Eat My Words

Johanna Almstead:
Hi everyone. I am menu planning for my next guest and I am craving hamachi crudo. I'm just going to do it. I am going to do a hamachi crudo. I'm going to do it with a little citrusy. I'm going to do some yuzu juice and a little bit of ponzu. I'm going to do cilantro. I'm going to do a little fresh jalapeno. I'm going to do a little Fresno chili and some lemon juice and let that all kind of cure it together. I'm going to serve that with just a little bit of microgreens on top. Delish, delish. And I'm feeling a little bit of a slight bubble. I don't want a bubbly bubbly to serve with this, but I want an effervescent.

So, kind of like a white wine, like a Vinho Verde that has just like a little slight zinger, little slight bubble, but not as bubbly as like a Crémant or a prosecco or a Champagne. I'm going to have that start and then I think I'm going to just go gorgeous, simple, homemade pesto for dinner. I'm going to do a beautiful pesto over homemade spaghetti. And I like to do fresh chopped tomato on top of the fresh pesto and then fresh basil and sometimes a little bit of toasted pine nut on top with beautiful cheese. I'm going to do that. I'm going to have a big old like giant loaf of delicious garlic bread. And I think with that I'm going to serve like a chilled red, a lighter red.

I think we're back in chilled red season. And then for dessert, I'm thinking I might go back. I've done this before, but I'm feeling like a cookie and ice cream bar. Maybe I do some brownies and some cookies and then like a few different flavors of ice cream. So, like vanilla, maybe a chocolate chip and maybe like a pistachio or something. And then I'm going to do some toppings and then people can stick like a big brownie in there, big ice cream with some sprinkles and some nuts, maybe some Amaro cherries, feeling a little Sunday cookie bar. My next guest is so wise, so brave, so thoughtful, so kind, and I can't wait for you to get to meet her and to hear her story because it is unbelievable. So, let's dig in.

Hello everyone and welcome to Eat My Words. I know I say this every time because I am genuinely so excited for all of these conversations, but today I'm really excited because my guest today is wise and adventurous and curious and so many things and I can't wait for you to meet her. So, my guest today is a journalist. She's an essayist and she's an author. Her first memoir, Want Me was NPR's Best Book of the Year. Her writing has appeared in Cosmopolitan, The Cut, Elle, Esquire, Marie Claire, Glamour, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Wired, Women's Health and many, many more. She was a senior staff writer at Jezebel and a staff writer at Salon.

She also writes a weekly newsletter and is the co-host of the podcast, Dire Straits. So, she's sitting around on our couch a lot, obviously nothing happening there. She is also a wife. She is a daughter. She is a mother and she is a sister, which we're going to hear about Tracy Clark-Flory. Welcome to Eat My Words.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Thank you so much for having me.

Johanna Almstead:
Thank you so much for being here during what I know is a really, really exciting and really, really busy time on the heels of the launch of your latest book, My Mother's Daughter. First of all, congratulations on the book.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Thank you so much. It has been a whirlwind. You were meeting me a week out from publication. So, it's like I'm in the thick of it in this moment.

Johanna Almstead:
And how does it feel?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
I mean, honestly, it's been amazing. The events, my first book came out during the pandemic. And so, all of my events ... Yeah, all my events were virtual. So, it was just like Zoom book launches, which were nice. But now I'm kind of learning what I miss the first time around. It's been incredible. I had an event in Berkeley. I had an event in Brooklyn and just bringing all these people from different eras of my life together to celebrate the book has been so phenomenal.

Johanna Almstead:
I'm so glad you're getting that opportunity, especially after your first book launch. I think this is important.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Finally.

Johanna Almstead:
Yeah, the community-

Tracy Clark-Flory:
It is important. I really had a moment during the book launch where I was like, it was all worth it. In this moment, it was all worth it. Yeah.

Johanna Almstead:
Yeah. That's amazing. Well, I read your book. I was like deep in. I'm so deeply invested in your family and your story and we will get to that. But I would like to back up a little bit because you had sort of this whole first half of your life that happened, or not half, I don't want to say whatever, the first chapter of your life that happened before this book begins. And so, I'd like to back up a little bit and so we can talk about how you got to where you are now. Where would you say your journey began?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
I mean, I think I probably would trace it back to the setting, which was Berkeley, California. You cannot extricate the person I am from that origin place. I was raised by a couple of Berkeley hippies and I just feel like that place and the culture, the environment kind of suffused my life, my early childhood. There was a slight countercultural bent to my upbringing. Both of my parents really kind of identified as being outsiders. So, while they didn't kind of occupy certain hippie stereotypes, there were certain things that I think really influenced how I thought about the world or how I approached the world, how I saw myself. And I think that outsider status is key.

It was a household where I grew up with my mom watching Fox News so that she could yell at the TV. And so, there was this, definitely this sense of political outrage in the background. And yet at the same time, it was like a pretty normative nuclear family, like our little trio of three.

Johanna Almstead:
You were raised as an only child.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Raised as an only child. They weren't countercultural in the sense of like, I didn't grow up on a commune or anything like that. So, they had progressive ideas and certainly their friend group was ... My mom's friend group especially leaned queer. A lot of her closest friends were queer women. And so, that was kind of the backdrop of my upbringing was this both something very traditional kind of heteronormative and also not.

Johanna Almstead:
Why do you think your parents saw themselves as outsiders? Because sort of on the surface they weren't really. Was it because of their political ideals or?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
I think for my mom, I think she felt like an outsider as a woman. She did not, and I think this ties very much into her story that I know we'll get into that's so much told in this book, but I think she didn't feel like an "appropriate woman." She wasn't appropriately feminine. She was very opinionated, super sharp and smart and tough. She would not let any man get away with anything. That was kind of her disposition and that was partly a disposition that she developed from her family of origin and her father who she described as a tyrant. He was kind of like this 1950s patriarchal archetype. And I think sex factored in very much like my mom was a woman who experienced her own desire as being abnormal.

She was a woman who wanted. She didn't feel like, especially if you think about the context of her upbringing, she was born in 1946 in the Midwest. She felt very outside what she was told was normal for a woman, which was essentially that you didn't desire and you didn't want sex. And so, she fled-

Johanna Almstead:
But you still had to do it.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
But you had to do it, but kind of like as an obligation, right? I remember talking to her about sex early on as a teenager and then my twenties and everything that she got growing up about sex was that women did it out of a sense of duty to their husbands, that they didn't actually enjoy it themselves. So, she emerged from that feeling very much like an outsider and like she didn't belong. And that was part of why she fled to the Bay Area, that and her progressive ideals. My dad, I think, felt like an outsider because he's not a rule follower. He doesn't want to get in line and he's also just like, he marshes to the beat of his own drummer.

He is kind of like a local character in Berkeley. He is a kite skateboarder, which is, I mean, he might be the only person in the world who does this. Maybe there's someone else out there that does it.

Johanna Almstead:
I was like, "Oh, is that a thing?" But I don't know-

Tracy Clark-Flory:
And so, he's like the crazy guy at the Berkeley Marina every day whose kite skateboarding while listening to music and dancing on a skateboard. And he's in his late 70s.

Johanna Almstead:
Okay. Go dad.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Go dad. Yeah.

Johanna Almstead:
Was he doing that kind of stuff when you were growing up?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Oh yeah. There was a feature in the local paper about him where there was a full photo of him with his skateboard and kite. So, certainly-

Johanna Almstead:
And did you think that was cool when you were little or was that embarrassing?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
It was a mix. I have always, I think, appreciated my dad's kind of creative, playful spirit. I think also being a teenager, your dad being in the paper for doing this very cookie thing.

Johanna Almstead:
It's not always cool.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
It's like yeah. And also, I remember that I would provide him as a teenager the music that he would listen to and dance to while he was kite skateboarding. And I remember the journalist asked him about where he got his music and he mentioned me by name and mentioned the artists that I'd shared with him and he picked the wrong ones as far as I was concerned. And so, I was on record in the paper as liking Christina Aguilera or something and I was like-

Johanna Almstead:
Oh, dear.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
... "Dad, how could you do this to me?"

Johanna Almstead:
Oh gosh, that's so hard. Yeah. I mean, I have a tweenage girl right now and I'm like-

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Oh boy.

Johanna Almstead:
... "That might be embarrassing to her." It's tough. It's a fine line between cool and mortifying.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
But eventually, she'll grow up and think that you're just very cool or realize it that you were always very cool.

Johanna Almstead:
She better. Okay. So, you grew up in Berkeley and then what did you do when you left your parents' house?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
So, I went to college in the Bay Area and I pursued English lit and journalism. I was really interested in becoming a writer. I was really clear about that. I got my first job out of college at the online magazine salon where I started writing for their feminist blog. So, really shortly out of college I was a feminist writing on the internet and also writing personal essays. One of the first viral pieces that I wrote as a young 20-something was titled In Defense of Casual Sex. And it was responding to a lot of handwriting and critiques about my generation's experiences around casual sex and sort of warnings that casual sex was going to ruin us for marriage and for love.

And I responded to that. And so, very quickly, I mean, I've kind of always been drawn to writing about sex since high school, I would say. There was always... and certainly in college as well in the school newspaper. So, it wasn't really a surprise that as I entered into the professional world that I was writing about these topics, it's kind of surprising that I was able to find an outlet for it.

