click this button.

[00:18:10] And then I paid $3.99. And I listened to my wife life on a couple of walks. And I was, okay. So first of all, I was like, oh, you're funny. This is a good book. And then to be able to see that the way I had changed my mind about submission and respect and all this stuff from 2006 to 2013 was wild.

[00:18:35] And now I am not going to go back and make a third edition of From Blushing Bride to Wided Wife. But the 2024 edition would obviously be way, way different. Anyway, your question was, what do I want to have done or what do I want? I have a lot of books that I want to write, rewrite, re-release, poetry, all kinds of stuff. And I can't do that full time. I have to earn money.

[00:19:02] So the dream is that my books earn the money. I know that I have to go out and speak and do different things. I don't really want to be a deconstruction speaker. I would rather speak about creativity or writing and those kinds of things. So just using this time to piece together some ways that I can make money doing my own stuff so that I can make, I can do less of the writing for other people.

[00:19:27] So in a dream world, I turn 50 and boom, my books are selling and I have enough money and I can get a car that's, my cars. I drive a 2006 minivan. My car is as old as my youngest child. My car is going to be 19 coming up here in 2025. And like, you know what? I would really like a car that is in, you know, maybe elementary school.

[00:19:57] Not graduating from high school. I would like a newer car. So there are, yeah, there are some things that I want, but when I look back in the last, like, so my ex left in September of 2020, I was making like $250 a week. There's a pandemic. I got these kids who don't have driver's license because they lived in Cambodia for five years, blah, blah, blah. I have come really, really, really far. I would like to zoom a little bit faster in my 50th year. And maybe I, maybe I can.

[00:20:27] And part of this do the 50 podcast episodes is it's me getting out of my comfort zone and getting in front of other people, other people's audiences, new people who might want to read my book. Cause that's the other challenging part. Even if I make time to write the books, which I do, I published six books from 2021 to 2024, but then making the time to tell people about them. That's another full-time job, which I don't have time for like three full-time jobs.

[00:20:57] So at the end of the year, I want to have pushed myself outside of my comfort zone. I want to love people. I want to be brave. I also want to sit at home on my couch a lot, but I do that. I do that a lot anyway. And yeah, I just want people who need the words in my books to know that they're there. Yeah. And so that's really important to me.

[00:21:27] It's fun. And I believe in the stuff that I've written, the stuff I've written recently, not the stuff that I wrote back in the day. But yeah, we will see. We will see. Marla inspired me to turn some of her, I started with her poems. I took her words and put them on pictures just like she did. I was like, this seems like a fun project. So I did some of that. It was so fun.

[00:21:52] And then I slowly just put some of my own like very short little sayings on things. And that's been so fun and healing for me. And one that I made recently was creativity is an act of resistance. So I'd love to talk to you about creativity. And I feel like you kind of inspired me to be able to or like gave me permission in a way to just like play with words. They don't have to be serious. They don't have to be super profound.

[00:22:21] They can be, but they might not be. I mean, in one of your books, you're like, you have a poem that's I'll butcher it, but it's something like, this is a really bad poem. And I wrote it down. And now you have permission to write down a bad poem too. And so it's something like that. And I feel like, yeah, you just you have a way of giving people permission to just play with thoughts and pictures and words and be creative in whatever way it comes out.

[00:22:46] So can you talk to us a little bit about creativity and how that's been healing for you? Yes. So I don't even know where to start because I'm this is like talk about what makes me fart. This is what makes me fart. I will start with this book. So I told you I was born in 1975. People cannot see this, but it is the Childcraft How and Why Library, volume 11, Make and Do

[00:23:12] from 1975 that I found at Goodwill for $2 recently. And I write poems about this because this was my single favorite book as a child. People have asked me, what was your favorite book as a kid? And I can never really pick one, but I totally forgot about this one. So in this book from 1975, it gives you all of these crafts that you can make, like so many different things and they're ridiculous.

[00:23:40] But I would just sit in my room, look through this, take notes. Like what could I actually make? I am not being like self-deprecating when I say that I am not good with my hands. Like I cannot build things and make things. I can't put bookshelves together. Like I cannot do that. So I would have to find the crafts that were, that just didn't require a lot.

[00:24:07] And most of them were, were pieces of paper, paper that you folded or things that you wrote on. There are these like games that you can play and a show that you can put on and clown costumes and all this stuff. And I would hold these little, I don't even know what I called them, but for my siblings, I have three younger siblings. And then for a while, my cousins, five cousins who were missionaries to Indonesia lived with us. I thought it was for a year.

[00:24:37] I think it was just a few months. My mom told me, it felt like forever. But then when they would visit, I would just be in charge and I would lead these crafting sessions or these games, or we would do these things. We had like the Mary Lou Retton club. I don't know if you even know who Mary Lou Retton is. I do not. She's a gymnast, US gymnast from 1984. She was 16 and she won the first women's all around. So I was nine years old.

