We Want to Feel Seen With Kathleen Glasgow

We’re back with another Terrible Reading Club episode, sponsored by BetterHelp Online Therapy. Think of it as our book club for truly terrible times. Haven’t read the book we’re discussing? Good news: In this reading club, that’s not a requirement.

Today, we’re chatting with Kathleen Glasgow about her YA novel “You’d Be Home Now,” which tackles substance abuse and the opioid crisis. Note that we also talk about self-harm in this episode.

—

Support our new independent production (and get bonus content galore!) by joining TTFA Premium. We now offer tiers as low as $4.99 / month. Sign up.

Our email subscribers get first dibs on ticket sales, new merch, show announcements and more. Join our mailing list here.

Did you know we’re on TikTok? Yep, it’s true. Follow Nora. You can catch up with TTFA on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook using @ttfapodcast. Nora's Instagram is @noraborealis.

—

Hello and welcome back to the Terrible Reading Club, a little series within our podcast that I like to think of as great books for terrible times … or about terrible things? The books themselves are not terrible. They are actually the opposite. 

For a lot of people, including myself, one of the terrible times of life is … adolescence. Being a teenager. And I think this is true for the vast majority of people, it just kind of sucks. It doesn’t really matter where you live, there’s just kind of nothing to do and everything to do. That’s why you always see groups of teenagers just standing around. I was at the mall recently. There were teenagers just standing around at the mall. And all I could think of was, “Huh, it’s been two decades since I was a teenanger and we were just standing around at the mall.” This is a generational thing, just standing around at the mall. They did not have an Orange Julius, which is how I knew that I was not in a time warp, because also these kids were wearing the same clothes that we wore in 1999 or 2001. Bizarre. 

Anyways.

Being a teenager? Ugh. But reading about teenagers is not terrible, and I am a lover of young adult fiction. Which is strange in some ways, because when I was an actual young adult, there wasn’t a lot in this genre. But once I hit adulthood, you better believe that I was a full-on Twi-hard.when i found out that there was a book about a love triangle between a virginal human girl, a 117-year-old vampire, and a hot werewolf boy, yeah, I was into it, okay? 

There’s just so much to love about YA as a genre, and one of my favorite YA authors is Kathleen Glasgow. Since I picked up her 2016 novel “Girl in Pieces,” I’ve been a huge fan. I got to do an event with her in Minneapolis for her 2019 novel “How to Make Friends with the Dark,” and her latest book, “You’d Be Home Now,” arrived at my home and i read it in one sitting.

Kathleen is a master of exploring the darkest parts of adolescence -- the fear, the anxiety, the danger of feeling grown-up but not having the power and the frontal lobe of a grownup of a grown-up -- and doing that with care and tenderness. I have yet to read a Kathleen Glasgow book and not cry.

“You’d Be Home Now” follows a high school girl named Emory. She’s a rich girl in a town that’s being crushed by the opioid crisis. Emory herself is being crushed by the role she’s forced to play in her home and her community: She’s the youngest child of a family of three kids. She’s got a hot, popular sister and a troublemaking brother who just got back from rehab. And she has no room to be herself … especially because what sent her brother to rehab was a car accident that killed one of the most popular girls in school.

If you’ve never read YA because you think, oh, gosh, get a life, it’s FOR KIDS, I hope this conversation with Kathleen -- where yes, we discuss the shortcomings and merits of Twilight -- changes your mind.

Here we go.

Nora McInerny: First, I want to talk to you about the genre of YA. You are a writer of young adult fiction. What is YA as defined today vs. as it was defined when we were young adults? And what drew you to this as a genre of writing? 

Kathleen Glasgow: So first, I want to say that because I've, I've now reached, like, crone age, when I was 12 and 13, and I was picking out books about teenagers at a haunted bookshop in Tucson which no longer exists, they weren't called young adult. It was just, like, teen fiction, I guess. And they were all in paperback, which was awesome. There was none of this hardcover business that I think most YA should come out in paperback. And they were a variety of, like, experiences and ranges of emotional maturity. But it wasn't quite what it became, I think, when Twilight came out, that was something very specifically targeted to a certain audience age. And so for me, when I say that I write for teens, that means that the stories that I write have to do with adolescent experiences, things and emotional journeys that are particular to adolescence. Adults can read them, and they might find something there that they can latch onto and find meaningful. But the stories that I write are, they're coming of age stories, and they are about the emotional experience of adolescence in particular. So these kids do not have the tools that we have as adults, that you would reflect in a book that was for adults. 

Nora McInerny: And yet, so many readers of YA are actually As. We are adults. You mentioned Twilight. I was a Twihard. Strange thing to confess over a decade later. But what do you think draws adults to read books that are targeted to teenagers? 

