Michelle Obama: The Light Podcast - Molly Jong Fast On Alcoholism Dementia And A Mom Addicted To Fame

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

Michele chats with author, journalist, and political commentator Molly Jong-Fast. Molly's new book, How to Lose Your Mother: A Daughter's Memoir depicts the emotionally complex relationship she had with her mother, feminist icon Erica Jong. Through sobriety at 19, to stepping out of her mother's overbearing shadow, and finally parenting her mother through dementia, Molly bares it all. Plus she shares her recipe for a decadently sweet Baked Alaska!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This podcast is brought to you by our friends at Alloy Health. My mother was staunchly anti-cooking, and she loved to clean but did not like to cook. And yes, well, you're a little neurotic. Cleaning definitely scratches the itch that cooking does not. Hello, hello, and welcome back to your mama's kitchen. This is the place where we explore how we are shaped as adults by the kitchens that we grow up in as kids. Of course the food, but all the other stuff that happens there, too. The way we eavesdropped on our parents, the songs on the radio, what you saw through the kitchen window during the homework at the kitchen table,

all of that lives inside us. I'm Michelle Norris. And our guest today is someone who has thoughts and opinions that people love to hear. I'm talking about Molly Jong Fast. She works with me at my other job at MSNBC as a political analyst where people learn all kinds of smart things from her. She is also a correspondent for Vanity Fair and her latest book, How to Lose Your Mother, a daughter's memoir came out this year and it details her relationship with her own mama, who happens to be the legendary Erica Jong. Now, to say that Erica Zhang was an icon of

the 1970s is not at all an overstatement. Fear of Flying sold millions of copies. It was a staple on bookshelves of feminists and really woman of all kinds all around the world. And while Erica Jong was flying around the globe, her daughter, Molly, was back at home trying to figure out her own life. And Molly joins me today to talk about that life, to talk about that book and to talk about the way the kitchen of her youth maybe lives inside her in some way today. Hey, Molly, I'm so glad you're here. Thanks. I'm glad to be here. First of all, can I just begin by saying that I so enjoyed this book. And for those of you who are reading it, if you have not dipped into the audio version, just a pro tip, it's really worth listening to. Molly reads it herself. It doesn't even feel like you're reading a script. It feels like you're telling me a story. There were several asides that were written in a certain way. But when I hear you, you sound like someone who writes out loud. Like you're almost speaking into the computer. I don't know if that's actually how you're right, but it felt like that to me. Oh, thank you. You know, it's funny because I did do the audio version and I thought,

this is either really good or really bad. You know what it is when you design? It's really good. Yeah, or I'm really high on my own supply. So I felt good about it. And, but it is, you know, look, my mom had this amazing story. She told me about which was after she wrote Fear Flying, which was in 1973, so five years before I was born, she read it into a tape recorder. And and listen to it back. And there really is something to be said for that kind of, you know, I've always been someone who, like, appreciated poetry, was very interested in the way language sounds

and the sort of lyrical quality of writing, and especially in a time of AI, this could never be more important. And really, you know, an auto-generated image could not read this in the way that captured the emotions that you captured. And as an author, when you read your own book, and we'll get to the kitchen in just a minute, but when you read a book, you have to take ownership of the words

in a very different way. Oh, yeah. When you put your mouth around your own words, it's, did I really say that? Did I mean to say that? I absolutely meant to say that. You have to own it. I was surprised.

It was only one thing where I was like, most of it I felt pretty, like, as I was reading it back, I was like, oh, it's pretty good. But, you know, remember, it's, as you and I both know, it's months later that you're reading it. So it's anybody's guess what's in there. I'm sorry to ask, but what was the one thing? I can't remember. I think it was just the way it was, it wasn't like a, it was, there was nothing in there. I mean, you, I think you and I both can relate to this. There was nothing in there that wasn't something that I felt comfortable sharing. It was more that it was like not, it didn't sound right. or didn't like grammatically sound right?

