Kelly is the author of four New York Times bestselling memoirs, including Glitter and Glue, Lift, and The Middle Place, which take ordinary events and relationships and make them come alive in funny, memorable prose. Kelly hosts the podcast “Kelly Corrigan Wonders,” and the PBS television show “Tell Me More”, which have received grants from the John Templeton Foundation. She has also given a popular TED talk entitled “To Love is to Be Brave”. Most recently, she co-authored a children’s book with her daughter Claire called Marianne the Maker. She joins the podcast to discuss faith, family, and staying open to wonder.
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Tom: Kelly, welcome to the show.
Kelly: Thank you.
Tom: So, to kick us off, could you tell our listeners, I think one thing where you grew up, and then two, just maybe an episode or two from your childhood that you still cherish the most?
Kelly: So I grew up outside of Philadelphia in a town called Villanova. I’m from Catholic families on both sides. My parents are from Baltimore, and I have two older brothers. So, probably the defining features of my childhood that I had these very unusual parents, in that they were quite different from one another. A huge extrovert, a life eater, and a huge introvert, deeply private, loyal, reliable, pragmatic woman. And then I was the youngest kid of three. And my two siblings were boys. So, our family had a real boy vibe to it. My brothers and my dad are, were our very sporty people. And so I feel like I came out of childhood with at least two very strong beliefs. One was, I am my father’s daughter. Like, that’s the foundation of my worldview, which is like, it’s out there, it’s waiting for you. I can’t wait to meet you. just eyes up, hands out, like it’s, you’re not gonna believe what happens next, Lovey.
Tom: Yeah.
Kelly: So, almost zero cynicism, and almost zero hesitation. Like, really deeply sure that the world would meet me where I am, that I wouldn’t be rejected.
Tom: Mm-hmm.
Kelly: And then, because I was the only girl, I always felt like I was a little rough around the edges.
Tom: Mm-hmm.
Kelly: I used to wail to my mother that I thought I should go to some kind of finishing school. So I had the confidence of my father, but I had this like second-guessing, from just being alone as a girl there at the end. And then the other thing is that I was unlike my brothers in this sporty way. So I had to develop something else.
Tom: Mm-hmm. Yes.
Kelly: I wasn’t hugely academic. I wasn’t intellectual yet. I wasn’t athletic.
And so I became creative, and then my dad, amazingly, amazingly, was so genuinely interested in whatever was going through my head that he made it seem legit to me. And then when we used to take road trips to see my brother play lacrosse at Washington and Lee, and, you know, it’s six hours there, six hours back. Just the two of us, like going deep all the way. And he would often say during those rides, Lovey, you’re a great conversationalist. And I really hoped that he was right. I hoped that what I was this creative kid who was a conversationalist, that that would be enough.
Tom: Sure. Yeah. When did your passion for writing develop?
Kelly: So, I went to the Radner school system, and it’s an incredible public school system, K-12. And in seventh grade, we read a separate Peace and To Kill a Mockingbird, and Holden Caulfield, Catcher in the Rye, all in one year. I just remember thinking of all the things that people can do, of all the tricks out there, this, to me, is the coolest one. Like I, I am not nearly as knocked out by somebody who can score a hat trick as I am by someone who can put a story together like this, and they’re each so different.
Tom: Mm-hmm.
Kelly: And so I, I loved those books and I loved talking about those books. And I loved this crazy thing that we do and do and do generation after generation, all over the world. Which is to tell a story that is like a Trojan horse for this big, huge idea. And then on the surface of it, it’s just a story about a small town lawyer and his two kids and their cousin who comes by, and this thing that happened.
Tom: Mm-hmm.
Kelly: But it’s just packed. So to me, that was the dream. That was the dream. And then when I was in college, I was an English major, and then I had my master’s in English literature, and I tried to write a book in my twenties. But I mean, I’m telling you in 1992, I didn’t know the difference between a publisher, an editor, and an agent. And I didn’t know anybody else who did
Tom: Yeah. And so did that first book concept pay out?
Kelly: I worked on it for a while, and then I, you know, I had a full-time job. I was working at United Way during the day. I was like a real save-the-world kid. I was getting my master’s at night, so I was reading these thousand-page books a week. And then I read Anne Lamont.
Tom: Hmm.
Kelly: I did not know that there was this way that a normal person could tell, a story from their life.
I also thought that memoirs were the same as autobiographies, where you like start “I was born in Chicago, Illinois” And so the idea of just picking off like a year of your life,
Tom: Mm-hmm.
