Shaping The Story Of Grief With Diane Zinna

Diane Zinna became an adult orphan at 23 after losing her father at 15 and her mom during her master's program. Each time she sat down to write, themes of grief and loss filled the page. Diane's new novel, The All-Night Sun, tells the story of a grieving teacher whose losses follow her to a Midsommar’s Eve celebration, where things turn dark. We’re talking about how we decide when to share our grief stories with others, and how common it is for our grief stories to be disjointed and non-linear.

Transcript

Well,

Grief Growers,

It's not very often that we get a novelist here on Coming Back.

So many of the books we cover here on the show are nonfiction,

They're memoirs,

They're how-tos,

They're self-help.

So I'm really delighted today to introduce you to Diane Zina,

Who's written a book called The All Night Sun that reflects on her own grief,

But also some things that are universal,

I think,

In so many of our griefs.

So Diane,

Welcome to the show,

And if you could start us off with your lost story.

Of course,

And thank you so much,

Shelby.

I actually lost my parents really early.

My father passed away when I was 15,

And then my mother passed away when I was 23 on the graduation day for my creative writing program,

For my MFA program.

And when that happened,

She had been my only family.

She had grown up on Long Island in New York,

And when I moved to Florida for my degree,

She came with me.

We were all each other's heads.

And I went on my graduation day to show her my diploma at her apartment,

And I found her.

It was that last day before everyone started moving back to their hometowns,

And so I was in this new city,

Newish city to me,

Without any support network.

We didn't really have any other extended family,

So there was no one else for me to lean on.

And I was right at that edge.

I thought that I was getting my master's in creative writing.

I wanted to go teach.

I wanted to start publishing right away.

I felt like everything was a great start for me,

And at that point,

Everything I sat down to write,

No matter what the theme was,

Everything veered into a story of loss for years and years.

And I tried to ignore it.

I tried to write around it,

And I recognized,

Much like my character in my book,

That grief is not something that you can walk around.

You have to go through it.

And so that's my story of loss.

It was me as an adult orphan,

And I didn't know a lot of other people like me.

I went through years of depression and kind of holding myself away because I felt like no one else really understood what I was going through.

And I felt it was a burden to share it with other people.

I felt people's discomfort around me.

They didn't really know what to make of the kind of grief I was going through.

And so this book is really trying to tell the story of that kind of grief,

The kind of grief that makes other people pull away.

And yeah,

I think this is what I've been trying to do my whole life.

Every time I came down to sit at the page and try to tell another story,

This is the book that needed to come out.

Yeah.

And I love this calling or this need or this drive to write a book about grief that makes people pull away.

Because I think so many of us who are grieving,

We know that feeling where we roll our grief suitcase behind us into a room,

Metaphorically,

And people scatter like mice or cockroaches.

They just go away.

And I love this line that you wrote.

I've got a couple of things underlined on page 18 here.

I was too old to be an orphan,

Old enough to drive,

Too young to know I wouldn't be able to make things work alone.

And this is coming from the main character Lauren Cressway,

Assume,

At least in some part is a reflection of you in the world in this sense of I'm too old to be an orphan,

But I'm enough of an adult that I should know how to do this.

And simultaneously,

I have no idea how to do this.

Yeah,

People just scurry confronted with this kind of grief because it doesn't really fit a mold that a lot of us have been trained to be used to.

We are taught the stages of grief as though they are the steps of a ladder and we will make it to the pinnacle and we will be okay.

And for me,

The way that I experienced grief was a thrashing on those rocks,

Like moving back and forth against them and just in a circuitous way.

And I felt like I wasn't meeting or fitting any molds and people would invite me to their thanksgivings,

Right?

And I would not want to come and then they would be perplexed,

You know,

We're giving you a holiday where you can be among other people,

Why won't you accept it?

And I didn't quite understand it myself.

You know,

It was such a going back and forth between different kinds of feelings that it took me a long time to figure out that this was my grief story and how it was working out for me.

And for most people,

It doesn't follow a set pattern.

Yes,

Well,

And I think what's true for us one day is not necessarily true the next.

Or what's true for us one year is not true the next.

So some years it's like,

Yeah,

I want to show up for Thanksgiving,

But other years it's like,

No,

I absolutely don't.

And I've done this icky thing.

Well,

I'm putting the label of icky on it.

Grief growers,

You can decide.

Diane,

You can decide if this is true for you.

