Tembi Locke: My thing was, if I'm going to tell the story, then I have to lay myself bare. I can't half-ass it, I can't give you a little window in. I have to let you be there, and I have to allow myself to be as vulnerable as I was living it. I have to bring that back to the page, and that's wasn't always easy.
Announcer: You're listening to the MILF Podcast. This is the show where we talk about motherhood and sexuality, with amazing women with fascinating stories to share on the joys of being a milf. Now here's your host, the milfiest milf I know, Jennifer Tracy.
Jennifer Tracy: Hey, guys. Welcome back to the show. This is MILF Podcast, the show where we talk about motherhood, entrepreneurship, sexuality and everything in between. I'm Jennifer Tracy, your host. Back to my normal role this week of being the interviewer. I hope you guys really enjoyed the pod-swap I did last week with Jackie MacDougall and her 40 Thrive Podcast. If you didn't get over to her podcast to check out the other half of that pod-swap, please do. It was really fun and I just love and adore her.
Jennifer Tracy: Hi. Episode 51. I mean, we're on the other side of 50 right now. We're over the hill. Is the hill 40 or 50? I don't know. Anyway, really exciting guest on the show today. I can't wait to introduce her. But before I do, I'm going to make a few short announcements.
Jennifer Tracy: Number one is just to remind you that the organization that I'm focusing on for June for the give is FamiliesBelongTogether.org. You can find their information on my website, MILFPodcast.com, in the Giving Back page, or you can go directly to them, FamiliesBelongTogether.org and make a donation. As always, is you write an iTunes review for MILF Podcast in the month of June, I will donate $25 for each review written in the month of June for my podcast. So that's that, check that out.
Jennifer Tracy: Another thing is, we have our live podcast event coming in July, here in Los Angeles. We're going to do a live podcast event Wednesday, July 24th, at Dynasty Typewriter Theater, which is in Los Angeles. It's about halfway between Koreatown and Downtown, in this beautiful, beautiful theater. I'm so excited that we get to do it there. And there's going to be some fun stuff happening that night, some fun surprises.
Jennifer Tracy: There's going to be some pole dancing, there's going to be four beautiful women on stage with me that are going to be talking with me about sex after kids and just sex in general, but particularly what happens after you have a child and how do you have sex, do you have sex, do you want to have sex. All of those things.
Jennifer Tracy: And I want to talk a little bit about some of the guests. I haven't revealed who any of the guests are until today. So I'm going to reveal three of them, but the last one is going to remain a mystery, for a couple more weeks.
Jennifer Tracy: The first guest that's going to be in the live podcast event is Sabrina Hill Weisz, who was my very first guest on the show. She was on episode one, she's also one of my best friends. She's such a milf, and she's just delightful. And Sabrina and I have known each other got, gosh, now, 16 years, and we performed sketch comedy together for years and years and years, and she's a delight. She also does the opening titles for the show. She does the announcing and announces me in. That's her beautiful voice.
Jennifer Tracy: The second guest is going to be Wendy Miller. Wendy was recently on the show. She was episode 43. She was the Head of Programing for Playboy TV for seven years, and she is a sexologist, so she's going to definitely have quite a lot to add to our conversation about sex after kids and just sex in general.
Jennifer Tracy: And the third person I'm going to reveal is the beautiful Christina Grance who was in episode eight of the show. She has a little boy who's almost two, so she's really in the thick of it. She also has her own lingerie business, online lingerie business, and she's killing it in all areas. So she's going to be on stage as well.
Jennifer Tracy: Anyway. That was just a little reveal of that. If you want to get tickets for the show, which I highly recommend doing ahead of time, you can go to my website, MILFPodcast.com under the Events age there's a link to buy tickets, so you can go to the Dynasty Typewriter website and buy them there. Again, it's Wednesday, July 24th. I hope to see you there.
Jennifer Tracy: Today's guest is Tembi Locke, author of the memoir From Scratch. This book literally ripped me apart, and then put me back together again. I was so blown away. I didn't actually want the book to end. I kept kind of drawing out, finishing it. I would look at it and go, "God, I really want to read that, but I don't want it to end," so I al let it sit for a couple days.
Jennifer Tracy: Honestly one of the best books I've ever read. Top five books I've ever read. I obviously don't say that very often, so I can't recommend it highly enough. Reese Witherspoon actually picked it last month as her book of the months for her book club.