Kelly: Which is what she had done in operating instructions, was just tell the story of getting her kid from zero to one. That was kind of an eye-opener for me. I was like, Oh, wait a second. If this is legit, like if this counts as a book, like now I feel like maybe there’s a chance for me. And then this crazy thing happened, which is I had a 1-year-old and a 2-year-old, and I had stage three cancer, and I was in chemotherapy a week later. And then the next thing I knew, my father, who, as I explained, was kind of my guy.
It was like the safest ground I could stand on was the person that made the world a great place for me, was also diagnosed and also started chemotherapy. And I had this very strong feeling from doctors that this was it, that have a great year with him, was what one doctor said. And also at the same time, self-publishing became a thing.
Tom: Mm.
Kelly: And I thought, oh, well, now I can just write a, a little set of stories to try to tell this one person. Like, this is what it has been to be your kid. This is a gift that you have given me, and I can give it to him, and I don’t have to wait, and I don’t need permission.
And so that’s what I did. I wrote 90, a hundred pages. I gave it a little title and a cover, and I had it printed, and I handed it to him in our kitchen. And he went upstairs and he read 90 pages and he came downstairs and he just looked at me and like took his little hand and patted it on his heart and he was like, Lovey. And it was like, game over. I’m good.
And then my sister-in-law, Phoebe, she was like, Kelly, I don’t think this is just something for your dad. I think this is a real book. And I was like, you do? I cannot tell you what that means to me. So anyway, she said I’ll do this with you. I’ll read every page. I’ll get it organized, I’ll be your reader. So, the book, The Middle Place, which is the book we’re talking about, it’s dedicated to Phoebe
Tom: Mm.
Kelly: Who wouldn’t let it go.
Tom: You’ve described how you faced some incredible adversity, receiving a cancer diagnosis when you had small children, the father, the person in your life who helped you hold it all together. Also, receiving such a diagnosis, I mean, the worst possible time. And yet you are also able to identify the beautiful things in life, the experiences you treasure, and then you’re able to share with others so they can treasure it with you. Do you have any advice for how to see the good that’s out there and not get too heavily pulled down on the things that we both individually and collectively struggle with?
Kelly: Yes, it’s the same advice that the Buddhists would give you, which is, what’s happening right now is right now kind of okay. Keeping tabs on like, whether you’re actually okay right this moment.
Tom: Mm.
Kelly: So like, you could be in chemotherapy at UCSF, and I had this wonderful nurse named Catherine Zuka, who I’ve stayed in touch with all these years, and I love her. And so when I was getting chemotherapy, but I was in conversation with Catherine, if I remembered to say like, Am I okay right now? It would be like, oh yeah, I’m better than okay. Like I, I made this new friend, she’s important to me. I love hearing her stories. I’m so enjoying getting to know her.
I’m gonna keep knowing her. So that habit of mind to say Sure, if you were to like avert your gaze from the context and do a quick inventory, like, Am I okay right now? Oftentimes, I am, and I also think that the sort of great gift of writing is that it tunes you into your senses, it makes you much more observant ‘cause you’re collecting all the time.
And so those sensory inputs can be, little, little tethers to the present
Tom: Yeah.
Kelly: Because like, even right now I’m sitting in a great chair and I have my favorite blanket on me.
Tom: Mm-hmm.
Kelly: And I’m very warm, and I’m often not. It’s a leftover from cancer treatment and chemotherapy is that I have this neuropathy. Right this second I’m perfectly caffeinated. My feet are not cold, which is like such a victory. I have my blanket. The lighting’s just right for me. Sometimes I get headaches, and I don’t have any of those problems right now. So, remembering to notice when things are okay and in what ways is a great habit of mine,
Tom: Yeah. It reminds me of a, I had a conversation with Gretchen Rubin a couple of years ago when her book Life in Five Senses
Kelly: Yes,
Tom: And just her encouragement of, there are these five levels of experiencing reality that are happening all the time. Should we pay attention to them, and it can make life become, in a certain sense, five-dimensional and so rich,
Kelly: You know, there’s two hobbies I’ve had over the years that have also developed my eye. One is painting and the other is biography. And in both cases I’m sort of obsessing on the human face and trying to capture it, which is a lot about seeing the shapes rather than the forms and the nameable things like an eye becomes an oval and nose becomes a couple of planes, and like that, interruption.
Of the default mechanisms by which we evaluate what is and is not in front of us. Disrupting that a little bit in order to paint it or capture it with your lens has this sort of residual effect of helping you see in more detail all the time.
Tom: Mm-hmm.