But at the beginning of chapter four,

You tell this story of Lauren,

The main character in the All Night Sun,

Sitting in the chair of a Vietnamese hairdresser who's asking about her parents and what she got them for Christmas.

And she lies and pretends like they're alive and does this whole thing of,

I got my father a shirt,

My mother loves Chanel perfume and had this whole dialogue about parents who were very much dead,

But pretended that they were alive.

And I've done this too in my own grief because I'm simply just like that is a door that I am not ready to open either right now or with you,

Kind of whatever the circumstances may be.

Right.

That's right.

I think it goes on to say that people open the door to the funhouse without realizing that they've walked into this place of mirrors and just scary things.

And you just,

It's exhausting sometimes to think that I need to repeat my story again,

And it may not be received and should it be received by this person in this moment in this public place.

Yeah,

For sure.

There are many instances where it was just easier just to pretend.

Yeah.

I love this line.

I'm going to read it for grief growers who are curious.

It says,

Sometimes people just open the wrong door without realizing they're in scary funhouse at all.

And I think so many grieving people know this,

The loaded questions and people who are asking them don't even know they're loaded.

It's like,

Wow,

You have just opened a Pandora's box and you have no idea.

And then it becomes the weight of the greever,

The person who has lost to decide whether or not to open the box.

That's a lot of pressure redirected back on us.

So I wonder in your own loss story with the loss of your parents,

How you make that decision?

Like how do you know when the box should be opened or how do you know when you should leave it shut?

I think that unlike Lauren,

I was always trying,

You know,

In my own loss story,

I was always trying.

I understood why people would stop trying in the way that Lauren does in the book.

But I was very much the kind of person that if I saw an opening,

I would give it a shot.

You know,

I really wanted to connect with people.

And I was often let down,

You know,

By no fault of the other people really.

And as I said,

Sometimes they didn't know what to do with me.

Sometimes they were giving me what I needed,

You know,

And it was a lot of just kind of me and that feeling again and again,

Like I am alone in this.

And it was such a remarkable feeling,

Shelby,

When you did your interview with Cheryl Strayed over Mother's Day.

That was when I was first introduced to you.

And you got to know the kind of work that you're doing.

And that was really,

You know,

So many years on.

That was really one of the first times I felt like I was actually in a virtual community of people who might get it.

It was an amazing feeling,

When I will never forget.

Yeah.

And it seems so,

I love your heart and your spirit.

And you're like,

I'm going to try and open the box anyway,

Because I do feel so alone.

Like,

Everybody around me has good intentions.

Like not every greever has the ability to see that.

And I don't necessarily think that grieving people are walking around accusing others of being insensitive.

But that's often the read of the room that happens.

I know for me,

Especially,

I was like,

No one can say anything right in response to this.

And I think in response,

So many of us just become closed off to people.

That's very much the sense I got from your main character.

And you talked about in the email you sent me to introduce yourself to the show,

You were talking about unlikable female narrators.

And I had never heard this concept for a novel before.

Like,

What happens when you don't really like the person telling the story?

And I did not like Lauren at all.

I identified with many of the things that she did.

So pulling away people occasionally lying about whether my parents were dead,

Doing something reckless with somebody maybe she shouldn't have for a season of her life in order to cope with grief.

And so I resonated with these things.

And I'm like,

Wow,

I'm a lot like an unlikable female narrator.

And also we were very different in a lot of ways.

So I wonder why you choose that angle to present the book to the world.

But also maybe why you designed Lauren the way that she is in the first place as an unlikable female narrator.

Yeah,

And I don't think anyone sets out to create an unlikable female narrator.

I like Lauren very much.

I love her.

And I recognize sort of the reasons why she does the things that she does.

And maybe because there were so many elements of her like me,

I got her.

But there were a lot of editors who wouldn't take her on because they wanted,

You know,

When they talk about unlikable,

They want somebody stronger.

They want someone more sassy.

You know,

They want someone who's meeting the world head on,

You know.

And for Lauren,

I think that unlikability is sometimes the inability for people to really know her.

And so I wanted to present her in just like the truest form that I could imagine of someone who was actually going through that.

And I knew that not everyone was going to identify or like her.

But maybe they would understand her.

And maybe that's enough.

I will say that many people have written to me and said,

You know,

I also love Lauren.

And the one is my heart because,

You know,

Probably to the end of the book,

I was dreaming of a future for her where she was going to be okay.

