season 3, episode 10 - the necessity of stories with meghan malcolm

our guest for episode 10 is meghan malcolm! meghan is a writer and owns a community bookstore and library. in both arenas, they focus on fantasy, sci-fi, memoirs, and books about gender and sexuality for all ages. the bookstore also carries compelling literary fiction and non-fiction. they believe in the power of storytelling and education and their career a space for that. meghan conveniently lives a couple blocks away from her bookstore with her girlfriend, two kids, and their dog lion, all of whom are complete forces of nature. you can find them online at willowpressco.com and on instagram @willowpress. use code SNORTCACKLE for your first free month of subscription to meghan's writings at www.willowpressco.com/subscribe.

each season we read a new book about witchcraft practices around the world with the #snortandcacklebookclub, with a book review by ash and the occasional guest helping us close out the season. this season's #snortandcacklebookclub read is brujas: the magic and power of witches of color by lorraine monteagut.

take the fibre witch quiz at ashalberg.com/quiz. follow us on instagram @snortandcackle and be sure to subscribe via your favourite podcasting app so you don't miss an episode!

seasons 1-3 of snort & cackle are generously supported by the manitoba arts council. you can support future episodes of snort & cackle by sponsoring a full episode or transcript.

transcript

snort & cackle - season 3, episode 10 - meghan malcolm

ash alberg: [Upbeat music plays.] Hello, and welcome to the Snort and Cackle podcast. I'm your host, Ash Alberg. I'm a queer fibre witch and hedgewitch. And each week I interview a fellow boss witch to discuss how everyday magic helps them make their life and the wider world, a better place.

Expect serious discussions about intersections of privilege and oppression, big C versus small C capitalism, rituals, sustainability, astrology, ancestral work, and a whole lot of snorts and cackles. Each season, we read a new book about witchcraft practices around the world with the #SnortAndCackleBookClub with a book review by me and the occasional guest helping us close out the season. Our book this season is Brujas: The Magic and Power of Witches of Color by Lorraine Monteagut.

Whether you're an aspiring boss witch looking to start your knitwear design business, a plant witch looking to play more with your local naturally dyed color palette or a knit witch wondering just what the hell is a natural yarn and how do you use it in your favorite patterns, we've got the solution for you.

Take the free fiber witch quiz at ashalberg.com/quiz and find out which self-paced online program will help you take your dreams into reality. Visit ashalberg.com/quiz [upbeat music fades out] and then join fellow fiber witches in the Creative Coven Community at ashalberg.com/creative-coven-community for 24/7 access to Ash’s favorite resources, monthly zoom knit nights, and more. [End of intro.]

I am here today with Meghan Malcolm. Meghan is a writer and owns a community bookstore, that I love, and library. In both arenas, they focus on fantasy/sci-fi memoirs and books about gender and sexuality for all ages. The bookstore also carries compelling literary fiction and nonfiction. They believe in the power of storytelling and education and their career is a space for that.

Meghan conveniently lives a couple blocks away from her bookstore with her girlfriend, two kids, and their dog, Lion, all of whom are complete forces of nature. Hi, Meghan.

meghan malcolm: Hi. [Both giggle.]

ash alberg: How are you?
meghan malcolm: I am good. [Ash laughs.] I hiding in my kids' bedroom,

finding a quiet moment. Another person.

ash alberg: Yeah, we've been in lockdown slash deep freeze for an extended period of time it feels. Like winter ... and so listeners, Meghan and I live in the same city and winters normally cause people to hermit, but like COVID has forced a level of hermiting that nobody's super stoked about I don't think. Even the introverts.

meghan malcolm: Yeah, totally.
ash alberg: Tell us a bit about you and what you do in the world.

meghan malcolm: Yeah, like you were just saying, I own a bookstore. It's a little baby, like I opened it in fall. Before that it was my business Willow was like just an outlet for my writing. Now it's an outlet for my writing and a bookstore, which has been a really fun development.

Keeping me way more connected in terms of building a community, like writing is a [audio distortion] thing. And so now I feel like I get to do both where I get to be around people and also do my writing.

ash alberg: Nice.

meghan malcolm: Yeah. It's a ... it's something that I started because stories are super important to me as a form of escape and as a form of validating your experiences, seeing your [audio distortion] and like the empowerment that comes from that. Yeah.

So wanted to create a place where people could access that. And it's been really cool. I can tell that this is the thing that I like actually want to do for at least a very long time. And typically, I'm somebody who likes to try things. So yeah. I'm excited to be really ... no pun intended, but like be putting down roots essentially. Yeah.

ash alberg: I love it. I also, I deeply appreciate your collection of kids' books. I have no children other than Willow at this point. And she's just a fur baby, so she doesn't necessarily appreciate me reading her books. But I love collecting kids' things and kids' books, especially like good picture books, are something that I have always really loved.

I was a bookworm from the age of probably in utero, but like definitely by the age of two, I was like finding books to read. And also as an adult now, thinking about, what are books that I would want to be reading to kids then I want ... yeah there's, the classics and there can be good messaging within the classics.

Like I think Paper Bag Princess is a fun one no matter where things fall, but it's also a situation where you read a lot of books now and it's okay, that's okay-ish. And also there's like a lot of unlearning we need to do with a lot of the classics. And it's just because the world evolves and we evolve and views evolve and we start to recognize that this part of the book was fine and this part is highly problematic and you can't necessarily just remove that portion.

But it does involve wider conversations around it. And sometimes you just want to read a good bedtime story to a kid and so yeah, I found some like really delightful books. Can I Give You a Squish, I remember when you posted that one on Instagram and I was like, oh my god, I need this book. And it is the cutest fucking book and also teaches consent to kids at an age where they need to be learning about consent but also I think a lot of people feel like it's really difficult to talk about something that can feel really huge to adults.

And to children it's actually, you don't necessarily need to make it that huge. Like kids are smart and also they don't complicate things as much as we do. So I feel Can I Give You a Squish is a great example of how stories and storybooks are wonderful ways of teaching kids really important ideas at a really young age and building foundations for them that then make ... as things get, as they get older and things get more complicated, you can still like, bring it back down to it's as simple as this.

meghan malcolm: Yeah. I agree with everything you said, and I feel like it became a big part of why I included kids’ books in my bookstore because the books [audio cut out] extremely tiny.

ash alberg: Mhm, it is. [Chuckles.]

meghan malcolm: I have super ... like in this space before me, there was an ATM in there. [Ash laughs.] So it's that small. [Ash snorts.] And I wanted to include kids' books one because I have kids so it just happened that way. But then also, yeah, everything you're saying, like it's so ... it's hard to find good kids' books.

There are so ... I would say there's so much more than when I was a kid. But it is still, it takes some effort and I feel as like a bookstore owner, like I would do

that process for somebody and then they can just come in and have it all at their fingertips and [audio cut out] go into like a more whatever, like more big chain bookstore or whatever.

What's [audio cut out] your tips right away is like maybe a lot more like heteronormative stuff. It's nice to like, not look for a gem, but have it all just be like, that'd be the main thing. And I feel like I really got passionate about that when my ... I have two kids, one is six and one is three. My six-year-old like was born being like in quotations, like the very stereotypical, like girly girl.

Like she's, “I am Emelyn. I am a girl. I love fashion. I love like designing my outfits and I love princesses.” And I was like, cool, this was so not my experience as a child. [Ash laughs.] Let's let you be you. And it was so hard to find her a princess story that I was like, yeah, cool. I want to show this to you.

So I ended up just making my own and turned the Robin Hood story to shift the perspective to Marian, changed her name from Maid Marian ‘cause that feels like unnecessary and she's ... they [audio distortion/cut out] Robin Hood to a woman and Prince John is like the face of capitalism being like, “Everybody work harder and get me more money.”

ash alberg: True.
meghan malcolm: And they essentially hold a peaceful protest. [Laughs.] ash alberg: It’s so good. I love everything about this.

meghan malcolm: Yeah. It was very fun to write. And there's like a pivotal moment for Marian when she realizes that she's angry, that Prince John [audio cut out] their instruments and she starts stopping and she like trying to let it out. And when I wrote that scene, it was so satisfying and I realized like I've never seen a princess get angry.

ash alberg: Yeess. Yeah.

meghan malcolm: [Audio distortion] and kids' books, for sure, like Disney movies or whatever, and that angry be this like powerful moment. I feel like you see that in the female villains.

ash alberg: Yes. Yeah, completely. It's actually making me think of, I haven't actually managed to find a copy of this slash just having bought a copy, but there's a kid's book that as a result of finding so many good ones through you,

then I've just like, my eyeballs are just constantly looking for good kids' books and like I have a collection that has quickly outgrown the space that I had initially planned for it. And I'm like, I don't technically need more of these, but I just want more.

And one of these books that now I'm forgetting the name of it is, I think it's called Red and it's about a little girl finding, being angry and that anger, it like, the whole purpose of the book is talking about how anger is a good emotion and that it's a useful emotion, which is totally true.

And we live in a society where anger frequently just shifts all the way over to the toxic side. And for folks who are socialized as men and masculine, then it does tend to be extremely toxic, because patriarchy, but for femmes and folks who are socialized as women, it's a, it's an emotion that we're denied frequently. And so when you feel it, then you don't, like we're not given the tools to express it period, but then figuring out how do you express this in a healthy way?

Again, it often shows up in really toxic ways, but it can also be a really fucking important emotion. Like it is just part of the human experience and when it arises, it's telling you something. And it's just a way of figuring out, like, how do you express this in a way where you're not harming somebody else?

