By Christine Rice
Jillian Lauren is no stranger to risk. She dropped out of college, became addicted to drugs, and in the early 1990s, joined the Prince of Brunei’s harem. In her latest memoir, Everything You Ever Wanted, Lauren chronicles what you might think would be a less harrowing odyssey: becoming a mother. But for Lauren and her husband, Weezer bassist Scott Shriner, the geography between wanting a child and finally adopting was fraught with obstacles.
The stakes are high. How does a person with her past adopt? Throughout the narrative, Lauren deconstructs herself and the exhausting adoption process and, although it is in no way a how-to, this attention to detail and research gives prospective adoptive parents a primer on what to expect. It becomes clear that her risk-taking tendencies (and what she learned from them) probably allowed her to shoulder the often frustrating intricacies of international adoption and the harrowing process of identifying her son Tariku’s special needs.
In EYEW, Lauren’s observations–on parenting, the amped up atmosphere of Los Angeles, adoption, substance abuse, and her past– are sometimes funny and often revealing and they expose Lauren’s vulnerability at every turn. There’s a certain amount of grit and gumption you need to be a parent and an extra dose of that, it seems, to be a memoirist.
Christine Rice: Desperate to get pregnant, there’s a scene in the memoir where you run into a perfectly coifed friend (of course she’s pregnant…everyone is) who tells you that, after struggling to get pregnant, she finally succeeded with the help of a Maori tribal healer from New Zealand. She tells you that this particular healer is so magical that she turns breech babies around in the womb. You write,
When I get home, I Google these healers before my coat is off. Indeed, they are in Santa Monica right now, being hosted at the home of a Vedic astrologer, whatever that is. I get an appointment for the next day. I am elated.
I show up at a charming 1950s beach house, painted powdery pink. Two dachshunds dressed in lederhosen– little Peter Pan collar shirts, embroidered suspenders, the whole thing– greet me at the door. You can read that sentence again if you need to. They are followed by a plain-looking woman in the kind of shapeless dress you buy at the Hare Krishna store on Venice Boulevard. She rubs her pregnant belly. Of course she does. Everyoneeveryoneeveryone in the world is pregnant.
I loved that moment for a number of reasons. First, of course, it was hysterical. But then I realized the importance of place in your struggle. The static of LA – of lederhosen-wearing dogs and celebrities and near-celebrities and Vedic astrologers – can’t drown out the fact that you are trying to do something that people do all over the world: get pregnant. But the energy of LA amps up the stakes because, in a way, LA is perfection. It’s the place where perfect people live. And this isn’t a perfect problem.
How did LA figure into the overall narrative of Everything You Ever Wanted? How might this be a different book if you, say, still lived in New Jersey?
Jillian Lauren: If I still lived in Jersey I’d probably be in a mental institution, so that would be different. Just kidding. Place is always a character in my work, not just a backdrop. LA isn’t just a city– it’s a construct, an idea, a force. The maniacal self-improvement culture of LA hits a fever pitch when it comes to parenting. It offers wonderful opportunities both for satire AND for spiritual growth. As writers, we get to observe closely and look critically at the world around us. The extremity of the cultural trends here in LA can be a goldmine for an artist. This city really brings into sharp relief issues that are common in many places, in subtler forms.
CR: In The Paris Review interview, the poet, essayist, and memoirist, Mary Karr says:
I’d warned my mother and sister in advance that I wanted to cover the period of Mother’s psychotic break and her divorce from Daddy. She’d inherited a sum of cash that was vast by our standards, and she bought a bar and married the bartender—her sixth husband. She was an outlaw, and really didn’t give a rat’s ass what the neighbors thought. She drank hard and packed a pistol. When I tested the waters about doing a memoir of the period, she told me, Hell, go for it. She and my sister probably figured nobody’d read the book but me and whomever I was sleeping with. Also, my mother was a portrait painter. She understood point of view. My sister, who’s a very sophisticated reader, signed off too. For our people to do anything to generate income that won’t land you in prison, it’s a win.
Unlike Mary Karr, you don’t exactly have the blessing of your family when it comes to writing your family’s history (you did sit them down to tell them about Some Girls…and it didn’t go well). How has this fact influenced your writing?