Kathleen Glasgow: I think it's the plot, and I think it's the depth of the emotional quality of the experience of being written about them maybe they haven't really thought about since they were a teenager, or maybe they're revisiting it. I think it's mainly the plots and the presentation of the story. I will go to my grave defending Twilight, because Bella's story, like her thoughts and feelings mattered in that story. Her thoughts and feelings about being a girl and, you know, loving Edward, everybody can identify with that, whatever age you are. And her thoughts and feelings were taken seriously. And that's the kind of YA that I really like, where particularly girls’ experiences are taken seriously and given resonance on the page. Their feelings aren't treated as fluff or something that they'll get over later on. YA, a lot of it is fast-paced. There's a lot of different types of YA that you can read. There's something for everybody, and sometimes I think that in YA in particular, there are discussions of things that don't happen all the time in literature for adults, like mental health, or addiction, and some tougher topics. Because usually in some adult books, they're framed in a different way, like if you have a character who's an alcoholic. There's also this subplot of, like, they witnessed a murder, or did they? Because they were in a blackout, you know? The alcoholism isn't the main plotline. Things like that. And I think a lot of adults really do want to read about that. 

Nora McInerny: And to revisit Twilight, I think one of the reasons why Bella's thoughts and feelings were taken seriously is because she was dating a 117-year-old man who could read her mind. 

Kathleen Glasgow: Right? And you know what? That's fantastic! And you could say everything you want, like, well, that's an inappropriate relationship because she's a teenager and he’s 117. And it's also like, “Yeah, well, you know what? In real life, too, that happens, where older men prey on younger girls. It happens.” But also, when you are a teenager, you like older guys. No one's going to be able to tell you any different, because everything is heightened when you're a teenager. There's no gray, it's black or white. That's it.

Nora McInerny: You are irrevocably in love [Yes!] with Edward Cullen. I read those in my 20s. And you know what I needed out of that book that I got, Kathleen? I needed a devoted boyfriend who cared about me and admired me, even though I was, and you know, she says this all the time, basically in her mind, is like, or the way that Bella is described, at least, you know, “Oh, well, she's nothing special, right? She's just a plain Jane regular girl.” And I do think that's what drew me in and made me love the books and then the movies, was: I needed to feel adored. I wanted so badly to feel adored or even basically liked. 

Kathleen Glasgow: You want to feel seen for who you are, like, everyone else it feels like is dismissing you for what you perceive are faults. And here comes this completely hot, poetic, like, pretty kind guy. And he's, like, gorgeous to boot. So what if he's 117? He is paying attention to, and he adores you. When you're a teenager, you have to step beyond your family, because you're like, “Well, I know you love me.” But it's really important to have someone else outside love you. You know, it is a form of validation. Like, “Oh, so I am worthy of something. Someone else loved me now that I'm out in the world.” And that's, you know, I think that we forget that as adults, that it's really important for teens, to feel that sense of being adored and being seen and recognized beyond your family role – like daughter, son. So you are your own person. 

Nora McInerny: Yeah. So what was your teenage experience like? Were you in a love triangle with a vampire and a werewolf? What were you doing, and what was your outer life like? And what was your inner life like at that age? 

Kathleen Glasgow: Well, first I want to end the main Twilight thing with saying that my teen started reading Twilight and I was like, “Yeah, cool.” And they came to me and said, “Um, it's very creepy that Edward is watching Bella sleep. Like that is really wrong.” And I said, “Yeah, but…” And they said, “You know, I just, no.” And then they moved on, and I was like, OK, but you know, this goes back to, like, kids can recognize problematic material. They are smart enough to know what they're comfortable reading and what they're not. I never really thought about that when I was reading Twilight. I was just like, “Oh, he's like watching her sleep because he's protecting her.” You know? 

Nora McInerny: Yes! I never thought that him following her to Port Angeles was bad. [laughs] I was like, “Oh my God, so romantic. He, like, followed her and then rescued her in a Volvo.” [laughs] 

Kathleen Glasgow: He went after her to save her. 

Nora McInerny: Yeah, yeah. He just needed to make sure she was safe! And I was in, well into my 20s when I read that. And I believe only a teenager, my niece, pointed that out to me as inappropriate behavior. I was like, “Yeah, that is … that's a good point. That's a good point.” Yeah. They’re smart!

Kathleen Glasgow: It takes a long time for some of us to realize those things. And you know, I wasn't in a love triangle with a werewolf and a vampire when I was a teenager, but I had a very long, not great relationship that started when I was, like, 15 and lasted until I was 21. And that was really … that was like an all-encompassing thing. It was, like, explosive at moments, and it was very clingy for the both of us. It was not healthy. But none of those things seemed to matter to me at the time. All that mattered was that I could be with this person, because at that age, you don't, you don't know everything. “Oh, you know, someone else will love me some day.” You don't feel that way. You think, like, that's it. And I was thinking about that person this morning and I was like, “You know what? Wow, you really made me crawl some places to get his affection.” I'm still thinking about that. Like, I'm still learning about things that I should have learned a long time ago. 

Nora McInerny: So, your high school, or your adolescence, sounds like … I don't want to put words in your mouth, but how would you characterize your adolescence? Was it difficult? Was it … on the scale of Bayside High School to Euphoria High School, where did you land? 