And you have to read the book as it's written. You can't make edits on the fly because they do not like that. They bring you back. Someone's listening to every single word. You added an extra the here or you said something. You said that instead of this and they make you go back and do it over. But let's get to the kitchen. Let's get to the kitchen.

We always began with that simple six-word question. Tell me about your mama's kitchen. You were raised in New York City. difficult childhood that you write about, tumultuous childhood, a mom who didn't cook a lot, a nanny that you really, really loved. Can you take me inside the kitchen, walk me? You know, you take the elevator up to what floor, walk through. What did that kitchen look like? What do you remember? Walk me inside the room. So we lived in this house on 94th Street between 124, East 94th Street, and it was during a period when New York,

sort of over 86th Street had a lot of crime. So the kitchen was very, very small. Like, you have to remember my family, my Jewish mother, Jewish grandmother. Everyone was very career-oriented and resented domestic, any kind of domestic thing as like being a kind of, you know, like they didn't want it. They decided not to learn things so they didn't have to do them. And my grandmother was exactly the same way. So my grandfather was an import exporter.

And my grandmother was a painter who wanted to be, she wanted to be this famous painter who wasn't very famous, who was married to another painter. Her name was Lee Krasner. She wasn't particularly famous. She was not really. She was most famous for being married to, what's his name, who did the paintings with Jackson Pollock.

She was married to Jackson Pollock. She was a very good friend of my grandmother's. My grandmother felt that if she did not have children and all the domestic life accoutrements, she could be a famous painter. So she really resented her children. That said, my mother and her sisters were largely raised by their grandparents who lived in the house with them. And then the parents went off to work in import, export.

So the tradition of not raising your own children and not cooking for them, you know, was generational. Yes, was generational. And so my mother was staunchly anti-cooking. And she, though, loved to clean, but did not like to cook. And yes, well, when you're a little neurotic, cleaning definitely scratches the itch that cooking does not. So she was. not, but so we had a very small kitchen. So the way it worked was the house had a staircase, like a staircase, a brownstone staircase, walk up to the second floor, which is considered to be

the parlor floor. There was a living room, a dining room, and a tiny, tiny kitchen, which may have at one point been, you know, not, may have been like a preparation kitchen. I don't know. It wasn't a, you know, those, these brownstones were narrow and not the ones that were owned by, you know, they were owned by people who worked for great families. You know, they weren't. Wasn't like the gilded age where you had these like massive kitchens. These were not, these were sort of ancillary to those people. They were sort of the support.

What happened in that kitchen? So in New York, if you don't cook, you can actually take care of yourself because you can take out, you can order takeout and ding dong, it'll be delivered in 20 minutes to your door. Very easy and cheap. And is that what happened? You lived pretty much on takeout? So my mom was traveled a lot and worked a lot. My Margaret cooked everything from me.

Margaret was your nanny. Yeah. And she was. I called her a nanny. Okay. And she was, I would, and actually I was very upset when someone would say she was my nanny because she was like not, you know, the idea that she somehow worked for our family felt very disparaging.

You know, she was, she was our family, you know, so there was no, you know, I would never have called her a nanny. You know, I would have called her a Margaret. Did she live with your family? She lived with us and then I lived with her. You know, when there was vacations, I lived, there was no, no, no. This is not like normal families where, like, you have someone who comes in and helps you. This was like, she just was like lived with us for, you know, a decade or maybe more, and then came back.

And then I would just go with her when she went on vacation. Like, it was not, we were so amashed. Like, it wasn't, you know, she was not, she was, you know, unfortunately for her. So she could not get away from us, you know. So when you think about the kitchen, is she the person that you think about? Oh, yeah. So I just, and let me give a little bit of background to the story. She had had all these children when she was young, and she had been married to a man who she had been deeply in love with.

