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Steel Roses Podcast
Steel Roses is a podcast created for women by women. Social pressures for women are constant. Professionals, stay at home moms, working moms, we are here to tell you that you are not alone! This podcasts primary focus is providing real honest content shedding light on the daily struggles of women while also elevating women's voices.
All women are experiencing similar pressures and hurdles, and yet, no one is talking out in the open. If these topics continue to only exist as whispered conversations then we further permeate a culture of judgement and shame.
Join Jenny weekly as she discusses topics that effect women in a relatable, honest way.
Steel Roses Podcast
Rediscovering Passion and Purpose with Poet Lynne Thompson
Have you ever felt the pull between a stable career and a burning passion? Meet Lynne Thompson, our guest, who navigated this very conflict. From her early fascination with poetry, secretly inspired by her father's writings, to a lengthy stint as an attorney fulfilling her parents' dreams, Lynne's journey is anything but conventional. She shares the turning point that led her to leave a 15-year legal career for the world of poetry, exploring how this decision allowed her to truly thrive. Lynne's story inspired me to reflect on my own creative roots and the importance of pursuing what genuinely fulfills us.
Balancing life's responsibilities with personal passions is a challenge, especially for women. Lynne and I delve into the complexities of raising children, maintaining a career, and still finding time for what ignites our souls. We discuss the power of community support in silencing the naysayers and the significance of making time for seemingly impractical pursuits like poetry. I also share my own experience with podcasting burnout and how my family’s encouragement reignited my passion. This conversation is a reminder that amidst life's chaos, it’s crucial to carve out time for what truly matters to you.
Lynne also gives us an inside look at her latest poetry book, which centers around women's intricate experiences, from sexuality and aging to spirituality and rage. Inspired by a friend's suggestion and the poignant quote from Cornelius Eady, "Some folks will tell you the blues is a woman," Lynne's work captures the essence of women's struggles and triumphs. We touch upon the cultural and historical challenges women face and the ongoing efforts to amplify their voices. This episode is a heartfelt celebration of courage, resilience, and the relentless pursuit of dreams, enriched by Lynne’s insightful journey and literary contributions. Join us for an episode that promises to inspire and empower.
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Everybody welcome to Still Vs Podcast. This podcast was created for women, by women, to elevate women's voices. I'm very excited today to introduce you to our guest. Today we have Lynn Thompson. She is the adopted daughter of Caribbean immigrants in Los Angeles. She was the 2021-2022 Poet Laureate and received the Poet Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets. She is the author of actually three previous collections of poetry Beg no Pardon, start With a Small Guitar and Fretwork, which was the winner of the 2019 Marsh Hawk Poetry Prize.
Speaker 1:Ms Thompson is the recipient of multiple awards, including an individual artist fellowship from the city of Los Angeles, amongst many others, and now she's actually published her most recent work. It was in April of this year Blue on a Blue Palette, which reflects on the condition of women, their joys despite their histories and their insistence on survival as issues of race, culture, pandemic and climate threaten their livelihoods. And I'd also like to add that Lynn is an attorney by training, with a JD from Southwestern Law School. So that is quite a list there, and when I said many other awards, I really was being. That didn't even do it justice. So, lynn, welcome to the podcast. I'm so honored to have you here.
Speaker 2:Thank you for welcoming me. I'm so excited to be one of your guests. I've been following your podcast and it's great to be included among these amazing women.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm incredibly happy to have you here, so I would love for you to share your story with the listeners, especially how you were an attorney and got into poetry, like that's. That to me is like the big departure there. For people it's like wow, what? So please share with the listeners your story.
Speaker 2:It is pretty much of a left turn, but the truth was, as a as a young girl, my dad, who was a kind of secret writer, read me a lot of poetry. I loved it and I wrote poetry, as young people tend to do really bad, horrible poetry, but I was writing it. But then I followed the please your parents route and decided to go to law school, which I am eternally grateful for. I learned a lot that I keep with me even now. But after 15 years of practice, one day I literally said to myself you know, your life would be so much better if you were writing poetry. It just kind of came back to me in a rush.