Unless you're in danger, but even then, there's ways of using the anger and not, not removing it as being an option for you. So yeah, I love that. And yeah, I feel like princesses are frequently just very passive creatures in like mainstream stories.

So to have one that is much more active and also is being given like full access to her emotions ... Sorry, Willow just decide to scoot. That's a really exciting thing and is, especially for like little girls or little people who do really love princesses, like to have an example of a princess story that is, that is like a powerful one, that's an exciting thing because it's not like princess stories are bad. It's just, we need a wider range of what a princess is and can be.

meghan malcolm: Totally. I think so much of it is rooted in like the original, like Grimm's fairy tales and things like that, where it was like, initially it was an instruction manual for kids to know what is good behavior and what is bad behavior.

ash alberg: Yes.

meghan malcolm: And what gets you a happy ending and what is a happy ending. And we like haven't, we're now starting, but we've, for a long time were using those stories still and it was like good behavior as being passive and quiet and there's ... someone did a study or researched all these stories and realized there's no moment where like a female character, like main character does anything that ... like they're all very passive.

There was never a moment, “This is what I'm going to do to save the day or change the story.” Like they're always saved or rescued or something happens to them except for one, who is Gretel. And she pushes the witch into the fire.

ash alberg: Yeah! Oh, that's so true.

meghan malcolm: It's the one out of so many stories. [audio cut out] And so obviously I have ... So I, my older daughter is very still the same, she's six years, like same. And I don't want her to associate the things that are like, genuinely her interests with being passive, being like, you have to be all these like fragile things with that.

ash alberg: Yeah.
meghan malcolm: ‘Cause I think that's the problem, is when we pitch it as if

you're this, you can't be this. ash alberg: Yes. Yeah.

meghan malcolm: And she's so cool. She like goes, she’s on a cheer team and she like picks her outfit and like matches her hair, puts on eyeshadow. And then she goes and lifts her friends ‘cause she's so strong. [Ash laughs.] And like has [audio cut out] body, like this is so awesome. Like you can be both and that's, we're starting to do a better job of teaching our kids and ourselves.

I think we're starting to give ourselves permission to be all the things. ash alberg: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

And it's, it's so lovely to see that kids can be like learning that from the beginning rather than needing to unlearn the shit when they're our age. And it's, it takes a lot of work to be like, unconditioning those things. And I think even within that there ... the next generation is going to be ahead of us just naturally with certain things.

Like there will be limitations and that's not necessarily a bad thing, they’re valid. And it's not like there's a magical, like end spot where it's aha, we have achieved enlightenment. That's not ... everybody's going to have a different definition of it, but it's really lovely to be able to start kids from an age where they are starting from a stronger place, essentially.

Like I was just reading, I've been reading Burnout and it's fantastic. And there's a section where they talk about ... it's like, it's quite a, they make a point at the beginning of saying we don't mean for this to be cis-centric basically, but like all of the research has been done by cis folks.

So like, when we talk about women, we're talking about all women, but like just a heads’ up that the research is going to be pretty focused. And so they, they talk about how like the reasons for burnout and especially for folks who are femme, like why we experience burnout in a different kind of a way and how it manifests and also like how the patriarchy and how supremacy is part of that.

And there's a whole chunk about diet culture, because of course that's part of how femmes especially are controlled. I would say everybody ends up getting controlled by it by in some way or other, but I literally don't know a female-bodied and/or fem person who has not had some disordered eating at some point in their life if they don't still actively deal with it.

Which is just like a sad fact of society. And they talk about how like children by the ... little girls by the age of six are already, it's, I think it's, they said half already are feeling like they are like, I'm putting this in quotations, but like too fat. And it's like a thing that they worry about.

And it's, the messaging happens at such a young age and sometimes it's really explicit. And other times it's just like the way that society is like seeping in, in like shitty insidious ways. And so yeah, to have kids being able to start from a place where they are happy about their whole version of their body, whether that is like physically how they are taking up space in the world or emotionally how they are taking up space in the world.

And stories are really big part of that, I think, especially when kids are younger, because we can control a little bit more in terms of, what media they're consuming potentially. But books are like a way that kids get a lot of messaging that may or may not be helping them.

meghan malcolm: Mhmmm. Yeah.

And they just, they mimic it a lot. They repeat it. And they, I think, seek out stories. I did as a kid, like when I found something that resonated with me, I was like, whoa, why ... I see myself in this character. I, or I found like a little bit of information about like sex or periods or whatever, that in a book I was like, I want to read more of this.

I think it was partially because no one was talking to me about things. Like our generation, like a lot of our parents didn't give us sex talks or anything. Like it was not a conversation. Whereas now I think that's changing a bit, but yeah, there's a, it's a way to seek out information.

And I feel like that's something that also is a big drive for me with Willow and the bookstore, like giving people access to information. Really good books on gender, on sexuality, on ... yeah, like all facets of topics. And sometimes I'll get people even like messaging or it reminds me of that kid me that was like, I need to know more about this.

I'm gonna try to find something at the library, maybe. But I'll have people like send me DMs and be like, hey, I'm going through this thing and nobody really gets it. Can you find me a book on it? [audio cut out] And I feel like books are really, whether you're a kid or an adult, it's like people look for themselves ...

ash alberg: Yes.
meghan malcolm: ... in books and look for answers in books.

Yeah. There, it's really powerful. Like it's very ... and I've found that through my writing so I can imagine it, if somebody maybe doesn't like tap into that through their writing or through writing, that reading would be like the same experience.

ash alberg: Yeah. Yeah. ‘Cause we've been talking about the kids books, ‘cause I just love them so much, but you also have books for literally all ages and the adult books, the range of them is fantastic. And it's like the books that you might be able to find depending on your independent bookstore, like they might have them, but you're also not going to find the concentration of them in the same kind of a way. They'll be like scattered amongst other things.

So like to have books that are primarily about like characters of color and queer characters and like to find romance books, because I fucking love the romance genre, especially now during the pandemic. I'm like give me all the romance because it has to have a happy ending. That is the point of the fucking genre.

And however we define happy ending, that can shift a little bit, but finding ones that are explicitly queer or interracial or ... like those are things where within the romance industry, even if the actual book is about that, the romance industry has acknowledged the fact that yeah, we'll change the cover of it because it's not going to sell as well.

And so you don't necessarily know off the bat, like this is going to be about this, or you're going to see or experience in this, or you're going to see your fantasy in this. And so to be able to find books that reflect experiences outside of just white, cis, heteronormative experiences, which are also valid, but there's a shit ton of books about that are very easy to find.

And they're the ones that like, if you go to, in an airport, which we don't do nowadays, ‘cause COVID, but like the airport bookstores, like you're not going to find very many books that actually reflect anything outside of those stories, unless they happen to have become a bestseller. And even then, it's begrudgingly, right?

Like it's not the default. So it's lovely to have a bookstore like Willow where that's the default.

meghan malcolm: Mmm, yeah, that's a good way to put it. I feel like I want people to come in and be like, oh, this is the default rather than the other way around. I'm like, I, it like a, I'm very proud to be like a queer-owned bookstore. And I'm very proud to be like all these things, but also sometimes it bugs me a bit like the label that is like, “You’re a niche.”

And I'm like, what's niche is only carrying straight books. ash alberg: Yes! [Laughs.] It’s so weird.

meghan malcolm: That's not, you're carrying one thing and, but I'm carrying a whole variety of things and I'm ...? Like that, it, so like that element of it bothers me. [audio cut out] A queer bookstore, and it's yes, I am. Like, half of me is totally, I am.

And then half I'm a bookstore that carries book. I carry stories about many different people and many different experiences.

And that's it. It's as simple as that. It's not a special thing. And I get, I feel that when I see Netflix, see like whatever, and I'm like, there's no category for straight. There's no like ...

ash alberg: Yes, totally. And it's, but it's a funny thing too ‘cause there's some times where I'm like, I literally just want to see queer stories and it's become really interesting when I like watch a show on Netflix where there's not an explicitly queer character or storyline just naturally built into it, because most of their newer content, at least maybe just the content that I am seeing, but like for the most part, except for the dating reality shows, because those ones, they have not quite figured out how to do queer, but that's also just in general, there's very few queer ones, which is annoying.

Although Dating Around has lots of adorable queer stories. But anyway the, like when I watched Netflix productions now, and there's not a queer storyline somewhere in it. I'm like, did you forget? Did you miss something? I think it was Magnolias or Sweet Magnolias, something like that. And it's based on the Southern states and it's based off of a series of romance books, I think, but it's also something where I'm like, it's really not that difficult to just write in a queer character.

Like it's actually, the fact that you don't have any queer characters in this entire storyline is actually ... feels really jarring to me because I've just gotten used to them just like naturally putting ones in and not where it's like the point of the story is about this queer relationship.

It's just that like queers are normal parts of society. We’re everywhere, whether it's the Southern states or somewhere else. And to not include in a storyline feels like actually a very active choice these days in terms of erasure. I don't know. It's a weird one, but ...

meghan malcolm: Yep. No, I feel that. And it's been cool to see people's reactions to coming in this space and being like, wow, like this feels so nice to walk in and just see all these covers. And these covers and I'm not going to carry like Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings, which like, not because they're bad books, like they're fine, but you can get them anywhere.

That's, it's not [audio cut out] ... So I want to bring together the things that are maybe harder to find, or on like the back shelf or in their own like quotes, niche section. [Audio distorted] like this is, yeah.

And it's been fun. Like you were talking about romance novels, like it's been, that's been a highly requested genre. Only threw me for a loop because I've never been interested in it. Like just, I've never watched rom coms even or whatever, but I totally get that also in the pandemic now, people who maybe weren't even into it before are now into it.