Johanna Almstead:
I was going to say, which came first, your desire to do it or the opportunity to do it?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah, definitely the desire. Yeah. I mean, I was writing about so many of these same issues on our school newspaper at college and a little bit causing eyebrows to raise. I remember a professor running into me in the halls and being like in response to an article I just written, "Well, you're certainly making a name for yourself." And it was kind of this like that these were sort of edgy topics. I was writing about women's desire and pornography and things like that. I just was very clearly driven to these sorts of topics from the very get.

And then luckily enough, I had found a job and an environment where I was encouraged to continue writing about the things I wanted to write about and eventually kind of got officially reassigned as a sex writer in my mid 20s where I really started to do more journalistic coverage of all sorts of aspects of our sexual culture and would write about like new age sexual healers and the porn industry and sex research on women's desire. And I started in an advice column where people would write in and it was titled Am I Normal because I was finding that that was the fundamental question behind pretty much every single question that I got was, "Am I normal?"

Everyone was afraid that they were abnormal in terms of their desires and their wants. And then from there, it was like got further into journalism and reporting and spent years reporting on the porn industry and really was attempting to write about it as a mainstream Hollywood reporter would report on Hollywood to take it seriously as an entertainment industry that is incredibly popular, right, but rarely reported on and taken seriously. And then that brought me to my first book, which has the subtitle is A Sex Writer's Journey into the Heart of Desire.

And that book was really about telling the story of my journey through sex writing, but also how that interacted with my journey as a young woman coming into the world and finding myself.

Johanna Almstead:
Yeah. It's like you were living it and reporting on it all at the same time. It's different when you're sort of more ... I mean, I feel like in your 20s, you're not really a fully formed woman, human, individual. That's such a time of pulling apart and putting back together intention and all that stuff. So, I think it's interesting to... that's a very interesting time to have been reporting on that kind of... yeah.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah, very educational, honestly. I mean, I think in a lot of ways, that early journalism career was like a form of sex ed for me in that it allowed me to kind of pursue questions that I had even if I didn't consciously know that I had them. I grew up online, pornography was, I had many questions about pornography, many assumptions about pornography as a young person.

My initial idea of what sex was really shaped by watching porn online as a young person and then coming to report on the industry as a journalist and see behind the scenes and see what you don't see in the finished product and how these scenes are constructed and how performers approach their work that was totally counter to so many of the assumptions that I'd made as a young person about what made for good sex.

Johanna Almstead:
Right. And it's like what makes for good sex in real life and what makes for good sex as an entertainment form.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah. And I had performers tell me like, "Oh, in my personal life, I don't have sex like this at all. I don't enjoy this. This is a job. This is performance and this is what looks good on camera," right? And that was revelatory for me as a young person to confront that, to really kind of pull back the curtain on this entertainment medium that had been very influential for me in terms of my ideas around sex. I don't want to put it all in porn. I think there was a lot in the cultural stew growing up in the 90s and 2000s that maybe misled me in certain ways around what made for good sex, but that was a big one.

Johanna Almstead:
Yeah. Okay. So, you sort of had made a name for yourself as this kind of edgy reporter and you're covering stuff that some people don't want you to cover, some people don't want to touch with a 10-foot pole. Some people are like, "Yes, give us more." I love the part in your book you talk about like talking to your father-in-law on the East Coast about what you do for a living.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah, yeah.

Johanna Almstead:
I can fully picture that.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah. He's like, "So, why do you care so much about sex worker rights?" Yeah.

Johanna Almstead:
Yeah, I love it.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Let me try to explain this.

Johanna Almstead:
So, you're doing what you want to do, you've made a life for yourself, you wanted to be a writer, you're getting to write not only professionally but about the stuff you want to write about. What happens next? I mean, I know because I write the book, but I want you to tell them.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah. I mean, I published that book right alongside ... Well, I wrote that book, right alongside Becoming a Mom. I literally wrote that book during my maternity leave, part of it with my baby strapped to my chest where I was writing in the dark by the glow of my laptop screen and that was a really important moment of transformation for me. I was processing my journey up to that point by writing this book, but I was also stepping into motherhood, which felt very much in contrast with this identity of sex writer, which I'd never fully identified with. I felt like anytime someone heard sex writer, they're like, "Carrie Bradshaw, what is this?"

And I felt like I was trying to do something very different, but it felt kind of inappropriate as I was stepping into motherhood, this sex writer identity. And that was something that I started to confront as my kid grew up and I started going to kid birthday parties and talking with other parents about my work like, "Oh, what do you write about? What's your book about?" And I found myself turning red and stuttering and not being able to answer because-

Johanna Almstead:
So wild. It's so wild.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah. Which it's ironic because it's like so often parenthood is deeply tied to sex, right?

Johanna Almstead:
How we all got here.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
It's kind of-

Johanna Almstead:
Most of us got here at least.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah, yeah. And yet somehow it feels totally forbidden for me to acknowledge this part of myself at a kid's birthday party, even when the kids are not in the immediate vicinity, just to acknowledge yourself as a fuller person, as a mom especially.

Johanna Almstead:
I was going to say, I feel like there's so much shame/judgment/snark around motherhood in general and I'm guilty of it too, but I don't know. I remember just feeling so judged on so many levels. And then you add this other element of being like a fully formed, multidimensional, complicated woman with desires who's writing about women who have desires and also hitting the brick wall of physical actual motherhood, which I feel like is very counterintuitive to stuff that phase, right?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah. Yeah.

Johanna Almstead:
So, yeah, that's intense.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah, it was intense. Yeah. And it was right around that time that I started working at Jezebel as a senior staff writer and was able to kind of write about motherhood and write feminist critiques around the culture of motherhood and stuff, which was really wonderful. And I was just kind of trucking along a little bit feeling like the sex writer title didn't fit anymore because I was broadening what I was writing about and wasn't driven in the same way to do the kind of adventurous reporting that I'd done in the past. And it was like in the wake of my book publishing too and it was right around that time that ... Well, I'm going to back up because I'm not sure if you're ready to talk about the DNA test yet.

Johanna Almstead:
We can talk about it. Yeah. It feels like we're about there.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah.

Johanna Almstead:
Yeah.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
It was right around that time that I was sitting in my backyard with a very good friend and she was telling me about taking a DNA test because her mom had asked her to because she was interested in genealogy and-

Johanna Almstead:
Talking about like one of those ones that you swab and-

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah, fit in a vial, drop it in the mailbox. Yeah.

Johanna Almstead:
Okay.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
And they had found a family secret, a very shocking family secret. Someone's father who they thought was their father was not their biological father.

Johanna Almstead:
Big secret.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Big-

Johanna Almstead:
Big one.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
... big secret. And it was in that moment that I realized that a DNA test could be the way for me to solve a very big secret in my life.

Johanna Almstead:
And so, at this point you knew we should back up for people who have not read the book. Tell the listeners what you knew about your family at that point.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah. So, when I was a teenager, right after I went on birth control pills, which I kind of sold to my mom as being for dermatological reasons.

Johanna Almstead:
Oh, I sold mine because of having bad periods.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
There you go.

Johanna Almstead:
Yeah.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah. I feel like that's probably pretty common. And of course, she saw through that and like two weeks later-

Johanna Almstead:
So, you were like 16?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah, 15, I think.

Johanna Almstead:
15, okay.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
She sat me down two weeks later at the kitchen table and she said, "I have something to tell you. It's serious." And I watched the color drain from her face and I could just tell that whatever she was going to tell me next was going to change everything. And she said, "When I was 18, I had sex and I got pregnant. My father sent me away to a home for unwet mothers and I placed the baby, a girl for adoption." And of course I'd grown up as an only child and I'd actually grown up as an only child begging for a sister, like repeatedly begging for a sister.

And so, now here I was discovering that I had a sister somewhere out there in the world and I remember it was a kind of out of body experience and I remember my mom saying phrases like, "I wasn't able what was best for her." And then she told me that my sister was black. She told me that the father of her baby was a Nigerian man who she'd met at college, that he was captain of the soccer team.

Johanna Almstead:
And we should clarify here, both your birth parents are white.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yes. I'm white, my mom's white, my dad's yes-

Johanna Almstead:
Your little nuclear family is white-

Tracy Clark-Flory:
... white. And yeah, she told me these little details about him and she said something about how race had made her unwed pregnancy that much more taboo. And this was the 1960s when she was sent away. I was born 20 years, almost 20 years later. So, I'm learning that I have a sister and that she's 20 years older than me. And I remember in that conversation my mom saying, "Do you have any questions for me?" And I said, "Do you ever wonder about her?" And she just said in this gush of a whisper, "I think about her every day of my life."

Johanna Almstead:
Oh, it's heartbreaking.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah. And so, it was like, oh, okay, I have a sis...

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Like, "Oh, okay." I have a sister. She's somewhere out there in the world. She's 20 years older than me. And also, my mom has been carrying this other aching love my whole life.

Johanna Almstead:
And that actually, you processed that at 15

Tracy Clark-Flory:
I processed not in those terms, but it showed me that there was this other part of my mom that I just had no access to, no clue about. I remember picturing her like, "Oh, okay." So every day when she got ready for work to commute into San Francisco for her job, she was thinking about her other daughter. There was something about that idea of this whole time she would wake up and think about her, this other daughter and I had no idea.