Speaker 2:I would read it periodically, I would go to a reading occasionally, but one day I just thought you need to really think about this. So I had been a litigator in several small law firms in Los Angeles but I said I need a job that will free me up a little bit more from being a litigator and allow me a little bit more time to study poetry and try to learn how to write a good poem. That was my ambition. And so I got a job at UCLA using my legal background. I was the head of their employee and labor relations department, and that really did at least mentally free me up to devote more time and energy to the poetry.
Speaker 1:So that's how.
Speaker 2:I made the switch. I just literally said I want to do something that's going to feed my heart. The law was feeding me intellectually, but it wasn't feeding my heart. So that's the change.
Speaker 1:I have to ask you if you don't mind this question, um, because when I was about 37 so I, I don't work in law, but I do, I work in marketing and communications and much like what your story just was was that, um, I, I did creative writing all the time when I was in grammar school and into high school and then, um, my parents separated and it really took a toll on me and I went from. It almost felt like a. I went from a creative spirit to a real, realistic. I had like a slap of reality and and I don't know if that's the right phrase for it but I transitioned into Okay, I need to be real and get a real job, like I have to stop with the fairy tale. And so I got my real job quote, unquote.
Speaker 1:And so for many years I've, you know, been successful in my industry and everything, and I loved it for a really long time because I felt like, again, it was feeding me in a way. And then, most recently, over the past like four years or so, is when I started to have that like that itch, that like, oh, you know, I'd really like to be fed in a different way, like something that's going to feed my soul. So I'm curious if that was more of like how it felt for you, because for me it was like I hit this brick wall of like oh my gosh, I don't think I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing.
Speaker 2:I think it was very similar for me. It just felt that this need to create something. It was interesting to me during the pandemic how many people went into artistic endeavors. They were painting, they were baking bread. They were saying I'll try to do dance, I'll play the video and I'll do dance in my living room, because I think the human spirit create, craves, a certain amount of creativity and involving themselves in it in some way or other. And so for me, yes, it really was. You know, this is great, but and it was great for other people but what am I doing to satisfy myself, to feel good about myself? And there was always this itching about the poetry, and so I just went back to it.
Speaker 1:I think it's amazing that you made that decision and like really acted on it too, because what and what I'm sort of getting at here, too, is, I think that for many of us and it applies to men too, but I know we're talking about women today so for many of us women, we do feel like we have to set our own desires aside or set our own needs aside, and in doing that, it's almost like tucking a little part of ourselves into a box and saying I can't feed this creativity flow that I really enjoy because I really have to do X, y and Z reality stuff and this isn't as significant, and in some instances you can't do both. When my kids were little, there was no way I was just telling you my kids do both, like I could when I kids were little like there was no way there.
Speaker 1:I was just telling you my kids ages, when they were all infants. I had a one-year-old and I had newborns at the same time. So, um, it was, I want to say about three or four years, when they were very young. Everything I did, everything about myself, was just focused on them. I didn't really. I did little for myself, for my health, for anything, for feeding my soul.
Speaker 1:And you know that, but that was needed of me at that point in time. But once they were a little bit more sustainable is really when it started to become like Alright, jenny, like what are you doing for yourself? And I think that that's like a barrier A lot of women have trouble crossing and you crossed it and it's amazing. And that's why I wanted to point that out, because for the women that are listening, it doesn't matter how long you've been doing your career If you're able to figure out a way to pivot or even to just make time for something that really lights you up, that will actually change your whole energy around you up that will actually
Speaker 2:change your whole energy around you Absolutely. And I don't know if this happened with you, certainly, in addition to just the difficulty of making the pivot to something like, well, I think I'll write a poem now. Well, I didn't really know how to do it in the way that I know how to do it now and I was discouraged. My mother, in particular, I remember saying what's wrong with you? She said is there any money in it? And I said absolutely none. She said oh, my God, you are crazy. You've got a good, stable career, so I get it. That's her generation. It's important to be stable. You don't know what's going to happen in life. Save your money, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 2:My lawyer friends were Really what is you know? They just couldn't understand it. So I had to find my community which was supportive, and that was great. And turn those voices off was great. And turned those voices off.