Jennifer Tracy: Tembi's been on this amazing book tour, because it was just released last month so I've been watching her just really shine and go, and do cooking events, and book signings, and it's just so amazing.
Jennifer Tracy: And when I got to go to her house and meet her, we had never actually met. A mutual friend hooked us up. It was just like instant love. We just... well, I'll speak for myself. I fell in love with her. The interview definitely demonstrates that. Anyway. I really hope you enjoy my interview with Tembi. Thanks so much for listening.
Jennifer Tracy: Hi, Tembi.
Tembi Locke: Hello, Jennifer.
Jennifer Tracy: Thank you so much for being on the show.
Tembi Locke: You have no idea how thrilled I am.
Jennifer Tracy: This is really such an honor. I have so many things I want to talk to you about that we're not going to get all of it in, but we'll get a good, solid, juicy at least 45 minutes of it.
Tembi Locke: Let's do it. Let's do it.
Jennifer Tracy: I'm in the middle of reading your book, and I was just telling Corinne this last night, our mutual deal friend, it is one of the most beautiful books I've ever read, literally. I can't put it down, the way I'm totally with you, and what struck me when I was thinking of this this morning as I was reading it, what I love most about it, one of the many things, is that I am experiencing... I'm going to get emotional. I should've brought tissues with me.
Tembi Locke: I have some.
Jennifer Tracy: I'm experiencing you fall in love with your husband over and over and over again, and it's exquisite, and it's hopeful just of life, and love, and the world. It's exquisite. I'm so excited to sit and talk with you, and I want to learn more about you...
Tembi Locke: Thank you. That lands so deeply in my heart. I'm a first time writer, so I didn't come to writing about my life from the sense of I have an MFA, or I've wanted to do this my whole life. No. I had a story that I felt if I didn't get it out of me and share it, that I would suffer another kind of grief. When I sat down to write it, and maybe I'm jumping ahead, I don't know-
Jennifer Tracy: No. There's no order.
Tembi Locke: But when I began, in earnest, when I really knew, okay, this is a book and I feel like I should tell it this way, one of the things that I did, was I wrote a letter to myself. And the letter, I don't have it in front of me, but effectively what it said was, let this book, this endeavor, this project that I'm embarking on, let it touch as many hearts as it possibly can, and if I've done that, then I've served the larger cause.
Tembi Locke: So whenever I would get stuck in the writing or when whenever it would be hard, I would come back to the letter that I wrote to myself, as a reminder that I could bring to the best that I could with the skills that I have, but just anchor it in a heart place, so that when you, as a reader, share that, or give me that feedback, I know that I feel like that wish was fulfilled in terms of the heartfelt intention behind the writing.
Jennifer Tracy: Yes. It's interesting that you bring that up. I have my students do that as an exercise. As a published author, I have them write a letter to their current self-
Tembi Locke: That is fantastic.
Jennifer Tracy: ... from that perspective. Very much just similar to what you're saying, because it is so hard to write a book. I mean, it is just so hard to write a book, and we're going to get into that in a minute. But to have that staying power and what you talk so beautifully about throughout the book and in your TED Talk, which I also enjoyed, which is that depth of unconditional love and connection that is present and that has within you grown because of not despite of this incomprehensible loss.
Tembi Locke: Exactly, exactly. Yes. And that is something that it has taken me... we've got a phone ringing here. Get this-
Jennifer Tracy: No problem. We'll just pause for a... yeah. Real life happens.
Tembi Locke: That's how analog I am.
Jennifer Tracy: That's right. [inaudible 00:10:06]. It's actually kind of comforting.
Tembi Locke: Well, you know why I keep it?
Jennifer Tracy: Because earthquakes?
Tembi Locke: Because no one calls-
Jennifer Tracy: 911?
Tembi Locke: You're supposed to do it for that. I actually keep that line for my mother-in-law. She doesn't like calling on cellphones, for one, I think she has a hard time getting through sometimes, for whatever reason, calling. It's familiar, she's used that number for 20 years, she likes it, and she can leave a message, and it's great. When she hears the cellphone... anyway. So I leave it for her.
Jennifer Tracy: That's precious.
Tembi Locke: I leave the phone for her, and it's her and solicitors. Those are the only people calling.
Jennifer Tracy: Hilarious.
Tembi Locke: Anyway.