So this idea of my mom having this longing, not that I would have put it in those terms at that time, but it really opened my mind to just how much there was about my mom that I didn't know and didn't understand. And that there was like this-

Johanna Almstead:
Were you jealous?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
I don't remember consciously feeling it, but I do think that throughout my childhood, I would just notice moments where my mom didn't feel accessible to me. She felt kind of remote or at arm's length. I have one memory in particular where I was maybe eight years old and throwing a Frisbee with my dad on the front lawn and it was this very blissful childhood moment of feeling connected with my dad.

And I remember looking over at my mom and she kind of has this wry look on her face. She's happy for us, but she's not happy herself. That there's a way in which she can't join us in this happy scene. And I didn't know what to make of that as a kid. It's just there's some kind of remoteness. There's a way in which she's not totally present with us. And now of course, I see that as being because of the child that she lost, that she wasn't able to fully join us in these happy family scenes. Because she had a child out there in the world who she'd never gotten to know, to meet, to hold.

And so I do think there was, even before knowing about my sister, there was almost this kind of jealousy or feeling of like, "Where did my mom just disappear to? Why isn't she fully present here with me?" And so there's a way in which there was the shadow of my sister across my childhood even before I knew that she existed. And I even had this kind of intuition it seemed like of her where I remember as a kid laying in bed at night and I concocted this story about a secret sister that my parents were keeping from me.

Johanna Almstead:
This is so crazy. When I read this, I was like, "Oh my God, this is crazy."

Tracy Clark-Flory:
It's wild what kids know without knowing. And I was like, "I have a secret sister and my parents are keeping from me down the hall in our house," which didn't make any kind of sense. It has this fairytale quality to it. And I would be like, "Oh, but where is she during the day? And when does she take baths and when does she eat dinner?" But I just had this sense of a secret sister and I would lay in bed at night and I would hold my breath in hopes of being able to hear her breathing down the hall. It's like I didn't know, but I did maybe on some level, I think you pick up on the littlest things.

Johanna Almstead:
Also, you grew inside your mom, right?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah.

Johanna Almstead:
There's cells and there's pain and there's heartbreak and I don't know. I think there's a lot more than we know that gets carried, that knowingness or that intuition or that sort of tug that you have and that connection to your mom. I don't know. I think there's probably something there too.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah. The intimacy of that time of being in her body, being in her womb the same place that ... It's like the idea of both my sister and I share this beginning, right? We were both in there two decades apart, but yeah, what was sort of passed down or picked up? It's easy to get kind of mystical about it, honestly, because yeah, there's something there that's kind of hard to explain. Yeah.

Johanna Almstead:
So at the time, your dad knew about this, right?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Mm-hmm.

Johanna Almstead:
He always knew about it.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yes.

Johanna Almstead:
And when you're 15, do you just sort of take it and file it away? It's such big news, but also must be very overwhelming for a 15-year-old I think about. I mean, my daughter's 12 and I can't imagine her being able to wrap her head around. I think also you probably couldn't until you're a mother. I think also in theory, you can be like, "Oh, I get why she would be sad." But until you become a mother-mother and you're like, "Holy shit. She carried a baby in her body for that long."

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah.

Johanna Almstead:
Okay. So you just sort of take this information and go on with your life? You don't really ask a lot of questions?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
No. I mean-

Johanna Almstead:
Your mom doesn't really offer up a lot of other information and your mom doesn't actually have a lot of information. So I think this was a part of the book that was so interesting to me, but it was such a deeply researched book about this system that your mom got put into, which was this, I don't know if you want to talk about that a little bit, but because of that system, she didn't have a lot of information about your sister, right?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah. I mean, at that time, I didn't understand really anything about what a homes for unwed mothers was. And I understood that there was a sense of her being hidden away, that her unwed pregnancy meant that she had to be hidden away.

Johanna Almstead:
So she was removed from her family's home?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah. She was sent away to a home, this Victorian mansion essentially with a bunch of other women. And this was after finding my sister, I dove into this research and basically found that what happened in this pre-Roe era, an estimated 1.5 million women were sent away to homes for unwed mothers and three million women placed their babies for adoption between 1950 and 1975. The idea was that these single pregnant women would be hidden away behind the walls of these homes, that they would stay there until they could give birth and place their babies for adoption.

Johanna Almstead:
So she disappeared from her life also.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yes.

Johanna Almstead:
So she was actively attending college, right?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yep.

Johanna Almstead:
She was 18 years old. It's not like she was that young. I mean, that's very young to become a mother, but it's not like she was like 14 or whatever. She was 18 years old, she's in college and then she vanished.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
She vanished. She withdrew from all her classes. I know this, because I found her transcripts. And yeah, one day she withdrew from all her classes and was sent away and this is what happened.

Johanna Almstead:
Do you know how many months she was there?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
No, I don't. I mean, it was usually women would be sent away as soon as they started to show, as soon as they couldn't hide their pregnancies and they would try to hide their pregnancies with girdles and looser clothing, but at a certain point they would be sent away and they would stay there until they could give birth. And that was the assumption was that when you were sent away, you would place your baby for adoption. The vast majority of women who entered these homes parted with their babies.

And what I didn't understand until I looked into it was that these adoptions were coerced. Some of them were even forced. There was a tremendous amount of brainwashing that was happening in these homes. Young women were sat down and told basically like, "Write a list of what you can offer this baby. Now, write a list of what a married couple can offer this baby."

Johanna Almstead:
And basically also if they decided to keep this baby, they were like ruining their chances of ever having a normal life, right?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah.

Johanna Almstead:
No man was ever going to marry them if they had a baby. Oh God, it's heartbreaking.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah. They were threatened with disownment by their families. And so a lot of these women really didn't have a choice. There wasn't a choice that was being made, because in order to make a choice, you have to have some viable options. And really, this was presented as the only viable option. Lies were told to neighbors and friends and extended family about where they were during this time when they were disappeared.

And the idea was that they would place their babies for adoption, return to their lives and pretend it had never happened. And they were told that they could do that, that it would be possible that they could move on and forget and get essentially another shot at becoming a "proper woman and wife and mother," that they could pretend it had never happened and move on with their lives. That proved to not be true, of course. So many of these women were left traumatized and struggling with mental health issues for the rest of their lives, including PTSD, substance abuse issues.

Johanna Almstead:
It's so crazy to me, because it's such a traumatic ... First of all, becoming a mother, any which way about it is a traumatic event most of the time. Then to become a mother under these circumstances and then to have your child taken away from you and then to have zero awareness/support/safety net around you and your body and your mind and your heart that just went through this crazy thing. I mean, it's a wonder that there's anyone that comes out of that not fully unfunctioning. I mean, it's wild.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Absolutely. Yeah. It is wild. Right. And of course, having now gone through pregnancy and childbirth, my understanding of it has shifted tremendously. Whereas I think I could have kind of, in the past, accepted the surface level explanation for what happened as a mother now that really doesn't suffice. It just doesn't check out, right?

Yeah. And it was all part of this broader attempt at the time to reinforce marriage and the white nuclear family norm. It was rerouting women toward marriage. And most of these women were white. Black unwed mothers were expected to raise their own babies within their extended families. White women were sent away and kind of pushed towards redemption, because they were seen as having fallen from their pedestals.

Johanna Almstead:
So nuts. So nuts.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah.

Johanna Almstead:
And that Black women were forced to have their babies probably under circumstances that they didn't necessarily want to do either, right?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah.

Johanna Almstead:
Nobody wins. Nobody wins.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah. As a result, Black women were then faced lost education, lifelong poverty, harassment by welfare officials. And then the visibility of Black unwed mothers was used to argue for things like school segregation and to argue against the civil rights movement that was growing at that time. Yeah. So Black and white unwed mothers were essentially put on these completely different tracks. Yeah.

Johanna Almstead:
Yeah. I mean, it's a woman's issue and then it becomes a race issue. I thought your book was so well researched and written about the sort of like societal pressures and the societal machinations at play here that was putting these women on their particular paths.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah.

Johanna Almstead:
Okay. So your mom got put on the white woman path. She gave up her baby, her baby girl, and she tried to go back to life, right? She tried to go back to her normal life. She didn't go back to the same college though, right?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
That's right. Yeah. I think that I don't know exactly what the details on that are, but she never went back to the college she was at. She transferred schools. But about a year after she placed her daughter for adoption, she was in such a state of grief and was seeing a therapist, and that therapist committed her to a mental institution. He thought that she was a threat to herself when she told me-

Johanna Almstead:
She was like 19, 20?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah, she was 19 at that time. Yeah, I think. And when she told me about this, which was much later after we had that initial conversation about my sister, even she wasn't clear on how long she'd been there. It wasn't clear whether she'd been there for weeks or months. I think that speaks to the element of trauma that was at play. And she was having a psychotic break of sorts. She was in true crisis. I remember her saying that she figured out what she needed to say to get out of there as fast as she could. And so there was a real sense that being committed to this mental institution was not part of her process of healing. It actually was like an additional-

Johanna Almstead:
Trauma.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Felt like an additional form of punishment and she felt like she had to escape. And my understanding now is basically that, yeah, she didn't get a chance to heal. She just kind of tamped down all of those big feelings about having lost her baby because the lesson she'd been taught is that to feel those feelings, to grieve, that that would threaten to overpower you, that it was dangerous.