Speaker 2:And it was a little scary to do that because I've got to be honest, poetry is not the most practical thing in the world for someone to say they want to do. Of course, I still had a good job, so I wasn't worried in that regard. So, yeah, and then I didn't want to go back to school because I'd already paid off my law school loans. I never wanted to see the inside of the school again. Ok, so how are you going to do it? You're going to find a community? You're going to go to take classes at community college or whatever.
Speaker 2:Whatever you need to do to achieve what it is you want to achieve, which, for me, was to write the best poem I was capable of writing. Not all the people that I admired, and I wasn't aspiring necessarily to be like them, but to write a poem that I could look at and say this isn't that? So there's just I think you're right. There's so much around women in particular, especially if they say I think I want to do this now. Well, no, it takes too much time. It takes too much time. If you really want to do it, you can figure out a way to do it. We waste a lot of time as human beings, and what I learned was how to use every moment that wasn't on my job or my family or anything else. If it was just 10 minutes, how can I use that constructively for my writing? And a young woman said to me didn't it take longer? I said yes, but that wasn't the point. The point was doing something that I wanted to do.
Speaker 1:And you know it's interesting because when you find something that you're really excited about or really passionate about, you will find time. You will figure it out because it's going to eat away at you.
Speaker 1:Essentially, I had taken like a little podcast hiatus last spring and I was very burnt out from and cause I still, I have my daytime job still and I'm podcasting and the podcast, you know, to grow a podcast that takes time, it takes a lot of energy and so there's a lot that goes into behind the scenes of research on my side trying to make sure that I'm putting the podcast in the right like spaces, um. So it was really burnt out and I was like I'm going to just take like four weeks of not doing anything for the podcast. I'm going to schedule everything up and I'm just going to kind of disappear and like focus on just just being. You know, and I do um, practice meditation, affirmations and I do that work just because that. That helps me. That's something that's really been helpful to me. And in the after the first, like week or two after, I felt like okay, I'm, I'm feeling a little bit better here.
Speaker 1:I I started missing it, but then I was like well, you know, I'm like I miss it, but should I really be doing this? And then I've noticed that every time I've thought to myself maybe this is the last season or maybe this will be the last set of episodes and I'll just do a farewell and kind of cut it off. Every time something like that happens, that thought comes to me almost immediately after. Somebody will say to me why are you not podcasting?
Speaker 1:You should be like it's, you should be, broadcasting and in this instance it was my son who came to me and was like mommy, like what you know, why aren't you podcasting anymore? And I was like, oh no, buddy, I'm just taking a little break, like I'm still doing it, and he was like, okay, good, because I really love, it's really cool that you do that. Like I really like that, and the greatest affirmation ever, my little voice. I was like oh, my gosh, okay.
Speaker 2:And you know daughters like they're very encouraging about it.
Speaker 1:It's very cute because their kids are seven and eight years old and you know, it's those little brief moments and I also want to address your point. You know all everything you've accomplished it did take time in this world in this space, and it wasn't something overnight.
Speaker 2:Right, absolutely. Now, anything I can hear my mother talks to me frequently Anything worth doing is worth doing well, and to do it well takes time. So, yeah, it's not going to happen overnight, and there are just so many surprises that have happened for me along the way that I never could have anticipated, so I'm more than happy to go with the flow and see where it takes me so your new work that you published is focusing on the condition of women, so I do want you to talk a little bit about that and how you landed on that as your focus on this book.
Speaker 2:Well, it was interesting. So, as you said, I served as a poet laureate for Los Angeles in 2021 and 2022. Lovely, right in the middle of the pandemic. That made it easier.
Speaker 2:But during that period, because I was trying to do a lot of outreach via Zoom and every other way I could think of to the public, I wasn't really writing as much. And a friend of mine, also a poet and a professor, said Lynn, if you have enough poems to put together in a book, maybe this is a good time. You're not creating something new, but you can assemble a book. And I said well, I have a lot of poems, but I didn't really have a project and I don't, I don't know. He said look at the pumps, which I did, and realized how many of them concerned women, their sexuality, their aging, their spirituality, their frustration, their rage I should be saying our rage, not to separate myself but all of the things that we, as women, have gone through and continue to go through, both culturally, in the workplace, all of that. So I said, okay, maybe there is something here.