And she had been, she grown up in Scotland and had been a Episcopalian who had converted to Catholicism for her husband, which had made her, you know, very religiously Catholic, despite the fact not being born Catholic. Her husband had tragically died of Lugarig's disease, and she had had a baby that had died. So these two things really shaped her, and her kids had grown up, and she desperately needed a second act. And so I became, I think, her second act. So as much as it was, you know, it was a really reciprocal. I mean, she was really like a mother to me. And we became a sort of organization, the three of us, her. and my mom. So I asked you to take me inside the kitchen. That's okay. That's all very useful information. It's all fascinating. Can you walk me inside the kitchen and describe it? Yes. Yes. I'm sorry. No, that's okay. It was a very small kitchen, like a galley kitchen with very beautiful tiles that were sort of Italian because my mom wrote an Italian and was obsessed with Italy and had studied Italian.

at Columbia and considered herself to be sort of an Italian, despite having no connection to Italy besides her. But they took her. You know, she would always say the Italians are one of the lost tribes of Israel. No evidence to support this. And she wrote an Italian and she loved Italy. So she had these little Italian tiles that had little paintings of animals. And Margaret would make me a wagon wheel pasta with tomato sauce was my favorite thing. We ate a lot. lot of Italian food because my mom spent a lot of time in Italy. And though she could not cook, she had learned a few Italian dishes by, because she had this Italian boyfriend, you know, whatever. Very connected to it. Still, and we are still a little connected. Yeah. Yeah. When you think

about that kitchen, was it a place of respite, a place of comfort, a place. A place of comfort? a place of confusion. What did the kitchen represent of all the rooms in your house? Did you spend much time there? So there wasn't any place to sit in the kitchen because it was actually really small. So you'd have to sit in the dining room, which was really sort of attached. I mean, the thing about those kind of houses is they, or at least when I lived there, it was uniquely not specific.

It was not set up for modern life in a strange way. When you think about your childhood, you had Margaret, who you clung to fiercely. You had a mother that was jetting off all over the place. And as you write in the book and as you've talked about was someone who was a, would you say, a functional alcoholic? Yes. I think started as a very high functioning alcoholic and then eventually became what all alcoholics eventually become. When you have alcoholism in the home, food is often an afterthought.

Mm-hmm. Even for the children who need nutrition and maybe even need stability. Was Margaret your bulwark against that to make sure that you were fed? Yes. And actually, there was some stability. Yes. And actually, years later, I found out that Margaret had been an Al-Anon for 29. years or something. So there was all sorts of like wild kind of god-e-ish. So she knew.

She knew what was going down. Yeah. And that may be why she took me on vacation, why she, you know, I mean, her kids were grown and she was in her 60s or 60s at that point. So she definitely was, she definitely was not, She didn't necessarily have, you know, children that needed to be taken care of by her. But she certainly was much more committed to me than anyone would be normally. You said that Margaret needed a second act. Yeah. You know, given that she had been in Alon for so many years, if you track that with her adult children, she probably was dealing with her own addictions when they were young.

was she perhaps also looking for a second chance to get it right? Yeah, I mean, I don't know. You know, her kids turned out pretty well. And I don't know who her qualifier was. And I never asked. So because I think her husband died of, tragically, of a sort of degenerative disease. But I know that she had been deeply, deeply traumatized. And having a baby that died had really.

really rocked her in a way that, because I know, because we would talk about it all the time. And she had a, you know, I think it was deeply profound. And one of the things that was amazing about her was, you know, it's funny because I was talking to my kids. So I'm Jewish. My husband's Jewish. Her kids are Jewish. So I said, I mean, and you know, we don't really care. I mean, I grew up Unitarian.

My stepmom was Catholic. I mean, I don't really care about any of it, but I just, we did it because we wanted them to have something, something to reject. And, you know, whatever. But one of my kids was like, you know, you were definitely baptized. And I was like, no, I wasn't. And she was, and they were like, oh, you, because I was, before Margaret, I was raised, I had a Baptist nanny. And also, Margaret took me for communion all the time. So like the fact that I was absolutely baptized, which I had never occurred to me.