Jennifer Tracy: I love it. We're going to go into the book and how that was birthed. It blows my mind to hear you say the words, "I'm a first time writer" but I really want my listeners to hear this, because I always tell people, "You're an innate storyteller. We all are." We're raised hearing stories, telling stories. It's how we make sense in the world. And you came in knowing that you wanted to be an actress, so you were just like... you knew you were a storyteller from day one.
Tembi Locke: Yes.
Jennifer Tracy: So the fact that you're like, "I've never written a book..." I have that cookbook, Plenty. My God, it's so good. It's such a good one-
Tembi Locke: [crosstalk 00:11:31] delicious.
Jennifer Tracy: Of course you have amazing cookbooks.
Tembi Locke: Well, some are Saro's, some are mine. I have a kind of weakness for the printed word, and I like books around me, and cookbooks are like, oh.
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah, and I want to touch the pictures and get sauce on them.
Tembi Locke: Absolutely.
Jennifer Tracy: I love doing that. So sorry. I have a little bit of ADD, and you'll notice that throughout the conversation. The fact that you-
Tembi Locke: I love it. Bring it. I love it. I laugh because everybody in my family knows that if you can say something in five words I'll say it in 50, in speaking. So the fact that I'm doing a podcast, I'll be happy if we get through all your questions.
Jennifer Tracy: Hilarious. I'm the same way, girl, so this will be a feat for both of us.
Jennifer Tracy: When did you come up with the concept for this book? Your husband died in 2012, and how long after that did you realize, "I want to write a book. I need to write a book"?
Tembi Locke: I'll back up a little bit.
Jennifer Tracy: Please.
Tembi Locke: Okay. So the genesis of me beginning to write actually happened after he was initially diagnosed. Maybe two years or so after he passed, and I was a new mother, so you can imagine being a caregiver and a mother to a baby-
Jennifer Tracy: A newborn, yeah.
Tembi Locke: ... so much was coming at me. I was facing these two different sort of junctures in life, one, caring for an ailing partner, husband, lover, and then also being mom to baby, so I-
Jennifer Tracy: Did you have any help? I'm sorry to interrupt you. Did you have assistance of any kind, help?
Tembi Locke: That noise. Okay. I had family who would pitch in here and there, and for a period of time, we did, we blessed ourselves with someone who came, a nanny, which sounds like a very formal, but was basically-
Jennifer Tracy: A babysitter.
Tembi Locke: Yeah. We found each other on Craigslist. She came three days a week for three hours, and that was helpful. So in that time, the creative part of me inside felt that I didn't have a place to express all that was happening. And I was still acting, but acting is hit and miss, it's based on other people's timelines, and auditions, and when you book something. So I needed something that I could come to creatively and just write.
Tembi Locke: And I was doing it initially just to make sense of my lived experience, so I took writing classes at UCLA. I took some on campus, but mostly online because if I was sleepless I could write at two in the morning. And I kind of just did that off and on for, I don't know, six, seven years, with the idea at one point, I thought maybe I'll write a book about caregiving.
Tembi Locke: But it was not the time, and I couldn't quite wrap my mind around it, but I kept loving the journey of writing, so I kept taking classes. And then after Saro passed, I felt like, okay, I think I want to write a book, but I didn't know what that would look like, I didn't know where it would begin, I didn't know what it would encompass. I mean, I knew it would be at the root about our love, but I said, "Well, now I'm grieving, so how do I escort that..." I know, I didn't know were do I begin the story, where do I end the story, what's the... you know. And I needed to sit with that.
Tembi Locke: So that kind of hung out, incubating in my imagination for three years. So three years after he passed, I felt, okay, I'm ready in earnest to really begin thinking about a book proposal, thinking how I would actually structure this, because at some point I'm going to want to do this. And I continued to take workshops.
Tembi Locke: Still, not really ready, not quite sure-
Jennifer Tracy: And you're raising a daughter.
Tembi Locke: And I'm raising a daughter-
Jennifer Tracy: Solo. Yeah.
Tembi Locke: ... and I'm still in the lived experience, so it was really one of the summers that I was in Sicily, and I looked around and I thought, "Oh, I've had three summers here after Saro's passing." I looked at my daughter, I looked at my mother-in-law and I looked at me, and I literally had a question, "How did we get here?" And that question became the book.