Speaker 2:Even though I wasn't writing intentionally toward a book about women, it was clear that that was the subject that obsessed me. At the same time I noticed that a lot of the poems either refer to the blues in terms of the musical genre or the color blue. And I thought, okay, I don't know what's going on here, but something's happening with the blue and the women. And I found that wonderful quote of Cornelius Eady, a fellow poet that founded Kaveh Kahn, a wonderful poet, and I thought, okay, this is what ties it all together.
Speaker 2:And his statement was some folks will tell you the blues is a woman. And that really kind of brought it all together for me to say, ok, how can I move the pieces around and make the poem really speak to what he had said? So that was, that was the beginning of it. And looking at the poems and realizing and I'm thrilled, of course, now where we have a viable political candidate not that we didn't before, but once again we do and that has put a spotlight on women as mothers Don't get me revved up about that conversation or women not as mothers, all of that is really in the spotlight now. So I was very fortunate in the timing of this that a subject that deserves treatment in any book to me was one I was able to put together this book.
Speaker 1:And I do want to say that I had another guest on the podcast that also she gravitated towards the color blue and she had said to me that she didn't know why, she wasn't sure and her, her handle, her name. Like her, her episode launched on September 8th of 2024. And she calls herself nurse blue and it was, and she has all these like through lines to the color blue. And she said when you look at the significance of the color blue, it's meant to signify serenity, stability, wisdom, inspiration. And so I saw your, the title of your, I was like, oh, she also right, something's going on here.
Speaker 2:There's something in the atmosphere, exactly, exactly, exactly right. That sense of serenity and yet also, when you think of the blues, that sense of struggle which women have had forever, and now, in some ways, it feels like we've taken two steps forward and five steps back. Not because of women. So who does that leave? Steps back, not because of women, so who does that leave? So, yeah, it's timely in that, in that sense, and also I'm very interested in history, so I was trying to put some of that in there and it was. It was really fun to put it together.
Speaker 1:I love that your book is so timely, because I happen to agree with you with the timing of this and you know, it's very exciting to me, your book and you as your person and your brand, basically, that you're bringing with you to the stage. Because all of these little moments to me are saying like, yes, I do feel like we've had advancements, but I also feel like, yes, there's still so much more to go. But, on that same note, this conversation has been bubbling up and bubbling up and it's almost like when you shake up a soda bottle and you can just feel the pressure starting to fizzle up.
Speaker 2:That's what it feels like to me, and I mean that in the most positive way that was.
Speaker 1:that's how it feels to me, that and I dare I say it feels like we're on the precipice of this is our time. This is, this is about to happen for us as women Really being able to show up and take center stage and really show the world like we've always deserved a voice. Absolutely, we should have always had a seat at the table, or we're crafting our own table at this point we're making our own table we're making our own chairs and you can keep yours, because we really don't want part of it.
Speaker 1:It's kind of toxic and we'll do our thing over here because it's just we're going to blaze our own path and it excites me as a woman, but it excites me as a mother because I have two little girls that are going to come up in this world, and I want that absolutely great example and, and I think also the example you're the perfect uh host for this.
Speaker 2:An example of this, that and I don't know about our male counterparts, because I don't think of them in that way- but we can do more than one thing at a time.
Speaker 2:So I can be a lawyer and a poet, you can be a mother and a podcaster, we can shop and we can travel and we can do all of these because that's been kind of our lot all of our lives the expectation that, well, can't you do this and drop this.
Speaker 2:So I think that that's exciting for us as well, to say we're not just a nurse or a doctor or a minister, or I'm not a mother, but that doesn't mean I don't care for the young ones in my family. I'm. I'm a great, great aunt and have lots of little ones around and want to set the good example for them, like you're talking about. So I think it's a very exciting when I see young girls in particular. I'm just so excited for them because the possibilities and they have looked at their mothers and their grandmothers and their aunts and said we should be able to do whatever we want. And they take that as a given and we're saying, yes, it could be a given, but you're always going to have to fight this battle. So, yes, it's an exciting period and to can do multiple things or we can. We can show up and be what we want to be.