Kathleen Glasgow: My experience was probably much closer to Euphoria than Bayside. That's not the case for all teenagers. Some teenagers have perfectly adequate adolescences, and they get through it, and everything was fine. And, you know, woo hoo! And it's, like, some don't. And sometimes that's because of, like, internal factors or external factors. But I was definitely, like, on the side where, “Oh, look, I'm 16 and I just got expelled from school.” 

Nora McInerny: You got expelled from school?

Kathleen Glasgow: I did. And I wish I could say that it was for something super exciting, but it wasn't. It's just because I stopped going, and so it was for chronic truancy. Because I preferred to, like, take the bus to downtown Tucson and do drugs with my friends, basically, and hang out, and go to thrift shops and stuff like that. But my mother was very ... very supportive in the way that she was like, “OK, that wasn't working for you. So you're 16, you're going to get your GED, and you're going to get a job, and you're going to pay for your own phone. And in the fall, I'm going to pay for you to take two classes at a community college. You can choose the classes, but you will get good grades. And we will move on from there.” And we did. 

Nora McInerny: That's really good parenting.

Kathleen Glasgow: You know, I mean, she adapted to the situation rather than saying, “Well, I'm just going to send you to a different high school.” She was like, “That's not working for you.” 

Nora McInerny: I feel like that's very rare for that era of parenting. That's so impressive. That feels like some 21st Century parenting. 

Kathleen Glasgow: She was, I mean, she was very adaptable to difficult situations. And I think she was right, and I wish that more people realize that, educationally speaking and socially speaking, there are some kids who should not be in traditional high schools. And that perhaps trying to suck it up until senior year is not for them, and they might actually thrive if they were let loose. Since I also worked in academic administration for a long time, I'm going to confidently say that we should really stop pressuring all kids to go to college at 18. They'll be fine if they go to college at 26, 27, or 30.

Nora McInerny: 30, 35. My grandma went in her 80s! 

Kathleen Glasgow: I saw so many kids who are not socially prepared. You know, college is really … it's great if you want to think that it's the place for you to discover what you want to study. But for some kids, they just have no idea. They have no interest in being there, and they're lost. They're not emotionally ready to be there. And let them, let your kid go out and get a job, live in a little apartment with a couple of friends, see what it's like to be out there. Join AmeriCorps. You know, go to Europe, like, teach English as a second language. Let them do other things. 

Nora McInerny: Yeah, you have all the time in the world to sort of be an adult and get on, you know, this, this … what feels like a perpetual motion machine that just, you know, winds back and forth and back and forth. And I felt that same kind of urgency when I started college and I wasn't ready at all, and I really could have benefited from some flexibility in thought and in what life could be. And as an adolescent, the books that I read were primarily, you know, literary fiction, not just things that were assigned to me, but my mother would read something and pass it along to me. [Yeah.] There was just this huge chasm in books after age I would say 13. I was reading the Anastasia series. I don't know if you're familiar with that. [Yeah, yeah!] I loved Anastasia! Oh, I loved Anastasia, and I would walk up to the kids bookshop that was like seven blocks from my house and they were all slim little paperbacks. I could afford them. If they were missing one, they would order one for me. It was so lovely. And then there was just sort of nothing, like … nothing in that space. And, you know, it was sort of a time before the internet, really, and online shopping. So there probably were things in the market that I just wasn't seeing. But, what I had access to was really slim. And YA is a huge, huge market now. 

Kathleen Glasgow: It’s huge now, yeah. It’s huge.

Nora McInerny: It's huge now and your books, I obviously did not read as a teenager. I have read them as an adult, and your books all have a very serious issue at the core of them. The first book of yours that I read was Girl in Pieces, which is so affecting, so physically affecting for me and is, for the benefit of our listeners, is a book about a girl who self harms by cutting, but is also about the ways that the world around this girl has harmed her and the way that she reacts to it. This book, You'd Be Home Now, is about the opioid crisis. What compels you to bring the opioid crisis to a book for teenagers? 

Kathleen Glasgow: The origins of writing the book happened when I was having a conversation with my editor about what my next book was going to be about. And, she asked me if I would consider writing a contemporary retelling of Thornton Wilder's Our Town, which is a play about Grover's Corners, and it's three acts, and there's a character who's the stage manager who speaks directly to the audience and knows the history of everyone in the town, past and future. And I said yes, because I love that play, and I love the ways that that play, which came out in 1936, examines difficult topics through a small town lens, because there's suicide in the play, there's alcoholism. Thornton Wilder isn't shying away from anything that's difficult. And I thought for sure that if Thornton Wilder was going to write that play today, that it would probably be centered around the opioid crisis. But what I wanted to do with the book was really talk about the collateral damage around addiction, which is family members, in particular. Emmy, who narrates the book, whose brother Joey is just out of rehab when the book starts. Because we don't talk enough about what addiction does to the people around the addict. And as a person in recovery, I have all the sympathy in the world for people who are suffering from addiction. And I tried really hard to give Joey's point of view in the book about why he took drugs, and how hard it was for him to be out in a world that didn't support his recovery. But I really wanted to write from the point of view of a sister who loves her brother, who's watching her brother basically kill himself with drugs. Like, he's really on the precipice. And I wanted to examine that point of view, because I haven't seen that point of view in young adult books very much. Usually when I'm writing books about these topics, the main character is the one going through them, and I wanted to have someone that we normally don't pay attention to talking to readers about what it's like to feel that way, that you want to save someone so much that you ultimately can't, and you have to be able to set boundaries in order to live your own life. Because when you're in that situation, you want to do so much for that person to help them get better, but it's often at a cost of your own mental health and your own growth and maturity, and you feel guilty. Like Emmy, your brother's over there trying to stay sober and you want to go kiss the boy next door, and you feel guilty about that. But you should be able to have that life too. And it was, it was important for me to write from her point of view for this book. Also, no one can outwrite Thornton Wilder. So I kind of had to like springboard away from the play at a certain point, and my editor was like, “I think you can step away now. You have enough of your own book now, so you just do what you need to do.”