I had actually written like a whole couple more chapters for her where she was out in the world and she was developing hobbies and she was finding new friends.

She had made these connections that felt like family and she was going to scrapbooking parties.

And I just wanted to give her a full life because I loved her,

You know.

And the reason I ended the book that I did,

I wanted it to feel like someone who has been underwater for a really long time,

Their voice not being heard,

Feeling very lost,

Just coming up for one breath of air,

That first breath.

And if I could do that and end the book that way,

Then maybe more people would be able to see their stories than Lauren's story because her breathing was not over.

It was not anywhere near over,

But she was going to have another breath after that day and another breath and it was going to be okay.

Yeah,

And it,

For me that lack of happily ever after resolution that we see so many times in movies and TV shows,

That felt a lot more real to me.

I mean,

I understand that this is a novel and Lauren is a fictional person,

But also she was a lot more like people and grievers I know than other fictional grief material that I've read,

Watched,

Listened to,

Experienced because there are,

There is,

There are and there is,

I don't know,

That's not grammatically correct,

But there's so much humanity woven into her and something that was frustrating as a reader,

But something that I remember very much from my own grief experience is this.

I know grief growers can't see my hands right now,

But I'm like expanding and contracting them in a ball around my face,

But this expansion contraction of a timeline or like when things happened and what information was composed of and what things meant and what people's intentions were,

Like all of that got real fuzzy and real blurry and real unreliable at points in time in the book and I was like,

Why can't this girl just get her facts straight?

And I stopped and I was like,

Oh my God,

When I was grieving or really deep in the throes of it,

I was not predictable or consistent in my storytelling either.

Even if you go back,

I'm sure to the first couple of episodes,

I'm coming back and compare the way I told my grief story with the way I tell it now,

The facts,

The story of the experience has changed and so there's almost a sloppy permission for that to evolve for her throughout the book.

And as a reader,

I'm like,

Oh my gosh,

It's so,

It felt a little gas lighty because I'm like,

I'm relying on you to tell the story,

But even you can't keep your story straight.

And so it contributed to this unlikeability,

But it also contributed to her humanity and it also contributed to the grief of the story.

Like the layers of this thing are very deep.

And I really resonated with that because it was a piece of myself and my grief that I still grapple with and I'm trying to love.

And in attempting to do that and in seeing myself through Lauren's eyes and Lauren's character in the book,

I'm like,

Wow,

There's a lot more of that work to be done.

Yes.

Yeah.

And you know how she tells her story to different people,

Yeah,

It might depend on who she's talking to.

And like you were alluding to before,

You know,

Her story,

Even as she speaks it to herself might be different depending on the day and how much she can handle,

How much she can remember,

How much she can face and where she wants to draw those connecting lines and try to put it together for herself.

You know,

It's funny,

I have a long publication story,

You know,

But to keep it short,

I originally sold this book several years ago to another editor who,

You know,

Loves a book from the beginning,

Really close to like coming out with the cover art.

And this was like four or five years ago.

And she went on to take a job at another publishing house.

And they assigned me a new editor who had not been the acquiring person,

But just someone who liked the story.

And I remember I was so excited to meet with her because it meant the book was still going to happen.

And we met up at a diner and I was in a celebratory mood.

And I ordered these waffles with caramel and whipped cream and all these berries and everything.

And she ordered black coffee and dry toast.

And then our conversation started around the book.

And it should have been a signal to me that maybe we were in the same place.

And what she asked of me was,

Can you take the story and put it into a linear timeline?

First this happened,

Then this happened,

Then this happened.

And I was terrified of losing the book contract because it had taken me so long to get there.

And so I figured,

Okay,

Maybe it's an exercise.

Maybe we do this and I'll learn something from it,

From putting it into that format.

And so against my better judgment,

I did it.

I pulled the book apart and I retold that story,

Which was in so many ways my own story.

And I didn't feel good about it.

Still sent it to her thinking,

She may not like this,

But we'll get back to the way it was.

And if we've learned something,

She canceled the book.

Okay.

And it was devastating for me.

She said that it just wasn't working for her.

But for me,

I knew in my heart that this was a story,

My story of grief was one that went back and forth in time.

It was maybe little nuggets of information along the way,

Out of order.

You're walking down the street and you see something that triggers a memory and suddenly you're in it.

That was the way I needed to tell this story because that was grief as I had experienced it.