[00:25:02] Also cannot do anything like somersaults or flips, but I would pretend like that I could. So I'm doing all this stuff and I'm realizing as I look back now, I have always wanted to be some kind of artist, but art class in school was a really stressful situation for me because I'm not good at drawing. I'm not good at painting.

[00:25:28] And again, this is not, I'm fine saying this and I'm serious about it and I don't care. Like it's not, that's not my gift, but I am good with words. I can write them. I can cut them out. I can put them in different things and I can make magic with them. And I am going to read something if I can find it from my book, Please Cut Out My Poems. It's all poems, but I do have a few like notes that I wrote in it.

[00:25:58] And this says, as a kid, I cut up calendars and framed the art on my walls. I cut up magazines and invented stories. I made sappy word collages for boyfriends. 23 years ago when I had my first baby, I got this quote unquote brilliant idea to make and sell greeting cards out of old cards people had sent me. I'd call my business salvaged sentiments. OMG. This word art thing has been a long time love, I guess.

[00:26:24] And so getting ready to turn 50, trying to write about my childhood, realizing all of the things that I love to do and make and create. And now for the past year, so this poem art journey thing started in August of 2023. I just, the idea came to me and I started doing it. And now I make poem art every single day. There's more, I need to find more people. I will tell people, can I please give you my poem art? And they're like, yeah, well, we're good.

[00:26:53] We don't really need any poem art. Please, I have so much poem art. I am not helping by also making it and being like, can I give it to people too? You can. I want to start a poem art revolution. It's going to catch on Maggie. We just got to keep at it. And we got to find our people. We got to find the people who want it. So looking back and seeing all those things that I did and how it all leads to this. And then what makes you fart is about looking back at what you loved when you were a kid.

[00:27:22] And that's how you can find what you love now. And I can't make a living from poem art. I don't even sell it, but I can make a living from my words. And you don't have to make a living from the thing that you love. Just having time and space and resources to do it. I don't remember how we got started on this. I'm always forgetting the original questions. I had asked you about creativity and healing, but I like where this is going. And then we can shift into healing in a minute too. So go wherever you want. I'll shift into healing right now. Okay.

[00:27:50] Because the deconstructing journey is a lot about looking back to see how did I get here? How long have I believed this? Why did I believe this? Who told me this? What harm was done? I listened to your episode with Dr. Laura Anderson, which is so good. And she's talking about her childhood and her experience and the difference between deconstruction and religious trauma.

[00:28:17] And also she was talking, I didn't take notes listening to this one, but she lived at a camp for a while. I lived at a camp for a while. Oh, I didn't know that about you. Yes. And so just that healing of looking back and trying to piece things together and figure things out, but also like sending love back to who you were during all those different times.

[00:28:44] Like it's a little bit tricky for me. I'm getting there to love the woman who wrote from Blushing Bride to Wedded Wife and told wives what they needed to do to be good wives. It's a lot easier for me to look back at eight-year-old, nine-year-old Marla who was sitting on her bed with her make and do book and making crafts and reading her Bible and things like that.

[00:29:10] But I don't have, I think you had said, do you have journals like from way back when? Okay. Yes, I do. And I love looking back at them. I do not have as many as you do. You still have the superlative on that. Okay. But I don't, I, my earliest one is 1998 when I got married. So I don't have anything from high school. I don't have anything from when I was a kid. I don't have my pink puffy journal with the key that I would hide. I don't have ones from that. I think high school is the earliest that mine go.

[00:29:40] And those are, those feel pretty cringy to read, but they're funny and interesting. And they, they have like really beautiful clues about who I am and who I was and why I took this so seriously. And it does help me to cringe and then have some compassion for myself. Yeah. Yeah. So I, I, I don't have my words written down, but by finding these books that I used to read,

[00:30:07] I'm realizing when I open these up, it's just this wave of something. So I'm, I've been collecting like Trixie Belden, Nancy Drew, different things that I read these books that were written like in the fifties and sixties. I read them in the seventies and eighties. And I want to reread some of those this year so that I can maybe feel what I felt when I was that young. Like I can somehow go back.

[00:30:31] I don't have a lot of video from the time I have photos, but just wanting to experience that and heal some different things. Like some of the anxiety that I have now, I know stems from anxiety as a kid and trying to do some of that backward healing. And then with my, one of my books is called poem art therapy and it's, what's the subtitle? Cathartic word crafting after infidelity and divorce.

[00:30:59] So my husband cheated on me for four years. He left. I didn't know that he'd cheated until four months later. And I'm writing these poems to bring healing. And I, let me read something from, I'm rereading. Have you read bird by bird by Anne Lamott? No. This is, it's so good. It's called some instruct, the subtitle, some instructions on writing and life. She wrote the original in 1994, which is the year I graduated from high school. And I read it multiple times.