And so I been trying so hard to bring in queer romance novels. And they’re now, I'm like, okay. I feel like I can see the, I see the appeal here and I'm slowly getting into it. But there's something about seeing the covers of a man and a man or a woman and a woman or whatever that's also still [audio cut out] this, but I think that's also all I've seen so far.

I feel like they're getting into queerness in terms of lesbian or like two men. Haven't seen a ton of like gender diversity yet in them, but I am, I see it a lot in fantasy though.

ash alberg: Yes. Totally. I think that's the thing is that a lot of times, like non-binary and trans existences, honestly, I see a lot more of it in like fantasy and sci-fi, which is also partially because it's easier for us to exist in those spaces and not have it be like ... not that it's a weird thing. Like absolutely, we could be writing stories where like we're the main characters and it's normal, but it's also, I think up to this point, it's also just been like genres whereas non-binary and trans folk it’s, they’re like, generally genres that feel like better fits anyway.

It's, you're not necessarily interested in telling the story of like contemporary, urban walking down the street. You're like no. I want dragons, I want vampires, I want werewolves, I want aliens. Like I want to be living in this other space where we can talk about all of this in like also broader terms as well.

And also the other area where I find a lot of this is in erotica. There's some really fantastic trans- and non-binary-written erotica that has been around for a while now, but it's also just like really delightful and also something that you're only gonna find in like specialty sex stores, Venus Envy, that also happen to have like solid book sections.

It's always, I always find it really funny because trans-written erotica always involves a lot more complexity and trauma than like gay erotica, where it's just, it's so funny because when you, when I think of like gay male erotica and then like lesbian erotica, and then queer erotica, it's like, there's very different tropes and like very different, just like general ways of writing each of them.

And the queer one is always, “We're going to go right into the backstory. We're going to talk about how messy this is. We're going to talk about people's feelings, but also, and then there's going to be like really hot sex, but it's going to be like conflicted.” I’m like, this isn't necessarily ... I would like to read my smut without necessarily quite so much involved where I feel like I also need a therapy session afterwards. [Both chuckle.]

But I also appreciate it more than the oh man, classic lesbian erotica, just I can't. Like, it's just like skip 20 pages of this, please. And then give me like the half page of the smut minus the words like slurping, which seems to be a word that you all like to use. [Meghan giggles.]

And then that, we'll move on from there. I don't know. [Laughs.]

meghan malcolm: Totally feel you on that. I, yeah. I feel like there is like something about it being like this slow burn.

ash alberg: Yeah. meghan malcolm: Yeah.

Any sort of lesbian relationship written into like to a fantasy world, or if it's like erotica or whatever it is. It's like, maybe also it never happens.

ash alberg: Also that, yes, it's just this like a long slow, like longing and you're like, are you ever going to ... and yes, that reflects probably a lot of people's experiences, but it's also incredibly unsatisfying.

meghan malcolm: Yep. Yes. Yeah. I totally agree.

I actually started writing like quite a bit of erotica and it's not the genre that I like publicly share, it's just like something that I do. And it is fun for me because it's very, I think all of my ... like on the topic of like ritual and magic, like my writing feels like a big part of that and how I really tap into be able to hear myself, listen to myself, let things out that I didn't even know were there.

ash alberg: Yeah.

meghan malcolm: And there was a part of like, when I started writing so much lesbian erotica, when I was like, I knew I was queer, but yeah, like just knew in the back of my mind, like I'm queer, but I’m [audio distortion] [Both giggle, Ash snorts.] ... finds a way to come out.

ash alberg: Yeah, writing is, yeah. It's a funny one. Like the amount of processing that you can do through your writing and you're just like, oh, that's some old shit that I didn't realize I was still holding onto. Noted.

Which I think it can be hard, especially for like partners and family members where you're like writing a thing and then like really heavily processing it and then have to reaffirm for your family, this is not actually about you. Like it, and I feel like a lot of times it's very rarely about the people who are like immediately in your life. It's often like older shit that is being processed now, like a while later.

meghan malcolm: Mmmhm. Yeah, totally. And I feel like it's a way to lean heavily into your own perspective, but consider the other person's.

ash alberg: Yep.

meghan malcolm: Especially in like very draft form writing. Like I wrote my ... the birth story, essentially, of my first daughter and ... which I'm not like a birth story writer. I'm not, it's not [audio distortion] like no, whatever, but yeah.

I'm, it just came out of me by accident and realized through writing it that the birth itself had been really traumatic. And a lot of, a lot of things had happened that were totally not okay. But I, it was nine months after. Like I had that part of trauma where I like your memories leave you ...

ash alberg: Erase.

meghan malcolm: Yeah. Totally didn't remember it happened. And then I ended up writing it and took it to my husband at the time after, and was like, did this happen?

Like is this [audio cut out] story or a real story? He was like, yeah, that's what happened. And then one of his responses, like he had some like affirming responses and stuff, but one of his responses was, ‘cause I was, it was a story I was working on for a publication. And he was, “Are you going to publish it like that?” [Ash laughs.] It was like, ‘cause it was so like void of considering any other ... it was just my experience, and so super, super raw.

And when you actually, after you process your experience and you have the opportunity to just see your own side, consider the other person's side, weigh in that. But that draft was just like so my own story. I was like, everyone else is like barely a person in this story. [Ash laughs.] Me and a whole bunch of villains. [Laughs.]

ash alberg: But I feel like that's a really important part of both like the process and ritual of writing. And also like part of why writing is a really powerful tool

for helping us navigate shit because it is also, you're, like you hit the nail on the head. There's like that stage where we become aware of our own perspective and we are completely only focused on that.

And everybody else's experiences in the same moment don't matter. And we don't give a fuck and it's all about us. And that's, that raw draft is valid. And then we have to get into the next draft where we start to consider other people's experiences and opinions and their versions of reality as well.

And I feel like in society right now, we don't necessarily go to that second draft. And it's really problematic where it's, my experience is the only one that's valid. And there's lots of really shitty things out there that we do actually need to say, this was my experience and I need that to be recognized.

But we also, I think there's like, way more frequently than we want to acknowledge, there's other people's experiences too. And those ones are also valid and by ignoring them, then we're not actually doing any of us, including ourselves, any favors.

meghan malcolm: Mhmmm. Yeah. Totally. I totally agree with that.

I think for me, like now looking back on that draft, I ended up sending it to a friend because I think it scared me how my own perspective it was. And I've really struggled with, I really sever myself from my own experience and I think way too much about other people's experiences and feelings.

And so for me to, for that to have happened, I was shook up. I was like, oh my god, that's really how I felt? Like that really ... [Ash chuckles.]

I sent it to a friend and was like, edit this, like edit it. And let her just like completely rewrite it. And now I regret that, like now I think I would have rather published the original draft because that's what the story was about.

The story was about how this thing impacted me and how these things were done, like to my body. This is for me, so what a great healing moment and what a great way to like pendulum swing that and be like, actually, here's exactly how it felt for me. Actually, here's what's happening for me. So yeah, I, I look back on that and I'm like, ah. And I don't even have that first draft.

ash alberg: Oh, man. I was gonna say, because you could, I think it would be really interesting to have both published together.

meghan malcolm: Yes. I actually ended up publishing the birth story of my first and my second, because the second was so different.

But, and when I went to publish them, that's when I realized, I read it years later and was like, this isn't even what happened anymore. And there was like minimizing and oh, but this person dah dah dah, and I was like, man, I feel like I almost retraumatized myself with that.

ash alberg: Yeah.

meghan malcolm: The point was, when you're you, the ... you've given birth and then the hospital staff are like, your baby's healthy and forget about your own. What just [audio cut out] you and you’re like yeah, my baby, and then everything becomes about your baby.

And especially in like typical domestic roles of this heteronormative whatever, I immediately went home and was back to, I take care of my baby and my husband and ...

ash alberg: Right.
meghan malcolm: ... forgot everything else. Even though I couldn't stand up.

[Chuckles.]

ash alberg: Yeah. Also that, like the amount of ... I have zero desire to be pregnant. I definitely want to parent at some point, but the process of pregnancy is one where I'm like, I was talking to someone recently about it and I was like, even if you could remove the gender aspect of it, which is honestly a really huge part of why I don't want to be pregnant because there is no way to ungender that in our society at this point in time, and it would just be like super fucking dysphoric and awful the whole time.

But even if you could remove that, and even if we had a society that fully recognized that there are lots of different folks who get pregnant and are pregnant and that pregnancy does not automatically equal woman, and that also stop fucking touching people's bodies who are pregnant. That's just weird.

But even if you could remove like all of those shitty things, I'm like physically, what would happen to my body is also not something I'm interested in going through. And it, I think it's, like people don't talk about it. Not openly, at least.

They'll talk, as I've gotten older and I've had more friends who have been pregnant, they'll talk more openly about it and/or their like pregnancy difficulties, but even the ones where they're like, yeah, overall, it was like a healthy pregnancy and it we both ended up fine. The labor wasn't too awful. It's still like super fucked up. The body goes through massive changes

meghan malcolm: I think there's a lot of pressure on the like role of motherhood specifically. I like to just say parenthood, because I think that there shouldn't be such a big difference between motherhood and fatherhood, like you’re both parents.

ash alberg: Yup. When people say, “I'm going to go babysit my children,” I'm like, nope, they're your children. You are parenting. Welcome to your role. Like what the fuck? [Laughs.]

meghan malcolm: Yep. And the phrase of, if my ex were walking through the grocery store with ...

ash alberg: Oh my god, yes. “He's doing so well.” [Sarcasm.] If I ever co-parent with somebody who is or passes as a cis man, like you, it's not even like 50/50% labor, you need to be doing like at least 70% because literally everything you do will be considered great. And everything that I do will be considered shit because the mother figure can never do enough. Like it's always your fault.