So the good news is I'm not going to how. Or I'm not going to purgatory. Maybe I'm going to. When I picked up your book, oftentimes when people write memoirs about their family and particularly about their mothers, you know that food is probably going to be part of the occasion. You know, and when that person is Jewish, you really think. that food is probably going to be part of the equation. And food was just not at all. And so it made me, you know, did you eat? I mean, no, I, listen, I loved, I was, when I was little, I was a fat kid and I loved food. I found, you know, I'm an alcoholic, so I got sober,

was 19, but I wasn't using food from a very young age to soothe myself. I loved, you know, one of my favorite things was these tasty cake things that they had, moon pies. I mean, I loved, I still love junk food. I mean, just terrible eating habits the worst. So yes, I definitely, definitely ate a lot. And one of the moments of my childhood was when my alcoholic grandmother put the gafilta fish in the matzabal soup. And everyone had realized that she had lost it because the gifilta fish, which is this very disgusting,

fishy kind of thing that gets put together and is like a little terrible patte is supposed to be served before the matzabal soup and then the monsas balls go in the soup. Yeah. So we did have, we ate. I must be honest with you. Yes.

I listened to your book and I read it. in tandem. And it was sometimes really hard. Yeah. I mean, you write through pain. You write about some things that are really difficult, about your mother writing about you, about watching her deteriorate,

about realizing how deep into alcoholism she was. And there was, and there are sometimes you say things, and it's just like offhand, and it just hits you like a bolt of lightning. Like you mentioned, you said that you're, it seemed like your mother didn't want to spend time, with you as if she was allergic to you. Yeah.

So I think writing about, you know, one of the reasons why I talk about being sober since I was 19 is not because I think that I'm great for doing it. Though I have to say I'm very impressed that I keep going to meetings and do what I'm supposed to do. But mostly because I want to destigmatize alcoholism. Alcoholism, I believe, you know, I was doing a reading and someone's,

said, like, how did you become an alcoholic? And it wasn't even a thought to me. You know, I said genetics. Like, I didn't have a chance. I don't have, in my mind, I do not have an iota of me that thinks that it's not genetic, especially when you're young like that. I mean, and the way that I drank, I just absolutely think it's genetic. And so one of the reasons why I want to write about this is because I want, if you're reading this book and you see you have it or your kid has it or whoever has it, that they can be like, oh, Molly had it. She saw that she had it. She went to AA and then she could have this amazing life. I love how cooking can be a kind of love language, a way to nurture ourselves and the people around us.

From chopping fresh herbs to the scent of spices, filling up the kitchen, food, care. memories, culture, and care. It connects us to our roots, to our families, and to the simple pleasure of a meal

shared with loved ones. We talk about this all the time with our guests here on your mama's kitchen. So often, the things that we accepted as just part of life, like pushing through exhaustion,

ignoring our changing bodies, or putting ourselves last, are the very things that start to feel out of sync as we get older. We hear from so many women who say that they don't recognize themselves in the roles that they used to fill almost effortlessly. That's why these stories of balance and change matter because reclaiming

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You said you also wrote this book because you wanted to help people who are also dealing with maternal issues. Maybe parents who are alcoholics, parents who were celebrities, which is its own thing. It's not as big of them. And maybe parents who are a bit spacey. One of the things you noticed that your mom was sort of not always there. And it made me wonder, was the alcoholism part of helping her be present or helping

numb? I have no idea. I just was fascinated reading about the way that you were observing your mother as an adult now, looking back as yourself as a child. child observing her. What did you think that you had to offer besides your own experience with sobriety in terms of helping people navigate?

There are entire books about adult children of alcoholics. But when you're in the moment, those books often aren't available to you. You don't know how do I help someone when I'm watching them make bad decisions? or I realize what looks like fun slides into the space very quickly where it's inappropriate. Yeah. Where things are said, you said that your mom would always, you think, what would it be the most

inappropriate thing she could, and then she'd say it. Always. So what did you think you could offer people in that realm? So there was a book that came out right before I got sober called Drinking a Love Story. And it did actually, it was a memoir about getting a. sober. And it actually really did hugely help people. And what I've seen... Was that the book written by the woman who was a writer for the Boston Phoenix? Yes. And she ended up, yeah, and she ended up dying of lung cancer. It was a beautiful book.