It took me 14 months after that happened to return to the page and try again because I felt so invalidated by that experience that someone telling me that it needed to be linear and you can't even get linear,

Right?

Right.

No.

Why can't I make sense of a grief experience like this?

Well,

Because it needed to be in that format.

And so I put it back together finally into my own voice,

Into the way that I felt it needed to be told.

And my agent went out with it and in two weeks we got another editor who loved it and saw it in a way that I loved it and saw it and understood that grief can move that way.

And sometimes there's misinformation.

Sometimes there's missing information.

But hopefully the whole is giving a sense of exactly what she's carrying with her every day.

Yes.

And it sounds like,

I mean,

Wow,

Getting this book to book on the shelf state was in and of itself a grief experience.

Oh,

Yeah.

Will this be read,

Accepted?

Will people be able to listen to this person's story with patience,

With compassion,

With empathy?

An overwhelming response has been yes.

Yeah.

But the idea of a book as a grief experience,

The metaphor makes me laugh.

The waffles versus the dry toast.

I'm like,

Even that says something about grief and loss versus what you're feeding yourself when you're approaching a creative idea.

But these questions are so valid.

It's will it be loved?

Will it be accepted?

Will people get it?

And these are all questions that we ask about ourselves as grievers when we enter into the world,

Not to mention when we make something that contains our grief and then push it out into the world.

Because at some point,

And I spoke about this on a previous podcast on another show,

Is that especially as grieving people when we make creative work in the world,

At some point it no longer belongs only to us.

It's like we invisibly sign over the rights to everyone who will ever see,

Read,

Touch,

Consume,

Critique,

Love it.

Yes.

And all that that implies.

And so there's more and more layers of possible grief that you open the door to.

I mean,

Talk about the fun how scary.

We could go scary or we could go cotton candy.

We really don't know.

Until it lives out in the world.

It was 13 years in the making.

People have asked me,

You know,

Was it healing for you to write a story that was similar to something that you would actually experienced?

And I know I can't stay with material that is so similar to my own lived experience and not be changed by it.

I know that was happening.

But it was always hard,

Always coming to the page and sort of trying to be very,

Very close to the truth of a feeling that I had lived.

Trying to get as close as I could and put that into words.

That was very hard.

It didn't feel healing as I was writing it.

But it's been in the reception where people said,

Thank you for writing a book where I feel like I see myself on the page for the first time.

That has been healing because it's in the connection that I've always hoped that this would,

You know,

Bring the people,

You know,

Just connecting the minds of their own life and realizing that their grief experiences are valid and unique to them and something that they need to take their time with.

Right.

And that they have that permission for it to be nonlinear or disjointed or with holes in their memory and all these other things that so often the rest of the world doesn't allow us to be or to do in our grief.

Yes.

I'm wondering,

You mentioned that your mom died in the midst of your graduation from the creative writing program.

And I know from what you've said that the act of writing wasn't necessarily healing,

But I wonder in what ways in the past 13 or more years your writing itself as an art form has changed as a result of your grief.

So I'm thinking like sentence structure or the things and the people that inspire you,

But also how you feel about your own work when you look at it on a page.

Yeah,

That's a great question.

When I was in my creative writing program.

I was the only female student in my year with all male teachers.

And I was in a small program.

And so I came into that program with certain stories I wanted to tell about family and friendship and things that were,

You know,

Always just rubbing up against the line of sentimentality that's where I wanted to live,

That's where the kind of stories I wanted to tell.

And so I was in a room of men who were writing for the most part really cynical stories a lot of sarcasm.

The feedback in the room was often very sarcastic.

And I was always very I was always very sarcastic.

I was always very sarcastic.

I was always very sarcastic.

I was always very sarcastic.

And so I was young,

You know,

I was in my early 20s,

And I thought this was the way of publishing or writing I didn't know any better and so I started to play to the room.

And I started telling different kinds of stories.

And the stuff that I was always good at which people would say you know is inventive writing that,

You know,

Got better was there and that got amped up and people's feedback and I was felt I was doing great but I wasn't telling anywhere near the stories I wanted to tell in my own voice,

I was speaking in someone else's voice.

When I found my mom that day.

And when I started to come back to the page.

And I started to tell stories again.

I realized,

I didn't want anything cynical or sarcastic or artful near my stories.

I knew that the story of my mother and what I've been through and I've lost I knew it was too tender for me to that,

And I wanted just to do my very best to write my authentic story,

I wanted to write from a place of deep truth.