Whereas anything that the father figure does is like wonderful and great. And he's doing so well. And it's no, he's literally just like parenting his child, possibly like mediocrely. But like, he's just doing what he should be doing right now.

meghan malcolm: Totally. And I think that stuff gets in our heads. And I think that's a big, that like, the role of mother as it's deemed by society, there's a lot of “These are the best days of your lives. This is the, most [audio cut out] ... of this is like everything. These are the best moments and they go so quick, you should be so grateful,” like a lot of that narrative.

And so then when fucking trauma happens to you when you give birth, but you have a healthy baby, you're like, ahh. [Sighs.] It really gets in your head. Like maybe, I don't know if this is too graphic, but like ...

ash alberg: It’s fine. [Laughs.]

meghan malcolm: Like it really, reflecting on it, the moment I realized, like in my labor, I lost half my blood.

ash alberg: Fuck’s sake.

meghan malcolm: I, after the fact, didn't have a shower or bath for like over a week. That's pretty typical mom to be like, oh yeah, you shower when you can, maybe you never get a shower in. That’s very typically said by people who are like by society's terms, moms.

And I feel dads are just showering every morning when they wake up, like ... [Chuckles.] [audio cut out.] ... very typically of what we're socialized to accept. But in that instance, like I think of it now, and it wasn't until a friend came over. Lots of people visited me. Lots of people visited, came to see the baby. Oh, the baby blah blah blah. But finally it was like 10 days after the birth, a friend came over and was like, hi, I'm here to hold the baby so you can go and shower.

ash alberg: It took that long for somebody to do that?! meghan malcolm: Yeah!

ash alberg: Fucks sake. I feel like that needs to be like, you have arrived home. I realize that you're a hormonal mess. You also need a shower. Showers are magical portals for good things. So I'll hold the baby for a moment. You'll be okay.

It's and I recognized that depending on like hormone levels and shit like that, and like postpartum depression, like potentially that's like, handing over the baby is not necessarily a thing that's going to feel good, but you also do need to be able to like, do things where you're not physically attached to the baby and learning to do that at an early enough state that then it doesn't feel completely debilitating to do at a different, like later on.

meghan malcolm: Yeah, totally. And I think that, I think it was through like writing my own story later that I was like, why did nobody even just take a cloth and wipe the dried blood off my leg? What ...

ash alberg: Woooowww.
meghan malcolm: Why did nobody care for me in that way? ash alberg: Yeah.

meghan malcolm: And coming kind of face to face with that. And that's one example, like the whole story is, we just take the whole podcast. But I think that specific, like part of it, like really made me realize, as I'm writing this and I wrote it and [audio cut out], my baby was born, my first baby, and I was like, holy shit. And it was the first time I'd written since like long before I'd been pregnant.

And it was very like, it was one of those moments that like, it could have been like a scene from Buffy where Willow's doing like an incantation and is like out of body and there's like words going down her face. Like not very often [audio distortion] and it'd be like that amount of, it felt like the pen was just going on its own.

But it was, yeah. Before my pregnancy and nine months after my baby was born, so well over a year, coming up to two years of I haven't written, I sit down and that's what comes out. And it's very much like this magic moment of you need to start like seeing this. You need to start noticing the ways that you are silencing yourself, the things you're accepting.

And started to, and that put me back on, I've been writing since then. And it was very much one thing at a time with my life in that moment, but I think ...

ash alberg: But it was a starting point.

meghan malcolm: Yeah, I think those practices, yeah, I'm just, I'm reflecting on the topic of your podcast, I guess, like the ritual, magic. I think that those things that bring us back to ourselves and in this case for me, it was writing, they're really powerful.

ash alberg: Yeah, I was going to ask you like that whole experience. It seems very much that writing is part of your magic and how magic manifests itself for you. Is it something that like, has always been since you ... like, how has magic kind of and ritual kind of shaped itself through your life?

meghan malcolm: Yeah, I'd say writing is always been a big part of it. Or reading, writing and reading. Whether it was a way for me to escape and create like a safe place for myself and hide away or was a way for me to ... the story we were just talking about, discover something about myself, heal myself, let something out that's like deep down.

Yeah, and I like, as a kid I would like, was constantly reading in a way that's like ridiculous, was just like, didn't play with kids at recess, like just sat and read a book outside on the play structure.

ash alberg: Yeeep. Sounds like my life. [Laugh-snorts.]

meghan malcolm: Yeah. I remember like when you're in elementary school, at least the one I went to, when you switched classes, you would all be led in like a line.

ash alberg: Yep. And you were reading as you were walking along? Yeah. A hundred percent. [Both laugh.]

meghan malcolm: Yeah, I definitely was just like a constant reader and in a few different apartments we lived in, would clear out like a closet, which is the [audio cuts out] baby queer, like a little bit too metaphorical, but clear out a closet as like my like spot. [Ash snorts.] And I would read books in there, I would journal, I would write things.

I would like pull tarot cards. Like I was just like hiding in this little closet. [Both laugh.] And I feel like I still do that, like now I just have a bookstore that is a giant closet. [Both laugh, Ash snorts.] So it just really played out for me.

ash alberg: Oh, man. I feel like you almost, if Willow ever becomes like a larger space, it needs to have almost like closet doors somewhere in there. Like here's the part, or like a little reading nook where you like walk through a closet into another closet.

meghan malcolm: Yes. Yes. [Ash snickers.]

ash alberg: So how ... I, so side note, I love that your writing very frequently is using fairy tales and like turning them on their heads, ‘cause that's one of my own favorite exercises to do. Both in, like I have a theater background and I did a lot of devised theater and fairy tales were always my favorite to take the bones of, and then rebuild the meat on top of them.

So I deeply appreciate that. Do ... is there a reason that that has been a vehicle that you frequently used for your writing or is it ... ? Yeah.

meghan malcolm: Yeah, I, when we were talking before about the kids book, that was ignited it. Like I had rewritten Robin Hood for my daughter and then while researching for that and like reading about Grimm's fairy tales, reading

about all these things, I started to feel very passionate about how shitty that is. [Ash cackles and snorts.]

So eventually, and I typically do write for adults so I think it just sparked, like now I want to do this for adults. And also at the time I was going through a divorce and through that divorce had really experienced being villainized and I’m quite fascinated with villains and like, why are they villains in our, in like typical like fairy tales and Disney movies?

I think they are movies about like legitimate villains ... ash alberg: Yup.

meghan malcolm: ... but like the ones that we are indoctrinated with of like Maleficent is a villain. And it's why [audio cut out]? And started to write through a really traumatic time, like how I ... the first one I wrote was Maleficent. I flipped that story and was like, what if Maleficent’s not a villain?

[Audio cut out] ... and also by Disney. So I think it was easy for me to start to imagine that she has her own story. And her, those movies, I really resonate with. Like essentially this, the prince who she like curses his child because she's an evil villain. Like he tore the wings off her back so that he can [audio cut out] and I think that there's a lot of relationships where, because of what we're socialized in, because of gender roles, because of so many things, because of the patriarchy, there's a lot of men that are taking a lot and I'm speaking very much in cis socialize language, but there's a lot of men that take a lot, that then some of the women end up being the villain because they should have been grateful or let the men take more or ...

ash alberg: Totally. And I feel like also within divorce stories very, and like just generally break up stories, often the person who initiates the breakup is villainized. I don't know if that was your situation, if that was the dynamic, but there's like this weird ... And I see it, it's a weird Manitoba thing where people will pick sides, like social circles, will pick sides of if a couple breaks up like, oh, we're on this person's side or we're on that person's side.

And I find that incredibly unhelpful. Unless somebody was like straight up abusive, I have, this is not ... and even then if somebody was straight up abusive, we can be like, I, I'm not necessarily on your side, but I also have compassion and hope that you get whatever help you potentially need, if that was like part of the abuse story.

And also I'm going to focus my attention over here. But the vast majority of breakups are not rooted in that. And it's literally just that they might be two really great people who are just absolute shit for each other and they bring out the worst in each other.

And why does that then mean that we have to choose a side? Like I don't find it useful. I don't find it helpful. I don't think it actually helps either person in the ending relationship either because it's not like you’re ... it's not helpful to just reflect back the exact words that somebody is saying, because it's also potentially not helping them to learn from that situation and figure out like what didn't work for me?

Even if you did literally nothing wrong in the relationship, there's still learning to be done in terms of like, why did I stay in that? What was I missing in that moment in myself where it felt like staying was the option when clearly it was not? Like there are things that we can be learning and like bringing forward with us into future relationships or just in terms of knowing ourselves better.

And, but yeah, it's frequently like somebody is villainized and it's, they're a terrible person. It's, but you don't ... like there's so much gray area within that. And especially if you've been hearing stories, you're only hearing one person's side of those stories.

meghan malcolm: Yeah, I think it really came into play in the element too of what we were talking about before, like this role that someone who socialized as a woman is like expected to play, especially in the mom role. And ‘cause when I went through my split, my kids were three and six months. I think it's incredibly funny that one of the big rumors was that I had slept with a woman and could not like, had totally rocked my world.