JL: I’m talking to my parents again now, but that wasn’t the case for a few years after the first book. They’re actually really proud of this book. which is certainly a nice feeling, but it’s not a feeling I require in order to continue writing from my life. Authors approach writing about real life in very different ways. Personally, I don’t run my manuscripts by anyone other than my husband. He’s the only one who has veto power, and the reason he has that power is because he almost never uses it. Scott isn’t ego-invested in my work and he believes in the value of truth. As artists, we both know that our stories have power that go far beyond the confines of our individual lives. We both think that if it’s a story worth telling, it’s probably not a story that’s going to please everyone. That said, I try to write with the utmost compassion and respect, always.
CR: What memoirists have influenced your work – for better or worse?
JL: It’s always so hard to choose. The short list definitely includes Joan Didion, Nick Flynn, Maxine Hong Kingston, Mary Karr and Anne Lamott.
CR: You’ve written a novel, Pretty, and this is your second memoir. Do you enjoy memoir writing over novel writing? Or vice verse? In what ways does your process differ between the two forms? In what ways are they similar?
JL: My fiction and non-fiction inform each other and they’re both deeply personal forms for me. I try to approach my non-fiction in a novelistic sense of lyricism and my fiction with a reporter’s eye for detail.
CR: I found myself reaching for the Kleenex while reading EYEW. One of those moments came after this:
I play peek-a-boo and other games that encourage eye contact, nine billion times a day. I hold him and rock him and gaze into his eyes, even when he looks away. Slowly, he begins to hold my gaze a bit longer. Every second his eyes meet mine is a great victory. And every victory is incredible, and still, it is not enough to keep me from being bored out of my skull. I talk to a friend on the phone, who is also a new mom.
She says, “I can’t believe I ever worried that this would be boring! It is so fascinating!”
Oh, No.
It’s not that everyone thinks toddlers are boring, I just feel that way because I’m a selfish monster.
That’s this secret that parents don’t talk about. When they’re infants, that mind-numbing boredom is crushing. Here you are with this brilliant little person and you’re actually going to say that it’s boring? How could you? But it’s true. I felt it right after my first daughter was born and she was colicky and the only thing that would sooth her was being in a carrier next to my chest. Your situation was extra tough because you ‘cocooned’ yourself off at this point in order to make a connection with your child.
I’m just figuring all of this out (and my kids are teenagers). I’m curious about how you came to all of these realizations so quickly. Did the fact that you are incredibly organized and curious and did a shitload of research play into these breakthrough moments as a parent and as a writer? How much did research change your situation while you were chin-deep and desperately trying to find answers? How much of that research found its way—directly or indirectly–into the memoir?
JL: I wouldn’t describe them as realizations, so much as a process of evolving understanding. I’m hesitant to say realization, because every time I think I know something, it changes! These “understandings” came to me as much out of desperation as from all my research. I’m definitely an exhaustive researcher; it’s one of my strengths. But like I say in the book, parenting is like dancing – you can’t learn how to do it by reading about it.
CR: How did you start ‘confessional’ writing? Was it in your MFA program? Who first encouraged you? Or earlier?
JL: I wrote only fiction in graduate school. I came to confessional writing later, and it was for the same reason that I wrote fiction. There was a story clamoring to be told. This particular story was a true one, and so it required that I learn some new parameters.
CR: You decided to ‘cocoon’ your son in order to establish a solid bond with him. But there’s a point where you have to get out of the house.
I devise my own rules about cocooning at this point. We don’t stay in the house all the time; I simply can’t do it. But I do abide by not having playdates, not hanging out with other moms I know, not allowing anyone else to hold or nurture him. When my mother argues with me about it, I tell her that it’s about him learning who his parents are.
So you are starved for adult companionship and you are sleep-deprived and cranky. At this point, you sit in the food court and, eventually, end up letting your son Tariku have some sausage.
I get up and stand in line for another sausage. A mall-wandering mom in the Jody Maroni’s line says to me, snottily, “I saw you feeding him that. Isn’t that spicy for him?”
“You have a better idea?” I snap. “You want to try to feed this kid?”