And so,

Over the years that has been how my voice has evolved,

And I would say,

In some ways it was a coming back to my own voice.

After a period of trying out someone else's voice.

And I'm so glad I didn't start publishing,

You know,

Back then I'm so glad I had a chance to find my way back to the home of my own voice.

And to share those things that weren't of me.

And I think that's just such beautiful imagery of,

I had to try on and very much step into places I didn't belong.

In order to return to a place that I always did.

Yeah,

And I want to do a little bit of a pivot here in talking about discovering your mom and your dad's death at 15 is,

Is what do you remember of your parents and the things that you put together because I'm recalling this line from the book that says I can see them so clearly,

But there are times I cannot remember my mother's voice,

My father's hands and I think there's this sense I even in my own world and even in my own grief there are the things that stick.

So sharply.

And then there are things where it's like wow I have to really reach to even get a whisper of what of what that was on them so I wonder if we could take just a few minutes and you could share for your parents,

Or to you in life.

Thank you so much.

And,

You know,

People don't get asked this kind of thing enough.

It's just a beautiful question.

It's sort of like in the book where Siri,

The student who Lauren befriends which is across the desk and grabs her hand says,

Tell me what were they like,

Such an invitation to share.

Thank you.

My father was an artist.

He was a visual artist.

When I was born,

He had to stop his freelance artwork and get more practical jobs so he went into human post postman.

But he was a fantastic painter and he did a lot of murals actually a lot of murals in and around Washington DC which is where I am so sometimes I've gone back to see what those murals and just know that his hand was there and it's been very important to me.

One of the early life lessons that he gave me that I've tried to share with my daughter who's now eight,

Was about art about writing.

I had this,

I have this memory of being on the kitchen floor and I had poster board and markers and paint and all my supplies and I was supposed to put together a drawing of a tree.

And I was freaking out.

I could not do it.

I could not get it right I was in tears I was crying.

And he came over and he just asked me,

What is going wrong,

Tell me what you're feeling.

And so he showed me a few strokes of his pencil.

You know,

It doesn't have to be the whole tree.

Your teacher asked for a picture of a tree but what about a picture of a branch.

And he just,

You know,

Made this picture of a branch,

And he showed me how here's the fun stuff that you like to do by hand.

You want to do the leaves.

You want to do the caterpillar crawling on there,

You want to do the shine of the apple.

That's what makes you happy.

And trying to get the perspective of an entire tree was overwhelming to me,

But he helped me find my way into art and say,

This is how I claim my tree,

You know,

This is how I want to represent it.

And I never forgot that so when my daughter is passionate and excited and upset about a project.

I always try to weave it back to you.

How can you find your way into this that feels authentic to you and gives you joy.

And that's really cool.

It's like how can you take a slice of a larger picture,

And it's just as good if not better than trying to create the whole thing from scratch.

Yes.

Yes.

So that was him and he,

He actually passed,

He passed when I was 15,

He had the same kidney disease that I have.

And it's a disease that doesn't have a cure yet.

And so sometimes I think about how,

You know,

Where was he,

How was his health like at this age.

Now where am I have to compare our journeys on this.

So I think about that a lot.

His passing was very slow it happened over many years.

I remember the last day I saw him.

I went into the hospital room with my mom.

And he was even unresponsive for a while.

And I remember it was late in the day so there was a splint of golden light coming into the room spilling it out.

And I was standing in the door and my mother went over to his bedside.

And she leaned down,

And she said to him.

I love you,

Freddie.

And she hadn't really spoken to him as,

I hate to say it,

But as a person in a really long time.

His long illness had been really hard on her and she had been very depressed and pulling away from him and just doing the bare minimum in a lot of ways.

But that moment and that golden light she said,

I love you Freddie,

And he opened his eyes,

And he gripped her.

And he said you too.

And I will always remember that and she cries,

Of course I do,

Of course I do.

And then that night he passed away.

And he got the phone call in the middle of the night and I remember crawling into my mom's bed and sleeping side by side and just weeping through the night.

Wow.

And my mom,

You know,

We became each other's best friends.

We were inseparable,

We did everything together and it was interesting,

Something I've been working on in a new book I'm writing now,

But this feeling like anything I did,

Any experience I had,

I felt almost like it wasn't real unless she was experiencing it too.

And maybe it was because she was my person,

You know,

She was my person at that time and if I saw a TV show I really loved,

I wanted her to see it too.