And I left, blew up my whole life, I left my husband and my children. And I was like, I was breastfeeding a six-month-old, and, but okay.

ash alberg: Oh my god! Like ... [Laughs.]

meghan malcolm: But that's because later on I’m dating Alice, so people see, oh, now she's with a woman. Oh, her ... like it became because people don't, I guess, consider bisexuality a thing.

ash alberg: Also that. [Cackles.] Which is a whole other thing.

meghan malcolm: They were like, oh, it was her sexuality. And then the story spins. But I think that a big part of it too was I got a lot of, “You're hurting the children.” Like, stay together for the kids.

ash alberg: My god, that's like the most toxic fucking ... Like most of my friends’ parents are divorced and I know literally none of them who would say, I wish my parents had stayed together for the sake of us. So that then, like it, like the ones that got divorced when they were kids, in none of those situations were, will any of my friends be like, yeah, it would have been better if they'd stayed together [laughs dryly.] Just long enough for us to get through school.

Like literally none of those stories actually happened from the kids of divorced parents.

meghan malcolm: Yeah. Everything I feel like I've heard they, I wish they did it sooner because it's so difficult to be in an environment that's not healthy and then toxic and fighting or whatever the not healthy is. And then have your whole life changed when you're a teenager.

ash alberg: Yeaahh.
meghan malcolm: I'm, my parents split when I was four and I would say it's the

least impactful thing on me. Like I don't care.

ash alberg: And I think it's also one of these things where like people forget, or they don't want to acknowledge the fact because they're like, oh, this family unit, like that family unit needs to stay together no matter what. And if it does, and it's healthy for the most part, then that's wonderful and that's lovely.

But if it's not going to be that, it's way more harmful for the kids to be seeing this like really horrendous modeling of what a relationship should look like. And also to never see their parents happy or to rarely see their parents happy because we're modeling constantly. And if that's what they're being shown, that's also then what they are going to expect and in their own relationships.

And it takes so much fucking work to unlearn that and to learn how to be healthy within your own relationship dynamics. My parents overall, super healthy relationship. They've got their, their own things for sure. But that I look at them, I'm like, yeah, that's, like they’re teammates. And I would love to see that.

And also there are certain things that they do that I'm like, that doesn't work for me. I would do that differently. But even overall being modeled a healthy relationship, I still needed to unlearn a lot of really shitty dynamics. And that's just because of the way that society is training us to accept things.

So if you get the society stories and then also on top of that, your immediate like experience is showing you that oh yeah, the way that we interact in this family and the way that we show love is that, because also you're being told like your parents are like the ultimate example of what love looks like, and the way that love looks like is that people are screaming and throwing things at each other or alternatively they're like giving each other the cold shoulder all the time and you never see any sort of affection and you never see them be kind to each other. That's also damaging in and of itself.

meghan malcolm: Mhmm. Yeah, totally. And I think that when we have these sort of narratives in our head that are really toxic and expect these ridiculous things from people, we [audio cut out] the ability to be a good community.

ash alberg: Yeeahh.

meghan malcolm: The fact that I was going through this split, I'm just adjusting to having two kids, which is a double [audio distortion] [Ash laugh-snorts]. And, you know, my split was very surprising to me. It was for like a really heartbreaking reason. And I was, it was very stressful so suddenly overnight I'm like, okay, I'm on my own.

Like I, the fact that I was met with so much like judgment and shame and like being told why it was happening was really ... I, and I wish that I hadn't internalized it, but I did. And I got to the point where I was like, maybe I am just a lesbian.

Like I started to really realize the thing, or maybe I should have done more or done this or done whatever. All the things, and really internalized it for awhile. And it was through starting to write that Maleficent story that I was able to shake that off. And going on a lot of very bad Tinder dates. [Meghan chuckles, Ash cackles.]

ash alberg: That will, that will knock any concept of, “Oh, I left because the grass is greener.” Not necessarily. Takes a while. [Laughs.]

meghan malcolm: That was just about every rumor and was like, is this why? And that was not super fun, but I am really glad that I like let myself explore

and figure it out, answer the questions for myself. Like you hear so much, and I feel like a lot of it was just actual gaslighting. Like I was experiencing a lot of gaslighting and really took it as truth and I feel like that's where my writing really helps me in the end ...

ash alberg: Yep.

meghan malcolm: ... do what is real, even if I don't necessarily notice it at the time, like I can [audio cut out] short stories I wrote during my marriage that were about what I was experiencing, but I didn't know I was experiencing it. And there's like this deeper part of me that like, can see past the ways that I was like misled at the time.

And ooohh, you knew! It's just, it's so, it makes me feel really proud of this part of me that's, “You always knew!”

ash alberg: Mhm, mhm, yeah, that like deep intuition inside your body that's, “I know that you're not necessarily conscious of this, but I am so eventually you'll figure it out.”

meghan malcolm: Yeah. I've taken these, like I started with Maleficent and then it turned into just flipping a bunch of fairy tale characters. And I do feel like they're all sort of fragments on myself ‘cause I feel really uncomfortable, I feel uncomfortable writing about myself, but I feel more uncomfortable trying to write an experience that I've never had.

ash alberg: Yup. Yup.

meghan malcolm: Unless it’s a career or something I can like research, but it's not my story, but it is fragments of me blown up and different like emotions I've had or experiences I've had.

And it's really liberating for me to write through that and write out these fairytale characters who are villainized in the story we know and to tell their side and be like, no, this is what was actually happening.

ash alberg: Yeah.

meghan malcolm: And I feel like I was able to, as I was writing those stories, do that for myself of, “No, this is actually what your story was,” like back what we were talking about with the birth story.

Let's actually sink into your perspective of this and rather than all the noise and all society's expectations and all the everything.

ash alberg: Yes.

meghan malcolm: Yeah, it was very, like a very healing. And I edited quite a bit and throw a lot of fantasy in there. So it's very much, by the time it's in the reader's hands, it's like a grain of me in it and mostly just like an exciting story.

But it's been really transformational for me to do that. And they feel like that's why I would say that it's magic because that's what magic is supposed to do. [Chuckles.]

ash alberg: It's so true. And I feel like that grain is also still super fucking important. Even if the reader doesn't necessarily value it in the same way, there's like, we need to make more space for other people's experiences and also figure out how do we like keep our own experiences still being important?

Like being able to figure out that balance, which will change every single situation, but being able to balance out like, what is our experience in this and where are we ... not necessarily wrong. Sometimes we might be wrong. Other times it might just be that like, we're bumping up against somebody else's experience and we're not going to come to a middle ground and that's okay, but like leaving space in between for both to be true.

And then there's other situations where it's no, like I know that this part of this story did happen and is important. And regardless of how your experience interacted with it, that doesn't change the fact that this is an important part of it for me. And it doesn't need to change.

meghan malcolm: Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. I think that we're so conditioned to see the other side, don't [audio distortion] I think also is right, or like you're thinking of the reader, you're thinking of the reader experiencing it so it can get really [audio cut out.] And you're like, what if somebody misunderstands this or perceives [audio cut out] way.

ash alberg: Right, yes.
meghan malcolm: We do that as writers and just as humans, constantly relating

ourselves.
ash alberg: Yeah.

meghan malcolm: So I think there's something to like, just writing it and trying to imagine no one's ever going to read this.

ash alberg: Yeaah.

meghan malcolm: Which I wish I could have those moments in like arguments with people. Like I wish I [audio cut out] say exactly what I want to say to them and not edit it all and not hold space for their side. But [audio cut out.]

ash alberg: Yes. [Snorts.]
meghan malcolm: I don't do that. Sometimes I wish I could.

ash alberg: [Laughs.] It's true. Yeah. No, there's definitely some things where it's yeah, you know what, like just no. [Laughs.] And not always, but every once in a while.

meghan malcolm: Yeah. Some [audio cut out] challenge me. If we're having a disagreement, really cannot see eye to eye on something and she can tell that I liked habitually, it's my nature, it's my trauma, it's all these things coming together to be like overexplain and overempathizing and watering down my thing and she'll get to, “I actually don't know what you need right now. Like just say it and not filter it. Like just, I can handle it. Just say it.”

ash alberg: Yeah.
meghan malcolm: Like it won't be usually something that's really big that she'll

challenge me in that. [Chuckles.] ash alberg: Yeah.

meghan malcolm: It’ll be something where I'm clearly frustrated and then I'll be like, “Fine! You didn't do this and like this,” so nice. And she'll just smile. [Audio distortion] so proud.

ash alberg: [Laughs.] Because you're changing patterns! But I think that's especially, I'm like, I have an aggressive baseline, which is sometimes really helpful, other times not so much.

And I have learned, especially because I love my caregivers, but like I have learned that I do also need to like, make a point of reminding them that my

voice, when I am passionate about a thing, whether I am talking about the patriarchy or I am talking about marshmallows, like when I am like excited about a thing, my voice will sound the same, which is similar to this level at this point of time. And I'm not yelling at you. I also, I'm not saying that you can't change my mind.

I'm just like, this is how I get, and this is what my voice will sound like. And it doesn't matter who you are. Like, I'm not attacking you right now, but if you have a different opinion, it's okay for you to tell me that opinion. Like I just, again, I may not actually give that much of a shit. If I'm just like talking about marshmallows right now, it will sound the same if I am talking about like systemic oppression.

And like just getting people used to that so that they recognize and know that if you really hate marshmallows and you would rather have whipped cream that like, you can tell me that even if it sounds like my voice is like really passionate about the thing. I might still, I might not change my mind about the marshmallows, but your whipped cream preference is noted and is also valid.

But I think it's, if we're not hyper aware of that, and we're not, hyper aware of like where on the divide we tend to behave or where in our own lives ... I definitely notice that I will leave more space than is necessarily healthy for me in certain situations and then I basically, I make up for it by having really hard line boundaries elsewhere.