Nora McInerny: Yeah, you mentioned wanting to center this story around people who are typically considered at the periphery of an experience like addiction. When really, you know, Emmy is at the center of her own experience of that.

Kathleen Glasgow: Yes, she is addiction-adjacent, and she's experiencing it in her own way. So if you have, like last year, more than 80,000 people dying of drug overdoses, that's just last year, and I think it's going to be bigger this year. You have to think about it, how far those tentacles spread. Each person had family. Each person had friends or community that they were involved in. They had teachers, doctors, people they knew on the street. How far do those tentacles spread, then, when just one person dies of a drug overdose, how many people has their addiction affected? That are not getting adequate help, who might be feeling guilty because they're like, “I should have done more.” Who might be feeling guilty because they're saying, “Why couldn't I save this person?” Who might be feeling guilty because they said, “I had to let that person go to save myself.” Which is an entirely valid emotional response. Like sometimes you, at a certain point, you have to decide, when addiction is involved, “I can't be around you anymore.” And in those cases, for me, I think that that's where ... civic resources really need to take the lead. We do very little for people with addiction in this country. We do very little for people who have ended up on the streets. We prefer to just walk on by. And as in the book, which also addresses the homelessness problem in Milhaven, there are people, those are somebody's family. And we do very little to help them. It's as though we say, “Well, you put yourself there. Good luck to you.” And I think that on a personal level, to me, I think that's very shameful. 

Nora McInerny: Yeah. We do very little for people, period, in this country. And there's definitely seems to be a threshold at which you just sort of cease to be a person, and now you are an issue, you are a problem, and not even a problem to solve.

Kathleen Glasgow: You're just a problem. 

Nora McInerny: You're just a problem. You're just a problem. People say that all the time, right? Like the homelessness issue, like the homelessness “problem.” It's like, well, these are, these are people. These are people with addiction. These are people who don't have a place to live. It is deeply shameful to live in a country where we have so much excess, and so many people with literally nothing. And we are processing these issues as adults with, you know, some more context than we had when we were teenagers, with more of our brain function coming online. But you said something really interesting at the beginning of this conversation when we were talking about Twilight, when we were talking about Bella, which is the importance of having your feelings validated and feeling seen, either in real life or in art. When you are a teenager, your relationships, not just your friendships, but you know, your family relationships, everything feels so intense. And boundaries are hard for most adults to establish. 

Kathleen Glasgow: You have to learn boundaries, it takes years to figure out what your own boundaries are going to be. Teenagers don't. You don't have any boundaries. You don't have any boundaries as a kid! You, you have kids, you have not, your children have no boundaries. That's why we can't be in the bathroom by ourselves, because they're like, “What are you doing?” And they open the door and they're like, “Why did you lock the door?” Like, there are no boundaries whatsoever. 

Nora McInerny: This morning. *knock knock knock knock* “I'm in the shower.” OK, opens the door. I'm like, “Oh, OK.” 

Kathleen Glasgow: You're like, “No, I'm in the shower.” 

Nora McInerny: Literally in the shower and, like, the water's still going. You know, there's like a- I'm like, “I can't hear you. I will not hear you until this shower is over.” I'll just yell louder, oh I'll just come in. Oh my god. Yeah. 

Kathleen Glasgow: Yeah. Remember the days of early motherhood where you would not like, bathe for, like, a week.

Nora McInerny: Or they'd be in a bouncy seat while you pee, like in the bathroom carrying the whole seat in. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Kathleen Glasgow: Yeah, yeah. And then, and then they're older and you're like, “Well, you can hang out by yourself while I take this shower,” and then you're like, “Oh, no, that's not happening now either. “You wonder, like, when? But you don't, no one has any boundaries. You don't, you don't have any boundaries as a teenager. You're trying to figure them out. Adults can't tell you what the boundaries should be, because you have to figure, you have to be autonomous and have your own thoughts and feelings. And you only, I think you only really start learning things, maybe for me anyway, in your, like, late thirties or early forties, where some things you're like, “I'm not doing that. No, no, that's a hard no.”

