The Stories that Change Us - Jessi Hempel

Written By Tim Sullivan

Season 1, Episode 2

Within the span of five years, the world as Jessi Hempel knew it shifted on it’s axis. When exploring the prospect of parenthood, the award-winning journalist and podcast host had to wade through her own fears from her past, the echo chamber of what the world shared a parent should be, and decide how she wanted to move forward. In this show, Jessi shares how she approached writing THE FAMILY OUTING and provides perspective on making the most difficult decisions as a parent - even before you meet your child for the first time.

Content Warning: this episode addresses pregnancy loss and grief. If that doesn’t feel healthy for you, please do what’s best for you in this moment.

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Show Notes

About Jessi Hempel:

About Amy Kugler:

About the Show: “And More with Amy Kugler” is a production of BEAM, a venture dedicated to amplifying the untold stories of motherhood and building public/private/advocacy partnerships to shift policy for moms nationally and globally.

 

Transcript

Jessi Hempel

It is true about the most important things in life that we have to listen for are knowing. Right? That that stretches across I mean that stretches across parenthood but also the big career decisions we make in life, where we're going to live. If we listen well enough, we hear what we're supposed to do. But first we have to block out everything else.

Amy Kugler

This is "And More with Amy Kugler." It's a show where we'll explore all of the stories about motherhood and caregiving and how they can be a driving force for change. We'll talk about the challenging and hilarious moments that we rarely say out loud, and we'll find a way forward that lifts us all up. Let's get started.

Hey, everyone, it's Amy Kugler and I have been thinking a lot about the power of curiosity, how it holds in our life. And both when it comes to understanding our own selves, our children, and also our families, the ebbs and flows that each of us take and how our family dynamics change over time. I'm really digging in deep with that with my own family, but also, you know, in the stories with others, and this is exactly why I am so excited to have today's guest on. We have wonderful Jessi Hempel here with us today. How are you doing, Jessi?

Jessi Hempel

Great. It's wonderful to be here.

Amy Kugler

So glad. Well, let me tell you a little bit about her and then we are going to get everything started.

Jessi Hempel is the host of the award winning podcast "Hello, Monday." And I don't know about you, but you have to go and listen to it. I'm an OG listener, just glad I'm gonna claim it. I want to claim it. She's also a senior editor at large at LinkedIn. For nearly two decades, she has been writing and editing features and cover stories from magazine including wired and Ford and time, and about work life and meaning in the contemporary age. And I know her from her tech background, right? And then the Wall Street Journal days and all of that. But I also know that she is branching out in so many different conversations around, you know, her own book. She's the author of the family outing, and it's a striking and remarkable literary memoir about one family's transformation hers her own family, with almost all of them embracing their queer identities. Jessie is, you know, the mom of two amazing little kiddos, and she and her wife live in Brooklyn. So let me just dig in right there. How old are your kiddos now? Let's go with that over

Jessi Hempel

here. By the way, that was some introduction. Thank you so much, Amy. My son is just shy of five, he's four in three quarters, he would tell you, and my daughter is two.

Amy Kugler

Oh, my gosh, I love it such a fun age and also such a wild chaotic time. Like there is not a time when we sit down, right>

Jessi Hempel

No, pretty much.

Amy Kugler 2:59

Well, let's dig in. I think, you know, the the reason why I wanted to have you on here is just the power of your story is remarkable. But not only that, you compiled stories from your entire family at such a pivotal over such so many pivotal years in this transformation. So just to give a quick overview of the family outing, can you tell us a little bit more about what the book is about?

Jessi Hempel

Totally, it totally. This book is my attempt to try to understand the impact of what happened when basically every single member of my family came out. And Amy I mean, everyone, right? So you know, I'm like the OG somewhat boring version of just gay, right, I came out first. But my father then came out as gay and and left a 23 year marriage, my sister came out as bisexual, my brother came out as transgender. And through that entire experience, my mother, as her marriage unraveled, and she came to terms with her own story came out as a survivor. And all of that happened to me in my family in the space of five years. It was a very, very busy five years. When it was, yeah,

Amy Kugler 4:13

Yeah, yeah. And the, when you read it, right, that the events that snowball, right, with one after another after another, and the way you set it up is remarkable did in those moments when all of that transformation was happening? Did it feel like whiplash? Or did it feel like you're just taking one thing at a time, each time?