Beautiful book. And she, it was actually really helpful for people getting sober. A lot of people read it. A lot of people got sober because of it. It was really actually meaningful. The other thing that I was thinking about, and what's been actually quite cool about this book is that when I've done events, people just want to talk to me about their parents, you know, and their kids. And they have these kids. They have these parents. They don't know how to manage. And, you know, why I wrote this book was because I couldn't believe how hard it was. Like, I had, you know, I'd gotten sober at 19. I knew how to do hard things, right? I had these pregnancies, which were like, you know, one, I had diabetes and I had a very tough delivery and I had a C-section scar that opened.

I had, and it was anemic. You know, I've had a lot of tough stuff. So I didn't consider myself to be a wimp, but I could not believe how hard it was to take care of elderly parents. Like, it just, they, they, they, I couldn't do it right. I felt terrible. they were mad at me. I mean, it just was awful. And I thought to myself, here I am with all this privilege, right? I could use their money to take care of them. So it wasn't like I had to use, you know, a lot of my friends are like trying to decide whether kids can go to camp or the parents can have the care they need, right? I mean, like. Nothing prepares you for this. We don't have this conversation. I mean, you've heard me say this in our other job, which I talk about all the time. Yeah. 12,000 people a day are turning 65. And we're going to be. We're going to be. We're going to be. We're going to be in. We're going. We're going. We're not. We're not. We're not. We're not. We're not. We're not. We're not. We're just not having a conversation about the aging of the baby boomers. Yes, and it's a huge group, and it's wildly expensive, and there are not great choices,

and it's just very tough. So I couldn't believe how hard it was, and you know, part of it is that I process life through writing, and part of it is that I felt that if I couldn't believe how hard this was, and I'm pretty competent, then probably other people felt that way, too. And that's what I felt with the book is like, people are like, oh, my God, this is me. Oh, my God. I have, you know, like, this is my situation. And I think even like, you know, there are parts of my childhood that are bad, though I would argue.

I always say, and I think it's really true. Like, I was cared for. I had a say, you know, there are, we both know a lot of people who had, you know, this government is causing people to have childhoods that are. where there's no safe place to stay and there's no food and there's a, you know, and where this government is cutting sap benefits. So there, I mean, there are children who will go hungry tonight who will have had much worse childhoods than mine. So, you know, I was say, even though it wasn't maybe exactly, you know, it had problems, but, and certainly I chronicle them, but it's nothing compared to like being poor or like trying to keep your mom from

overdosing on heroin. You know, we both know kids who grew up a lot of kids who grew up like that. So I do want to say that just because I think it's important to sort of level set. But that said, it doesn't matter how good or how bad your childhood it is. This parent stuff is real hard. And that's what you, you know, I mean, and so when after I've done events, like people come to me for a book signing and you know, they'll say, oh, my mom, my dad, my this, my that. And then the people, and you know, and you'll be like, I know, you know. And then eventually you'll get someone who's like, I'm an only child. And you're like, I'm so sorry. Because there's no other person to, you know, there's nobody to even complain about not doing anything. It's just you.

I keep referring back to the book because I was really so struck by some of the things that you said. But you, you know, in the very beginning of the book, you basically, the beginning of the book could be put your seatbelt on, you know, your prologue because you basically spell, this is my mom. This is what life was like with my mom. And this was like when she got, she started to show signs of dementia at the moment that your stepfather was also marching into a very difficult period of his own with real health challenges. And so you were dealing with two people. And then the double whammy of having to parent someone who you felt didn't properly parent you. Yeah. So the, so my stepfather had Parkinson's, which, can be really fine for a long time. So he had, he had Parkinsonian's dementia, which is this kind of Parkinson's that's very, that's very, it's sort of the end of Parkinson's. So he had the end of Parkinson's.