Kelly: And that’s a very strong to the present because I’m often in a conversation with someone, especially live, especially when we’re podcasting or shooting a PBS episode, where there’s nothing else that we are multitasking, which nobody monotasks anymore. But right now all I’m doing is talking to you.
Tom: Yep.
Kelly: I am unreachable by all other forms and that allows me to like look at the light on the tip of your nose.
Tom: Yeah.
Kelly: Or wonder about how I would do your eyebrows, that kind of, um, deconstruction and lead you to a different kind of presence.
Tom: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. It’s extraordinary. I think, in hosting this show, I’ve gotten to talk to a lot of people about the nature of consciousness and the subjective experience of reality. And the more that you directly think about it, the more befuddling it is. But at the same time, you can just be grateful. I don’t know how the trillion cells in my brain and all those connections create a unified self, but there’s something in this moment, and I can, I can really treasure it.
Kelly: That’s why the podcast is called Kelly Corrigan Wonders, because wonder is like my favorite state. And I like to stop there cause the thing that comes after wondering is like sorting and containing and categorizing, and all of that is fixing something that probably shouldn’t be fixed.
You should probably just stay in the state of wonder as long as you possibly can, which is to say the state of kind of not knowing and not determining and not making certain that which is fundamentally beyond you.
Tom: I wanna pivot to some of the topics you explore in great depth in your books. Parenting, marriage, whether it’s your own, your parents, as we consume news. It sounds like there’s fewer children than ever being born in the world. From your writings, I can tell the intensity of joy you get from being a mother.
What would you tell someone who feels a bit on the fence of like whether to pursue having children or not?
Kelly: I don’t know because I don’t know why a person would be on the fence, and there are probably really good reasons that demand investigation and respect, but, um, I was just having this conversation with a group of people on a ranch. So, we had had a lot of time and a lot of nature around us, and so it was sort of facilitating a deeper conversation, and people were talking about the hardest moments that they had had with family members, siblings, parents, children, everybody has them.
Everybody has somebody that is, so, so, so difficult for them to understand, uh, engage with love.
Tom: Yep.
Kelly: And I was wondering if maybe the point of family, if it needs one, is that those are relationships that are harder, much, much harder to walk away from than all the others.
Tom: Mm-hmm.
Kelly: I mean. It’s easier to leave a marriage. It’s easier to leave a job. It’s easier to leave a school or a town. Or a country.
Tom: Yeah.
Kelly: These, everyone on the porch of this ranch was saying the same thing, which is like, I, I, I know that I should detach. I know that I should have these boundaries, and I should not engage with this person because it’s just torture on, on repeat, but I can’t bring myself to. And I was saying, I think it’s so beautiful or encouraging or meaningful that we can’t, of course, we wanna resolve these relationships. Of course, we don’t wanna cut ties. And so if you’re thinking about having children, and you’re thinking that this is just so loaded and complex. Dangerous.
Tom: Mm-hmm.
Kelly: You are of course, right. It goes wrong sometimes in ways that are so dreadful. But you only go around once. I wanted to have a full human experience, which involves feeling all emotions at maximum dosage that including the horrible ones.
Tom: Hmm.
Kelly: So if we’re here one time. And you’re sincerely committed to the full Monty, the full Ferris wheel experience, and this is your only access, are these the most loaded relationships that are available to us
Tom: Yeah.
Kelly: And then all that aside, there are certain feelings and moments that are just not available to you any other way. No parent can deny what it feels like to have a kid kiss you for the first time. Like I was just with this friend of mine who has this darling baby, and she’s eight months old, and she can’t do it yet. And I was like, I can so vividly remember George’s hands around my neck and her kissing me
Tom: Mm-hmm.
Kelly: After like, how many kisses? Thousand kisses. Like she finally figured it out, or like swimming with a child, like, you know, helping them in the water. It’s like so metaphoric, like the whole thing is right there. Everything you’re doing as a parent that’s gonna play out for you in terms of this merger. And then this detachment, the separation, happens when you’re in a pool with a kid.
And that has like one of 5,000 different moments the contain the whole experience of parenthood.
Tom: For those who’ve taken the plunge and have kids, what’s the best parenting advice you’ve ever gotten?
Kelly: Say less.
Tom: Hmm.
Kelly: We did a whole podcast series on intellectual humility. We’ve done five or 600 podcast episodes, and of all the series that we did and all the work we’ve ever done going into production, that was the most affecting, that one idea of humility, because it is endlessly applicable.