Jessi Hempel

You know how it is with the story, especially the story of your life. You don't have the perspective to understand it as a story in the happening. It just feels like a garbled set of events. And it's only when you reach ripe old Middle Ages i now have that you you have the ability to step back and piece it together. And I should say specifically, you know, you asked sort of where the book came from. I feel like I need to bring you back to March. of 2020. And I don't know where you were, but I know that just saying March of 2020 evokes that feeling in the chest of most people in North America, maybe globally, right. And I was living in Brooklyn, New York, and my wife and I had this little baby, he was 15 months old Jude. And we thought we knew something about our lives. We, you know, I, at the time, I was a writer, and a technology journalist and a serious journalist. And I traveled all the time. It was new parents, I was very tired, but my identity was set. And then in the space of a week, everything changed. My job was up in the air. My we lived in this ground floor apartment on a very busy Avenue in Brooklyn, if you are a listener in New York, you probably know Park Slope, and we live sort of down the street from a hospital. And all day, I would hear the ambulances just whipping back and for whipping back and forth. But then the thing I remember is that when the ambulances went away, there were no people outside. And so you would just hear silence. And that's when I started to hear the birds in New York sounded like a nature preserve. And, you know, it was just like, one of those weird moments in life where everything that you expect is different than what you expect. So Amy, my wife and I, we had to get out of town, we started to get kind of nervous. So we put our baby in the back of the Subaru with the dog because we are those kinds of lesbians. And we hit the gas, probably blaring Indigo Girls, I'm going to be really honest. And we hit the gas. And we drove to her parents house in Tupelo, Mississippi. And those first couple of weeks in Tupelo living in my wife's childhood bedroom. I at first did the things that you did early in the pandemic, where I like, did zoom yoga and zoom one with friends and zoom caption. Very quickly, I was done with Zoom. I was so done with Zoom. Aren't we all? Right, it was just like, we were all just glazed over robots. And I became very depressed, and I stopped calling my friends. And I realized that the only people I was talking to every day were my family members. And we were quarantining at that point in like, different states, different homes. My mother, my father, and my sister, my brother and I, but my primary comfort was coming from nice people. And I thought, well, that is weird. Because if you had known us 20 years ago, you would have voted us least likely to keep in touch with each other. I mean, the humble family was chaos. People ran from that fire, right. And so that's the origin of the book, I had that long, quiet period of time. And I thought, I'm going to explore a question. And the question is like, how did we come out? Okay. Except that, I'll just say one more thing that I promise I'll take a breath. But I wasn't interested in writing an intellectual treatise, I wanted to write a beach. I wanted to write the kind of book that you open it up, you read the first page, and you're like, well, shucks?

Amy Kugler 8:11

Yeah. Well, and you did that for sure. I mean, as evidenced by the fact that I'm reading it, as I mentioned the second time yesterday, and just like crying, I think that the powerful question of how did we get here, right, and how did we make it out? Okay, is something that everyone continually asks? And I don't know, I mean, as a parent, I asked that all the time. It's more, it's not how did we make it? Okay, it's that, you know, are we going to be okay, right, as, as a parent, and so I think it's powerful to be able to say, Okay, our family has gone through so many clarifying moments. And we're here and we're standing and we still like each other, and we want to spend time together. And to examine that question that totally answers the wine now, right? Because all of these events happened, what, prior decade ago?

Jessi Hempel

Yeah. In the 90s, really like the spoke of but but what I tried to do is actually go all the way back and look at how my parents were children. Right. And that that's really interesting, the way in which the notion of parenthood changes from generation to generation. And, you know, my grandparents loved my parents on both sides of the family like loved my mom loved my dad, but what it meant to love your child and steward your child in the 60s and 70s versus today, and then me the kind of parents that we're aspiring to be for our kids. It's so different from generation to generation. Looking back

Amy Kugler 9:46

at those stories, what is and how different generations you know, determined what love and care and affection and showing it meant, right? What are some lessons that you get to take away into your journey as it parent?