Nora McInerny: It's a gift when any author does this, but I love the ending of a book after the story is over, when an author gives us a little extra treat, which you did in this book, can you tell our listeners the story of the little scrap of paper that you found?

Kathleen Glasgow: I did, when things were open before the pandemic, school visits. And I generally when I do school visits, because my books tackle such sensitive topics, that kids are who are listening or feeling, they don't want to raise their hand to be like, “Me too! I'm in the depths of despair.” I mean, that's not the way it works. So it tends to be very quiet and we do writing exercises, and then I get a lot of kids who email me later or come up to me afterwards. And so we were doing a writing exercise called My Biggest Secret, and it's about how to take something from your real life and turn it into fiction. And I'm a big believer in Post-it notes for jotting down ideas. And so I had the students write the biggest secret they never told anyone on a Post-it note. And I wasn't going to have them read it, because that's a big deal. And then we would springboard from one of those secrets into how to turn it into fiction. And one, once you've written down what you think is your biggest, most shameful secret, there's a real emotional relief that you have. Like, you might not have said it out loud, but you wrote it on a piece of paper. And that's a big weight off your shoulders to admit that to yourself. And that's important for teens to be able to do. And so if you, if you write like, “I stole $20 from my mom's purse,” I'm going to write that on the whiteboard and say, “OK, now you have to answer these questions. That's the first line of your book, is I stole $20 from my mom's purse. Who stole the $20? Why 20? What are they going to use the $20 for? Did your mom find out?” And if you want to write, you know like, I like setting my stories in space, that it's going to be, “I stole the C14 super reactor from the bunk space beneath my mother's cot in Section C. Why did you steal that C14 super reactor, right? What ship are you on out there?” And you can turn it around, and once you've done that, naturally, your imagination will kick in, and it's no longer you with that secret. It's a character. And different things will happen to them because of that secret, because it's not you, it's a character, and you will build upon them. But this girl, when I was cleaning up afterwards, I had seen this girl in the audience, and she was obviously sad after she wrote the note. And I wondered, you know, what she'd written, but I don't ask anyone for their notes. And I knew where she was sitting, and I was registering her as someone that perhaps was going to talk to me afterwards. But she did not. And then we were cleaning up afterwards, and when I came to her chair, I found a Post-it note on the ground that said, “I love my sister, but I hate my sister because she's a drug addict.” And I thought … it was just really touching and painful to see that because I could understand that, because I've been on both sides of that. And she loves her sister, but she hates her sister. And how do you live that way, when someone else is sucking all the energy out of the room? And there's none left for you? And you feel invisible? And then that really helped me when I was thinking of Emmy's character and how she would feel, because she loves Joey, but she can admit that a part of her also hates Joey because he's taking a lot of her teenage life from her. And that's a hard thing to reconcile, especially for a teenager.

We’ll be right back.

—

Nora McInerny: I think teenagers today have the benefit of parents who, if their parents are of a certain age, have been to therapy, have maybe, like, offered them some mental health resources and access to the internet, where at least some of these concepts are available to them. But having that information available to you is different from being able to act on it. And every character in this book, we are talking about feeling seen, every character in this book feels unseen. And a part of that is sort of that natural, you sort of mentioned individuation, right, where I want, I need to be my own person away from my family. But there's also this distance between the characters that none of them want but none of them know how to bridge. 

Kathleen Glasgow: They don't, because they're all stuck in their roles. Nobody's allowed to go beyond that role. Like Joey will never … he feels like he will never not be the bad one in the family, no matter how many days of sobriety he has. He feels it's never going to be enough for his mother. And his mother, I think that she improves a little bit by the end of the book, but she's a very rigid person, and she likes things to look a certain way and be a certain way, but no one feels seen. And it's really hard as a teenager to feel seen by people for who you want to be. It's really hard to try to be who you want to be as a teenager without somebody, maybe in your family, saying, “What are you doing? That's not you.” And you're like, “But wait, I'm trying to know who I am.” And sometimes parents push back on that a little bit. I try to remember with my own kids that they're not me and their experiences growing up and going to school and their friend groups are not what I had, like they're their own people. I don't expect them to want to watch “The Big Bang Theory” with me, for instance. You know, they can, they need to do what they're going to do and figure out who they are. It's just my job to be there if they need some help if things don't go well. 

Nora McInerny: That's such a good point. I have been thinking about that a lot, and there's sort of this language around parenting that you see online often where people say things like, “Oh, this is my mini me.” And I always just, ugh, I cringe. I know people are just saying, “Oh, this kid looks like me.” But even then, there's already so much pressure as a child to live up to whatever expectations your parents had of what their family would be like. And I think that is something all adults need to acknowledge. Children are born with an expectation. You have an idea of who you want your kids to be. And even the most progressive, you know, warmest, fuzziest of us, of course, we've imagined, right? What our family should be like, what our family could be like. And, there is so much ego in parenting, right? 