If I went to a park and I saw an alligator,

Well I was going to bring her back to that park and we were going to find that alligator.

And I wanted her to see that one,

That actually happened because we're living in Florida and there were a lot of alligators in the pools and the pots down there.

But yeah,

She was my person and we were very,

Very close in those years.

As I mentioned,

She moved down to Florida with me so that I could do my degree and she could be in the same town.

She was very pulled off,

You know,

She had me but she was not trusting of friends.

She was lonely I think in a lot of ways.

And so I feel like,

You know,

My father's death was just so hard on her that she had a really hard time coming back from that,

You know,

And she didn't have a support network around her to help seek her through.

So that was sort of my model,

Right?

When she passed away,

You know,

There was that feeling that I learned that people aren't going to get it.

There's no one who's going to be there for you.

You have to rely on yourself,

You know.

Because that's how I've seen her going through her grieving from my dad.

Yes,

And so much of how we grieve is what we learned through that modeling.

But I'm so curious about this picture of your mom because even at the beginning of our conversation you had said we were all the other person had.

And while there is great depth and meaning and importance in that,

It sounds like she was your eyewitness.

Like if I saw something,

She had to come see it too.

And almost like a validator,

But also like I'm living this life and you have to experience it with me.

And there's kind of a joy and a lightness in that and then there's also kind of a need to be seen in that also.

Yes,

And anxiety in it.

Yes,

And so when that goes away,

When she dies,

It's like,

Okay,

Well now what?

My eyewitness has vanished.

My father is gone and now my eyewitness has vanished.

And it's almost like one of those zen cones where it's like if one,

What's the sound of one hand clapping?

Or if a tree falls in the forest,

Does anyone know how to hear it?

It's like if I'm living my life after loss,

Does anyone care how I'm living it?

Or does anyone see the pain I'm in inside of it?

Yeah,

What happens when the eyewitness goes missing?

Yes,

And then there was also this feeling that,

You know,

All of the family stories and the memories and the objects that were important had fallen to me.

And the responsibility of keeping all of that alive and relevant in the world felt like a really heavy thing to carry.

You know,

If I look through a box of photographs,

Can I tell the same stories of these photographs that my mother would have told?

And why not have I forgotten?

How dare I forget?

Yeah,

Well,

And not having another set of eyes or another storyteller in the mix,

And this came through in The All Night Sun too,

It kind of invokes this feeling of,

Well,

Then I can be,

Create whatever I want.

There's an air of recklessness that enters the picture because now I have no accountability.

I have nothing tying me to anything.

And one of the lines I underlined,

At least in the beginning of the book,

Let me see if I can find it again.

It was about floating in the world.

And I was like,

Oh yes,

I know exactly what that means.

And I resonated with it so much.

Let's see.

Oh,

When I look back,

It felt like floating because before then I had been so rooted.

And it's like we don't even see how rooted we are as people until we experience great loss.

And then it's like,

Wow,

We are rocketed towards a very great abyss in a lot of situations.

Yeah.

Yeah,

That recklessness and kind of this idea,

It wasn't suicidal,

But teetering on this idea of whether or not I really want to be here.

And oh my gosh,

Eating up a total zest for life and swallowing the thing whole.

I felt like it was two poles the book was oscillating between.

Yes.

Because this is funny,

We're almost through the interview and we haven't even really outlined the plot of the book.

But Lauren meets a student and travels with her to Europe and goes to Midsummer Fest and a great deal of things ensue.

But there's gosh,

This distinction of being in the US,

Being abroad,

Being dead,

Being alive,

Being reckless,

Being responsible.

It's like there's all of these poles that Lauren's character is oscillating between in the whole book.

And the whole time I'm reading,

I'm like,

Just make up your mind.

And that's something I laugh at myself because I'm like I said that to myself in my grief also is just make up your mind when in reality it's an impossible ask.

We are asked and tasked with holding dual realities inside of us all the time until the end of time.

And even,

Slight spoiler alert,

One of the lines from the end of the book is about love and kind of how that's defined.

Let me see if I can find this.

I want to.

I folded down some pages so I could get to places more easy in the conversation.

Oh yes,

So Lauren narrates,

She writes,

I saw Siri first as someone who might save me,

Then as someone who had failed me.

But love was holding all the pieces at the same time.

And it's always true whether we remember that or not.