Jessi Hempel

Well, I think so much about the way that for my parents as children, their parents tried to love them by shoehorning them into society and encouraging them not to talk about the ways they were different. Right. So for my dad, I mean, my dad was the kind of kid that if you saw him at like 10 years old, you probably would have been like, that kids probably gay, he just doesn't know it yet. Right. And so his parents attempting to love him, tried to just love it out of him, right, like, let's not talk about it, let's send you a way to Christian boarding school. And then my mother, my mother came up against this, you know, terrible, violent episode that unfolded in her town that involved a serial killer, I will say no more. But when it all came out, and it turned out that that person, or people were actually pretty involved with my mom, her parents replied, by saying, let's not talk about this, let's just, you're never going to talk to him, again, you're going to get on with your life. And again, that happened that I love. And then fast forward a generation and in my generation, I don't know about you, but when I was a teenager, you would never tell somebody that you were in therapy, even if you were right, but by the time I got to college in my young adulthood, like I found my way to therapy, and I found my way to the idea, culturally, that you should talk about the things that hurt, that there's something to learn. And I hope that I'm raising my own children with the idea right from the start, that every feeling is okay. And that there are people to support them through whatever emerges. And also, I don't know about you, but I'm positive that I'm messing my own children up in ways I can't imagine.

Amy Kugler 11:42

I keep saying that I am just continually adding to the therapy fund, partly as a joke, but partly is truth. Right? It's like, you know why? Like, yesterday, we had a couple of incidents to with my son who's six, and it was just like, he was feeling his feelings. I'm like, I'm just adding it to the therapy found it's okay. Right, like, I'm not doing this? Well. I think it's interesting, because as we raise those kids, right, and it is a, it is our brains working in a different way than the way that we were in some ways taught that love was right, because I think our parents, my parents, like yours, too, are in that middle ground of trying to come to terms with a lot of it and really bringing clarity around it. They didn't have as many bold realizations, right, as your parents, but also like, there's small ways, right? And so now as we chart our own path forward with our kids, it's it's a little it's the RE parenting for us. And the parenting at the same time. It takes a lot of energy, but it's worth it.

Jessi Hempel

Yeah, I think that that's true. And my son at four is just a handful right now. Right? And, and there's so much intellectual work that goes into trying to figure out how to manage the ways that he is a handful.

Amy Kugler 12:59

And you it's wild, and the stories that you get to pass down to him, I'm sure are remarkable. And your daughter too. It's like, how are we going to do this? You said he was four and three, three and a half or sorry, four and a half?

Jessi Hempel

He's four and a half daughter? Yeah. Yeah. So

Amy Kugler 13:16

yeah. Anytime you say a kid around that age as a half, or they claim them as a half, you know that like, Oh, you're getting into independence, we love it. You love it. So before we cut to break, I'm really curious as you were doing the project, as you mentioned, in the book, you called it the project, I thought that was fascinating. It makes it it makes us very studious. At the same time, it also takes some of the emotion out of an emotionally charged conversation in some ways. I love it. How did you how did you explain the project? I know your your wife knew all about this from the jump. But how did you explain this also to your kids about what you were doing with the family?

Jessi Hempel

We'll see. That was the magic of the timing of this project. My son when I started it was 15 months, my daughter didn't exist yet. And I would say Ps that it's not a very good idea to have a baby the same month that your book is due like you just shall not. But I knew that they were young enough that the book will have been received and landed by the time they're old enough to read it. And that was important to me. I wouldn't have wanted to publish this book when they were say 10 and 12. You know, yeah. And also me like this book was the dream for me. If you asked me what I wanted to do when I was 18, I would say write this book. And this book owes itself to my kids in this interesting way. I you know, I don't think we make a mistake when we generalize the experience of motherhood. I know people really react to it differently. But for me, I didn't think I wanted kids and wrapped up in that It was also a didn't think I'd be a very good parent. And about a decade into my relationship with my wife, she said, No, let's do this. And I signed on reluctantly, like truly reluctantly. And then, in a surprise turn of events, literally the first time that we attempted to get pregnant, which, when you're two queer women, that's a science experiment, right? Francis, my wife got pregnant with twins. And I went, I was like, Well, I wasn't even sure on one, I thought it would take three years to get pregnant. Now, we're gonna have two babies. Yeah. And then it was a very dramatic pregnancy, a very hard pregnancy. And in the end, one of the babies passed away. And so Francis gave birth to Jude and his brother asked her, and in that moment, my entire world changed. And I would say for the better, I mean, I hope that I never have a day that is that sad again in my life. But it was also the happiest day in my life. Right? And it infused me with a sense of purpose and a hurry about that purpose. And I came away from that saying, whatever it was that I thought I was going to do with my life, it better mean something, and I better do it right now. And that was actually right around the time that I started working on the book.