Speaker 1:There is a there's a like a little light in my my girls that I see that you know.
Speaker 1:I feel like that light, if not nurtured in the most appropriate way, is going to dim. Not nurtured in the most appropriate way, is going to dim. And I think back on when I was younger and that you know I would show excitement for something and because it wasn't fostered, you know, nobody stoked those flames. It dimmed over time. And so it's interesting because one of my girls is very confident and forward and she'll say I'm great at this and I'm always like, yes, you are.
Speaker 2:Yes, you are, yes, you are. I think that is such an important observation it's only a generation or two away from our mothers, or if we were raised by grandmothers or aunts or whoever the female figure was in our life to say, on the one hand, yes, you should go to college or whatever, but you better get married just in case, have that husband just in case. And not, you know there should be a fallback, because you know you might not make it. It was always kind of in the background, despite the encouragement, but now we can. We can podcast. At the same time we hold our daughters in our laps. So I think I think that's really important because they, they're coming into it watching you. You're remembering what it was like to get to where you want to be today, and that wasn't that long ago. For them, it feels like, oh, that was in the olden days. No well, yeah, not that old, not that old.
Speaker 1:So, yes, it's a, it's funny to hear you say like that and yes, I was holding my little girl there because- and she's adorable.
Speaker 2:I could just tell from the top of her head she's adorable.
Speaker 1:She had a little bellyache of a moment. No, I think your work is incredibly important through the poetry and I think that your subject matter is incredibly timely. And I think it's interesting too that you didn't see that through line immediately of like the focus of your, of your poetry, Um, because it's almost like that message was trying to come out and be told. And it was just coming and even if you wanted to stop it like you know what I'm saying Like it was just on its way to you and you were really the vessel that was meant to be sharing this messaging.
Speaker 1:So I wanted to point that out too, because I think that there's instances where and myself I'm a perpetrator of this where something comes and it's trying to like poke a hole, to help break through, to say, hey, like this is your new path, this is where you're meant to be going with this, and you were able to see that, and you were able to break through and come out with this fabulous book of poems and be able to really share this messaging, and and that's a wonderful thing, um, that you were able to do that yeah, I think, because I didn't follow the academic route and I want to be a little bit careful about how I talk about this.
Speaker 2:I was making it up in a way as I went along and the things that resonated with me were the things that I wrote about. I'm not entirely convinced, when I talk to my fellow poets some of whom have gone through MFA programs in particular that they always got the encouragement to pursue what they were interested in, as opposed to what their professor thought they should be writing about. I did not not in every case, but I've heard a few people say that. So I was lucky in a way. First of all, I was older, so I'm going to do whatever I want to do, and second of all, I didn't have those constraints of being part of a program that was trying to mold me as a poet in a particular way, so I could take a workshop here in LA, maybe one in New York, I would go to conferences in the summer just to be around other poets, hear what they were talking about, what should I be reading, etc. And so forth.
Speaker 2:So I was able to forge a path. Really, that was the path I wanted. Whether it was the right path or not is not for me to judge, but I sure did enjoy it. I tell the kids in my family this a lot of it is being in the right place at the right time. And if you think you hear someone telling you something, listen to that. I don't know what it is in the universe, but it's saying why don't you go down this road and see what it is?
Speaker 1:It's very interesting so that that there and I was actually going to point that out, so I'm glad you brought that up, so that there is almost like you have to be in tune with yourself and to be able to hear that and to hear those little voices I had a situation recently where I was very upset about something that happened professionally for me in my daytime job and I was very distraught over it and it was eating into my weekend. That's how upset I was getting and I, as I mentioned, like I practice meditation. The listeners are sick of me talking about it, but they know.
Speaker 2:They know they're aware.
Speaker 1:I'm very in tune with, like myself and and with my alignment like. This is how I'm able to meet all you fabulous guests, because I'm everyone kind of draws in and we're all in the line together because everyone kind of draws in and we're all on the line together.
Speaker 1:And so I was really upset and it was like a set. It was on a Saturday and I was sitting in my bed and we're my husband, I got the kids bed, we're in, I'm starting to settle and I was like, let me just take a couple deep breaths. Let me try to, you know, relax my mind here. This voice popped into my head.