[00:31:28] I want to say in the early 2000s. And I, I write with a pen. So, I mean, I read with a pen. So I'll go through and, and underline. And then when I read something again, I'll use a different color. And that book, I think had like five or six different colors in it. But at one point, she's talking about shitty first drafts and fucking this, whatever. I crossed out every single cuss word in the book.

[00:31:56] And then at some point, I don't know the year. I'd have to look because this is a new, I got a new edition so I could go through in 2024 clean. But one of the years, like the subsequent years that I read it, I wrote back, I wrote back in all those words. This is another thing I have is books that I've written all this stuff in. And I thought I didn't journal a lot after my husband left. And I was reading this book. I just started reading it last week.

[00:32:25] And I read it for the first time in 2021. And in the margins, I'm saying, this is like March 2021. And Unbelieve came out. I self-published it in September 2021. And in March of 2021, I say, that's it. I'm going to write poetry. I'm going to write it. I'm going to share it. Like, I don't remember this. I don't remember making this decision. And then I, so there's all this hidden stuff in these books.

[00:32:53] Anyway, she talks about in this, let's see if I can find it. I just read it yesterday. She's talking about vengeance. While I tell my students that they should always write out of vengeance, as long as they do so nicely. Use these memories I told them. They are yours that should not have happened to you. Personally, I would write about this partly out of a longing to make sense of it all and partly out of vengeance. And I think about that a lot.

[00:33:22] Like, I am working on another book that's kind of talking to patriarchy, purity culture, my ex, different things. And I want to write it from this elevated place of, I have healed. I'm good. You can't touch me anymore. But we'll also kind of want to get some, like, jabs in. So trying to figure that all out. But as I was reading this morning, I opened this up.

[00:33:49] The very first thing I read, she says, there are so many things I want to tell my students in our last class. So many things I want to remind them of. Write about your childhoods. And I was like, oh, my God. That is exactly what I'm doing. Like, I love it when I'm doing something. I'm reading something. It's like this synchronous. Everything fits together. She said, I tell them for the umpteenth time. Write about that time in your life when you were so intensely interested in the world. When your powers of observation were at their most acute. When you felt things so deeply.

[00:34:18] And so I want to know. I want to remember. I want to go back so that I can move forward. Because I think, well, we know. We know that we can't just go forward. When things have harmed us for healing to be done, you have to go back and figure it out and heal from the root of it. So that's a lot of what I'm doing. Some of it's serious and some of it's less serious.

[00:34:45] And I just do as much as I can handle at a time. But I want to say at this point, it's really, it's more fun than not fun. Yeah. Do you remember when you read books as a kid? Do you remember that being the times that you felt the most curious about the world? Like, is that when you felt like most alive is when you were reading? Oh, what a good question. Um, probably.

[00:35:15] I mean, that was like my favorite thing to do. And I, yeah, I've always lived in my head. So on our last interview, we were talking about, I'm like trying to get in touch with my body. Because in the past, it's been like, yeah, who cares? All I care about is my head. And ironically, I've tried to forget this and I cannot forget it. I was reading this, rereading a Rob Bell. I don't know if you've read his books. Everything is spiritual.

[00:35:44] And I read it in 2021. And this is another book where I'd written stuff in the margins. And I'm like, oh my God, I can't believe I wrote this in 2021. But he, he said that there was this woman named Carol who spoke this prophecy over him. And I'm like, oh shit. A woman named Carol spoke a prophecy over me at this place that we worked in Cambodia, which turned out to be so toxic. And this whole situation, like I want to forget about Carol.

[00:36:11] And I don't want anything she said to be based in any kind of truth. Yeah. But this woman came up to me and let's see what year was it? Probably 2016. And we're in this worship service and doing all this stuff. She comes over to me. She lays her hands on me. And she says that, I wrote it down. But God basically told her to come tell me that I have been loving God with my head.

[00:36:40] And now it is time to love God with my heart. Like I'm supposed to now like live from my heart that I've been living from my head for this whole time. She doesn't know me. I live in Cambodia and she's on a missions trip. Like she just came from California. We just like, I don't even know if we had met. But she somehow comes over to me and says this. And I'm like, okay, Carol. I mean, okay. First of all, that's so invasive. It's so invasive. But Carol was freaking right.

[00:37:09] Like it was like time to feel the feelings. Time to go from your heart. It could have been just some pat thing that she said to everyone. Maybe everyone was in there. I don't know. The Rob Bell's prophecy from Carol. I think she was invasive too. I can't remember. But I mean, any kind of prophecy is pretty invasive. So prophecy. Can you? Okay. What? That's so wild. That we. It's so weird. So weird. And I had someone.

[00:37:37] I finally got to the point where people were telling me stuff that God told them. And I was like, yeah, until God tells me, you can just, yeah, take that somewhere else. Like someone that I barely knew, did not like, told me that God told her we were supposed to write a book together. And I was like, it'd be a cold day in hell. Write a book with you. This is like 10 years ago. But yeah, I just like the audacity. I don't know if you've read the book. My body is not a prayer request by Dr. Amy Kenney.