Johanna Almstead:
It would somehow make it real.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah.

Johanna Almstead:
Yeah, awful.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah. And so I think really the lesson was like you tamp it down, you box it up. And I have come to learn that that was extremely common for women who were sent away in that era and placed babies for adoption.

Johanna Almstead:
I mean, I think that was common for not just women who were sent away, but women who suffered sexual assault, women who suffered sexual abuse. I think there was not a place for women to express the traumas that they went through and then be supported. It was just like tamp it down, chin up and get on with life, which explains a lot.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah. I mean, truly. Yeah. And this is just a common way of dealing with traumatic experiences. Yeah.

Johanna Almstead:
So she gets out of the mental institution by basically sort of faking her way to wellness and then goes on and tries to have a normal life and does.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah, anyways. Yeah.

Johanna Almstead:
Meets your dad and has a career and gives birth to you and has this beautiful little family.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah.

Johanna Almstead:
Oh my gosh. It's just so crazy.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
But she was haunted by it. I mean, that's the thing is it's like she was able to move on in a sense that she was able to go on and have a life that I know that in so many ways she was happy with and very grateful for, but she never healed her trauma and it haunted her. In her own words, she thought about her daughter every single day of her life. She struggled with substance abuse issues for sure.

Johanna Almstead:
And she died of a disease, right?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah. She died of lung cancer.

Johanna Almstead:
If you think about, I don't know if you've read any of that stuff talking about how trauma makes its way into your cells and its disease, that it's unease in your body. I don't know. I think about she got very, very sick and died from that disease. Hard to completely disconnect that.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah, for sure. I mean, even too, it's like she died of lung cancer. I know she started smoking at least from like when I talked to one of her friends from college who met her in the wake of the adoption. She talked about her smoking all the time. And of course, I wonder like, "Oh, is that a habit that she picked up in response to the stress and trauma of this event in her life? And then did that play a role in her later illness and death?" So there are lots of ways to work it up.

Johanna Almstead:
You talk about how her use of alcohol and her use of marijuana throughout your life, marijuana, pot, whatever you want to call it, it sounded so weird. So do you think she was just sort of taking the edge off, like self-medicating?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah. Self-medicating. I think she was self-medicating. Yeah, because I think there was this persistent pain.

Johanna Almstead:
Do you know if she ever, once she was sort of a fully formed adult, do you know if she ever go to therapy or get any help?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
She did.

Johanna Almstead:
She did?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah. I mean, because a lot of her friends who I grew up with were therapists. One of her therapist friends told me that she'd made a referral to a therapist before I was born, long before I was born. I think she kind of felt like maybe there was some stuff she wanted to work through, but she never really went deep in the way that I think she probably needed to.

Johanna Almstead:
I mean, I imagine it would be hard to function as a human in the world if you actually did allow yourself to go that deep.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Right, exactly. I mean, I think the pain would be so profound and overwhelming. And I think especially too after becoming a mom again and having me, I could imagine that she felt the need to keep it together for me so that she could mother me.

Johanna Almstead:
Yeah. It's not going to give you any more time or space to like tackle those demons when you have a small child.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah.

Johanna Almstead:
Wow. My heart, like for your mom, the whole time I was reading that book and just now talking about it, I think like, man, she was trying her best, right? She was just like trying to move on and have a life. Like you wouldn't be here if she hadn't tried, right?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah.

Johanna Almstead:
Okay. So you know this secret, you've known it since you were 15. How old were you when you decided to finally take the DNA test?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
I would've been in my late 30s. Yeah. So this was like spring of 2022.

Johanna Almstead:
So during that time, did you ever try to find her in any other way, or it just sort of was something you packed away and you were like, "It is what it is."

Tracy Clark-Flory:
My mom had listed herself on an adoption registry and she told me that she'd done that because she wanted her daughter to be able to find her if she ever came looking.

Johanna Almstead:
Because this was back in the time when, just to clarify for the listeners, this was back when basically the adoptions were anonymous, right?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah, it was close.

Johanna Almstead:
The family who adopted this child did not know your mom's name, right?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah, and vice versa. And so the way to find each other would be to list yourself on an adoption registry with like a birthdate and time and place and that sort of thing.

Johanna Almstead:
And hospital, and area, and city, and whatever.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Right. Which she did, but-

Johanna Almstead:
But technically your sister, if she had tried, could have possibly found her through that?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Possibly. Yeah. Although, I mean these registries, I've gone looking through them, and it feels like very needle in a haystack.

Johanna Almstead:
I would imagine.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
So it's unclear to me whether it would've happened. And then after my mom died, that was 13 years ago, I listed myself on an adoption registry because shortly after her death, my dad had disconnected their landline and I realized that was the number she'd listed. And so I felt this sense of like, "Oh, she can't find us now. I'm the connector now." So I listed myself and nothing happened, nothing came of it. My mom had mentioned something about how some people hire detectives.

Johanna Almstead:
Like private investigators, right?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Private investigators who can track people down, but she said that she didn't want to interrupt her daughter's life. So she had this sense of like it was not her right to go looking for her. So she wanted to make herself available, but she didn't want to kind of pursue her because she felt that it could be really upsetting to barge into her life at this point.

Johanna Almstead:
Sorry to interrupt, but I feel like it's like she just carried this kind of bag of rocks of shame because of the circumstances under which she got pregnant and under which she gave birth and had to give her up. It's like there's just this heavy shame around it. It's like that she did something wrong, which she didn't. Like you said, she didn't have choices.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
She was pulled into this system that was so much bigger than her, but I don't think she ever really came to reckon with that. I think she took personal responsibility and carried a great amount of shame and guilt around it.

The way my dad had described it to me from his conversations with her, especially earlier on in their relationship before I came around was that she felt like she had done something unforgivable in her life that she could never atone for, and she carried that her whole life. And so that influenced her approach to not going looking for her actively. And that influenced me later on after she died, I longed for my sister.

It occurred to me as I was processing the fact of my mom being gone, it was so bizarre to know that there was another piece of her out there in the world, right? She's out there. But then I questioned myself like, "Oh, well, now would not be the time to go looking for your sister, because how selfish to in your grief try to find the daughter that never got to know your mother."

Johanna Almstead:
Right. Like, "Hi, guess what? I found you and your mom died."

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Right. Exactly.

Johanna Almstead:
"You didn't even get to meet her."

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah. But now, I'm turning to you as a way of challenge-

Johanna Almstead:
And the comfort.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah, channeling our mom. So I shelved it. It felt wrong, inappropriate. And it was really years later that it was like that conversation with my friend where she mentioned the DNA test and the family secret and it was just like, "Oh man, this is the way." I could actually really, truly find her. Like snapping my fingers as easy as that, you spit in a vial and you drop in the mailbox, and so I did it. I went for it.

Johanna Almstead:
Yeah. And you had to wait a couple weeks for the results, right?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Two weeks, two weeks. And then I got an email that said, "Your DNA results are in." and I've never tapped so quickly on an email before in my life. And immediately pulling up my results, the very first top match is this woman named Catherine who is a stranger, but I feel like I recognize her immediately, because she has my eyebrows or-

Johanna Almstead:
Oh, there's an actual picture of her.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
There's a little profile picture of her. Yeah. And I'm looking right at my mother, I'm looking at me, I'm looking at my maternal grandmother, I'm like immediately seeing this familiarity in someone who I've never seen before and I click on her.

Johanna Almstead:
And who is of a different race than you?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yes, yes.

Johanna Almstead:
Which is wild.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yes.

Johanna Almstead:
Right? Wow, that you're seeing your mother and you and everything in somebody who has a different color skin.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
And it immediately clicked, "This is her, this is my sister." Because the details in her bio matched everything that I knew. And she said in her bio that she had three sons and she said, "Family is my world and there's always room for more." And it just felt like an invitation. So I messaged her right then and there. I didn't overthink it. I just tapped out a message as fast as I could and I hit send. And within a couple hours we were on the phone. It was just like decades of not knowing of wondering and then suddenly here she is and we are connected talking on the phone to my sister.

Johanna Almstead:
So wild. So wild.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Unbelievable.

Johanna Almstead:
And I feel like it just keeps spiraling, these surprises and these connections. And this is the part of the book that I have to say gave me so much hope in the human spirit. It gave me so much ... I kept getting nervous that something was going to go wrong. I kept thinking, "Oh no, she's going to get there and they're going to reject her." Or, "No, they're going to get there and ..." Or, "Oh, no, they're going to-"

Johanna Almstead:
They're going to reject her or oh no, they're going to get there and oh no, they're going to find the father and then he's going to reject that. And it just kept getting better and I was so happy. I kept thinking, God, this is what is the best of humanity.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yes. Yeah. I mean, it was a really wild life-changing experience of course, but not just in terms of coming together with my sister and her family and eventually her father, but also in terms of challenging my sense of what's possible in this world because I had kind of adopted my mom's sense of kind of cynicism and worst case scenario thinking. And so I really-

Johanna Almstead:
And I kept going there as a reader. I was also, I think you're not alone. I think it's a little bit of the world we live in.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah. And there's every reason to kind of assume the worst in a situation like this. And I'm very aware that so many of these reunion stories are not so happy or harmonious. And so I feel tremendously lucky that it has unfolded in the way that it's unfolded because of course there's so much pain. There can be so much pain and anger and rightfully so.