Speaker 2:And it said to me that's your, that's your job.
Speaker 1:it's not you Meaning like.
Speaker 2:this is just a job, Exactly.
Speaker 1:And it's not reflective of you as an individual, because you, as an individual, have gotten proved time and time again that you're great at what you're doing. So because someone else is doing what they're doing doesn't mean that this is really you.
Speaker 1:And being able to listen to that voice, and I'm sure you've had moments throughout your career as a poet and even as a lawyer that where you heard this little nudge, that kind of pointed you down a particular path and that's how you got to where you got to today. So it's really important when, for the listeners I want you guys to hear this that like when you do hear that little voice or you have that little feeling, to go with it and really pay attention, because we've been conditioned over time to ignore intuition.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:It's a huge failure.
Speaker 2:I think it's a missed opportunity because and as you were speaking I was thinking of when I made the decision I want to become the best poet I'm capable of becoming. I'm practicing law and I'm saying I think I need to stop practicing law and think about some other kind of job. And what might that be? Literally, probably within a week of thinking that, I got a call from a headhunter who described the job at UCLA and my first response was I don't know. I've never done anything like that before. I'm not sure. That hung up, the voice came back and said is this not what you asked for? You asked for another job. This woman is practically putting it on your table. Call these people back.
Speaker 2:I called them back, set up the job interview the only interview I ever walked out of in my life where I knew I was going to get the job. I knew it the day I had it and so or I felt fairly confident and in fact did get the job. So I say that to support what you're saying, that you get these indications from the universe. We all pray for X. Then, when we get it, we think, oh, I'm not sure. No, this is what you were asking for. Go with it. You know it may not be exactly what you thought or you know there may be bumps along the way, but this is what you asked for and I think that women in particular oh, I'm not sure, or whatever the opportunity doesn't come along often it may not sit on your shoulder very long if you're not interested, I'll move on to the next person that wants to listen to me.
Speaker 2:so you really have to train yourself to think. You know I am not advocating going and you know if you're not as good a walker as some others, don't try to run the marathon first day out. But if you want that, figure out how to work toward that and when people offer you opportunities, don't dismiss them out of hand.
Speaker 1:I guess that's what I'm trying to get to. There's always that fear when you're about to take that leap.
Speaker 2:I know, I personally feel this all the time, so I understand the other thing, too, is to also recognize when something is not for you.
Speaker 1:So I recently was knocking on a door for something that I was like this is it? Let me stop messing around, let me just knock on this door. And I knocked on that door pretty hard and nobody answered and I usually would have old old me, would have gotten upset, I would have gotten depressed.
Speaker 1:I would have just been down in the dumps and current me took it as well. Jenny, you knocked on that door out of desperation. You didn't really want to knock on that door. You should continue knocking on the doors that you want to knock on, and those are the ones that are opening up, and it's very interesting.
Speaker 2:Those are the ones that open. It's like the. I know everyone in America is getting these thousands of emails. Whatever side of the political spectrum you're on, you get 20 of them a day, however many, and one I got, I think, earlier today, said this is the seventh time we've written you, and I said, yes, and what does that tell you if I haven't answered? Yeahuh, stop knocking on the door. Yeah, stop knocking on the door. So, yeah, that's the other side of it is when to recognize, you know, maybe this isn't really meant for me, no matter how much you wanted it, maybe I just this isn't the moment, you know, and go on to the next thing, because you're missing out on something else if you're so insistent on knocking on this door that refuses to budge. So, yeah, it's hard, though, to find that balance. That's why your podcast is so great, because we can all talk about it and support each other and realize you're not alone. Other women you know are going through this in some fashion.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, honestly, absolutely. And the one other thing that I want to talk about that we touched on it lately was don't get discouraged when you're on a journey where you're really doing something that lights you up. Don't think to yourself and compare yourself to the person who's like super successful. Exactly to the person who's like super successful, Because the person that's super successful. Take a look at their history. Most likely they've been at it for several years.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:The person that when I first started podcasting the person that I was following, I called her my guru and I took all these courses with her and I was getting really, like you know, into it. And but then I was also getting down on myself at the same time because I was like how can I ever accomplish this? Like nobody even knows me, I'm not on social media, like I don't know anybody. And then I started looking at the people that I was following and I was like, well, let me look back Like how long have they been doing this? And I looked at some of their really early work and I was like, wow, that's pretty awful.