[00:38:07] No, I think I have it, but I haven't read it. Okay. It's so good. And I wrote lots of poems from it in Jaded. But yeah, it's by Dr. Amy Kenney. And she just talks about that where she's in a wheelchair. And people just feel like they have this permission to come up to her, touch her and pray for God to heal her body and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And she's like, my body is not a prayer request. It's none of your business.

[00:38:32] And that's what Christianity is all about, at least evangelical Christianity, is button your nose into other people's business, their bedrooms, their bathrooms, their wheelchairs, their lives. I mean, yeah, that's the basis of missionary work and the basis of prophecy and the basis of a lot of core things about evangelicalism.

[00:39:01] Are you an alumnus of an evangelical college or university? Or have you ever wondered what attending or working at one of those schools is like? The Chapel Probation Podcast brings you the stories from students, faculty, and administration who experienced all the racism, the queer phobia, the misogyny, and purity culture weirdness that are kind of the hallmarks of these schools.

[00:39:27] I'm Scott Okamoto, author of Asian American Apostate, Losing Religion and Finding Myself at an Evangelical University, which tells my story of teaching English at an evangelical school and realizing I didn't believe in God or the Bible anymore.

[00:39:43] I created Chapel Probation as a compliment to my book, but this podcast has become its own community of people who have stories of hurt and pain and stories of triumph during and after their time at evangelical schools. Some of the guests you've probably heard of, but most of them you probably haven't. But all the stories are incredible examples of surviving Christian schools and finding ourselves.

[00:40:13] You can find Chapel Probation wherever you listen to podcasts, and I hope you'll join us. Subscribe to this podcast by visiting dauntless.fm. We had talked about this earlier. You had asked me how I find ways to be creative when I'm in a rut or when I'm feeling low. This is so funny because I looked back at our text and I was like, okay, let me write this down. Let me think about this.

[00:40:41] One of my kids, I kid you not, came out into where I was today, like this afternoon, 2 o'clock maybe. It's like three hours ago. And she's almost in tears. And she's a very, very creative person and has all kinds of stuff going on. And she's like, I can't do it. I can't do any of it. And what do I do? And I was blanking. I'm trying to give her some ideas and none of them were helpful. Finally, she just went on a walk.

[00:41:10] I don't know if that helped. But I said to her when she got back, I was like, it's funny that you asked me that because that was one of the questions that Maggie said we might talk about. And she's like, oh, well, I might listen to that podcast interview if you answer that question. I was like, well, clearly I couldn't answer the question when you asked me. Like you're saving the advice for the podcast but not giving it to her in real life. Exactly. Shh, don't tell.

[00:41:36] And I don't know because I – another thing I said to one of my kids or maybe all my kids this week is that I feel like I'm on this roller coaster. And this is not new for me to be on some kind of roller coaster. High highs and low lows have kind of been the story of my life. And one of the memories – I'm jotting down all of my memories from childhood. Anything that jogs some kind of memory, I write it down. And my parents – I don't know what this was called or where it's from.

[00:42:03] But all these things we have today with the Enneagram and all these different personality things, something back in the 80s that they had that there were these four traits that people fell into like quadrants. And I remember these words. So I knew these words when I was like eight. Melancholy, choleric, phlegmatic, and sanguine, which words that no one says out in the world except for melancholy. Yeah.

[00:42:29] But I knew – like they did this test on me or they just pegged me with these things. But I was melancholy first and then choleric. And my understanding – this is probably another healing thing. My understanding were that melancholy and choleric were the bad traits. And phlegmatic and sanguine were the good traits. Like phlegmatic meant calm, I think. And sanguine was kind of happy. So melancholy is moody and choleric. Who knows what that even means?

[00:42:57] Cholera, that's the only thing I got. But I have always, always, always been melancholy. Like I am definitely moody. I am melancholy. I am up, up, up, up, up, up, and then crash and then up and then crash. And so with my creativity in the past couple weeks, I have felt that way where I will get so excited. I'll be making this poem art. I'm working on my next book.

[00:43:26] I'm making plans for podcasts. I'm like, yes. And then I'll just flatline and it's like, what is the freaking point of any of this? What am I even doing? Nobody cares about my poem art. No one wants to read a 49-year-old woman's book of poetry. And I don't know what it is. And again, that would have been something where I'm like blaming the devil for trying to thwart my big plans that God has for me or whatever.

[00:43:55] But I don't know outside of just like feeling my feelings and breathing, meditating, different techniques that I can use that help. I don't really know. And I do know that the holidays are kind of tricky and traumatic for me. Like the first Christmas after my ex left was just, I remember sitting there with the kids and my sister and I was trying to be joyful and I just felt sick inside.

