Jennifer Bray

obviously they were talking about themselves and they were like obviously I didn't use the phrase that I was burnt out and I thought like why are we so afraid of admitting that we we are like and I think a lot of us were after the pandemic yeah and for me the book was born from um wanting to think about something different wanting to escape the same thing that I felt when I was a kid yeah and a teenager you know the sense of awe I needed that back I needed some joy back

Yeah, like, that's exactly it.

It's kind of... I mean, look, I don't want to sound, like, poor, pitiful me.

Like, people working in hospitals and in healthcare settings and in nursing homes, they had it the worst.

Yeah.

Hands down.

But, yeah, like, it was a really, really stressful time.

And...

just the competitive nature of it too like after a while the like there's this it's kind of lame actually like as journalists you have this kind of buzz when you get a really good story yeah you have this kind of hit where you're like oh my god and everyone's sharing it and blah blah blah and you're like you know you've got this kind of 10 seconds of woohoo actually used to last around a day and then throughout the pandemic you just stop feeling any joy from writing any of these stories or breaking them and it just

it changed the game a little bit for me.

And it actually took me a while afterwards to kind of love journalism again.

I think I fell out of love with it for a while.

And yeah, I remember just lying awake and being like, oh God, what does tomorrow hold?

Blah, blah.

And then instead I'd be like,

imagine if I wrote a book about sisters.

You know, imagine if I wrote a book about family, what would that feel like?

Imagine if this character did this, what about that?

And then it just kind of took off.

Yeah.