Tembi Locke: I needed to answer that, and I thought that's something I would want to answer in a book for myself, for a reader, and also for my daughter to have a story. She takes for granted, this just happens every summer, we go see her grandmother in Sicily. And I knew that there were parts of her dad's life that she didn't know, and I wanted to be able to share them. And she was always asking me, "Tell me a story about babbo. Tell me a story about babbo." And there were some I can tell and some that were not age-appropriate to tell, so I didn't tell those.
Tembi Locke: So three years after his passing is when I really began to think about a book. And I kind of then continued to tinker and write, and tinker and write, and shape my thinking of the book. And really as I approached his fifth anniversary, that's when I was ready to... I think I can curse on the podcast.
Jennifer Tracy: Fuck yeah you can.
Tembi Locke: Great. I was ready to shit or get off the pot basically. I was like, "Okay, I'm ready to do this." And I think there's something about grief and loss that five years is a significant marker of time, and I felt that I'd had enough experience after his passing, and I was solid enough in my life to be able to look back, and to also be able to share. I've done enough making sense of some of the early parts. I had to heal basically. I need to heal. I couldn't jump in and be like, "Hey, let me start writing a book." I was raw. If anything, I wrote tons of letters to people just thanking them, complaining. My writing, it was very raw actually.
Jennifer Tracy: Therapeutic.
Tembi Locke: Therapeutic, and you need to make sense before you can share. And the memoir, at the crux of memoir is being able to have lived enough and made sense of it enough to then go share. So at any juncture before that five-year, I just wasn't ready. I wasn't ready emotionally, but also I hadn't had enough of the living to tell the story I wanted to tell.
Jennifer Tracy: And make sense of it-
Tembi Locke: And make sense of it-
Jennifer Tracy: ... in a different way.
Tembi Locke: And make sense of it in a very different way. And I had someone tell me one time, I was working on a project and I was working in Vancouver, and I was on the plane back with one of the writers on the show, and at that point Saro was still alive, this was probably about two years before he passed, and she was just chatting me up.
Tembi Locke: And I said, "You know, I'm writing," and she goes, "You're writing?" Because I was acting on her show. And I said, "Yeah," and she said, "Well, what are you writing?" And I shared with her, and she goes, "Well, this is my advice to you. Keep writing..." and she said, "... and write down exactly what you're experiencing right now, because it will never be as fresh to you again. So keep writing that. You'll know when you're ready." And that conversation stayed with me. Paula U. wherever you are out there in the world, that's you that I'm talking about.
Jennifer Tracy: I love that.
Tembi Locke: And Paula's advice became really critical at the five-year mark when I was really to go back and write a blog. All that writing that I had been doing two years before he passed, when he was critically ill and in the hospital, or the six months after he passed, I had this sort of document of my lived experience that I could go back to. And Joan Didion talks about keeping journals, keeping a notebook, all of that stuff. That became really key.
Jennifer Tracy: I can say this having just freshly closed the book before I got in my car to come over here... I'm in the middle of the book right now... is that I can feel that just in the texture of the book, in the words, in the descriptives. Like, the way that you describe each scene and each moment and each place, I really feel like I'm there with you, because the details are there.
Tembi Locke: Thank you.
Jennifer Tracy: It's so specific.
Tembi Locke: Thank you.
Jennifer Tracy: So that is so interesting, that you had all the documentation. How did you decide... because the book goes back and forth in time, which I love.
Tembi Locke: Okay, thank you.
Jennifer Tracy: I love that. I love everything about it.
Tembi Locke: I was scared of that. I have to be honest with you.
Jennifer Tracy: Right. It's because it can be scary. And some writing, "Experts" will say, "Don't do that," or, "Don't do flashbacks" or whatever, and I always say, "Don't listen to anybody who calls themselves an expert." And also, you have to tell the story in a way that you want.
Jennifer Tracy: Anyway. How did you decide how to do that, and then how on earth did you figure out how to... because it is seamless. I don't stop and go, "Wait. Where are we?" I just go, "Yeah, we're here," or, "Now we're here in Sicily again and it's this time." There's no pause in me that goes, "Where are we."
Tembi Locke: I mean, I can talk on a very practical level, and then I have to get a little woo woo.
Jennifer Tracy: All of it. Yeah. All of it.
Tembi Locke: Because some of it happens in a woo woo space.
Jennifer Tracy: Yes. I'm very woo woo.