[00:44:23] And then January 3rd was my wedding anniversary that year. January 4th, I found out my ex had been cheating for four years. January 5th, my daughter turned 14, 15. And so there's that trauma around that. There's this seasonal affective disorder and stuff. There's the freaking political landscape of the United States of America. And then there's perimenopause.

[00:44:50] So I think probably I should go easy on myself and enjoy those moments of giddiness that I do feel sometimes when I am being creative, when I'm making poem art, when I'm remembering something for my childhood, when someone is inspired by me. But what I told my kid, I said, how about you just do a little bit each day? Like you just do a little bit.

[00:45:19] You're trying to learn some new things. You're trying to do too much and you're overwhelmed. When people tell me I could never, I want to write a book, but I can't do it. I write my books 30 minutes a day. Like I just write. And then poems. My cheat code for poetry is my notes app. I write stuff that's happening all the time. And then I transfer it over to a Google Doc. And then I look and say, are there any poems tucked into here? I can't sit down.

[00:45:47] Like some poems, I'll wake up in the morning and there's a poem in my head. Like that has happened. But I can't just sit down and compose poetry. It comes in from all these different places all day long. And then I take my experiences and all of my thoughts and ideas and I crystallize those into poems that are sometimes wildly clever and sometimes complete shit.

[00:46:13] And like you said, sometimes I put the complete shit poems in the book anyway because that is the thing. In an ideal world, I would be like revered as the most brilliant poet ever. But realistically, if I'm going to become rich and famous, it's going to be because of my relatability. It's going to be because people read my poems and they literally think, well, shit, I could do that.

[00:46:41] Like that's all she's doing is just saying this thing and putting it in this little format. I could do it too. Which, you know, you're putting your own words on this poem art. And you might say, well, that's not a poem. It's just a few words. I have a poem that's like, you can't just, that's the title. And the poem is, watch me. It's a poem. It's a poem.

[00:47:07] So, yeah, that's my encouragement to people is just little pockets of time. Example. Okay, so this is kind of a plug. I just realized I could make this plug. Like, April is National Poetry Month. And my friend Taylor and I last year did this thing in April called Poet to Published, where it's like 30 days. We get together. We're in a Facebook group. We have Zoom calls on Tuesday and Thursday. We free write together on Saturdays.

[00:47:36] And then if you want, you could self-publish a book of poetry at the end of the month. Ideally, though, you would have been working on your poems like a few months in advance. So I keep meaning to post this. This is a reminder to myself to do this. But tell people, listen, it's January. You have until April. You've got three months. If you just write for 20 minutes a day and then look at what you wrote and pull out a few of those words and there's your poem. Or just sit down.

[00:48:04] If you don't have 20 minutes, sit down and write a shitty poem. Like, just write it. It doesn't matter how bad it is. If you do this, by the time April 1st comes around, you're going to have 90 poems that you can then work with and workshop and show people. And that's how you write a book. Like, if you really want to write a book. And I've been telling people a lot when they get stuck on their book. I was like, maybe your book wants to be poems.

[00:48:33] That's what happened to me. Like, I had this drawn-out deconstruction saga that I couldn't. It was boring me to tears because I kept changing my mind. And I was like, nobody wants to hear this. I don't even want to hear this. And so I just whittled all the stuff away, like Michelangelo and David. And it's like, here, this is what's left. It's a poem. It's the most important part. Just read that part.

[00:49:00] And so, yeah, try to make time for a little bit of creativity each day. And there are occasionally times when I feel a little bit bad for saying that because I am, I work from home. My young adult kids live with me and do all the chores and all the cooking and all the shopping. I'm like, yeah, easy for you to say, Marla, because you have these hired servants that you birthed. You pay their mortgage and their whatever.

[00:49:28] But I will tell you this, those lovely books that we talked about, From Blushing Bride to Wedded Wife and Is That All He Thinks About How to Enjoy Great Sex with Your Husband. Those were published in 2006, 7, 8, and 9. In 2006, I gave birth to my third baby and published a book. So I had two toddlers and a baby published a book. Then I had two toddlers and a bigger baby and published another book.

[00:49:57] Then I had like three toddlers. Then I had like an elementary kid. Those were when I wrote these books and publishers paid me money for them. And I somehow made time even then. So I can say that, that I have, I've done that. We can, for the most part, make time to be creative. And I think we really need it.

[00:50:23] Like, I really think that, that we kind of are going to explode or implode if we have too much creativity bottled up inside of us. Glennon Doyle said once that like reading is her inhale and writing is her exhale. And I think we tend to consume a lot, whether it's words or scrolling or watching things, which is great.

[00:50:47] But if you don't then churn something out and make something, then I think it's kind of imbalanced. So that's what I would encourage people to do is just, just do it. I mean, obviously don't force yourself to make crafts if you really don't want to. But whatever it is. Whatever your art or creativity or whatever it is that, whatever it is that makes you fart, that's what you should do a little bit of every day. Yeah. Do a little bit.