Kathleen Glasgow: There's a lot of ego, and I, like this startling- one of the startling things about parenthood for me was when you become a parent, then, you know, your kid’s like, “I'm going to say like three or four or five.” And you wake up one day and realize, “My reaction to that situation was exactly how my dad would have reacted.” And then you're like, where did that come from? Wow, that stuff is really ingrained in you. And if it was a good thing, I guess you could be like, OK. But if it was a bad thing, you have to be like, OK, I gotta- I have to actively work in certain situations to assess the situation on its own and not react how, you know, how things have been ingrained in me from the way that I was raised. And I don't know that a lot of parents do that. And in the book, Emmy, like, her mother decorates her room and picks out her clothes and makes her lunch. She just wants to eat Doritos and not carrots and hummus. Like let her eat Doritos. She, like, Emmy has no idea. And Joey's been relegated to being the bad one. No one, no one really knows who Joey is, and so he gave up and retreated into drugs, where it didn't matter if no one saw you at all. Teens can feel invisible even when they're sitting in a room full of their family. It's just an ache inside you when you're a teenager, and you don't, you don't really know what to do. And I cringe too when I hear people saying, “Here's my little mini me,” and I'm like, they're not you. The great thing about them is that they are their whole unique person that is going to unfold before you from the period of birth to, like, 30 years. And then you're going to see what happens. They're not. And, like in You'd Be Home Now, that's, that's the thing I was trying to do with Joey's character is that you have to take your kids as they are. And Emmy. Like the kid in front of you, maybe that's not the kid that you had in your parenting journal, like, “My child is going to grow and it's going to be this way,” and that's, that might not be the kid in front of you. The kid in front of you is yours, though, and you have to take them right where they are. For everything that they are, even if it's not what you expected. And even if it's painful. And you need to love them for that. Right?

Nora McInerny: You have to do that, and it is so surprising that people can look at a baby, right, and say that. “Awww, look at this. I just can't wait to see who you become.” And then, they go through the period of becoming who they are. And it is difficult and sometimes irritating. My mother slapped me twice in high school that I remember. [laughs]

Kathleen Glasgow: I love it when you talk about your mother on, like, your Instagram and your stories and they're just like, these are great. Like they're honest and they're compelling and they're funny and they're touching and they're sad. Like and I'm like, “I need to know your mother.” 

Nora McInerny: She's great! She's great. She was just here a week ago, and we're sitting in the living room. And she said something like, “I mean, you know, we just didn't really talk about feelings, you know, when you were a kid, was that bad?” Because I'd just gotten out of a one-hour intense conversation with a child about every feeling that they've had and helping them sort through things and through it we didn't get to spend the evening together, my mother and I, because I was sucked into that, which is where I belonged. And I could sense, like, a little bit of insecurity with her, right, like we didn't do that, was that bad? No, no one in the ‘90s except Kathleen Glasgow's mom was talking to their kids like this. Truly, this is why I'm so astonished because I did have good parents. I had a good mother. And, I was telling her, I just did not know how to open my mouth and say what I needed, because I also didn't even know what I needed, because at that age, I felt so stuck in people's perceptions of me, in my perception of who I could or should be. I just, I did not know how to raise my hand and say, “Help.” I didn't know. 

Kathleen Glasgow: Who knows? I mean, and that's the thing about reading books, too, is sometimes books give you the language to say what you need to say to someone because you find it in a character and you're like, “This is how I could tell someone, like, what I'm feeling.” And my mother was very, we were just very close, and she considered me for a long time to be her mini me. Like she gave me this perm when I was in seventh grade. Like a really tight, short, close to the head perm like she had. And I was just mortified for an entire year, and I had to break out of that. Well, even when I broke out of that, and I went so far to the other side. I mean, she supported me fully and emotionally in many ways. Lke she used to bring her typewriter home from work so that I could type stories all weekend. Like, she'd supported that. You know and that was one of those big IBM Selectrics. And she had to be taking all of those, she had to be taking those ink cartridges too from, like, the supply closet. But she was always supportive of that. Like she never said, “Oh, you can't be a writer, you have to do something else.” She's like, “Oh, here's the typewriter, write.” But she was firm in the sense that she had to be firm like, “You're harming yourself. You need to go to the psychiatric hospital.” And even though that would happen, like over and over and over again, she would just keep supporting me. Like she never made me feel ashamed of what was happening to me or anything. Which I think is, it is unusual for a parent of that time because she definitely was not brought up that way because she was, you know, she got married in like '61 when she was like 23, right out of college, so she was from a much more stringent time. 

Nora McInerny: How do you talk to your kids about your experience as an adolescent? You mentioned psych wards, you mentioned being kicked out of school for not going — the irony. You mentioned drug use. How do you talk to your children about this without, one, I guess, freaking them out. Or two, falling into that trap of forgetting that they're not you. 