So here you are, two mothers, in the mall. Anyone looking at the two of you would say that you have a lot in common and yet you are worlds apart. That’s what bugs me about popular culture’s image of mothers. We’re supposed to fit a cookie-cutter mold. It’s as if we eat the same foods, buy the same diapers, discipline our kids the same way, think alike, etc. It’s almost like we are expected to stop being individuals, to do and to KNOW everything that’s ‘right’ for our kids in that moment. But what is ‘right’ is ever-shifting.
Throughout the book, you are tormented by self doubt. Can you comment on this quest for finding your way as a parent? Finding out what’s right for your family? Of deflecting judgement?
JL: Finding my way as a parent has been a collage project. There were so many confident parents in my life who seemed to know all the right ways to do it, and so I naturally thought it was my fault when their suggestions often didn’t work out for us. Now, I don’t think everyone else has the answer. I try to approach parenting with a spirit of curiosity and investigation. I’ve learned that every child is a unique being, with individualized needs. This is something that having a child with special needs definitely teaches you. It’s so freeing! It’s one of the gifts of special needs parenting- you learn that most people basically have no idea what they’re talking about. They’re making generalizations based on their anecdotal experiences. As far as judgment goes, I don’t know that I successfully deflect it, but I do think that I’ve grown a thick skin and I don’t care much anymore what other people think about my parenting. I mean, of course I care- it’s human to care- I just don’t place too much weight on it. I know that the judgement stems from their own insecurities. So why would I take stock in myself based on pronouncements derived from someone else’s insecurities?
CR: When did you start writing EYEW? In the early drafts of EYEW, was there a moment when the story clicked for you? When the narrative started to make sense?
JL: I can’t say there was one ‘Aha’ moment. It was more like a series of clicks (with lots of whirring in between). I write tons of drafts, and within each, I discover something new. Even though I had a detailed proposal before I even started writing, I tried to let the story tell itself to me, to be open to a shift in the narrative. My beginning middle and end rarely wind up as what I thought they were going to be.
CR: Many writers are very private – even memoirists…which is odd, right? You seem to embrace social media. Can you talk a little bit about how you approach sharing private information and when you might draw the line?
JL: My online personae is pretty organic and it changes all the time. I’m not exactly a brilliant social media strategist. I’m just real and I hope that’ll be of interest to a select audience. Some weeks I feel more introverted and I don’t share at all. Sometimes I trumpet every brilliant macaroni collage from the tallest hill. I really enjoy my interactions with my readers on social media. My only hard and fast rule is that I don’t share any of the private aspects of my son’s story. I identify “private” as the stuff that’s his story rather than my story.
Jillian Lauren’s written work has appeared in the Paris Review, the New York Times, Vanity Fair, Los Angeles Magazine, and Salon, among other outlets, and has been anthologized widely, including in The Moth Anthology, True Tales of Lust and Love, and Best of Babble Blogs. She has performed at spoken word and storytelling events across the country, including as a regular on The Moth main stage, and has been interviewed on such television programs as The View and Good Morning America, and by Howard Stern. Lauren is a popular and sometimes controversial blogger at MSNBC, The Huffington Post and jillianlauren.com, which was named a Top 100 Mom Blog of 2012 by Babble Magazine. She is married to Weezer bass player Scott Shriner. They live in Los Angeles with their son, Tariku.
Christine Maul Rice’s award-winning novel, Swarm Theory, was called “a gripping work of Midwest Gothic” by Michigan Public Radio and earned an Independent Publisher Book Award, a National Indie Excellence Award, a Chicago Writers Association Book of the Year award (finalist), and was included in PANK’s Best Books of 2016 and Powell’s Books Midyear Roundup: The Best Books of 2016 So Far. In 2019, Christine was included in New City’s Lit 50: Who Really Books in Chicago and named One of 30 Writers to Watch by Chicago’s Guild Complex. Most recently, her short stories, essays, and interviews have appeared in Allium, 2020: The Year of the Asterisk*, Make Literary Magazine, The Rumpus, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Millions, Roanoke Review, The Literary Review, among others. Christine is the founder and editor of the literary nonprofit Hypertext Magazine & Studio and is an Assistant Professor of English at Valparaiso University.