[00:51:17] Because a little bit really, really, really adds up. Like you cannot, for me, I always go back to writing because that's what I do. But you can't edit a blank page like you can, if you have all this crap written down, you can go through and fix it. But you can't just fix nothing. Like you have to get something down. So taking imperfect action is really a big thing.

[00:51:42] I probably learned that from the entrepreneurs who make a lot of money and I write their books for them for my day job. But I love it. And I think self-publishing is a good way to take imperfect action. My first, the first edition of Unbelieve, I didn't size it correctly. And so the font is microscopic. And my friend Corinne in Las Vegas, she texted me, Marla, she got her book before I did. I didn't do a test copy or anything.

[00:52:10] She's like, you're not going to be able to read this. She must be exaggerating. Like is her eyes bad or something? No, because when you take like 12 point font, but your page is eight and a half by 11, and then you shrink it down into a book, then it shrinks your font into, I don't know, 7 point, 6.5. I try to make poem art out of those tiny poems. I'm like, I can't even see this. It's like, it's not even worth it.

[00:52:40] So yeah, just do it though, because then you can do it again. You can redo it and you can tell a story and you can laugh with your friend Maggie about it. Like three years later when you're so much older and wiser, you would never make that kind of mistake again. Can you talk about the mess of your table and how that, I want to say breeds creativity, but that's not, fosters creativity maybe? Fosters breeds. Things are probably breeding on this table.

[00:53:07] Okay, so this is another, it's kind of a paradox. I both enjoy order and simplicity and minimalism and also messes and wildness and collecting and hoarding and maybe I'll use this later. So my whole entire life has been that struggle of how do I do this?

[00:53:34] I have a poem, I think in Unbelieve about my dad coming into my room. I want to say I was 10 with a garden, like a rake, a yard rake. And he raked everything in my room into a pile in the corner. And he said, clean this up or I'm going to throw it away. It was everywhere. All, everything. Probably, like we lived in a very old farmhouse. There have been, there's been a bat in my bedroom. There's been mice in my bedroom.

[00:54:03] He probably was afraid of the creatures that were living under the my pile of stuff. So, so I, I have messes, like I make messes and then I clean them up and then I make them again and then I clean them up. I, I think I, I don't know, I function better when everything is in order. But then I just get all caught up in it and then it goes all like this. And I try so hard, like don't start this new thing until you clean this up and don't do this.

[00:54:29] And it, and maybe Maggie, maybe my 50th year is when I will figure out how to keep things orderly. My, my sister, so she's almost 10 years younger than me. She is going to be 40 in May. And so all of my siblings and I will be in our 40s for the months until I turn 50. But she is the neatest, most organized person that I've ever met. But she is a little bit obsessive compulsive about it.

[00:54:59] So I don't know if I even know how to not make this mess. Like my, the answer to your question, I don't know. I thrive on it and also don't. So it's just kind of a cycle of make the mess, clean it up. My big thing is I don't, I don't want to waste things. I don't want to forget about things. And that's what happens. I was, when I was working today on my book about my childhood. And I started going back through some of my Google docs. And I'm like, when did I write this? When did I write this? When did I write this?

[00:55:28] I do things and make things and forget about them. And I don't want to do that. So this year I'm hoping to uncover everything. I've started to organize my mess so that I can visually see everything. I've started to make decisions. Yes, this is a great craft idea, but I can't do it. Example. I don't know if you've heard of Maggie Smith. She's a poet and she wrote, you could make this place beautiful about her husband who cheated

[00:55:58] on her. And it's, I've read it twice. I'm going to read it again. It's gorgeous. She's, it's the book that I wish that I could have written. And I don't even know if I would try because it's so good. But she talked about herself like as nesting dolls, like this is her when she's this and this and this and this. And so all of the past hers are in there. Madeline L'Engle, who wrote A Wrinkle in Time, she also said that like, I'm all the people that I've ever been or I'm all the whatever.

[00:56:25] So I, as soon as I read that, I got on Amazon and I bought a set of wooden nesting dolls. I'm like, I am going to make like word collage. I'm going to make 49 year old Marla and 36 year old Marla. Isn't that a brilliant idea? Well, guess what? It sat in my closet for over a year. And then when I pulled it out, I'm like, what the hell is this? Oh, that's right. I was going to make these. And then I'm like, no, I don't want to.

[00:56:49] My friend Pam just so happened to write something online about nesting dolls, whatever. And I mailed them to her. She is an artist. And I was like, Pam can use these. Pam can make a beautiful nesting doll creation that I do. I just, I'm just too ambitious. I am. I have, my eyes are bigger than my, not my stomach, but bigger than my capabilities. I don't know. I can't do it all. And so realizing.

[00:57:17] But I love that you have all these ideas. And when I ask this about your messy, like messy table workspace, it's because I admire it so much. I have like a card table that I got out that has like all my Marla books and all my poems and all my ripped up paper and all my children's books. Yes, you showed it to me before. Yeah. And it makes me so happy. And when it gets like lots and lots of stuff, I'm like, oh my gosh, I got to send a picture to Marla. She'll be so happy. She is so happy.