Tembi Locke: Okay. Okay. So I always knew that for me, I don't think linearly, my experience as a grieving person, there's nothing linear about that. I would come down the stair in 2013 around the corner and there's something that reminds me of 2006, and there's my child and she's wearing the same sweater she... you know, memory doesn't work in a linear fashion.
Tembi Locke: So I knew that because the book was about loss and memory, that to just go and then A, and then B, and then C, and then D, was first of all boring as a bag of tax and secondly...
Jennifer Tracy: I thought you were going to say something else when you said, "Bag of..." I was like, "Oh."
Tembi Locke: No. We're getting there. We're warming up. We're warming up. No, but it would've felt inauthentic, and it wasn't a book a could write, or a book I was interested, or even would know how to write.
Tembi Locke: Now, that said, I knew I wanted to sort of be mosaic in my approach, I wanted it to feel the way it feels in my body and in my heart and in my memory, so that's my desire, that was my wish, and then there's the rendering. Like, okay, now how do I technically do that in a narrative form-
Jennifer Tracy: I mean, that is a very advanced writing style and writing structure, and-
Tembi Locke: Well, yes.
Jennifer Tracy: And you did it.
Tembi Locke: And it scared me. It scared the bejesus out of me-
Jennifer Tracy: I'm sure. It would scare me-
Tembi Locke: And by the way, there were many, when I... so I wrote the proposal, and I got the book deal off of the proposal. And one of the things that came back, some of the feedback that came back as I was talking to editors was, some people were like, "She's a first time writer. Nope. She needs to tell this in a straight line."
Jennifer Tracy: Interesting. That's interesting.
Tembi Locke: Like, "This is too complicated, what if she just gets lost in the middle of the narrative somewhere and you can't track it?" And I heard it, but I also was like, "Yeah, no, I think I can do this. I think I can do this. I think I can do this. I don't know how yet, but I know I can do this.
Tembi Locke: The editor that I ended up working with, she also saw the same vision. So because I know that I'm taking my reader effectively through... I mean, the book kind of touches on three decades. It touches on the '90s, the 2000s, and then current decade. And then it's in five locations, it's in three languages. I was like, "Okay. I'm taking the reader across a lot of terrain, I'm asking a lot of them, so I need to anchor it in a very specific structure."
Tembi Locke: So I felt like the three summers structure would give the reader an anchoring, and that also, my high school English, the three-act structure, beginning, the middle and an end, gave me some guardrails, so I could just kind of go off.
Tembi Locke: But then I was always touching back in time within that timeframe. So initially my first draft, my full completed first draft was not what you are reading right now. It had everything in it, but there was a lot more and things were in different orders.
Tembi Locke: Let me back up and say that initially, what I did when I began was I created an outline for myself. So I wrote for myself a timeline of my own life. Then, in my totally OCD anal, and totally scared that I could not execute the very thing I told these people I would execute, I thought, okay. So I created almost a grid, I did a timeline, and then I did A, B, and C stories.
Tembi Locke: And that's from my work as an actor in Hollywood, where you have your A story which is driving the episode, then you've got your B story, and then you've got your lesser story. So I was like, "Okay. What is driving the narrative? What is my B story that constantly is there and I need to touch back to? What are those themes? And then what are the other things that I need to just do to round it out?" So I kind of created a chart for myself, a themed chart.
Tembi Locke: I had to go back to the basics, the basics. And I took the first month of my book deal and just organized my story before I could even get to the actual... I needed a start, I needed to know where I was headed. And initially, the first chapters in my writing, I would be in Sicily, and then I would touch back to a memory in L.A., and be in Sicily, and touch back to a memory in L.A.
Tembi Locke: And I was always concerned that maybe I would lose my reader, and in that first draft, sometimes I did, but I needed to do it that way first, and then in my second draft, or the second draft I gave my editor, let me put I like that, because there were many drafts before the one that I gave my editor, then we really looked at it, and then it became making the mosaic even more a mosaic.
Tembi Locke: So I always knew I was starting on that mountain top in Sicily. You haven't gotten to the end, but I always knew where I would end. I won't give it away. I always knew where I would end. And I knew I had my three summers, and I knew I needed to anchor the reader very early on in the love and in the loss, so that they were emotionally hooked in, and that they knew Saro. So I have to bring effectively as a writer my job.
Tembi Locke: I looked at this book on two levels. One, what I'm doing as the wife, by lived experience of it, but then there's what my writer has to do to tell the emotional story. So I needed to bring Saro to life.