Perhaps because of that,

Though there are things we might forget,

Nothing is ever really lost.

And wow,

To oscillate between savior and failure,

Responsibility,

Recklessness,

The US,

Europe,

Light,

Dark,

Like wow.

This,

The amount of layers that are contained in the all-night sun was just astounding to me.

Even more are coming forward now even in conversation with you.

Yes,

Our job as grieving people,

Whether we realize it or not,

We're already doing it,

Is to be a container for all of it.

That's right.

You know,

One of the first things that Siri says to Lauren,

You know,

Which is inviting her to come back to Sweden for Midsummer during this time when there was going to be endless sun.

And it just feels like such a difference to Lauren from what she's been experiencing all these years of just being alone in her dark apartment.

But she says,

Come through to Sweden,

It'll be Midsummer.

Everything will just be green and fresh and new.

Everything will just be thawing out.

And Lauren feels like,

Yes,

That is my invitation back to a way of being I haven't had in a long time.

That feels like a respite from grief for me.

And when she goes there,

She's bringing with her all of that pain that comes with her.

But now all of that darkness is sort of splashed against this really bright canvas of unending day and people,

You know,

Hopping around Midsummer polls and seeing Jovial songs.

And she's there still with all of this pain inside of her.

I knew that when I travel to Sweden during Midsummer,

That contrast where I was,

I was in a period of deep grief,

The contrast of the beauty there,

The endless day,

All that sunlight that has made everything sparkle.

And what was inside of me,

That was a story.

That was a story because that was a very dramatic way of showing it.

But that is what a lot of us do every day.

We go to our kids' school play and we're bringing with us our grief.

We go to Thanksgiving and we're bringing with us our grief.

And the Midsummer Festival was just a beautiful canvas upon which to splash out all this grief talk and this story of moving our way through it.

Yes,

And it's this reinforced environmental reminder of even light,

Actual sunlight does not have the power to drown out loss and loss does not have the power to force the sun to stop shining.

We must carry both.

We must be containers for both.

And Diane,

As we're getting to the end of our conversation,

I know you shared something with us a few minutes ago about having the same kidney disease as your dad.

Uncurable,

Incurable,

Uncurable.

And living with that as a reality.

And so I wonder,

As you've also mentioned,

You're working on another book,

If something you feel in relation to your writing and your work is a sense of mortal urgency.

I think this is something that I hear from a lot of creative people,

But myself included,

And I don't have something that I know about.

I just know I'm going to die one day because I've witnessed my mother's death.

But there's almost this rush or this pressure to get everything out into the world that you want out into the world because one day you're going to die.

And I wonder if that's true for you and or if that played into the publishing of The All Night Sun.

I don't feel like there's a rush in me to get the stories out.

I feel like,

If anything,

The publication story of The All Night Sun taught me that everything is going to come in its own time.

And when it does,

It'll be of its time.

So I've never felt this sort of urgency.

I instead feel that I just want to make sure that what I'm writing about is meaningful to me.

And when I lost that first book contract,

My agent,

Who was an angel and stood by me through that whole thing,

She said,

Well,

Do you want to go out with book number two?

I know that you've been working on something else.

Do you want to try that one first?

And I just knew that The All Night Sun contained enough of my journey to the page that this needed to be the book that went out first.

And I just wanted to be the author of whatever long that took.

I wanted this to be my entranceway into storytelling,

Into sharing my words with the world.

And so now that it's out and it's been received so beautifully,

I feel like I can relax and tell other stories.

I think they'll always have grief at their core.

It's something that I really believe is important to talk about.

I do a lot of work in this area.

I think it's really important,

Doesn't get enough attention,

Writing fiction about real life grief experiences.

So my work is always going to contain that,

But not with a sense of I need to get it out.

I just need to get that story out in a way that felt authentic to me.

I see an image of no hard grip or a desperation.

I don't hear that energy in your voice at all.

It's like I just see the doorway and I know that this is the thing that's supposed to pass through right now.

Oh,

That's beautifully said.

Thank you.

Yeah,

It's a different kind of energy that I hear from a lot of creative people who are either staring down a known death.

I know how I will die.

Or I have a very strong suspicion because how do any of us really ever know?

But then people who kind of have an unknown death somewhere moving in the future.

So thank you for asking that question.

I know that for a lot of artists it's not something they genuinely want to step into.

But thank you for sharing that with us because I know sometimes it can be at the heart of what you make.