We launched I Think I’m Ready to Talk at the Elmhurst Art Museum, surrounded by the people who got me through it.
Patrick introduced me.
I have lived these pages in my own way alongside her.
Often showing up in the way she needed, and—honestly—sometimes not.
I’ve learned that such pain and change in a partnership may start with one side, but can never be one-sided.
I’ve learned about the power and depth in listening, beyond anything vocalized to a deeper awareness.
And I’ve learned, through Erin’s story, about the power in speaking up—
being ready, able, and brave enough to talk.
Here’s what I said.
Well, this is a lot of firsts.
The first time my dear sweet husband had a speech written and ready. When he proposed, he thought he could wing it, and all he could say was “I love you, koala.” That was thankfully just us.
For those of you who were at our wedding — he did basically the same thing then.
This is a first for me, too. I have never spoken much out loud about what I went through. Especially not to this many loved ones in front of me, all at once.
Almost every one of you has said some version of the same thing to me.
I’m so sorry you went through this.
I wish I’d been there.
I would have come.
I didn’t know.
I’m sorry.
I believe you. All of you.
But what I want you all to know — you weren’t there because I didn’t tell you.
I’d like to blame HIPAA. I’d like to blame the healthcare system. I’d like to blame anesthesia, and 2020, and the fact that there is no good time to bring this up — not at brunch, not at Christmas, definitely not at the Maloney Christmas party.
But it was me. I was my own version of HIPAA.
I didn’t tell you how hard it was to form words for some time after an eight-hour brain surgery.
I didn’t tell you how bad the miscarriage was.
I didn’t tell you about the emergency abortion. Some of you are finding that out right now, in a room with passed apps. I’m sorry about the timing.
I didn’t tell you how much pain I was in — the kind you reorganize your day around.
I didn’t tell you that I was throwing away my pain pills instead of taking them, because I wanted a clean read on whether I was actually getting better. But that’s not how health works. I know that now.
I didn’t tell you how scared I was that it would happen again.
And I didn’t tell you how bad the postpartum was. How much I was struggling.
I had the baby. The one I wasn’t sure I’d get. And I stood in his room at two in the morning and could not say out loud that I was not okay.
That one I barely told myself.
Patrick, you were there for all of it. You slept in the chair. You learned which nurses to ask. You learned what the tone of each grunt meant, even when I got annoyed with you for the never-ending question: “How are you feeling?”
I still didn’t tell you all of it. I gave you the version with the edges filed off — usually after, usually much later. I’m sorry. You have been remarkably gracious about being married to someone whose first instinct in a crisis is to handle it quietly, alone.
I’ve had a lot of time to think about why I didn’t allow myself to talk.
I didn’t want to be a burden. I didn’t want to hand anyone a worry they couldn’t do anything with. I didn’t want to answer questions when I didn’t have any answers — and for a long stretch, I didn’t. I had a calendar full of appointments and a very specific kind of silence.
Some of that was protective. Some of it was true.
And some of it was that I would simply rather be the person who is fine. Fine is a whole personality. It works right up until it doesn’t.
So instead of telling you, I wrote two hundred and sixty pages. I had those pages professionally bound and printed by a publishing house. Which is, I think we can all agree, a completely normal and proportionate response to a hard conversation.
The book is called I Think I’m Ready to Talk. The “I think” is load-bearing. It was extremely true when I titled it. It’s a little less true tonight.
A friend in this room gave me that title. Once I had clawed myself out of the darkness that postpartum brought, she told me, “I knew you would talk once you were ready to talk.” I owe her not only for the title, but for the patience she granted me.
Some of you in this room kept me alive.
Some of you sat in waiting rooms for hours with nothing to report, because there was nothing to report. Some of you texted consistently for a year and never once needed me to text back. You kept showing up for a version of me that was telling you nothing, and you never made me earn it.
And some of you are here for the wine — which, honestly, fair. Same. Thank you for being here, no matter the reason that brought you.
What I’ve learned, and I learned it a difficult way, is that not talking doesn’t protect anyone.
It doesn’t even work. They can see it on your face.
It just leaves you alone in the room with it. And it leaves the people who love you feeling like they showed up late to something they were never actually invited to.
You were always invited. It just took me until now to send that invite.
I’m talking now. It’s in the book, and it’s out here too — you can ask me things. The parts that made the final cut and the parts that didn’t.
I am now, thanks to all of you, an open book.
Let’s talk.