Kathleen Glasgow
speaker
166 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard Jan 2025
Kathleen Glasgow’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Thank you for making time for me. I'm so excited. You're like my teen mom OG, my favorite one, like forever. And I can't tell you how happy I am for you that you are doing all this stuff and you're making it work. And also, I only have two kids and I feel like I don't know what I'm doing. And whenever I see you with your kids, I'm like, she's really got this together.
There's not, there is not a manual. There are manuals for parenting and there are not manuals for parenting. And like all kids, all kids are different is the thing. Do you know what I mean? Like your one kid is not the same as like your other kid, like at all. So you have to have like 12 different types of parenting just for like, you know, your kids. And it's like, oh my God.
Absolutely.
Yay. First of all, I want to say it's really great that you said that you read on planes because a lot of times now that's where I get like my uninterrupted reading time is on planes. And I like buy a book that I know absolutely that I'm going to savor it on the plane for like that entire plane ride. And you like you're sinking into a book.
So the thing, like, I was always a big reader, but I had this, like, time in my, when I was a teen where I couldn't concentrate on reading a lot, and so I wasn't reading a lot. But then I found the books that sucked you in. And I always tell people, and they're like, well, I don't really like to read, whether they're a kid or an adult. And they're like, I just, I can't, I don't really like it.
And I tell them, keep trying, because... It doesn't matter. You can go through these times where you're like, I'm not reading. I don't know what to read or I don't like it. But you're going to find that book like you found books.
And then you were in. Yeah. And you'll and now you'll keep trying. Even if you pick up a book and you say, but you're still going to go try to pick up another one, because once you find one that you really like, you can't stop. And so sometimes it takes years. And I tell other parents who's like, oh, my kids aren't readers. I don't know what to do. I'm like, they'll find it.
Yeah, they will. Just keep encouraging them. Because I have one who's a big reader and one who's not. But when she finds a book, she's, like, in it. Yeah. You just have to, like, keep trying.
Yeah. You just, you just keep trying, like, don't shame your kids for not being big readers or not being interested. Just keep like putting things in front of them or see what they're interested in. And, you know, just say one day you're going to find that book. Mm-hmm. And then you're going to be in it. Hook, line, and ticker. Yeah, hook, line, and ticker. So, Girl in Pieces.
I started out as a poet. And I was very happy doing that and being alone with my fingerless gloves and whatnot, like typing out my little poems and sending them off to literary magazines. And I liked the isolation that, to me, came with being a poet where you'd be quiet and really... you know, not too many people are going to read your poem. And that's great.
And then one day when I was on a bus in my late 20s going to my job at the University of Minnesota, this girl sat down next to me and her sleeves were pushed up and she was about 15 and she had fresh scars on her arm. And like that, did you ever have like those moments in life where you You see someone younger, and it, like, kind of blows you apart because you're like, wait, that was me. Mm-hmm.
And you really wish you could just tell them, if you hold on, it's going to be okay. Yes. Right? Mm-hmm. And that girl was me. I was like, that is what I was like at 15, like harming, in depression, drinking, doing drugs, doing anything I could to make myself disappear. And when she saw me looking, she pushed down like the sleeves of her jacket. shirt. And then she got off at the next stop.
And I should have said something to her. Like I told you, I should have said, it's going to be okay. Like, that's me. You and I are the same. We're in it together. We're a little army.
No, not at all. Yeah. And I couldn't stop thinking about her. And I thought about her for like weeks and weeks. And I kept like, like all the things that I had pushed down in myself in order to get to where I was like at that moment in my life. Seeing that girl made it all bubble to the surface.
And for years, like in my writing classes and my friends, you know, they would see my scars and they're like, you should write about that. And I was like, oh, no, no, no. No one wants to hear about that. But I couldn't stop thinking about her. And I thought, you know, I'll write about it because that's what I do. And what I've always done when something is like difficult, like I write about it.
I'm a big journaler. But it felt like it was really too big for like one poem. Or even like three. And I thought, well, no one's going to read this anyway. And I don't know how to write a novel. But when you're a writer, it shouldn't really matter. If you don't know how to do something, you just try. Like who really knows how to write a novel? Like, I've learned now that every novel is different.
And every time I start writing a book, I don't know how to write that book until it tells me how to write it. And I just started writing. And I wrote for nine years. And there were 13... Because no one was going to read it. It was just for me. Like, who was going to read a story about this girl who self-harms? Right? So you didn't have intentions to publish the book? No. No. It was only for me.
And I was in a really... I was in a really great bubble writing it because it was really bringing out all these thoughts and feelings that I hadn't wanted to think about for a very long time. And during that process of drafting the book, which ended up having like 13 drafts total. First, my sister died, which was five days after my first child was born, which is like a whole other thing.
And then my mother died. And I didn't write for a year. After my mother died. Like I just could not, like I could not. And then one morning I went back to the draft and I realized that what was wrong with the book, which was called at that point, The Tender Kit, was that I still wasn't talking about what I should be talking about.
And I had given Charlie in those drafts a supportive family and a supportive best friend. And everything that happened with Riley had happened before the events that started the draft. And in that moment with, like, my mother gone and my sister gone, I was an open wound. And I felt orphaned and alone in the world.
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