Which is not necessarily, it's like an all or nothing approach, which is not necessarily balanced. It ends up balancing itself out. But knowing those things about ourselves and being self-aware and then being able to communicate them with the people in our lives so that then they can meet us in those places. And like with Alice, where she's like helping you to challenge these like parts of your personality that have been hardwired in, and aren't necessarily always serving you and being like, I want you to take up the space that you need to take up in this moment.

And then I totally see where that pride comes in. [Laugh-snorts.]

meghan malcolm: I feel like she's been obviously like such a healthy and amazing part of my life in the last few years. And she my, my three-year-old is what you're saying. Like baseline is, it sounds like I'm yelling, but I'm not [audio distortion]. She stomps and she yells and she's very, it's very her nature to be firey.

And I, for so long was like, I don't know who she like, who she's like, and I don't know where she gets this from and dah. And then one day Alice is, she's exactly you. Like, she's exactly you, but [audio cut out] experience where she isn't being socialized to be not that way.

ash alberg: Yes.
meghan malcolm: Not like right away as a kid, like afraid to rock the boat

because of the circumstance she's in. Like she's in a different [audio cut out]. ash alberg: Yeah.

meghan malcolm: Like she's literally tiny you. Emelyn, not you, she's got pieces of you. Margot is thousand percent you. [Ash laughs.] And it was jarring for me because I didn't even see myself that way and that's now, time, more time has passed and I feel like I'm working through a lot of things. Holy shit like she actually is. And it's really fun for me to watch her have a different experience and just be like, just be herself and not shrink herself down.

ash alberg: Yes, totally. I feel especially the way that kids are socialized, again, like little girls are just like, whether their parents build that environment for them or not, the rest of society ends up building this environment where they're not allowed to have these like big, loud, like taking up space, emotional experiences.

And then boys are allowed to do that but then we get to a point where we're like, oh, that's annoying. And so now I'm going to label you a troublemaker. And neither of those situations is particularly helpful for anybody, including the children.

But yeah, there's something really lovely about letting a kid just have those experiences and then also teach them that okay, you're ... this is all super valid. And also we're going to show you healthy ways of, if you are fiery and if this is like your baseline response to these situations, healthy ways for you to express that so that if you're having a really like big feel that we know that we can punch a pillow, rather than punching a wall where you're going to hurt your hand or punching the person who is annoying you unless they deserve it. Because I'm also like, I'm pro kids hitting each other in certain situations.

Like eventually we do need to learn those lessons. If you've been told no multiple times, and you're still being a shithead, if you get a smack, that's, that is the natural consequence. Like we also need to listen to each other.

meghan malcolm: Yeah. My six-year-old, she is the more like, passive one in terms of ... Sorry, Lion ...

ash alberg: Has reappeared?

meghan malcolm: She, my six-year-old went to daycare for weeks coming home with bite marks on her body, like full bite marks. And they don't tell you like, which kid did it. They don't give you any information, because like they think the parents will fight in the halls or something, but ...

ash alberg: But like also if your kid is coming home for weeks with ... it's one thing if it's like once, but if it's happening over and over again, like I need to know which fucking kid this is.

meghan malcolm: I know, yeah.

ash alberg: And then discuss it with their parents.

meghan malcolm: And then eventually we get this incident report for Emelyn and it's like Emelyn bit somebody. And then, we, and I was like, was it the kid that has been biting her for weeks? And they were like, yeah.

And that she like went for it and got their inner thigh. [Ash laughs.] And I was like, like this moment as a parent, I imagined being like, we can't do that, dah dah dah, this big, like big concerning moment. Nothing in me was concerned. I was like, she finally snapped and was like ...

ash alberg: Yep, she defended herself. Yep.
[Both talking at the same time.]
meghan malcolm: Never came home with a bite mark again.

ash alberg: This is the thing though. I'm like, if you've got a kid that is actively bullying another child, and none of the adults are stepping in and like making enough of an impact, sometimes you just need to give them a dose of their own medicine and then they learn and then they back off.

My brother had a similar situation when he was a kid, there was this kid who bullied him mercilessly and he was such a fucking asshole. Like I think people also don't want to acknowledge the fact that kids can be really awful and cruel

and that like you actually need to fucking step in. You don't just, “Oh no, it's fine. They'll grow out of it.”

No. Sometimes they can be absolute little assholes. And if it's over an extended period of time and you're not doing anything about it, then whatever the fuck happens, like you let that happen.

But my brother, at one point he, he put up with it and he put up with it and it was awful. And then one day he snapped, he beat the shit out of that kid. And then the kid left him alone after that. And it was like, yeah, sometimes you just need to have that happen. And like, in the same way, my brother was a biter when he was a kid, used to just like chomp on me.

There was one time where he came over. I was like sitting, reading a book and he toddled over to me and chomped my shoulder. And I started screaming. He left like full like teeth marks. And my mom just, she lost it.

It was the last time. And so she grabbed his arm and she like, she bit, she didn't, she didn't try to break skin or anything, but she like put pressure and held until he started being like, “Oh, this isn't nice.” And she was like, “See, that's not nice.” And let him go and then had all of the guilt, phoned her mother, phoned friends who are like pediatric blah, blah, blahs. And everyone was like nope, you're okay. That's actually what you needed to do then.

And he never bit me again and he never bit anybody else. Like sometimes we do just need, like with dogs, like mama dog will check the puppies and if they don't get that checking and they're taken away from their pack too quickly, their like little home pack, then you end up with dogs that have really bad socialization manners. Like they don't know what the boundaries are and until another dog teaches them, then they don't learn.

And we're also mammals. We do need, sometimes you can't just talk about the things. Sometimes you actually need to do something about it.

meghan malcolm: Mhmm. Yes, totally. That's, I was thinking of watching my five-month-old puppy at the dog park and being like, put in this place and shown. Sometimes you need to know how you impact people by pseudo experiences. [Laughs.]

And yeah, and I think some kids need ... like one, my one, my older daughter, you can be like, Emelyn, maybe you shouldn't do that. And she'd be like, “Okay!” [Ash laughs.] But like Margot, you have to be like, Margot, this is what

it feels like when you say you don't love me anymore. [Laughs.] And then she's, “Ooohh.”

ash alberg: But like really needs to have that spelled out. And I think that's the thing, is like we have to acknowledge the fact that people experience things differently and depending on your baseline and like just the way that you like experience the world and the way that your brain works and everything else, like we're going to need different ways of explaining it.

And so it doesn't, I'm not advocating that like teachers go around and bite the biters in their classroom. [Meghan laughs.] But if the kid that's being bitten day after day, finally bites back and that solves it, then you're welcome. And that doesn't require an incident report as far as I'm concerned.

That's, okay, everything has been righted. We are good.
meghan malcolm: Yeah. This has been solved. Justice has been served.

ash alberg: A hundred percent. And now we've solved the issue and we're not going to have to deal with this on an ongoing basis. Everybody's done everybody a favor.

meghan malcolm: Yeah.

ash alberg: So funny. Oh my god. So I feel like we've talked about how magic appears in your work at least as far as the writing goes. What about in the bookstore, other than the fact that you have some delightful witch books? But yeah.

meghan malcolm: In the bookstore, I have started to carry tarot cards and Oracle cards, which at first was like, I'm only carrying books. And then I was like, I'm only carrying books and puzzles and now ... [audio distortion] [Ash snorts.] It's happening. And I think I was hesitant to carry them because I was hesitant put myself into any like category in terms of spirituality.

ash alberg: Yeah.

meghan malcolm: And I don't know if that's necessarily actually important. I think it's my own little hang-up because I spent a little bit of time in a fundamentalist church.

ash alberg: Ooooh, joy.

meghan malcolm: Once upon a time. And I think because of the level of like certainty in that like vein of religion, and this is the thing, everybody should have the thing. I feel very hesitant to ever have that kind of certainty ever again.

ash alberg: Yeah, totally.

meghan malcolm: And ever sort of like feel like I'm trying to share it with other people. I feel super, like I'm definitely swinging to the other side of the pendulum, whereas now I'm like, it's just my private thing that I do with myself. And who knows if I'm right about it.

I feel like yeah, I definitely was very humbled by that experience. But I got to the point where I was like, no, I think that no matter what, like tarot cards and Oracle cards are such a cool tool to use, to reflect, to meditate, to whatever, like to listen to your intuition, whatever it means to different people. Yeah, and I found a few that were like, one is literary witches, and one is, it is fairy tales and folktales, all like this beautiful art, like it's interpreting all these different fairy tales.

So it's a tarot deck and each card is yeah, different fairy tale or folk tale from like across the world. And ...

ash alberg: I feel like I need this just to look and read and learn more.

meghan malcolm: Well, and then the person who made this, yeah. It's a tarot deck. I'm forgetting now if it's tarot or Oracle, but was like, I have a feeling that people who are interested in this are going to want to learn more and made like a book that accompanies it and tells a synopsis of each story.

‘Cause if I pulled a card and I wasn't familiar with the story, it'd be like, now I need to research this story.

ash alberg: A hundred percent. Yes. Oh, I do love a really good guidebook. Those are, they are worth their weight in gold as far as I'm concerned.

meghan malcolm: Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah, so that's been fun. And I feel like it's really cool for me to get these little like insights into when people buy. I, I personally despise retail, but here I am. Like I wish I just ...

ash alberg: I understand. [Chuckles.]

meghan malcolm: Yeah, like I wish I could just like do trades for everything or it just be free, but that's not the reality.

ash alberg: No. [Laughs.]

meghan malcolm: But when people come to buy their like, buy a deck of cards and they're like talking to me at the till and they'd tell me what it's for, how they use it. So cool for me to hear. I, I just appreciate it so much.