[00:57:47] Yeah. And I, it like, it inspires me to let myself, um, it's not about like, it's not about the mess. It's like letting myself be unfiltered or like, it doesn't have to be perfect. Like letting it just kind of be and like sifting through and taking what stays. Like, look, I cut all these out cause they all inspired me. And then I spread them out and I look again and I pull 10 of them. And then I look again and I'm like, ooh, this one looks cool. And then I look through my pictures and I'm like, this picture is perfect.

[00:58:17] And so just like, it's like this process of sifting through them. That's so cool. And, and you can only do that if you have them all out. Like you can't take everything out every time. And so, yeah, I love that you have this space. That's just like, it gets to just be the kind of creative zone where you can just come and like enter it anytime. And I love that. And it's so inspiring to me. Yeah, it is. I love it too. Like I have this, so we have a house. This is the, I'm in the dining room.

[00:58:47] I call it the dining room. It's actually my office. We have never dined here. Someone gave us this dining room table. It is my desk. So I sit sometimes at one end of the table with my laptop. Most of the time, well, maybe half and half. I write either there or right from the couch. I wrote my books back in the day. I wrote them from my bed. I don't do that anymore cause it hurts my back. So I'll write here, but then I've got my paper cutter over here and then everywhere else is just all this stuff. So I think for me, like I, I, yes, exactly what you're saying.

[00:59:15] So I'll put on, I'll rewatch seasons of things like Ted Lasso, Schitt's Creek. I just rewatched Gilmore Girls for the first time since the very first time I ever watched it. Okay. And so something that I don't necessarily need to pay super close attention to, but the poem art, it's not taking a lot of brain power. Like I have the poems cut out and then yes, sometimes I'll get one single book and I'll look through, tear the pages out. I have different ways that I do it, whatever, however the mood strikes, but I do it like

[00:59:45] kind of in this batching thing where I get all of the poems, match them with the pictures and then I'll go through and cut them and lay them out. And then I'll go through and glue them, but it's so, I mean, it's, I, I feel good because it's, there's a product at the end. Like there's something tangible that I can hold at the end, but it's not hard for me to do. I don't have to think about it a lot. And that's what I wouldn't be able to do with other kinds of art, like woodworking or painting

[01:00:14] or something where I would have to try really, really hard. So the trying is in the writing. Um, and there's a little bit of trying in the poem art, like finding the illustrations and stuff, but for the most part, it's just really soothing. And, and yeah, so for me, messes are great, but what I don't want is I don't want to miss things because they got lost in my mess. So if my, if I know where things are in my mess, then that's good. I don't want to forget that I bought things.

[01:00:44] I don't want to forget that I, I wanted to do this thing. So I'm trying to figure out right now and I'm looking at my shelves and like a couple of them are like that. And the other ones are just, everything is all. Um, but I, yeah, I want to have some sense of order so that I can make the most of what I'm doing, but I will never be someone who can just do everything is nice and neat and

[01:01:14] clean. And I don't think that's the ideal. Like it might be for some people, but it's not, it doesn't have to be like, that's not the, that's not on like a higher tier than, than like letting, letting things kind of sift through the table. Oh, and trust me, they say that the older you get, like the less fucks you give. And it's true. Like I, I do not care what tier that I am on or what kind of anything.

[01:01:40] I mean, I do want that nicer car, but mostly just because I don't want to keep getting it fixed. Speaking of how old are you, Maggie? 34. Okay. So I, I just was, I was Googling, like, what do you call someone in their fifties? I was trying to see if there was a different word for it. Oh no. I said, so like Googled, what do you call someone who's 50? Like I thought maybe once you turn 50, you were something.

[01:02:04] And then I forgot that there are these, um, these words for decades, like people in decades, which I should not have forgotten because I actually have a poem called Septuaginarians, which is about my 70 year old friends. And I have a poem where I talk about this 80 year old guy who came to mind. Oh no, no, no. He wasn't 80. He was telling me that his church believes what Charles Stanley believes. He was like in his eighties. And I'm like, okay, octogenarian, whatever. So I see the word for people in their fifties.

[01:02:35] I, you probably don't know this. I don't think I've ever heard this word in my whole entire life. I can't even say it. It's quinquagenarian, Q-U-I-N-Q-U-A. Quinquagenarian. Quinquagenarian. And everybody try to say that at home. Yeah. Quinquagenarian. And get this. Are you ready? This one is not surprising because I, I knew this prefix, but in my sixties, it's sexagenarian.

[01:03:01] And I, you and I are going, you're going to content warning and I'm going to content warning. And when I posted about it and I was like, listen, a conference about sex is so low on my priority list right now. You do not even know. However, there are friends who are going that this is like, they're all in one place and I get to meet them. And that is why I am going. But I was like, wait a second. Is this like a prophecy? Sexagenarian. Like when I'm 60, then I'm going to care again. We'll see.