So, for instance, my husband and I are always trying to get to the right distance and posture with our kids every single day. There’s a temptation to get up in there and have an opinion, and that other person’s requirement after many, many, many mistakes. It is to say, as one of us is developing a sense of conviction around what they should do with that job or with that boyfriend or with that roommate.
And we’re getting into this voice, well, you know what she needs to do, and why doesn’t she, just that all that tone is like telling you that you’re rising into a position of conviction
Tom: Yep.
Kelly: and the other person’s supposed to say maybe, and just that word, just that little five-letter word is supposed to remind the other person, like, we don’t know.
Tom: Mm-hmm.
Kelly: We live in Montana, Claire’s in Charlottesville, Virginia. We have met her roommate for like five minutes. Why on earth would we have a strong opinion about what she should do? That is crazy pants. Say less.
Tom: I’m gonna file that away.
Kelly: Good luck with it. I, I am a total failure, but I wish the best of luck
You know, the, the flip side of say less is ask better questions, because if you’re active as a partner in a relationship, and you have that strong desire to be useful to the other person,
Tom: Yeah.
Kelly: A way to do it that feels very active but is not breaking the rule is to just ask great questions. Why do you think that? Well, where do you think you would apply? Have you looked them up yet? How many people work there? There’s such terrible laziness and terrible patience
Tom: Mm-hmm.
Kelly: And this like overpowering desire to be the teacher instead of the learner. There’s just so few people really, actually wanna learn. Most people just wanna say what they wanna say,
Tom: Yeah.
Kelly: And in parenting. That is a huge mistake.
Tom: All right. I wanna pivot with, a few more questions about the big, heavy, weighty matters in life. You’ve had a life-threatening illness, family members with it, and you’ve lived through it. How can somebody be a supportive friend or family member of someone who is facing a cancer diagnosis or another life-threatening illness?
What is a good way to really be supportive if they hadn’t gone through it themselves?
Kelly: It’s not unrelated to what we were just talking about, which is, um, follow their lead. So the people that I loved the most and was so grateful for were of two categories. One was people who could really mirror wherever I was. So if I was like in a, you know, dark humor kind of day and I wanted to sit on the back porch and drink a corona and smoke a cigarette, which I had this crazy desire to smoke a cigarette one day, it was like the only person I wanted was a person who would somehow let that be, I’ll smoke a cigarette with you, whatever.
Like, this is crazy, and Edward, I thought was really good at following me into whatever mood I was in. So there were days, you know, where you really wanna do research, like what is CRPR positive? What are my odds? It’s the 36-year-old with stage three cancer. What percentage of people do chemotherapy before surgery?
Blah, blah, blah. he would jump in with me instead of trying to talk me out of it. Everybody’s like trying to throw each other outta things all the time. Oh, don’t worry about that. Like, I remember my friend Liz was dying, and she said, You’re the only person that lets me say I think I’m dying without saying, no, you’re not. There’s gonna be, you know, there’s that trial in Arizona, you know, Andy told me that there’s a new doctor you guys are going to see next week. And that’s just like a rejection. You’re just saying like, I don’t wanna hear what you think. I don’t like what you’re saying, so I’m gonna push back. And that is not appropriate.
Tom: Yeah.
Kelly: So I think following their lead is really good. And then I did have some really beautiful surprises. This woman, I know Katie d bro. When I went to chemo one day, which is a whole day operation, it was like an eight-hour infusion, so it was, you know, 10 hours door to door. I came back and the kids were one and two the day I got diagnosed, and it was over the fall. And so she had done this like an amazing Halloween decoration on our front stoop because there’s just no way I was gonna get to that. I mean, honestly, I’m not like necessarily gonna get to it even on my healthiest day, but it, like, I came home, I was burst into tears.
I was like, that’s such a great thing to do. And then she left me outta the bag so that we could hand it out when people came to the door. And then my other friend, Amy, was always thinking of ways to incorporate my kids into her kids’ day so that they could keep having fun days. I liked the way she did that because it made it seem like, Hey, I’m doing this anyway, and I thought I’d pick up your girls, too. Can I get ’em at 10:00 AM? And it was like, perfect. It’s so great because I don’t feel that guilty, ’cause you’ve set it up so that it seems like a very small thing. So those are the two kinds of people. The things that threw me a little bit were, and there’s always someone like this in a crisis.
I’ve seen it a hundred times since then. When it’s other people’s crises and not mine, there’s always that bossy person who like comes in and takes over and they do the meal planning website or they do the, we’re gonna drive her to chemo and pick her up from chemo or, and that threw me that I, I felt like a little out of control there when someone else was like, rallying the troops on my behalf.