And so my worst case scenarios I think were quite reasonable. I don't think they were grounded in reality, but to have this surprise of every player in this story reacting kind of as their best self it felt like. There was some kind of alchemy or magic in that, that when everyone's kind of playing their part and being their best self, it just kind of builds on itself and it snowballs and we're all kind of like committing to this act of best selfhood of...

Johanna Almstead:
Of love though.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Of love.

Johanna Almstead:
It's making me weepy now because I think about, you wrote in the book about sort of like feeling sort of anxious and thinking about when you were going to call and when did you call and almost like in the beginning of a love affair, right?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yes.

Johanna Almstead:
In the beginning and that you allowed yourselves to fall in love with each other and with this story and with the messiness of it. And I think that to me was such a huge takeaway and it just kept getting better. It kept like with your uncle and then with her father and then the father. It just kept being like, and everyone just kept allowing themselves the vulnerability and the terror of falling in love with these people who they knew they were connected to in some ways. Some of them had no idea. This dad, her father had no idea he had a child.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
He was never told, which was so common of men in this era when women were sent away, the fathers were not told.

Johanna Almstead:
And his reaction of compassion, I mean, I don't want to ruin it. I guess I'm ruining it for people who haven't read it, but like, I'm sorry, spoiler alert. But his reaction of compassion and love and understanding for your mom and the situation that she was in, I kept thinking of so many men that I know who are such fucking narcissistic, such egomaniacs who would have been so mad or so offended by this or whatever. And I kept just thinking like, "This is humanity at its finest." Okay. So I guess we shouldn't keep ruining the book for everybody because then people won't buy it. But we're allowed to say it's a happy end. It's not an ending-

Tracy Clark-Flory:
It is.

Johanna Almstead:
... because it's the beginning of this new relationship. Yeah.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah. And thank goodness there's this happiness that kind of bookends the book, which felt so psychically necessary for me for the reader. There's a lot of pain, a lot of pain that we move through in the heart of this book as I'm coming to understand what happened to my mom and to my sister by being pulled into this racist and sexist system back in 1965 and then reckoning with the ways that I inherited some of that trauma myself as my mom's kept daughter. And so it really feels like you just go to the darkest depths in the middle of the book, especially around my mom being committed to a mental institution. And then there's just like the relief of people coming together in this way that makes you feel better about the capacity of humankind to meet each other in these difficult moments, to let themselves fall in love, to be vulnerable, to embrace the unknown, all of it.

Johanna Almstead:
Even the little peripheral, I shouldn't say little because I don't mean to minimize his feelings, but even the peripheral stuff that needed to be navigated with your own husband who was like watching you go through this whole thing and super supportive of you going through it, but also sort of feeling like a little left out and a little like tugged and a little like... That's all very real human conflict or I don't even know if it's conflict or tension. And again, just this idea that we always have the opportunity to rise to the occasion

And even though he had his moment of like, "I need to work through this," that he was able to rise to the occasion too. And I don't know, it really, really I couldn't stop talking about it. I was like because I couldn't believe, I guess we're so programmed with all this, I mean, I'm going to age myself, but like Jerry Springer as stuff, like the drama and the Real Housewives and all this shit that's like toxic and crazy and your mother's story is so toxic and crazy. It is so hard and it is so traumatic and so awful. And then to have real humans rise to the occasion is really, really, really beautiful.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah. I mean, it's tremendous. It's like I really felt like in so many ways through this experience, I was getting completely rearranged as a person.

Johanna Almstead:
I imagine so.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Spiritually. It's like you can't go through this kind of experience and come out the other side the same. You will be changed. And there is, I like that you mentioned the kind of like that churn and the pain. It can be painful being rearranged even when it's so beautiful and it's so positive, it's the growing pains of it of like stepping into this new sort of outlook and perspective and sense of family. Yeah. So there is some tension in that process of getting to the other side.

Johanna Almstead:
And I feel like I kept yearning for your mom. I kept thinking like, I imagine for you, this process must have been so hard and so complicated because you're in many ways living sort of your mother's story, like you're living the end part of your mother's story that she's not getting to experience in the waking living world right now. And so that to me, I imagine just that part of it, you as a daughter and you as a mother and you having to reconcile now knowing every bit of information you get is just like more information about this life that your mom lived as your mother that had this whole other fucking attic or basement that was happening where you were just living on the main floor with her.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah. I mean really I went through a process grieving her lost motherhood. There's like this part in the book where I'm like finding myself at times doubled over in pain as I'm making my kid his lunch for school because I'm feeling the pain of what it actually meant for her to lose her child, connecting with it in a way that I was never able to connect with it before I had a child, but also before I really came to understand how coerced these adoptions were and how abused and traumatized these women were by the system. So there was something very intense and bizarre about feeling those feelings that my mom didn't get to fully feel, I think.

Johanna Almstead:
And the injustice of it all, just like-

Tracy Clark-Flory:
The injustice of it. Yeah. Right. Feeling the anger that I don't think she ever fully arrived at because I don't think she ever fully faced the way that she was abused by the system.

Johanna Almstead:
She probably could. You can't see the forest for the trees, right?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Exactly. And it's like she took personal responsibility and she carried it, right? The bag of rocks that you were talking about earlier, that's what she was carrying. And so for me to be like, "Fuck that bag of rocks, you should never have been carrying that. That was never yours to carry." Yeah. So to feel the unfelt feelings, right? I mean, I think this is like profound work I think that most of us have to do on some level with our parents "What are the unfelt feelings? What are the secrets? The unspoken truths that there's just a lot of pain but a lot of healing in moving through that.

Johanna Almstead:
Yeah. And what genetic trauma we inherit, right?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
It's very real.

Johanna Almstead:
And what can we undo so we don't pass it on?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yes.

Johanna Almstead:
But I mean, I feel like we don't even have time to get into it, but I think it's so interesting and you talk about this in the book, but the fact that you made your living as this sort of like outspoken talking about things that so many people think are taboo and that you sort of were like right in the face of it.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah. I was drawn to it from the very get, right? Yeah, my first job right out of college, there I am defending premarital sex on the internet and going viral for it and I'm literally defending the act that got my mom sent away that shattered her world, that changed her forevermore. But I think you see maybe sometimes smaller kind of versions of this, but I think there often is that kind of generational impulse toward the secret, toward the shame, toward the trauma that-

Johanna Almstead:
Righting the wrong.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah, even if we don't understand it, that we're driven by these things and maybe part of being driven towards these things helps us to start to see it, look at it and face it.

Johanna Almstead:
Well, man, you faced it. Holy moly.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
I think it's safe to say that I have... I mean, there's always more facing to do, but I think I've done a lot of that work, that's for sure.

Johanna Almstead:
Yeah. I mean, I feel like going through it and writing about it, then having to promote your book and talk about writing about it and going through it. It's like, "Holy man, you are exercising these demons."

Tracy Clark-Flory:
We are doing it. Yeah.

Johanna Almstead:
Your mom, wherever she is, is finally chilling.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yes, that's what I hope. I hope she's... Yeah, with a Mai Tai on a beach somewhere, just like, "Okay, now I can be at peace."

Johanna Almstead:
Yeah. They're all together now.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yes. Yes, exactly. Exactly.

Johanna Almstead:
So you've had a lot of achievements. You've done a lot of hard things. What is on that you're most proud of?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
What is what I'm most proud of? That is such a hard question.

Johanna Almstead:
Really?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah. It's such a hard question. I mean, because I think there's a part of me that in my initial impulse is the thing that I'm proudest of is being a mother to my son, but then then of course there's a part of me that's like, I don't want to default into this sort of like, "Well, I'm a woman in the world who's written two books, but I'm just going to default to motherhood." But I would say that like...

Johanna Almstead:
You're allowed to, by the way. You're allowed to default to motherhood on here. It's okay.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
I would say that it's mothering my son and just getting to watch the person that he is becoming and take delight of that. And I guess I would just say broadly it's like in both of my books, this experience of saying the unsayable and then hearing from readers who say that it has literally changed their lives, there's nothing better than that. That feeling of being able to help people change their lives by telling the truth.

Johanna Almstead:
Totally, totally. And telling your mom's story and telling the story of those workers who were working in the porn industry, like whatever, telling their stories and giving them validation and a solid ground to stand on I think is huge.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah. I mean, sharing my mom with readers across both books, honestly, and hearing people talk about her and even responding to things like quotes from her that I've included in both books where it's almost like her mothering is perpetuated through the books. People are having moments of connection with her in ways that she could never have foreseen that her impact would spread out in this way. That's tremendous to be able to share her through my work.

Johanna Almstead:
Yeah. That's pretty remarkable. When you think about that young woman who didn't think she had any choices and couldn't even make the impact on her own life probably if she wanted to, to think that she's having such an impact now is really beautiful.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
I love that. I love the way you put that.

Johanna Almstead:
Is there anything that you once believed about yourself that you've since outgrown through this whole process or before this process?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
I think I have come to see myself as actually being very strong and I think I saw myself as being delicate.