Speaker 2:And I'm like oh, they started in the same boat, everybody, they started the same way, just they started sooner and just continue, continue trying.
Speaker 1:If you, if you found something that you're passionate about, regardless of everyone's opinions around you, if you really love it, then you should go for it.
Speaker 2:Go for it.
Speaker 1:You know, I'm still working my daytime job. It's not like I'm not one of those people that was able to quit and say, oh, I'm just going to focus on my passion. That's not realistic for me.
Speaker 2:The average. I think it was Viola Davis that somebody was interviewing her and they said oh, it's like you have overnight success. And she said what? Oh no, I've been working at this for 30 years. To you it might seem overnight, she said, but I know that that isn't the case.
Speaker 2:And for most actors, writers, especially in the creative fields, the type of thing that you're, the podcasting, which I consider creative, they got to keep the day job. This is not. And for poets, when my first book came out, I had four older brothers and one of them said are you going to quit your day job? I said what is wrong with you? I said okay, let me put this in terms you can understand. Stephen King publishes a book and it's a quarter of a million copies printed right off the top. A poet is thrilled if they print 2000 copies of their book knowing that a thousand will be returned to the remainder bin.
Speaker 2:So you know. You know you have to be realistic about about your passions. If you want to be a dancer, not everyone's going to be Misty Copeland, in fact, everyone's going to be mystical. In fact, nobody's going to be mystical, you know. So you have to be realistic about your dreams and yet keep plugging away at them. Yeah, at whatever level you achieve, knowing that even if you achieve the topmost wrong, it's not permanent.
Speaker 2:So I was in a workshop with a woman she's passed away now, carolyn Kaiser, wonderful poet. She had won the Pulitzer Prize. So in this group of us we're all just kind of worshiping at her feet and said, well, I guess now you don't have to worry about getting your poems published. And she said no, I'm rejected now, the same way I was before I won the Pulitzer Prize. So even when you achieve what is the pinnacle, in whatever area you're trying to work in, it's for a day, a week, a month, but it's not necessarily forever. So you just have to be humble about it and keep keep your eye on what the real prize is. Is that satisfaction that you feel when you do the thing that you love.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, exactly, Exactly. And that, that feeling that you get and I know this feeling through the podcast when I get to connect with guests like yourself and talk about your story and the work that you're doing. Every single time I walk away feeling lighter and excited and it's the times when I'm not engaged with the guests. I have to tell you I actually get sad.
Speaker 1:I miss talking with you guys because I'm talking with the get exactly, and I have to tell you, like a lot of the guests I reach back out to after the fact, I'm like hey, how's it going? How's it?
Speaker 2:going. What's new?
Speaker 1:Because once you're part of this podcast to me, you're part of the podcast community. With me, you're you're part of the guest cast and I couldn't be more honored to have you with me because of your journey and what you've done and what you've accomplished is so amazing.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. I was, when I was going over as I said before we went on air going over the podcast and your website and thinking this this is why I wrote that book, this is the reason I wrote that book, because we need to be there for each other. Burn down the myth that, you know, women are always fighting with each other. Well, yes, sometimes, but no more so than men. So why are we enlarging that myth for women? So it's equally my honor to be able to share what has been something of an unusual journey. I do remember one of the lawyers I knew saying you know, you can never come back to law again, and that kind of scared me because I thought, well, wait a minute. But I thought, well, we'll just have to see. I don't believe it, so I'm not having it. So, yeah, it's scary, but man, is it satisfying when you jump off and do that thing that just has been obsessing your mind and you say, just go for it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's truly amazing. Lynn, thank you so much for being on with me today, thank you for having me. Listeners, we're going to link in the description of the podcast, lynn's books. You can take a look at the book and pick up a copy, because it is truly inspiring work. So thank you so much again, lynn, and thank you listeners, thank you and everybody. We'll catch you on the next one, take care.