There's so many, there's people doing so many different forms of ritual that this one person bought a deck and was like me, every Monday night, me and my friend pull a card like on FaceTime together. And we like pull the card and reflect on it together. That's so cool!

ash alberg: I love that, especially right now in fucking COVID, like ways of connecting through ritual that like, that's just, everything about that is just delightful.

meghan malcolm: It's very much COVID magic. [Chuckles.]

ash alberg: COVID magic, oh my god, I love it. [Laugh-snorts.]

meghan malcolm: Yeah.

ash alberg: Cool. So what's something that you wish you'd been told about magic or ritual or witchcraft when you were younger?

meghan malcolm: When I was younger, I feel like I had a really unique experience where my parents were both very open to everything in terms of like religion or spirituality. Like we were Jewish for a little bit. We were Wiccan for a bit and we like did, we did little rituals together as a family, like we like blessed our new apartment and went and bought the little ingredients.

So I feel like I had a pretty sweet ... like I remember one year at Halloween, my parents were, my mom was like, I'm big into learning about what witches really are. We watched probably way too graphic movies for me as a child about witch trials [Ash laugh-snorts.] Not ... like I vividly remember, like watching the like burning scenes and being like, ookay.

ash alberg: [Laughs.] Love it.

meghan malcolm: But like my mom was very much into, let's learn the real history of things. So I, yeah. I feel like, yeah, and Halloween she would be like, people are going to dress up as witches, but like it's, that's not what witches are. That's what you're taught to believe witches are. So I dressed up as a witch, but like a real one to rebel against and have my own cause.

And people are like, what are you? And I was like, this is magic, this is a pentacle. This is a ... do you know what the moon does? [Ash cackles.] And really, I did not have very many friends. [Laughs.] But yeah, so I feel like when I look back on my childhood, I feel like I was told everything. But later as a teenager, I was ... started going to a youth group at this church that I mentioned earlier.

And I feel like that's the part where I wish somebody like intervened and was, “Hey, the stuff you were doing before is not bad. You are not a lost soul.”

ash alberg: Mmhmm. Yup. Yup yup.

meghan malcolm: You are literally just an educated and informed person connecting with yourself. Maybe you didn't need to dress up as a real witch for Halloween and get that. You didn't need to do that maybe.

But yeah, no, I just I feel like I wish I didn't have those negative narratives get into my head ‘cause it took me a long time to come back to it. And even now it's a very like private thing to me. Like I still feel a little, well, vulnerable with it.

ash alberg: Yeah. I totally get that. It's so interesting how we just like, always as a society, we're always like, oh, whatever trauma there is must be rooted back to like young childhood. Like it must be that far back. And it's, not necessarily.

I would say a lot of the things that I'm really having to actively unlearn was shit from when I actually moved away and was on my own and was going through experiences without having ... there was different kinds of stuff that it's okay, we're going to work through that shit.

But it's been funny through my EMDR therapy, when my therapist is okay, so if we go like further back, like what's the image? And is there anything earlier than that and realizing how consistently, like the shit that I'm having to remove from my body after like years of stagnation and calcification is from school age. Like it was at school where I started learning these things.

And as an adult, it was like, as a young adult being in like, honestly queer anarchist circles, like those embedded some messages that are really not fucking helpful at this point in my life, because it was also rooted in like a kind of a flatness. And in the same way that like, as a child in school, it's one person's idea or one very flat idea of what we are allowed to be and what good is and what bad is.

And I was lucky in that my family life was never, that was not an enforced message, but it was very much enforced in outside of my family home and at different ages. And I feel like we don't necessarily acknowledge that. We're like, oh, it must all be rooted all the way back to like when you were a toddler living at home and nobody else was interacting.

It's no. [Snorts.] The rest of society can really fuck us up at different stages of our life.

meghan malcolm: Mhmmm. Yeah. Yeah. I haven't heard somebody talk about that really before, and I really appreciate it. Yeah, I think that's, it's very true, that it's not just childhood things.

And I think that the, another important thing what I was talking about before with seeing myself in my three-year-old, sometimes it's actually really important to come back to the things that we were as a kid and yeah. And get back, get up, find our way back to that because that actually wasn't that bad a time.

ash alberg: Yeah. Yeah. Especially when kids are able to just do whatever they fucking need and not stop themselves in it. It's funny, I was talking to somebody recently about like, again through therapy, I've realized that like my best version of myself is not a calm creature.

Like I am an emotional creature. I've always been an emotional creature. And the healthiest version of myself is as heightened as I get. It's just not getting stuck at any point in it. It's just like feeling the feels, allowing them to happen and then moving on to the next thing and not getting stuck in a bend or stuck behind a rock of something and then getting stagnant.

And it's funny because, my therapist was like, yeah, like when we see kids, they get sad about something and they like have this big expression of that sadness and they have a big cry and then they have a big gulp of air and then they're done, like they've processed it and then they move on and they don't hold on to shit in the way that we do as adults.

And talking with someone recently, we were discussing the same thing and how there's this like desire to be like super Zen and super calm all the time. And I don't feel like, at least for myself, like that's useful. Like I'm like, I want to be functioning from a more regulated space, but that doesn't mean that I don't have those ups and downs. It just means that I allow those ups and downs to happen and I don't try and stuff them down.

And as children, we haven't been taught yet to stuff them down. Some kids do. They unfortunately learn it at like too young of an age. But if anything, I feel like going to a playground and watching small children play like, three, four five-year-olds play, you're able to see how that is able to like function and manifest and actually how like we are potentially the healthiest versions of ourselves at that age.

meghan malcolm: Mhmmm. Yeah. My, one of very little, this is a ritual, something we started to do as family in the first lockdown is we would take the kids somewhere outside and we would all scream as loud as we could together.

ash alberg: Yes!
meghan malcolm: And it made me realize how hard it is for me to do that. And

I was like, why am I like physically held back from doing? I can't do it.

Meanwhile my kids are like so loud, especially my three-year-old. But I also know that like, when I gave birth to my three-year-old, I was like so loud, so like, the whole birth center was like, what the fuck is happening? [Ash cackles.] So I'm like, I know I can do it. Like I know it's in me, but there's these ways that we've learned to inhibit ourselves.

ash alberg: Yeah.
meghan malcolm: And I feel like that in and of itself has become this ritual

where I'm like practicing. Like I'm like practicing to be loud again.

ash alberg: Yes, it's so true. I feel like sex can be a really great way of like practicing that. And if you're having really good sex, there's, you're able to like, let go of hang ups. Whether it's like, thinking about what your body looks like in space, or like how you sound, or like my hips, I'll be like unable to do wheel or happy baby when I'm doing yoga and then I'll have sex.

And it's, I literally just did that. And then I try to do it the next morning in my yoga practice. And I'm like completely unable and I'm like, okay, how do I, like, how do I like do this outside of these situations?

meghan malcolm: That's very true. That's, I wrote a piece ... it's in my, it's like woven into like my Maleficent story. I wrote a piece about how sex is, like sex became this kind of like arena for me to be like, I'm going to practice being loud. I'm going to practice asking for what I want. I'm going to practice actually noticing my body and noticing when it feels good, noticing when it doesn't.

Like these things that are like fundamental for existing in general, but like sex was like the place where I could try it out and get reconnected with it.

ash alberg: Totally. Yup. And I hope for everybody who is listening slash everyone in general, that you are having the sex with the kinds of people, including yourself, where that is something that feels more accessible to you. Like, and that ... ‘cause there's definitely, I've had sex where that's been, it's just compounded the issues.

meghan malcolm: [Chuckles.] Yes.

ash alberg: I hope for everybody's sake that you are all having sex with the kinds of folks who are very like actively helping you to pursue those things. [Chuckles.]

meghan malcolm: Yeah. Or just finding erotica about it. ash alberg: Yeeaah! That also helps. Honestly ... go ahead.

meghan malcolm: Oh, I just think that it is totally its own, like sex is its own like kind of ritual and magic, like that connection process.

ash alberg: Yep. Absolutely. I have been like very actively trying to find more sex folks, sex witches, to chat because I'm just like, this is ... also I have a pretty heavy history in sexual health as like a background, which I always, because I also work quite regularly with kids, I'm like, don't necessarily need these two things to exist hand in hand.

Not because they're not relevant, but just because it makes people squeamish. And it like, I'm like, if I'm not teaching kids about sexual wellness, I'm not going to bring it up in the classroom. If I'm teaching kids about natural dyeing, we're not going to also talk about consent and orgasms.

That's not ... [Both giggle.] meghan malcolm: Yeah.

ash alberg: They're not the same thing. [Snorts.] Believe it or not. They won't come up in class.

But yeah, I feel like I, I don't talk about it as much as it actually is like a pretty massive part of my life and definitely about my magical practice which is also potentially just, like growing up in a puritanical society, it's, even if we exist in communities that are more open about it, then it's not always as comfortable to talk about openly.

meghan malcolm: Yeah, I appreciate that. And I ended up actually taking like a sex educator certificate program because I became so fascinated with it and found so much healing and like therapy through just sex, whether it was like with a partner or my random Tinder date time.

ash alberg: [Laughs.] Yes.

meghan malcolm: Basically just this time for me to be like, what do I want? But yeah, just, I found so much within that, that I was like, I'm going to intellectualize this and study it. [Both laugh.] And so did that. And I'm still taking classes and learning and I'm not really sure what it's for other than right now it informs my writing. It informs my like book selection. Like it's bringing in like good resources.