Johanna Almstead:
Really?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yes. I think I saw myself as being delicate and I think the process of like this confronting my mom's past, like meeting my sister, coming together with her family, going so deep on that and then writing about it and bringing it into the world. I think that I have shifted my own sense of who I am and that sense of delicacy has really changed, which isn't to say that it isn't hard or they don't struggle, but I think I connect more with an understanding of myself as strong and brave, which is not how I saw myself before.

Johanna Almstead:
Oh, I'm happy that you see yourself. So your son is, he's four, five?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
He was four. He's eight now.

Johanna Almstead:
Oh, he's eight now. Okay. So in the book, that's-

Tracy Clark-Flory:
In the book, he's four. Yeah, exactly.

Johanna Almstead:
So he's eight now and I imagine that I'm not probably his normal media that he would consume, so it's probably not going to be a while. It's going to be a while before he listens to this podcast.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yes.

Johanna Almstead:
But you were doing some heavy hard as you were parenting him and becoming a mother and stepping into your role as a mother. And so what do you want him when he's old enough to listen to this if he ever does? I mean, they probably won't even have devices to listen to this by the time he can, but whatever, when it gets imprinted in his brain or something, what do you want him to know about this time up until now?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah. I mean, I would want him to know that he was part of it, that my love for him and my experience of motherhood thanks to him was part of what drove me on this journey that without falling in love with him, I don't know that I would have had that same sense of urgency around understanding my mom's past and grieving her lost motherhood. He is part of this journey every single step of the way because of how he changed me, that the person I became as his mother from loving him was the person who was able to go on this journey and write this book.

Johanna Almstead:
He may have given you a little courage.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah. I mean, probably, probably, right? I mean, there is that stereotype of the fierce mama bear, but I mean-

Johanna Almstead:
It's real.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
It's very real. I would do anything and everything for him, of course that sense of willing sacrifice for your child, that changes you and that does make you stronger.

Johanna Almstead:
And braver.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
And braver, for sure.

Johanna Almstead:
I don't know, at least in my experience, it's given me more courage to confront any demons that could possibly haunt them, my children, much more quickly and much more head on.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yes. Well, I think it's so interesting that sense of what you can't do for yourself but that you can do for them. I am willing to do this for myself to take care of myself in this way because I know that it's going to help you, that it's clarifying in that way.

Johanna Almstead:
Right. Yeah. So we say it's a happy ending and it is, but it's also been hard. Can you talk a little bit about any of the specific sacrifices you've made to get this far?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Like the personal journey with my sister or in terms of writing the book or...

Johanna Almstead:
Any of it. Any of it. And I think none of us get to where we are without some sacrifices. I think it's important that we talk about the sacrifices we make because no one's really getting out of them.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Right. I mean, I guess I would say just on a real talk level, in terms of writing the book, the amount of work that goes into writing a book like this and any book too, truly, to write a book period is so tremendous. It's the kind of thing that doesn't make sense on paper at all because even if you get a good book deal, even if you get a great book deal, there's no way it breaks down to be a livable wage.

Johanna Almstead:
You're still making 14 cents an hour when it comes down to it.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Because if you factor in how much time you're devoting to it is a labor of love even in some of the best cases, unless you're like the truly, truly exceptional out of this world kind of examples, even great success means something that is so impractical, irrational. And when I think about sacrifice, I think about feeling driven to do this despite it all and doing it and making it work, making it happen and feeling like it was and is worth it, but it's a lot. You devote years of your life to a book from the very earliest stages of envisioning it and writing your book proposal to writing through it and doing edits and prepping for book promotion and then promoting it and talking about... You were living with it for years.

Johanna Almstead:
Yeah. Well, I'm really glad you did do it.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Me too. Me too.

Johanna Almstead:
Okay. So now you have done it, right? You wrote the book, you released the book, you're promoting the book. What are you dreaming about next?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Honestly, what I'm most excited about right now, because I don't have another big creative all consuming project that has taken over yet. I mean, I actually kind of hope to find that next obsession. But right now what I'm most excited about is that I'm starting to work with private writing clients and I just love talking to people about their work and their ideas and their writing and helping other people to build and develop their books. That is so thrilling to me and that brings me a lot of excitement is like helping other books to be born into this world.

Johanna Almstead:
I imagine that must be, especially on the heels of this particular book, that was so deeply personal and so deeply emotional, I feel like that must be kind of fun to outsource the emotions to somebody else, but still get to tell the story.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
This is your stuff. Yes, exactly. Right. I mean, helping other people with their memoirs and especially with family stories, it is tremendous because it also feels like it's a lighter lift for me emotionally than writing this book was certainly, but it also allows me to kind of use what I learned in the process of writing this book to help other people on their writing journeys. And that's just tremendous because the writing process can be solitary and isolated and so to be able to connect with other people around writing and to kind of help them along their way is just awesome.

Johanna Almstead:
That's amazing. That's amazing. How do you nourish yourself these days?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
I nourish myself in a very specific way, which is like going to my favorite beach. I'm not going to mention the name because I don't want anyone to know about it.

Johanna Almstead:
I get that. I get that.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
But it's a beach in Northern California that is on a bay.

Johanna Almstead:
We could leave a bunch of breadcrumb or whatever they're called, Easter eggs, breadcrumb clues and see if people who could start a game so you can find it.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
I will say it's in Point Reyes area and it's on a bay and taking a plunge in that ice-cold, salty water, there is some kind of magic in that water. I'm just saying I've plunged into many bodies of water and this one is unique and there is nothing that is as replenishing as spending an afternoon on that beach jumping in that cold water, you will be changed.

Johanna Almstead:
All right. I like it. Okay. So now we're at the lightning round of silly questions. Many of them are food related mostly just because I like to talk about food and I like to make women talk about food because I spent 25 years in the fashion industry where I wasn't allowed to talk about food. So here we go. Don't overthink it. Favorite comfort food.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Ooh, salmon and rice with, don't judge me, a little side of mayo for dipping.

Johanna Almstead:
I'm not judging. Are we talking cooked salmon or...

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Cooked salmon.

Johanna Almstead:
Cooked salmon.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yep.

Johanna Almstead:
Okay. Do you ever do like a spicy mayo or just straight up mayo?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
I keep it really simple. Yeah. Sometimes my husband, Christopher, is the person who predominantly cooks in our household and he'll do a nice very sophisticated maybe soy saucy kind of treatment to the salmon, but then I often default to my little side of mayo. It's super basic, but I love it and it's very comforting.

Johanna Almstead:
I'm not mad at that at all. That sounds delicious. What was your first paid job? First time you ever exchanged labor for money?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
I worked at a greeting card shop in high school. We sold greeting cards and little gifties, like tiny little sweet gifts.

Johanna Almstead:
Cute. That's cute.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah.

Johanna Almstead:
Okay. Other than writing books and telling other people how to write books, what is something you're really good at?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Really good at. What is something I'm really good at?

Johanna Almstead:
This one trips people up sometimes.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah.

Johanna Almstead:
We're not really ways to talk-

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Oh, I got it.

Johanna Almstead:
Tell me.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Air hockey.

Johanna Almstead:
Oh, hey now.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
I am very good at it and I will beat you.

Johanna Almstead:
Okay. You probably will.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Just saying.

Johanna Almstead:
Do you have an air hockey table in your house?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
I want one. I would love one, but I don't have one. So it's only when I find myself in an arcade that-

Tracy Clark-Flory:
... But I don't have one. So it's only when I find myself in an arcade that we get into competitive mode. Yeah.

Johanna Almstead:
Nice. So I just went to a bar mitzvah on Saturday night and they had air hockey at the party. It was so fun. They had foosball and ping pong and air hockey. And I want to say one more. It was so fun.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
I love that.

Johanna Almstead:
I also, and I feel like this is going to be a helpful hint from [inaudible 01:12:25]. As your son gets older, I feel like an air hockey table in the house is a great way to have the neighborhood kiddos hang.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Oh, that's actually such a good point.

Johanna Almstead:
And you might not be able to get as competitive with them. That might get into the dad roller skating or roller whatever.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
I love that. I like the idea of strategizing ahead of time so that we become the cool house that all the kids want to hang out at.

Johanna Almstead:
100%, yes.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
We have some work to do, I think, on that front.

Johanna Almstead:
Yeah, 100%. And you're still early enough. If he's eight, you have time.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
We have time.

Johanna Almstead:
It happens quick. I would say-

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Okay.

Johanna Almstead:
You've got year, maybe two.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Okay. I appreciate-

Johanna Almstead:
... Yourself. Got to have the good snacks.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Good snacks. We got that. But we need the good hang space with a fun game.

Johanna Almstead:
You need [inaudible 01:13:07] space.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
I appreciate this warning. Yeah.

Johanna Almstead:
You can start saving up. You can put it on layaway. Put it on layaway and get your air hockey table.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
I love it. Everybody wins.

Johanna Almstead:
Everybody wins. I'm telling you. Okay. What's something you're really bad at?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Because it's top of mind. Because of air hockey, ping pong. I'm just really bad at ping pong.

Johanna Almstead:
Oh.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
I am so bad at it.

Johanna Almstead:
I think ping pong's hard. I think it's kind of hard.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah. And I really want to be good at it and I'm very competitive with silly games, but I have learned that I'm not good at it and I think I'm close to acceptance.

Johanna Almstead:
Okay. I support you. It's okay. You can let go of it. It's all right.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
I have air hockey. Yeah.