Tom: Yeah. Yeah. Are there any upsides to experiencing a, a life-threatening illness? having lived through it? where do you see those positives? And you named one already.
Kelly: For me, so many, after my second round of chemo, the tumor was smaller and softer. And so what that means is that it was kind of working, and we kind of knew it.
Tom: Mm-hmm.
Kelly: There were maybe five or six weeks of high anxiety. And the anxiety is, am I a corner case? Are we gonna find out that I’m the one who doesn’t work for? And as soon as it seemed like the standard protocol, chemo, surgery, radiation, et cetera, was gonna work for me.
Tom: Mm-hmm.
Kelly: Then I could just relax and enjoy this time with my people. A huge benefit for us was that my parents, they were not huge flyers.
They are not spendy people who came to California like five times in five months, which meant that they became very comfortable with my children, they were confident grandparents. They’d pick ’em up and change their diaper and you know, work on their diaper rash and put ’em in the swings and take ’em outta the swings.
And they knew what they could eat and what they couldn’t eat. And so that expertise that they had around my kids lasted forever. And that wouldn’t have happened because they’re just way more careful about money than that. They wouldn’t have bought those flights.
Tom: Yeah.
Kelly: That was huge. And then the other thing is that you don’t even know who you’re married to. Well, you’re married for like three years, four years. You don’t even know who the person is. I remember my cousin Kathy has lived a life, so at 10 years, she’s like, oh God, you don’t even know each other yet. And I thought, whatcha talking about? But you know, you just don’t know. And he’s just what I would’ve wanted, he never obstructed my impulse to study it, to ignore it, to celebrate it, to weep, to be afraid, to be strong. Like it was, like, those are all feelings are welcome here.
Tom: Yeah. Yeah. Well, at the time where we have remaining, I wanna touch on one more topic, just a light one, topic of faith
Kelly: Your speed round
Tom: In your books, you’ve talked about how your parents took great comfort and fulfillment in being devout Catholics of having a clear commitment, going to mass multiple times a week to have that community. And for you, growing both a child and adulthood sounds like it didn’t come easily, and it wasn’t clear where you fit into the big picture. So I’m wondering from your life lived and experiences, how have you explored and understood life’s mysteries and asked ultimate questions for yourself?
Kelly: Well, I love wonder. So, I like to stay open
Tom: Mm-hmm.
Kelly: So wonder and intellectual humility go well together. So I like to stay in the “I don’t know” position.
Tom: Yes.
Kelly: It feels good there for me. It feels hopeful and full of potential and, there’s nothing demanding about it, and there’s nothing finger-wagging about it. I think my parents had a very homogenous life, kind of like everyone they knew was Catholic, and everyone they knew didn’t eat meat on Fridays, and everyone they knew had ashes on their forehead going into Ash Wednesday. Everyone they knew gave up things for life. And so it’s possible that theirs was an unthinking.
Tom: Mm-hmm.
Kelly: And just more of like, being born with a certain eye color.
Tom: Yep.
Kelly: It was like, this is, this is the world. Like my mother, I once asked her, and she’s like, Oh my God, it would’ve been insane. And it never occurred to me to decide that I wasn’t Catholic. You know, it’s like deciding that I’m not my mother’s daughter. And, and you know, that that’s changed a lot in culture.
I mean, people are asking a lot of different questions in a lot of different venues. If you wanted to expose yourself to ideas beyond your milieu in my mother’s time versus my time versus my children’s time, it’s just so effortless now. I mean, you’re getting shot at all day long now with new ideas, whereas my mom’s life is very quiet.
Tom: Yep.
Kelly: I do feel very emotional when I go into churches. Like I feel very emotional when I go to St. Patrick’s Cathedral, ’cause I used to go with my dad a lot when I was visiting him during the workday in New York, which is a favorite thing for me to do. And I feel very emotional when I’m at Villanova. I was married there and my kids were baptized there. Both my parents’ funerals were there.
Tom: Mm.
Kelly: So it’s a hugely familiar place, and like I know all those words by heart now. So it’s like funny to be inside it because I often don’t hear what I’m saying. It’s just syllables that I know by heart in their special order. But I’ve been reflecting on it because I cleaned out my parents’ house after my mom died, and they had lived there for 55 years.
So I was born in Chicago, but we pretty quickly moved to Villanova, and they lived in this one house there were rosaries everywhere.
Tom: Hmm.
Kelly: In my mom’s car and in her purse and in her bedside table, in her desk, and in the kitchen. And so I’ve been thinking about what that must have done for her.
Tom: Hmm.
Kelly: How lovely to be grounded in that way.