Amy Kugler 16:27

Amazing, amazing to be able to hold both joy and heartbreak in the same breath and find meaning and purpose out of that. Jessie you just gave me chills. Well, and I think I really want to keep talking about that. You know, just your path to motherhood too, and talking about what that means for you and how you're moving it forward when we come back from break so everybody, this is an mor with Amy Kugler, and we'll be back with Jessi Hempel.

Hey, it's Amy. So before we fill this spot with an incredible sponsor that we've got lined up, I wanted to come to you with a quick ask. And more with Amy. Kugler is a production of beam. It's a venture dedicated to amplifying the untold stories of motherhood and building public private partnerships, along with collaborations with advocacy organizations to shift policy for moms nationally and globally. Ultimately, we're changing the narrative of motherhood one shared experience at a time, and I need your help in one of two ways. First support beam in our efforts through our crowdfunding campaign. You can find more about how you can help us reach our very big goal at Welcome to beam.com. You can also while you're there share your story we want to hear from you go to welcome to beam.com That's w e l c o m e t o b e a m.com and click on support for our crowdfunding campaign or share your stories directly on the website. Onward and upward my friends

just a heads up we are going to discuss pregnancy loss and miscarriage if those two topics are not healthy for you in this moment to listen to that's okay I get it skip to the end of the episode

I welcome back this is Anne Morrow with Amy Kugler and I am here with Jesse humble we have been talking about the stories we tell about ourselves, our families and motherhood and how those stories can transform over time that also change us and Jessie I just want to hop back into kind of your path to becoming a mother because I you know, obviously I read and I resonated with the fact that at first you did not think that motherhood was a part of your journey for lots of reasons. I'm curious a little bit about the stories that in just a heads Oh no. We're gonna read about pregnancy law how you were mother right and your job, your job comfortable for you, I guess. Feel free to skip to you know,

Jessi Hempel

I think that I I always was certain that I would not have children. And there is perhaps the first mistake I made in my life. One should never be certain about anything when it comes to identity in one's life. But I felt very comfortable with that and In fact, I even felt very annoyed throughout my 30 years that the world kept asking me for something different, that I would be moving along in my career. And people would say to me, so what's your plan for children? You really should get started on that now. And I would turn bright red, because it's funny how people in professional settings think that that's an okay question and not a terribly personal question to ask a woman. Right? Right.

Amy Kugler 20:23

Right. It's like, I don't tell you about your performance review. We're not talking about my body, or my choices,

Jessi Hempel

my choices, right, and they are my choices. And it is okay for me not to want children. And I love actually still, I love saying that now, even on the other side of having children, because I think it's an important thing for women and any caring parent to know, like, you don't have to want this and you're not less of a person for that. That said, I also know that infused in that, for me, was a lot of fear that I would parent, the way that I was parented. And the way that I was parented by two parents who are in the closet about various issues of their own was not great, they would tell you, it's not great, you can read a book about how it was not great. And I was so afraid of that, that I couldn't even open my mind to the idea. But, you know, my partner is a person who, well, first of all, I have absolute conviction that my life is better for her existence. And when she came to me and said, I really want this, it was all in my head. And he was like intellectual is like a math problem. I was like, well, if she really wants it, my first obligation in life is to deliver on my own purpose. Second obligation is to support my partner in her own nervous. I'm sure I could do this. And I don't know what I was thinking me, I think I was thinking about parenting, like, a long list of chores. And mind you there is a long list of chores that goes with parenting. But there was no emotional embodiment to that. And then, of course, it became apparent and break wide open. And my experience was that my whole essence rose to the challenge of it in ways that surprised me. And I feel so grateful that my wife brought that into my life.