Johanna Almstead:
You have air hockey. I mean, you might just get a T-shirt that says you're the best at air hockey or something, that might make you feel better.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Little trophy, yeah.

Johanna Almstead:
I like asking writers this one especially. What's your favorite word?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Oh God. That's so funny.

Johanna Almstead:
It's very paralyzing for many writers, I'll just tell you.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
It's so funny. The word that's coming to mind is just so silly, is indeed. And it's like not a word that I say in real life ever, but it's like I will find myself saying it in emails and texts and sometimes removing it from my writing because I'm like, "Well, I would never actually say that." But I love throwing in an indeed. It feels kind of playful.

Johanna Almstead:
I like it.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah, indeed.

Johanna Almstead:
It's a little sassy too. I like it.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
It feels like a throwback. It's like, yeah.

Johanna Almstead:
I'd be happy if you responded to one of my emails with indeed.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Indeed. Yeah. It feels like a throwback. It feels oddly formal but kind of playfully formal. That's how I intend it.

Johanna Almstead:
Slightly British maybe.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yes-

Johanna Almstead:
... Fun. Slightly haughty. A little bit haughty.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
You might say it with an accent. Yeah.

Johanna Almstead:
You might. Yeah.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
It's a fun one.

Johanna Almstead:
I might try to layer that in to my lexicon. Like, I did indeed have a good day.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
I did indeed. See? Once you start saying it.

Johanna Almstead:
It's good. It makes you smile. Okay. Least favorite food.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Olives.

Johanna Almstead:
Oh, so sad. Really?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah.

Johanna Almstead:
All of them? Green, brown, purple-

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Every kind. Every kind that I've tried and I've tried many kinds. I've never liked one. I've tried to like them. It's a no go.

Johanna Almstead:
Even just like the dumb, silly, like tasteless black olives that you get on pizza?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah. I hate all of them.

Johanna Almstead:
I'm really sorry about that.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
I mean, I hear that. I hear people's sympathy for my lack of love for olives and people are incredulous every time it comes up, but I just really truly ... I don't like them.

Johanna Almstead:
Do you also not like goat cheese? Because-

Tracy Clark-Flory:
I love goat cheese.

Johanna Almstead:
Okay. So you're breaking-

Tracy Clark-Flory:
And I love other things that people are sensitive about. I like oysters, raw oysters, great. Mushrooms, awesome, but it's just olives.

Johanna Almstead:
Okay. Because I've had a few people who don't like olives but also do not like goat cheese and I wondered if it was the same taste bud or something that was going to haywire.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
That's interesting. I love goat cheese. Love it.

Johanna Almstead:
That makes me sad. I really love olives. Okay. Anyway, least favorite word?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Gosh. The only one that's coming to mind is moist. I feel like I've been indoctrinated with moist hatred because people are so weird about it, but I don't even know if I share that feeling. I think it's like I've absorbed other people's sense of getting the ick from that word.

Johanna Almstead:
Yeah. It's real on this podcast, I'll tell you.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Do you get that a lot?

Johanna Almstead:
A lot of people say moist.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah.

Johanna Almstead:
And now it's gotten to be so much that when I say it, I never had it. I never had the weirdness about it, but so many people on this podcast say that, that this happened to me last night. I was talking to my daughter about, she got a cut on her face and I was telling her to keep it moist with Aquaphor because that's how you're not supposed to scar. And I said moist and then I was like, moist? It came out of my mouth. Weird. And I was like, is that ... And she started laughing at me and I was like, is that the right word? Did I just say the wrong thing? Now it's totally-

Tracy Clark-Flory:
... Yeah. No, it's like once you start overthinking a word, yeah, you do start to question, is this even a word?

Johanna Almstead:
Yeah, it happened last night. Do you have any hobbies other than air hockey?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Hobbies? I mean, right now I guess I would say my hobby is kind of reading about zen and Buddhism.

Johanna Almstead:
Oh, I like that.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
That is my kind of obsession is I go to my favorite local used bookstore and I go over to the spirituality section and I find all these books that are like $9, $6 used and some of them are out of print. And it's like this wonderful world of like usually my book recommendations are like the algorithm and what friends are reading and the hot new release. But this is just this other world of just like whatever I happen across and give a try to. And then I've just discovered life-changing books.

Johanna Almstead:
I love that for you.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah.

Johanna Almstead:
Is the interest in zen and Buddhism new?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Across the last few years, yeah.

Johanna Almstead:
Cool.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
I've been going really deep with it and kind of have gotten to be kind of studious around it. I feel like I'm studying up for something, but I don't know what other than enlightenment.

Johanna Almstead:
I mean that too. I mean pasha. A little bit of enlightenment, whatever. Or maybe it's like going to be part of your next big creative project.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
I mean, that's what I think. It's like anytime I have an obsession, it's always kind of like, what's this about? Where is this going to lead you? And so I would have to assume it's leading me somewhere, including creatively. I think there's no way that I'm putting in all this time and feel so like it's the thing I want to be reading about all the time that I'm obsessed with. That's pushing me somewhere. So we'll see.

Johanna Almstead:
But I like your zen non-attachment to the result.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Well, maybe it's kind of taking. I think I'm ...

Johanna Almstead:
I might be good at this.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
It's only taken like 50 books and several years.

Johanna Almstead:
But here I am, a student. Okay. Best piece of advice you've ever received?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
It was in the wake of a breakup, a really devastating breakup where I'd kind of blown up the relationship by cheating on my long distance boyfriend. And I think in part I was too scared to end the relationship because I really felt like, oh, this is the kind of man I should marry. And if I don't marry him, I'm going to end up sad and alone. And all these, the kind of-

Johanna Almstead:
Shoulda, coulda, woulda.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Self-talk that you do in your 20s. And my mom, I wish I could summon, I actually include it in this book, but she said something about having a sense of faith that it will work out. And that sounds so trite when I say it like that. But there was a way in which she delivered that advice where she acknowledged that it would sound trite and that it might sound naive, but that she really believed it. And I think maybe more than the advice itself, it was her faith and knowing that it would be okay for me that allowed me to kind of absorb even just a small fraction of that sense of faith.

Johanna Almstead:
I love that. If your personality were a flavor, what would it be?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
I would say like, okay, birthday cake ice cream, because it would be like vanilla, let's say like a French vanilla. It's like a complex, rich flavor, but maybe kind of basic with these little pops of like rainbow, let's say birthday cake mixed in that are kind of surprised when you get that bite and you're like, "Oh, I didn't know that was part of this deal."

Johanna Almstead:
Like suburban mom at a birthday party who happens to also be a sex writer.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah. And who wrote a book titled Want Me. Yeah, exactly.

Johanna Almstead:
Sprinkles. I like it.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah.

Johanna Almstead:
Okay. Last supper. It is not sad though. You're moving on to enlightenment perhaps. What are you eating tonight?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
This is a tough one. It's a really tough one.

Johanna Almstead:
Yeah.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Because I do love food.

Johanna Almstead:
You can do a whole spread. It's okay.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah.

Johanna Almstead:
Some people get real crazy.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
It would be like my husband's fish soup that he does. It's like this creamy fish soup. It's amazing. It's a family recipe. It's delicious and he has these garlic-

Johanna Almstead:
Like a chowder?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
It's maybe kind of chowdery. Yeah. It has some of the components of like a creamy chowder, but it's not as thick. It's perfect. And then he does it with these garlic toasts that are crispy, but you soak it in the soup and they're just like heavenly. It'd be that. It would be his brownies. He makes the best brownies that have like this ooey, gooey, melty chocolate cocoa thing going on with some homemade whipped cream and ice cream. Oh yeah, because if you open it up to desserts, that's like a whole other realm. What was I just saying the other day? One of my favorite desserts, like a soft serve twist with like chocolate sprinkles.

Johanna Almstead:
Yeah.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
I think I would have the soup, but then just all the desserts. I'd have an apple crisp with ice cream. That's another favorite. I love the basic desserts.

Johanna Almstead:
Very like Americana desserts. I like it.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
I guess so. Yeah. I know.

Johanna Almstead:
Hi, come to my party. I'll be serving fish soup and many desserts.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
And so many desserts. A multi-course dessert meal.

Johanna Almstead:
I love it. Do you get excited? Have you ever been to a wedding when they do the Venetian hour? Have you ever gone to an Italian American wedding?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
No.

Johanna Almstead:
It's like a real ... Maybe it's an East Coast thing. I think it is an East Coast thing, but they call it the Venetian hour and it's like maybe it's between the dinner and the dessert, or is it after desert? It might be after dessert, like later. They do a cart of all the crazy desserts and then you have all the coffees with-

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yes.

Johanna Almstead:
And you have all the things.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Amazing.

Johanna Almstead:
I feel like you'd be really happy there.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Oh, I would love that. I would love that. I remember I went on a cruise once as a kid with my parents and they had a midnight dessert buffet where if you stayed up to midnight, and then you would just go into a room and it was all these little mini desserts and you could just fill your plate with all the different kinds. That is heaven. Yeah.

Johanna Almstead:
That really is. I feel like my kids would literally think that was heaven. I think you should have a Venetian cart at your next book launch party.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
That's an idea.

Johanna Almstead:
Especially if it's about zen Buddhism. I feel like it's just very intertwined.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
The indulgence.

Johanna Almstead:
Totally on theme.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yes. I love that. I love it.