But I totally agree. There's some, and I would love to find more sex magic people that are like down to talk about it, ‘cause it's hard to find people that just want to talk about it.

ash alberg: Yeah. I find, especially in Winnipeg, like it's funny ‘cause whenever I go home to Halifax and I say home, it's my other home. Like I did grow up here and I now live back here, but like when I go home to Halifax any, and I meet somebody new, talking very openly and explicitly about sex is super fucking normal to me.

And I'm like, yeah, you're a stranger. We're now going to talk like really clearly about this topic. And it's no big deal. It's just like one of the many topics we're talking about. And then here, I find that it's like quite, you kind feel people out first.

And even then you just you start hedging your bets initially of, who am I going to be able to talk about this in this kind of a way with and like, what's the boundary line? Because I find, in Winnipeg, there's a really clear boundary line. I also blame the lack of good sex stores for part of that.

meghan malcolm: Yes, there is huge lack of that. [Both laugh.] Yeah, there's part of me that was like, I need to do it, but I did the bookstore thing. I need to leave it to someone else.

ash alberg: If you bring in sex toys, I feel like that'll be a really nice little addition to the ... you did that at one point, didn't you?

meghan malcolm: Mhmm, on my opening day. ash alberg: There was like a pop-up.
meghan malcolm: Yeah.
ash alberg: [Cackles.] I love it.

meghan malcolm: It caused a bit of confusion. People were like, wait, is this a bookstore? Like what is happening?

ash alberg: I feel like I'm starting to see more stores, like even there's like some plant stores in the city that are now, we're going to bring in more things for like general wellness ‘cause they're realizing the overlap. But it's still, it's definitely still not the same.

And I find that like, whenever I'm like, oh, I need something restocked, and my go-to is still to just like text my friend who owns Venus Envy and be like, this broke, help. He's just, okay, here's what we have. Like this will work.

Because he also, especially now with COVID, but even before that, like I would literally wait to rebuy something or restock something that broke until I could actually walk into a store, which back then was, I was going home every like year or so, so it's okay, my vibrator broke. I can go and walk into the store.

Because also there's like physical things that, I remember with Grace and Frankie with that TV show when it came out and then being like, yeah, we've got this like vibrator that's good for arthritis. And I was like, I need that. Somebody needs to make a prettier version of that because that thing is hideous.

But like literally the arthritis in my wrist, there are certain things that it can do and certain things that it's, this is aggravating and it's actually hurting my body, which defeats the purpose. And so being able to like, actually walk into a space and find things that are going to like work for your body across the board is, I think, something that we don't necessarily recognize or value as much as like we should.

Like the wellness portion of it is very much like part of what's important when it comes to sex and like sex magic. And if you've got tools that aren't supporting that wellness, then you're like defeating all of the magic anyway.

meghan malcolm: Mhmm. Yeah. I loved that Grace and Frankie storyline. And I, but I also am like, I wish this wasn't told as though it’s like for senior citizens.

ash alberg: Yeah. Also that.
meghan malcolm: There's like people that have disabilities, there's people that

have disabilities that aren't seen. ash alberg: Yep.

meghan malcolm: Like I have a huge lack of mobility on my right side, which is my dominant side. [Ash cackles.] And that's not very helpful. And, but no one would like, know it, looking at me.

And yeah, so I'm like, I struggle to find things that make things accessible for me, but also have people recognize that I need that. So yeah, feel, definitely feel that in the sex toy arena that I'm like there's the, one of the first ever like hands-free vibrators is ... there are the ones that you can lay on and stuff, but like a vibrator made specifically for somebody with a disability is coming out really soon.

It's one that you like lay on. Like it's like a body [audio cut out.] ecause the ones you lay on that are like the size of your palm are fine for somebody who can just go and lay on their stomach independently.

ash alberg: Yes. But if that's not your experience ...

meghan malcolm: Yeah. So this is oh, what are those pillows called? Those like big body support pillows?

ash alberg: Oh, yeah, yeah.
meghan malcolm: It's like that with a sex toy built into it. ash alberg: That’s so clever!

meghan malcolm: So if somebody has mobility issues or they're paralyzed from the waist up or whatever, there's all the different scenarios. Anyways, it's one of the first ever, and it's being like released really soon and I'm just like ...

ash alberg: You're like, I'm so excited. [Laughs.]
meghan malcolm: Really cool. Anyways. Totally different, it's a different kind

of magic.

ash alberg: [Cackles.] So true. Oh man. We might just need to do like a follow up conversation specifically about sex magic. That could be a fun episode. So what's next for you?

meghan malcolm: What's next for me, I'm resigning my lease at the bookstore, which is really exciting. I wasn't sure if that was going to happen, so that's great. So yeah, I'm going to keep doing that.

I'm still, I write my stories, the fairy tale series, it's called Wild and the ... which is, the first anthology that I wrote was called Domestic. And so writing Wild felt right to be like, and now we're in a different phase. And what would the fairy tale characters be if they could be wild, if they weren't so domesticated?

ash alberg: Yes.
meghan malcolm: So yeah, that's, that story or that series, I still release a story

every month and they're all interconnected.

The characters are all in a web. It's like contemporary fantasy. [Willow barks.] Willow has something to say about it.

So yeah, I'm just continuing to work on that and I would love to do sort of an anthology of it by the end of the year, like a more like, right now they're like one story at a time, so I'd like to compile them.

So yeah, that's sorta just going to keep on doing what I'm doing and hopefully find the space for some like fun projects, like some fun, maybe another kids’ book, definitely an anthology of those stories.

ash alberg: That's so much fun. Also, I just, I'm so excited that you are resigning the lease slash I'm so impressed with you for wanting to be running a brick and mortar during this pandemic. [Laugh-snorts.]

meghan malcolm: Yeah, it is ... it has been really good so far. I'm feeling it this month for sure. But that's also, now it's February, but that's also just January in retail, January, 5th wave, whatever we're in now.

ash alberg: Oh god, I don't even know at this point, I'm just like, and I saw yesterday, I like, on my Instagram feed, it was like the Manitoba COVID updates. They were like, “Case loads as of today, 642 new case loads.” And then at the same time, they're like, “And the province is lifting restrictions.”

And I'm like, this is why we're in this garbage and we will forever be in this garbage. And then there's the convoy. And I'm just like, I, fuck all of you. Like all of you. Go right out the door, stick you all on a nice little island, float you out into the middle of the ocean. The sharks can eat you. [Meghan giggles.] That's where I'm at.

meghan malcolm: Yeah. My greatest frustration has been realizing that this large group of people has been able to, in their words, host peaceful protests for ...

ash alberg: [Grumbles.] Yeah.
meghan malcolm: ... for weeks. And like you guys, you can, you could do this

whole time. Like where were you for all the other protests?

ash alberg: Also that! And it's just, I was like, I unfollowed a number of people after the convoy came through on the weekend and people were like, it's just freedom! And I'm like, okay, if you literally can't see the Confederate flag flying literally right next to you and you're not making that connection, fuck you.

Also fuck the government for doing such a bad job with messaging that people's level of exhaustion has reached the point where they're not using that critical thinking ability, like to that level. But also, fuck you if you actually believe that because meanwhile, in the real world, those exact same people are also ... like, I saw a message and then messaged my friend in Ottawa and was like, like she

lives downtown-ish and I'm like, don't go outside right now because they're literally threatening violence, sexual violence, to women and femmes who are wearing masks in the area right now.

And it's just, it's not the same. Like the overlap is so fucking heavy. And I think that's the bit that just makes me so frustrated ‘cause I'm like, when there are other protests happening, those ... that connection is not what's made, like when we've got a Black Lives Matter rally happening, there's not then people at that rally threatening violence to random passers by who are not part of the rally.

Like it's, just that overlap of like white supremacy and kyriarchy bullshit and violence as part of this, and people just like pretending that it's not that big of a thing. I'm like, I don't have time or patience for this anymore. Like. I don't know. Ugh.

meghan malcolm: Yeah, I 100% agree with all of that. And I think the island idea’s a good one.

ash alberg: [Cackles.] We just need to arrange the conversation with some sharks. I actually had a dream about sharks last night. Maybe this is a thing that's happening. Anyway. They were a little sharks, like a little baby sharks, but also a little terrified.

I don't know why I had a dream about sharks. I don't think that's ever happened in my life before. Other kinds of magic.

Thank you so much for this conversation, Meghan, this has been super fun. And we'll of course pop the links into the show notes and also the transcripts so that folks can, they can buy online. So do you ship generally with ... I know Winnipeggers can obviously go in, especially when lockdown isn't happening. But they're, the online shop is now open, so how widely do you ship?

meghan malcolm: Yeah, I can ship anywhere. If for the Wild series, like subscribing to that is, that's the easiest thing to ship because I purposely print the stories in a way that I can just stick them in a, like a letter envelope and send it off. But then yeah, if books also as well can be shipped, so yeah, there's a lot of ways to ... oh, and I'll keep doing the online store, even when I maybe one day open to the public again.

ash alberg: [Laugh-snorts.] We can dream about it. Maybe in the summer, who knows? Ugh, god. Thank you so much for this. And yeah, everybody makes

sure that you go and read some really good books ‘cause it's all just delightful and escapism is like a real useful thing right now.

meghan malcolm: Thank you so much for having me. It was really nice to ... these conversations that sort of make you reflect and realize where you are now and where you were in the past. And yeah, I really appreciated this conversation.

ash alberg: [Upbeat music plays.] You can find full episode recordings and transcripts at snortandcackle.com. Just click on podcast in the main menu. Follow Snort and Cackle on Instagram @snortandcackle and join our seasonal book club with @SnortandCackleBookClub. Don't forget to subscribe and review the podcast by your favorite podcasting platform.

Editing provided by Noah Gilroy, recording and mixing by Ash Alberg, music by Yesable.