[01:03:31] But anyway, you are a tricenarian. T-R-I-C-E-N-A-R-I-A-N. A tricenarian. It sounds like a dinosaur. Tricenarian. Yeah. I am a triceratops. Yeah. Tricenarian. What's 40? I feel like we've covered. Quadragenarian. Quadragenarian. And then 20 is vicenarian. Ooh. Yeah. That one's exciting. Yeah. You know? Kind of naughty.

[01:04:01] Yeah. Yeah. 20s and 60s. Those are the years you want to live in. I guess so. But quinquagenarian is that, I mean, that's, I'm ready. Whatever. Maybe that'll be the title of this episode. Quinquagenarian. Okay. Well, I want to read another one of your poems and then we can wrap it up if you want. But I'm thinking back to part of our conversation earlier about the holidays being hard.

[01:04:28] And when this airs, it'll be right after the holidays and Christmas, New Year's. And I know that for people deconstructing, that can bring up a lot of tricky things. For, you know, this poem I'm going to read is from your book, Pulm Art Therapy, Cathartic Word Crafting After Infidelity and Divorce. And that's why the holidays were hard for you. And I know that it can be tricky for other people for that reason as well. So the poem I want to read is called Antiversary. Antiversary. Ante? Anti?

[01:04:58] Anti? How do you like to say that? Ante. I don't know. Anti. How about anti? Anti. Antiversary. But then antiversary is like better with the pun. Anyway, I'll leave all this in and everybody can decide. Antiversary. Antiversary. However you want to say it. But it goes like this. Hugs to you as you navigate weird, hard dates commemorating what would, could, should have been but isn't. So yeah, as you, Marla, were talking about, I don't know, that first Christmas after your

[01:05:28] husband left, I wish I could go back to that Marla's nesting doll version and give Marla a little hug and to anyone else out there that's maybe coming off of hard holidays. Hugs from Marla and I. Hugs from Maggie and I, yes. Oh, thank you. Is there anything else that you want to add before we wrap up? I don't think so. I was just so excited to talk to you again and so excited that you're the first interview that I'm doing out of my 50. I got it. I mean, yeah.

[01:05:58] Yeah. I'm honored, Marla. This is exciting. Again, your episode, your first episode was one of my favorites. And everybody should keep their eye out for episodes with Marla because there'll be 50 of them this year. I wonder how like what you talk about will change over the year. Okay. Next year. I already have ideas. Next year. Let's do an episode where we go through and talk about your 50 episodes. I'm sure you'll be done with them by then. Yes. But like over talking about them.

[01:06:28] But that'd be kind of cool to like watch your growth through the year. Okay. I have – I'm going to add something to that. Okay. In the event that I cannot line up 50 podcasts, can you be like my 49th or 50th? I can be as many as you want. Come on back anytime, Marla. Don't do that. I've got to stretch myself, Maggie. I cannot just be on Hello Deconstructionist 30 times in a row. And season three is the season of Marla. Oh, man.

[01:06:57] No, but for real. Of course, you can be 49 or 50 if you need to fill it out, round it out. Thank you. Okay. I want to end with a benediction poem, if you will. Okay. It's called Weirdo and it's from What Makes You Fart. And it goes like this. I don't care how weird you are. The weirder the better, in fact. Inner weirdness, outer weirdness, all the weirdness. I hope you're getting weirder by the minute. And don't you dare hoard that weirdness all to yourself. Share it with the class and go forth and be even weirder.

[01:07:27] By Marla Taviano. Amen. Amen and amen. Amen and amen. It's true. Let's just be weird. Let's just embrace it. Let's don't try to be somebody different and just be who you are. Look back and see what you loved as a kid. What made you fart back then? What kind of things you were making and doing and pretending? I love it. Thank you so much, Maggie. This is so much fun. Thanks for being on and thanks for having me be your very first one of your 50 and 50.

[01:07:57] Always. Every time. Every time I do this, you're going to be my first. Amazing. Thanks. Thanks for listening to another episode of Hello Deconstructionists. If you enjoyed this episode or any others, please follow, subscribe, rate, or review the podcast wherever you listen. And if you can, share this episode with a friend who might enjoy the conversation as well.

[01:08:18] Don't forget that you can join the conversation in the Dauntless Media Collective Discord server by clicking the link in the show notes or heading to dauntless.fm and clicking the link in the top banner. As always, you can find me over on Instagram at hello underscore deconstructionists where together we are building community after evangelicalism one story at a time. Huge thank you to Amy Azera for writing the theme song for this podcast.

[01:08:44] And when this sweet little bop inevitably gets stuck in your head, I hope it reminds you of this wonderful community that's here with you. Thanks to all our guests for sharing these parts of their stories with us. And of course, to you for listening. See you next time. Gotta deconstruct Oh