Johanna Almstead:
Are you drinking anything with your fish soup and all your desserts?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah, I'd have a nice glass of wine or something.

Johanna Almstead:
Okay. Red or white or rose?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Rose.

Johanna Almstead:
Oh, nice.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah. That sounds actually perfect. I love that.

Johanna Almstead:
Lovely. That's a really spectacular menu. Okay. Have you had a moment in your life where you've had to eat your words and would you like to share?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
I mean, the only thing that's coming to mind immediately is something very recent, which was like we were en route to my book launch in Berkeley and it was me, Christopher and my sister, Kathy, who had come out to visit for the launch. And I was nervous, had a lot of anxiety and I didn't want to be late. And Christopher had mapped out a path that did not involve going on the freeway because he just felt like, "Oh, be like a nicer drive." And he was like, "Don't worry, it's going to take the same amount of time." And it was not what the map had said, my map that I turned to, my preferred routing service of choice.

And I was so sure that he was wrong and I had to eat my words because he was totally right. And actually what ended up happening is that we took this indirect route. It took the same amount of time and along the way I got to see all these landmarks from my childhood driving through Berkeley that I mentioned in the book. And so it ended up being this lovely sort of stroll down memory lane ahead of this really monumental moment. And so it was one of those moments where I was like, "You were so right."

Johanna Almstead:
So right.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
"And I'm sorry."

Johanna Almstead:
Christopher was right. Yeah, he was right.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
He was so right.

Johanna Almstead:
Oh, it's so hard to say sometimes though, isn't it? If you could eat only one food for the rest of your life all day, every day, you don't have to worry about it nutritionally sustaining you. It's just going to magically do that. What would you eat all day every day?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Pasta.

Johanna Almstead:
Good choice. Solid.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah. I'm never going to be mad about pasta. Yeah.

Johanna Almstead:
Never mad. Where's your happy place?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
It would be that same beach. Yep.

Johanna Almstead:
What did you have for dinner last night?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Enchiladas.

Johanna Almstead:
Ooh, fun.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah. Home cooked. Delicious.

Johanna Almstead:
Love that. What do you wear when you feel like you need to take on the world? So book launch, meeting with a publisher, hot date, what do you wear?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Jumpsuit. Jumpsuit all the way.

Johanna Almstead:
Jumpsuit? You're a jumpsuitter. Okay.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah, I am. Because it's like I have an identity crisis every time that I have to get dressed up in a more formal way and jumpsuits to me feel like perfectly me way to dress up and they make me feel strong and powerful.

Johanna Almstead:
I love that for you. Are they kind of like cargo-y industrial jumpsuits or are they lady-like jumpsuits-

Tracy Clark-Flory:
... Not lady-like. They are not full on cargo industrial, but they have little accents that lean in that direction. So it has a little bit of a femme touch to it, but it's not like silky fabrics or anything like that. It leans kind of tougher, I would say. But maybe it has that kind of look, but it's like a lavender jumpsuit. So it kind of balances.

Johanna Almstead:
And what are we wearing on our feet? What's happening on the shoes?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Clogs.

Johanna Almstead:
Clogs. You're so Berkeley. I love it. Jumpsuit and clogs.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah. Some clogs.

Johanna Almstead:
Berkeley and Brooklyn.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Heeled clogs and nice ones, but-

Johanna Almstead:
An open toe or a closed toe?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Closed toed. But one of my nicer ones. That's fancy for me.

Johanna Almstead:
I like it.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
I'm not going to do a heel. Yeah.

Johanna Almstead:
No. Okay.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
No.

Johanna Almstead:
Most memorable meal you've ever had?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
It would be the fish soup again, which I had on the first date with Christopher that was at his house where he cooked for me and I was like, "Oh my God, this man can cook."

Johanna Almstead:
I feel like creamy fish soup is kind of a bold move for early dating stages.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
It's a bold move and yet he was somehow so right. He could not have been more right. I was the perfect audience for a creamy soup. Oh my God. And then he made a homemade rustic tart with homemade ice cream. It was insane. I was like, who is this person?

Johanna Almstead:
Seriously-

Tracy Clark-Flory:
He pulled out all the stops.

Johanna Almstead:
... Marry me. Marry me soup.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah.

Johanna Almstead:
All right. I like it. Okay. Go to coping mechanism on a bad day? Shit's going sideways. Nothing's working. You have writer's block. Your computer's doing weird things. Your son is sick. What do you do?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Working out on my Peloton.

Johanna Almstead:
Okay. That's good.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Sorry to be so basic, but that is just what I've found is the thing that will make everything better is like a really good workout will rearrange me and entirely change my day. It's very annoying.

Johanna Almstead:
Do you have a favorite instructor?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah, Cody.

Johanna Almstead:
Cody? Okay.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Cody. I've shopped around a little bit, but Cody is where I have landed.

Johanna Almstead:
You come back to Cody.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah. I only take classes with him now.

Johanna Almstead:
Okay. Cody.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Exclusively, yes.

Johanna Almstead:
All right. Dream dinner party guest list, dead or alive? You can have as many people as you want and they're all going to say yes to your invitation. So who are you having dinner with?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Oh my God. I mean, probably at least a few of those people would be some of the authors of these zen and Buddhism books that I'm reading right now. Wow, this is going to get to be a very weird mix of people.

Johanna Almstead:
I was like, that's a rager for you.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah, because I don't know if that's dinner party appropriate. I'd also want a good number of those people to be writers. Some of my favorite authors, memoirists, I don't know, Danny Shapiro, Vivian Gornick, Leslie Jamison, [inaudible 01:30:21] Lehman. I'd want to collect all the books that I have on my shelf right here. Those authors altogether, that would be a fantastic time. Who else would I want to throw in there?

Johanna Almstead:
Some zen masters.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
With some zen Masters for sure. But then I feel like I'd want, I don't know, throw in some William Wordsworth and Shakespeare and Rumi.

Johanna Almstead:
Yes.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
I was like, really? Whew, this is quite a party.

Johanna Almstead:
But wait, I just thought of something. Sorry. I'm answering the question for you. But you would have to have your mom and Kathy And Uncle G-Day come back. Is that how you say his name?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
That would definitely ... Yes.

Johanna Almstead:
Okay.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah. I mean, now you're talking. If you could just take people, bring people back to-

Johanna Almstead:
... With the zen masters to help facilitate all that.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah. My mom would be great with some zen masters. She was kind of into zen. Yeah. Kathy, Uncle G-Day and then Kathy's extended family so my mom could meet her biological grandkids and great grandkids would be amazing.

Johanna Almstead:
Ph my God. This is such a good party. I love that.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
And then my son would have to be there and Christopher would have to be there and my dad would have to be there. And then this is like a rager.

Johanna Almstead:
And then the memoirists are all going to write about it.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah. We'd have some really good coverage of this event. It'd be so good. It would be so good. Oh my gosh.

Johanna Almstead:
Good one. I like this a lot. And you're serving fish soup.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
It'd be a great time for sure.

Johanna Almstead:
And so much dessert.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
And multi-course desserts. Yeah.

Johanna Almstead:
I'm into it.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
I love it.

Johanna Almstead:
Okay. Lastly, what is one thing you know for sure right now in this moment, you don't need to know it tomorrow, you didn't need to know it yesterday, what feels true to you right now?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
It's going to be okay.

Johanna Almstead:
Yeah.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah. Feels true. Yeah.

Johanna Almstead:
Can you please tell the nice people who are listening where they can find out more about you, where they can follow you on your socials and your website and all things?

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yes. You can find me at tracyclarkflory.com. That's where you'll find all my links and everything. I'm on Instagram @tracyclarkflory. You can go directly to my Substack at tracyclarkflory.substack.com. My podcast is direstraightspod.com. That's straights with a G-H. But yeah, tracyclarkflory.com is where you're going to find all the links to all the things.

Johanna Almstead:
Amazing. And her brand new book that's out is My Mother's Daughter: Finding Myself In My Family's Fractured Past. And I will say, as a reader, go out and read it, go, go, go. It's a beautiful story of love and family.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.

Johanna Almstead:
Thank you so much for being here and taking so much time with me. I know it's a lot and I know you're exhausted, so thank you so much for being here.

Tracy Clark-Flory:
This has been so fun. Yeah. Thank you for having me.

Johanna Almstead:
Well, that was so much fun. I feel like I could talk to her for hours. Her story is so remarkable. The story of her family is so remarkable. I really, really urge you to go read the book. It really will just give you faith in humankind again. So I hope you all enjoyed that episode as much as I did. If you haven't done so already, please follow us on social media. We are at Eat My Words The Podcast on both Instagram and TikTok. And if you know of anybody who you think might be inspired by this story or want to hear this incredible journey, please share this episode with them. You can copy the link out of your media player, whatever you're listening to this on, Spotify or Apple Music or one of the others. And you can then paste it into a text, an email, a DM. You can post it on your own social media, which we love when you do that. And every little bit helps us to keep building this community so we can continue telling our stories and sharing our lives with one another.

So thank you, thank you. Thank you for tuning in. I'm exhausted. That was a long one and I will catch you on the next one.

This Eat My Words podcast was created, produced, and directed by me, Johanna Almstead. Our sound editor is Isabel Robertson and our social media manager is Isabella [inaudible 01:35:13].