Kathleen Glasgow: Kids are not the same as each other, and so the information that they can upload to their brains sometimes has to be given to them in different ways and methods. My oldest is 13, and I have scars from self-harming. And so when your child is really little, they'll be like, “Oh, what happened?” And you can say things like, “Oh, very large cat, like, scratched me or something.” And they're like, “Oh, bad kitty!” And then, that's like fine. And I think it was only really two years ago, that it kind of, and I knew I was going to have to have this chat with him, but it kind of occurred to him that maybe that book Girl in Pieces that I had written, like maybe I was doing what was happening in that book like to myself, because he saw a lot of girls at his school reading the book. And I had the book and I told him, “I don't actually think that you are ready to read this book because I don't think it's your type of book emotionally, really.” And I don't, because he prefers a different, a different type of literature. And we just had the talk and I said, “Well, those experiences were experiences that I had with the girl in the book. Her story is mostly fiction, but the way that she feels about what she does to herself is drawn from the way that I felt.” I think it's really important when you have to relay difficult information about your past life to your children, that you be very careful with what kind of information you're giving them. Because you don't want them to carry that pain for you. Like, he should be having his own year of being 13, 14, 15, 16 without sometimes looking at me and feeling bad for the things that happened to me. Does that make any sense? 

Nora McInerny: Yeah, it really does. 

Kathleen Glasgow: I don't need sympathy from my child. I think if you're asking your child for sympathy for something that happened to you a long time ago, or things that happen to you, that's putting an incredible burden on them. And you're asking them to caretake you. And it's my job to caretake my child, not have them continually run through the things that happened to me as a child in their own head. 

Nora McInerny: Exactly. Do you ever have, like, a fear that your children will experience the same kinds of pain you did? 

Kathleen Glasgow: Yes. Like absolutely. How could you not? I think that takes some parents off guard too, is because your one hope, and it's a really great hope, is that your children will not experience any of the pain that you might have experienced growing up. You know, whether it's something like getting a broken heart or being assaulted. But you cannot protect your children from the world. You can only give them some tools to maneuver their way through it. My children are going to get their hearts broken, and that is really going to kill me to have to watch that, because I'm going to remember what that felt like. And there are things that are going to happen to my children that are going to be even more painful. And all I can do is just be there and not judge. The world is going to come for you in some way. It's going to hit you. They have experienced grief for the first time in the past two years, and watching that has been really interesting from a child's perspective as opposed to, like, my adult perspective. You just have to sit there and listen to them. You have to let them talk. If they don't have words, that's OK. But like your … I can't erase that grief that they feel. You have to carry that. It's something that is going to live inside you forever. You're going to carry that with you. I mean, I wish that I could protect them from everything, but I can't. And, you know, like … branching out. The people that are trying to ban books, it's just like, wow, that's the one safe space that any kid has, is finding a book that's for them and experiencing something on the page that they didn't know they'd get to experience. So just, let kids read. Do your kids have the internet? Because I can tell you, they've seen a lot. 

Nora McInerny: Oh, they're going to find way worse stuff on the internet than in any book. I would … the way I feel about banning books is what a futile, impotent effort at control, because the more … everybody knows this about teenagers, everybody knows this about basically any kind of person: The more you tell a person what not to do, the more they want to do it.  

Kathleen Glasgow: Yeah, that's exactly it. The great thing about libraries is that, you know what, I don't even know half the books that are in a library. Some of them I might be like, “Well, that seems gross.” But you know, I wouldn't know it unless I went looking for it. And even if I didn't like it, it's not up to me because I'm not going to read it. Like you read what you want to read. Everybody else reads what they want to read. You don't want your child reading it, you can do that permission for whatever you want, but they're going to find a way to access it because I don't know if you know about the internet or not. But you don't get to say like what everybody else gets to read. 

Nora McInerny: But you did just pique people's interest in it, which is why I’m telling everyone to ban You'd Be Home Now by Kathleen Glasgow. That is the takeaway from this episode.

Kathleen Glasgow: I feel like bizarrely my books have, like, skated by on, like, soft shadow bans. Like for Girl in Pieces, it's like they'll put it in a classroom library, like, really quietly, just so kids can take it out. But it's not like taught in the class, so it doesn't get, like, widespread. Because I hear from teachers who are like, “I have students who need to read this book and it's in my classroom library, and it's consistently checked out and it's in our school library and it's consistently checked out.” But they don't teach it, but they know that it's there for the students that need it. Because that would be, that would be very difficult to teach at that level. And so, but you know, it's, like, teachers know what they're doing. It's their job. And librarians know.

Nora McInerny: Yeah. Literally their job, they literally go to school for it, it's wild, but they absolutely are aware of what they're doing. 

Kathleen Glasgow: They, like, know. They have degrees. 

Nora McInerny: Yeah, yeah. Wild, wild. So our adolescences were so different that I told my husband, Aaron, that my high school, there were no parties at my high school. And, that's how he reacted, he was like, “Oh, buddy, oh. You think you went to the only high school in America with no parties?” I'm like, “Yeah, we just didn't have parties.” He's like, “No, you weren't invited to the parties.”

Kathleen Glasgow: Oh, that's so sad! 

Nora McInerny: I was like, “No, I think we just didn't have them, anyways!”