Amy Kugler 22:22

Well, and you know, as you explained before break, right? You Your wife was getting the caring parent, right and carrying twins. And how early did you find out that it wasn't a viable pregnancy? Or was it?

Jessi Hempel

Well, this was it's funny, I'm going to explain this to you exactly how Jude my four and a half year old understands it now, I love this, which is that at about 20 weeks, we went in for our 20 week scan. And they said, goodness, Baby A is trending really small. He's too small. And Baby B is of a great size. And the issue was that if their umbilical cords were straws, Baby B Jude, his straw was working just fine. But Aster straw was sort of closing up, he'd suck in a close up, and he wasn't able to eat enough. And they said, Well, you know what, he's, he's gonna pass and I'm so sorry. So we were devastated. And we went home and waited, and then any he didn't die. And he kept growing. And he kept growing. And then we got to 25 weeks. And they said, Well, we could deliver now. You know, both babies would have a shot at surviving. If we deliver now said every week that you wait from here is better for Jude. But it is more dangerous for Aster. What baby what one baby needs to stay in there and what the other baby needs is to come out. And we wrestled with how to manage this. And our doctor was the best doctor in the world. And he said, Ask no one. He said don't ask your parents, don't ask your friends. Just talk to each other and make the decision and know as you know, with any hard decision about anything in life, that you're not going to feel resolved, you're simply going to decide. Wow. So we decided we decided we would deliver it 29 weeks and we went into deliver and the day before the delivery. Pastor died. And it was devastating. It was always going to be devastating. But in some weird way. What that meant was that they sent us home and you got an extra six weeks in utero. And then we had the strangest birth ever. I have yet to meet someone who's had a birth like this but I would like to so if you're listening please get in touch. We worked with a doula who delivers babies who won't survive and we delivered one living baby and one stillborn baby And then we had a beautiful funeral with all of our family. And then we bought our living baby home.

Amy Kugler 25:08

And yeah, holding that duality of joy and heartbreak, I just can't, I can't get over that. And, you know, your doctors conversation around, just decide, like, don't ask anybody because you'll get too much in your head on these kinds of things. It's just too hard

Jessi Hempel

just to have all their decisions, right, and all their judgments and all how they would do it. And, and then it is true about the most important things in life that we have to listen for are knowing, right? That stretches across I mean, that stretches across parenthood, but also the big career decisions we make in life, where we're going to live. If we listen well enough. We hear what we're supposed to do. But first, we have to block out everything else.

Amy Kugler 25:55

Absolutely. And I think you you know, at the end of the book, the line that keeps riveting me in that moment is really your brother's line of unsign. About just, you know, being curious, I will read you back to you. Because I love when everybody does that mean to but you know, our secrets will leave their own tracks, we'll leave it to our kids to navigate those tracks as they grow. The gift we give them is to model the searching. And just I mean, even in that moment for you and Francis right and bringing home one baby and not another and the care and the conversations around all of that. In so many ways. I'm I'm so in awe of how you modeled the searching both for your family in that moment. But you'll continue to model that searching for your own kids as they grow. Because that's a skill. That's a muscle that you can't undo. Right? That's a muscle that makes you so much stronger.

Jessi Hempel

Yeah, it's like all you ever want to teach your children is that they can figure it out on their own, that they'll be okay on their own. How do you do that? Amy? Have you figured out how to do that?

Amy Kugler 27:06

I have not figured out how to do that. But you know, I feel like you and I are going to figure that out together. And we are going to tell that to the world somehow, someway with all of our missteps and falters at the same time. Oh my gosh, Jessie, this has been incredible. Thank you for all that you do both at LinkedIn, but also through your memoir. And I know you know, if you haven't picked up the family outing, please do. So we will leave links in the show notes so that you can find it anywhere. And then Jesse, where can people find you? If they want to learn more about you your story and all the things that are coming up for you.