Jennifer Tracy: You're the author, and you're also the central protagonist, literally. Again, and I texted this to Corinne, I said, "I was hooked line and sinker from the prologue."
Tembi Locke: That prologue I worked on for years. I mean, I say that, I don't mean that it was an edit every day for a year, but I would write a section of it and then like, "Oh, okay. Hold on to that. That lives somewhere in the book." And then something else would come to me, like, "Oh, okay. Put a pin in that." And then I would... this is so getting crafty here. [crosstalk 00:27:44]-
Jennifer Tracy: No, I love it. This is my life, so, yeah.
Tembi Locke: Okay. Perfect. Because I'm learning it too and I don't know that should I write another book, if I'll use the same process, but what I did was I was like, "Oh..." I created folders for myself. First I did them actually physical. Like I went Staples hard on the paper.
Jennifer Tracy: You'll come over to my house. It is bulletin boards, I have 80 different colors of colored pens, little note cards, giant post-its, baby post-its. I have to see it.
Tembi Locke: I'm visual. Exactly. Exactly.
Jennifer Tracy: So I love it. Staples, folders.
Tembi Locke: I drive a hybrid vehicle, so I'm getting the planet back. It's a net neutral. Somewhere in there it's a net neutral, I hope.
Tembi Locke: Anyway. I categorized them thematically. All the years that I was sort of germinating ideas, if something would spark for me I'd write it, and then I'd pop it in that folder. So Sicily's first summer, "Oh, I just wrote a whole thing about plums. Okay. Go in the food folder." Some of the writings about my letters to Saro and after he passed, and missing him, that goes in another folder.
Tembi Locke: So I kind of knew that somewhere in all those folders was a complete story, and that prologue I thought, "Oh, this feels like it could be the beginning," so every time I'd write something that felt like it could fit into the prologue, I'd put it in what I would call the prologue folder. And that prologue, it was hard to write it, and I would have to step away and come back, and step away and come back. When I had to recently reread it for the audio book-
Jennifer Tracy: Oh my gosh.
Tembi Locke: Because I lived it, and it takes me right back there in all the ways. And I wanted the reader right away to know... I wanted them to feel Saro as immediately as he landed in my heart. So I thought I have to have a sense of that kind of emotional urgency. Those were my desires as I went to write the prologue.
Tembi Locke: The prologue has to do a lot in this book, because I knew I was writing a book about loss. So it's one of those things where societally we want to shut down. It's hard to think about those things to begin with, so I knew to pull a reader in, I needed to give them almost everything upfront from an emotional point of view. The love of it, the sexiness of it, the food piece, the sights and sounds of Sicily, as well as the pain, and put that there.
Jennifer Tracy: And you did-
Tembi Locke: Thank you.
Jennifer Tracy: ... absolutely exquisitely. My jaw was on the floor after the prologue. Because Corinne was like, "Have you started the book? What do you think?" I was like, "I haven't start it yet but I'll let you know." And I read the prologue and I texted her, because she had also read it... we both were fortunate enough to get pre-copies. And I said, "I'm just blown away."
Jennifer Tracy: And then I would text her after a couple chapters, I'm like, "Are you kidding me with this book? Are you kidding me with this book?" I sent her a picture of me reading the book. Seriously. And I don't do this often, but-
Tembi Locke: Thank you so much.
Jennifer Tracy: ... I'm gushing because it's genuine. This is why we tell a story.
Tembi Locke: It is why we tell a story. And I thought, my thing was if I'm going to tell the story, then I have to lay myself bare. And I can't half-ass it, I can't give you a little window in. I have to let you be there, and I have to allow myself to be as vulnerable as I was living it, I have to bring that back to the page, and that wasn't always easy.
Tembi Locke: Part of that desire I mentioned earlier about the letter I wrote to myself, is that that's the gift potentially... after Saro passed, someone said to me, "You two, there's still more you have to do, the two of you." And by the way, how beautiful was that for someone to say to a newly grieving partner, lover, spouse of someone.
Tembi Locke: And I couldn't understand the words. They didn't cognitively make sense. Intellectually, they all lined up, they were complete sentence, but I could not understand the meaning of what she was saying, but I couldn't un-ring the bell also. So fast forward, five years, when I'm ready to begin writing the book, I was like, "Maybe this is some of that." That's my esoteric.