Kathleen Glasgow: Are you watching “Euphoria”? 

Nora McInerny: I only watched the first season, and it ruined my life. 

Kathleen Glasgow: OK. So with the character of Maddie and Nate and the whole dating violence and him choking her. And so I am watching this with my teenager, we fast forward through some things that he's like, “I don't want to watch that,” and I'm like, “I don't want to watch that with you.” And we got to the choking scene and, like, the aftermath. And he said, “Well, why is Maddie even going back to him?” And I said, look, it's basically what I told you. I'm like, “The first time you have this really deep, all encompassing love, one, it's very hard to imagine yourself without that person. They're entwined. He's abusive. She doesn't know any other form of relationship. It's not good, but it's also very hard sometimes to leave in that situation, and we don't, like, judge or shame people. You just remain there for them. And that's why she goes back, because he has been loyal to her. Like all along. He put flowers in her locker. He treats her like she thinks she should be treated.” And I do want to say, though, in the second season, they do address that more. And she admits to the woman that she babysits for that, she says, “I don't know what it's like not to fight in a relationship.” And I really liked that they brought that thread back, and that they're kind of examining it, and she's not with Nate at that point. So she does not stay with him. 

Nora McInerny: Yeah, I had to tap out after that first season, I was like, I don't know that I'm ready to have a teenager and witness this version of teenage-hood, whatever that says about me. It was a lot. Also, sometimes I think when things are extremely difficult in life, I cannot consume any difficulty. I need the dumbest comedies possible. I need, you know, I need a beach read. I need to listen to a podcast that is recapping the “Real Housewives” franchises. I need to keep things as light as possible and I need life to, I need art to not feel anything like life. 

Kathleen Glasgow: Exactly, I'm like working my way through the “Big Bang Theory,” and I, I'm like the last person on Earth, and I'm like, “Oh, this is great because this is just really funny. And it's the kind of thing, and I love all of them.” Let's go! I got like 12 years of this to get through. 

Nora McInerny: You've got 12 years to get through. That is such a treasure, such a treasure. In my 20s, the thing that we watched at night because there were so many seasons of it was “How I Met Your Mother.” We just would turn that on, the DVDs from Netflix back in the day, and just zone out after our, you know, stressful work days in corporate America, watching something with a laugh track, you know, watching something that literally laughs for you, or indicates when you should be laughing!

Kathleen Glasgow: Tell me when to laugh! Tell me, tell me when to laugh. I need to know. 

Nora McInerny: Tell me when to laugh, and I'll be there. I didn't do anything wild in high school whatsoever, which is why I think I can't handle “Euphoria.” I can't handle it. But you are thrilled by that comparison. It was a beautiful sort of recommendation of your book. Why do you think people are so obsessed with teenagers right now? YA is booming, “Euphoria” is like the number one show in my TikTok feed, at least. 

Kathleen Glasgow: Oh yeah. On Tik Tok, I love what people are saying about “Euphoria.” I love all the memes. Because it seems like it should be the time when you get to do anything you want before life really clamps you down or you learn too much. I mean, you're literally running, some people, running wild emotionally. But with that show, it's important to note, like the parties in that show, most teenage parties are, like, five kids sitting in a basement or in the back of somebody's truck, like, parked somewhere with, like, a bottle of Boone's Farm, if even that. So it's not typical, but I like the show because of it. It's over-amped, and everyone says the director, he should not be the only one in the writers room and he can't control himself. And it's like, “Oh I totally get it and I love it.” And part of me thinks that it's because he is also, he's been in recovery for a long time, and a lot of his addiction experiences, he filters through Rue. And part of me is like, “You know what, Sam Levinson, you have not set your, your addiction boundary yet. You will do everything, like writing.” Because it is for me, because I'll put everything in a book, because that's actually kind of a healthy way for me to be an addict. Do you know what I mean? Like I'll do anything, and I'll go right to the edge and then my editor has to say, “No, no, we're taking out these, you know, it's going to total 100 pages and you're going to restrain yourself,” and perhaps someone should be telling him that, but it's- he makes adolescence look gorgeous and sad and painful and beautiful and sultry, and all the things that it was not for a lot of people. And that's probably why. And I think adults like watching that show because maybe they're, some of the characters or the way they were. Or they just want to, they just like it because it looks gorgeous, sad, sexy, sultry over the top. He uses film. It looks beautiful. They shoot it on soundstages. And who doesn't want to be younger? 

Nora McInerny: Who doesn't want to be younger and who doesn't want to sort of watch, like wish fulfillment allmost of what you would have said, what you could have said, what your life could have been like. I don't even need to watch Euphoria to enjoy all the TikToks. And one of my favorite ones is when people show, like, Euphoria teens and then them as a teenager, like in the millenium. And I'm going to make one of those because it's so funny. 

Kathleen Glasgow: See people, people get it like you, you can like, love this show and also be like, “It is completely unrealistic for most people's adolescent experience.” But you love it because he amps it up. It's like a concert film about teenagerhood.