Jessi Hempel

Thank you, me. Um, well, you can try my website, which is Jesse J. humble.com. Or you can find me on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a great place to keep up with anything new that I'm working on.

Amy Kugler 27:56

I love it. And definitely a plug to Hello Monday because y'all y'all, for those who the view from Seattle like she had Megan Rapinoe on the other day too. And I was like, it's like, it's like it's my day. It's like it's my day. I love it. Like

Jessi Hempel

she uh, you need to have her on your show. I mean, she's, I think a dog mother. Yes. Perhaps not a parent yet but don't you want to talk to Meghan about that last kick?

Amy Kugler 28:24

Oh my god higher career don't we all I want her to sit to simmer in it and then I want to I want the fire with that. Oh my gosh, yeah, that's exactly it. Well, thank you again, Jesse. This has been such a pleasure and you know, friends and family. I hope you take a little bit of this conversation into your day. Think about it marinate about it, get curious about it, let us know what you think by going to welcome to bing.com and sharing your story and also you know, leaving comments in the show notes for and more with Amy is talk with Amy Kugler and tell your friends onward and upward. Gosh when you can for I go and have to hear from you have a story that we should talk about and for and more. Click the Share your story button to welcome to beam doc clean focus and make sure you're signed up for our newsletter there to get all the information about upcoming events and giveaways and oils around you can also follow us on Instagram at you have beam for masa, E a m and Bailey our Mo M are a couple of key lessons that I'll think about for the next week. Sometimes the question is, how did we come out? Okay. But often in the thick of it. It all starts with the question. How are we going to come out okay. And that's where the curiosity starts. That's where we modeled Searching. Second, it is possible to hold joy and heartbreak at the same time. These moments shift our DNA in ways that can provide purpose. And yet, it is hard. It's hard as hell. And so we've got to grieve and confirm it. Three, when push comes to shove, it is more important to speak our truth, to dig deep and understand our feelings and to give space for others to do the same. This is exactly what Jessie did as she worked on the project, which became this book, she asked her questions, and it's exactly what she's doing in her life as a mom and a partner. Sometimes we forget to hold the space. And because we're doing our own questioning, but this space is the most important part. I don't know about you, but sometimes the clarity that I get from the conversations I have with my kids are more important than anything I can come up with on my own. Next, sometimes in our moments of charting a new path of parenting, we just have to add it to the therapy fund. There's no perfect way, there's no one way there's no checkbox, like Jesse said she wanted parenting to become another checkbox in a way a to do list item. And that is definitely not what this is. There is no one way to move forward. But at the end of the day, a part of holding space is just joking about it. And the fact that we're just going to keep adding to our kids therapy fun for when they're older. And lastly, the thing that I'm going to take into the rest of this week is to model the searching for my family and for my kids. I hope you're able to do the same and this week as you think through and wrestled with these conversations. I hope that you see a little bit of yourself and Jessi, and the conversations that you can have with the friends and family around you that really add some clarity and transformation in your own life. Stay brave friends, onward and upward. Before I go, I'd love to hear from you. I have a story that we should talk about for anmore click the Share your story button on Welcome to bing.com and make sure you're signed up for our newsletter there to get all the information about upcoming events, giveaways and more. You can also follow us on Instagram at beam for moms. That's B E A M the number for M O M S I'd love to shout from the rooftops for my team who makes this beautiful show possible. Special thanks to Stacey Harris, without whom the entirety of beam would have been just a fleeting thought. Of course Dave Nelson, the man behind the mic and all the production for all these things. Benny Mathers, our producer for the KK and W support and graphic design by the inimitable Sylvan and Sullivan studios. And you know, I cannot forget my Dave, Brandon and Evie, the trio that pushes me always to be more myself, to all of beam's founding members, we are eternally grateful. Thank you for your unwavering belief that the power of our stories can make a difference. And to you my gorgeous listeners and guests, we love you. Thank you for trusting us with your stories and your time. It would mean the world to us if you'd follow rate or review on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get these stories and also share it with friends. You know the ones that want to hear it until next week, onward and upward, my friends. We'll see you then

Tim Sullivan
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