Hey! This is issue #5 of the Sheila Heti Summer Slow Read, a five month journey through the novel Motherhood. New episodes drop every Sunday from May-September, 20 issues in total. If you want to start at the beginning or read more about what the hell we’re doing here, head on over to issue #1.
It’s June(!!) which means we have officially crossed over into month two of the Sheila Heti Summer Slow Read. If you’re on this journey book club style, that means we’re now through the first 44 pages and into the next section. Ta da! Here’s the page breakdown again for anyone who wants to “keep up with the homework” as Devon (one of today’s guests) would say:
MAY: 1-44
JUNE: 47-137
JULY: 141-164
AUGUST: 167-201
SEPTEMBER: 205-284
I’m over-freaking-joyed to share this episode with you because my friends Alex (35, Sagittarius, world’s coolest and most inspiring mother of two kids under the age of five) and Devon (32, Capricorn, undecided about kids but leaning towards yes, hated this book until she didn’t) are joining me to talk about writing.
All three of us have been writing novels for over a year now, and they’ve been my 911, 24/7/365 emotional support system. Writing (and querying) a novel is a long, gut-wrenching, exhilarating process and I would just be gooey little pieces of anxiety splat on a wall without them. They’re both so smart and funny and wise. Girlhood is alive and well!!
#5. My pages spreading over the world (page 84)
“Maybe raising children really is a thankless task. Maybe there’s no reason to thank someone for putting their energies into a human who did not need to be born. Then should we be trying to work against this impulse – as Miles said – pass through our child-bearing years without bearing a child, no matter how much we might desire it; but to selflessly and with all our might do whatever we can to avoid it? To find our value and greatness in some place apart from mothering, as a man must find his worth and greatness in some place apart from domination and violence, and the more women and men who do this, the better off the world will be? Miles said we value warring and dominating men, the same way we revere the mother. The egoism of child-bearing is like the egoism of colonizing a country – both carry the wish of imprinting yourself on the world, and making it over with your values, and in your image. How assaulted I feel when I hear that a person has had three children, four, five, more… It feels greedy, overbearing and rude – an arrogant spreading of those selves.
Yet perhaps I am not so different from such people – spreading myself over so many pages, with my dream of my pages spreading over the world. My religious cousin, who is the same age as I am, she has six kids. And I have six books. Maybe there is no great difference between us, just the slightest difference in our faith – in what parts of ourselves we feel called to spread.” – Sheila Heti, Motherhood
Chaos crew timestamps:
1:00 – Introductions
4:50 – Reading today’s prompt
7:35 – Other people’s kids and why kids are such a good hang
9:20 – Biological drive, and the differences in feeling called to procreate vs. sharing our writing with the world
13:50 – The “children and art” of it all, legacy, and what we leave behind
16:00 – How Alex balances her identities as a mother and a writer, being a million things at once, and her invisible Hermione Granger time turner
21:20 – Devon’s lingering fears about becoming a mother someday, future thoughts about balancing writing with parenting, and how today’s prompt really fucking pissed her off 😂
25:50 – The “wholeness,” relationships, and the pie chart of what makes you a person
27:50 – Finding the time and making the time (and Alex being the biggest inspiration to us all, even though there are hard days and easy days)
31:30 – How it also depends on the kind of kid you get, and the chasm between reality and fantasy
35:00 – Selfish vs. selfless acts
43:35 – What creates the meaning? And how much of life is just unlearning things?