And he was aware of that. He was aware of that. And it was very tough. And it was, you know, a very kind of, you know, he had been fine. So this is what happened. He had had Parkinson's and been fine for a long time. And then it sort of tipped over into dementia. And it was hard to tell because I knew she had dementia, but I thought he was okay.

And, you know, they were never parents where you could tell them what to do. Well, and you write about one of the moments that was the line of demarcation, which gets your attention. One thing when you read it, but another thing when you're listening to it, where you talk about, and excuse me for saying this, you know, just warning the listeners and warning the viewers. Your mom was spending a lot of time in the bed, just kind of in the bed all the time and drinking and kind of zoning out. Yeah. And you discover poop in the bed. Yeah. Yeah, that was the moment when I saw it. have to do something. That was the moment. I couldn't. I couldn't. That was it. That was that was, that was, that was, uh, the moment that I decided. And the way you write about it and, and it was almost

like a soliloquy. It almost felt like a Nicene creed. You kept repeating it because I found this, because I found this. And you kept repeating that word. That's even hard for me to say out loud right now. But you just were saying it over and over again in print. And then, you know, as you're listening to it, as if you were convincing yourself, I have to do something. That was like almost an epiphany for you? That was the moment that you realized something has to be done? Yes. I mean, that was absolutely the moment that I realized that I had to do something. And it was it was a galvanizing moment for me. And that was when I decided that that was the moment I decided that I just could not let them live like this anymore. And I think that a lot of, again, there are people

who don't have parents, who have parents who will just be like this, we want to move into this nursing home or this assisted living place or, you know, this seems like the right thing. But these were not those people. These were people who just did not want anyone telling them what to do. So I really had to wait until that it was at that demarcation line where it was bad enough for me to get in there, but not so bad that somebody got hurt. And I remember one day going in there, This is really gritty. But my stepfather is opening this box with a very sharp knife. And I'm like, he's got Parkinson's.

And I'm like, he's going to kill himself with this thing. And, you know, it was miraculous that we got to where we got. And I was able to get them into a place that was safe before something really terrible happened. And as people were always approaching you. to talk about your famous mother. And then later on, they're approaching to talk about your famous mother's behavior. Yeah.

Now, as you're out in the world and you've written a book about your relationship with her, people are pulling you aside not necessarily to talk about her, but to talk about their own parents. Is that in some ways edifying for you that you've gotten to a point

that your mom isn't the subject of conversation that people always want to talk about? Or if they are, it's tangential to something else that is more important. So what happened was right before this book came out, I thought, oh my God, I've ruined my life. I thought, I had a real career that had nothing to do with Erica Zhang and I put myself back in this nepo baby space. And what a huge mistake. What was I thinking? That's literally what I thought. I was like, this was a huge mistake. And then weirdly,

the book did really well and people really responded to it. And I had all of these people telling me like, this is me, this is me, this is me. Because like my nightmare was writing a book that was like self-pitying or was like a, you know, that this, you know what I mean? And this book was, I didn't want that. I wanted to be, I wanted the book to be, a story that people could relate to, you know.

And it seems like you weren't settling scores either. It wasn't necessarily like mommy dearest. I did not want it to be mommy dearest. I wanted it to be absolutely the story of how we got through it, you know, and how we sort of had this, how I loved her, you know, and loved her the best I could. I certainly have always felt bad about the way. I wished I could have done more. I wish she could have lived with me.

I wish she had stopped drinking. I have a lot of wishes. But I felt like I did the best I could, you know. But that's clear, Molly. Yeah. I mean, you, when your parents get sick, you know, I've been through it, people have, it's like walking them home. Yeah. Yeah. And you have to adjust your stride to theirs. Yeah. And adjust your life. Yeah. To theirs. And you did that. You stepped up and you stepped in and

and probably had to make some decisions that felt like maybe you were shortchanging your own family to give to give them what they needed. Yeah, I mean, I, it was, I tried really hard to make sure not to do that. And I think I did, I was able to do that. But I, it was a real struggle. And that's a thing that a lot of people talk about, the sort of push and pull between what is it like to have, to be able to show up for parents. One of the things I've noticed is that a lot of times there'll be a sibling who ends up taking over and doing all of it. And it tends to be the sibling who either lives near the

parent is the girl's sibling or is sometimes the lowest functioning sibling ends up having to take over, which is such a strange thing. And then affects the sibling dynamic for the rest of their lives. Oh, yes. I mean... This is deep stuff. Yeah. It's, I mean, I have just half siblings from my father's side, so it's different, but yeah, yeah, it's really strange. Molly, most of your life, you would discover that your mother had written about you in some ways. Sometimes you'd discover it directly. Sometimes someone would say something to you that they'd read something your mother had written. And a lot of times it didn't feel accurate or it didn't feel true to you. How did that weigh on you?

How did that sit on your heart as now you were writing about her? I found it very annoying. And my first cousins, I have two first cousins that I'm very close with, and they both read the book and thought it was very accurate. So I was very happy that they said that. That's one of the questions I was going to ask you, did you vet this in the family? Because when you write a memoir, you're bringing everybody in the boat.

Yeah. Well, so I was pretty, if you read this book, it's very careful about not writing about my kids, not writing about, like, ancillary relatives who could get. Because sometimes, like, for example, my mother wrote in one of her books, she really just went after her sister's family in a way that got everyone completely crazy. So I was really careful to try not to, like, anyone who wasn't a direct, part of the story. My half-brothers didn't get any, you know, my kids, just really careful. And actually, my aunt called me up and was like, you know, father was terrible to me too.

And I said, yes, I know. But I didn't put you in the book because I didn't want to, you know, you're not, you know, I thought I didn't want to damage supporting characters. And she, I think she understood that. But it is, uh, there's definitely a lot of, you have to just, be so careful. So I gave it to, my daughter read it first because she's like a real reader. And she liked it, but then felt bad for me, which is a weird thing to have your daughter feel bad for you. And then my husband read it. He was irritated, but fine.

And then, but when my first cousins both read it, because they are very sharp and also because they live through this, one is the daughter of one aunt. the other is the daughter, the son of another aunt. They both said that they thought it was totally accurate, which really was gratifying to me for any number of reasons. So, a sigh of relief. Yeah, especially because memoir, as you know, writing about things, it doesn't necessarily jive to what happened. I started out asking you about the kitchen you grew up in.

I'm thinking about the house that you retreated to every day and the end of the day while you were on this journey as your mother and your stepfather, her partner aged, what is the kitchen like in your own home now? Does it in any way mirror the kitchen that you grew up with? Do you have Italian tiles in your kitchen? And did you try to create a space in your own home for your own kids and for your family that was informed by or is there completely different from the kitchen that you grew up in. So it was an open kitchen. It's an open kitchen in my apartment. And so there, you know, you can sit in the kitchen. In the dining room is really part of the kitchen. So, and there's a little couch so you can really sit in the kitchen.

So yeah, I mean, I definitely think that it's much more, you know, it's just a totally different dynamic because I mean I was it's funny because my daughter and I were watching the Barbara Walters movie which is really good and she were and you know it's a lot about how hard it was for her to be able to parent because she had this monster career and and you know I said to my daughter you know I took all this time off in the middle of my career so I didn't have to do this and I really got to be with you guys. And it was pretty, I don't know why I never talk about that, I guess, because it feels like a moral failing. You know, when you write a book and go on tour, you continue to collect stories. You think it's done. And it's actually another part of the journey where you're

still collecting stories. Is there an additional chapter to this book based on what you're hearing from people as you're out in the world talking about these issues? I mean, definitely that people, we need to talk more about parents. We need to talk more about elderly parents. That is very clear. I mean, the response I get is mostly like we need to talk more about elderly parents because we are not set up for the kind of aging crisis we're about to go into. Yeah, and you're creating a space for people to do that.

Molly, you know in the show we always ask people to share a recipe that means something to someone. And I know that I and Roy Wood have failed. No, Roy did have a recipe. Oh, he did? He had a memory. He just didn't have a recipe. He loved biscuits. He loved his grandmother's biscuits.

But he said, I have no idea how she made them. So we had to turn to our listeners and say, help a brother out. I once had a baked Alaska. It really got me, captured my imagination, pound cake, Sarah Lee pound cake from the store in the freezer, cut it in half, put it in in a cake pan, in a cake pan, in a loaf pan, ice cream, like, you know, that ice cream that comes in a box, you know, where you take the box. Yeah, you pick the top off, like, and growing up for me, it was Kemp's in my part of the world. I don't know what it would be

where you are. And it's a paper carton, so you can pull it off, then you cut into it, you cut a slice of it, you put it on top of the pound cake, you put another piece of pound cake on top, Then you egg whites whipped up with sugar until their hard peaks. And then you cover the pound cake and ice cream in the hard. So it is in, then you have to take a meringue that you put on top of that. Right. You put the meringue. You have to take it out of the pan. No, you put it in a pan. You put the in a cake pan. You put the meringue on the top. No, you have to cover the meringue. So I think it has to be in some other kind of pan.

So you can put meringue on either sides. It can't be a cake pan. Maybe it's a trifle or something like that. Yeah. I've never made baked Alaska, so I'm actually... And then you can put it in the oven. You can put it in the oven. And then the alas, the meringue keeps the ice cream from melting.

And the peaks get kind of brown. It's amazing. It's like incredible. So when did you first have baked Alaska? and why did it blow your mind? When I was a kid and it blew my mind, I thought this was like the greatest thing I had ever had when I was like in middle school.

I could not. I was so incredibly impressed with it and it's still to this day just a genius. Have you made this? No. Well, we must do this. We must figure out how to do it. I'll come to your house in Washington, D.C.

And we will go. And we'll make a bake Alaska. We need to figure out what kind of pan we need for that. We'll call Dory Greenspan, another one of our prior guests. And she'll walk us through how to do this. Yes. Yes. I would love that.

Molly, I've loved talking to you. Oh, I've loved talking to you. Thank you for your candor and your wisdom. I know that this book could not have been an easy journey for you. It seemed like you were surrounded by a good team, good on your editor for holding your hand through this process. And good on you for sending this book out into the world. Thank you.

Thank you for having me. All right. Well, listen, for anyone listening, if you have not read Molly's book, make sure that you take the time to find it again. It's called How to Lose Your Mother, a daughter's memoir. I love diving into deep conversations I have on the show.

And for me, some of the deepest conversations end up happening on the road when I'm with my family in a comfy seat of a car. And that's why I'm so happy that Rivian has gifted me an R1S so that I now have a car that I can travel in with my family without having to stop at gas stations and interrupt our conversation. So thanks to Rivian and thanks to you for joining us. As always, our inbox is open for you to record yourself

and share some of your own stories, your memories, your recipes from your kitchen growing up, maybe thoughts on some of the previous episodes. You have heard, make sure to send us a voice memo or a video recording at YMK at higherground Productions.com for a chance for your voice to be featured in a future episode or perhaps one of your videos to be featured now that we're also on YouTube where you can watch these conversations and listen as well. If you want to try making Molly's baked Alaska, we are going to have a recipe for that on the website. That's your mom's kitchen.com. You can find all the recipes from all the previous episodes and I'll have to upload a video when Molly and I actually make this contraction together.

And I look forward to that. Thank you very much for being with us. Make sure you come back next week and the week after that because here at your mama's kitchen, we are always serving up something delicious. Until then, be bountiful. I'm Michelle Norris.