Jennifer Tracy: I love it. And so much legacy for your daughter, if she has children, for them.
Tembi Locke: Which she is definitely like, "No, I'm not having kids." I was like, "Really? Really?" [inaudible 00:32:46] "Really, no."
Jennifer Tracy: Hilarious, hilarious.
Tembi Locke: No, I think she'll change her mind.
Jennifer Tracy: I want to ask you a question about that, because oftentimes memoirists at the beginning of the journey say, "Oh, it's going to be about my family, and they're going to read it."
Tembi Locke: Hell yeah.
Jennifer Tracy: And my advice always is, "Write as if they are dead," which in your case-
Tembi Locke: One person is.
Jennifer Tracy: ... for one party of it. Yeah. But I mean, literally, because again, you can't hold anything back if you want it to be as origin-
Tembi Locke: That is so true.
Jennifer Tracy: So how did you deal with that? Did you have any feelings of like, "Oh my God."
Tembi Locke: Yep I did. Yep I did. Yep. Yeppers.
Jennifer Tracy: Because you talk about your parents, you talk about-
Tembi Locke: Yeppers.
Jennifer Tracy: ... your in-laws. Extremely vulnerable.
Tembi Locke: Okay. Oh gosh. Yeah. Okay. So I knew that we would all have to be in the room and in the story. And I very much knew I was not in any way interested in writing a takedown book about this. That's not what this is. So I already knew that.
Tembi Locke: My starting point wasn't, "I need to reveal this person's secret." If anything, I'm revealing my own secrets about parts of me that I am still learning and discovering. I decided that I just need to write it, but every day I was like, "Oh my God, I have to get to that part of it. So it wasn't easy for me internally, but I didn't let that stop me from the writing.
Tembi Locke: Then I thought, well, let me write it first, and then I can always pull back. I can always take away, I can always edit, but I need to not put a harness on myself at the starting gate. I need to see what it's seeking to be expressed. So the only way to follow that is to actually allow it to unfold organically, and then see if it actually fits.
Tembi Locke: So there are things that I wrote that did not make the book, because ultimately when I went through the process of writing everything about everyone and also at different places in our lives, so where you meet someone in the early '90s, they may not be there emotionally or intellectually, or anything, at the end of the book. They've gone on their own journey. So I tried to also give everyone a journey, and an arc. People get to go on arcs with me, because I think that's a part of this whole... someone recently said it's like a journey of a whole family of people, and we all went on this journey together.
Tembi Locke: So yeah, I definitely thought about it, and then when I finished the draft and I knew I had something that I felt like, okay, this is what's close to what's going to be shared with the world, then I let certain people read it early, and if there was something that stood out for them, they were free to share that with me. I didn't say, "I'll take it out," but I did want to at least give a heads up.
Tembi Locke: There were some people that I just told them, a section, I'd be like, send them just a little excerpt and say, "Oh, this pops up here. What do you think? Is there anything you want to..." you know, offer that. And then for my in-laws who are in Italy, who do not read English, or speak English, for them I simply told them that I am writing a book, and this is what the book is, this is its intent, it encompasses this, and really what my hope and desire at the end of the book is that it be a kind of love letter to the fact that we're all sitting here right now in Sicily having pizza.
Tembi Locke: So I kind of tried to assure them that although I might be going into some of the parts that maybe we don't want to revisit as a family, that's a part of the story. I can't excise that from the story.
Jennifer Tracy: And what was their reaction when you called them and told them that?
Tembi Locke: I was actually present. Did it in person.
Jennifer Tracy: You did it in person?
Tembi Locke: I did it in person. I did it in person because I needed to sort of have... I'm big on transparency and accountability, so I thought I can't be responsible for how you feel, but I am responsible for telling you ahead of time and sharing with you ahead of time, and I want to gage a little bit. It felt important to me to do it in person.
Tembi Locke: They were like, "That's interesting. Good." They were like, "Okay, yeah." And they kind of were on board with it. And I was worried, because I don't know, people are private. I haven't been in a character in anybody's book.
Jennifer Tracy: Me neither. Yeah.
Tembi Locke: I don't know that I would want to. I mean, obviously I guess I am because I wrote my own book, but you know what I mean.
Jennifer Tracy: Previous to that.
Tembi Locke: Yeah. And then with my daughter, I'm there as a mom. I'm writing about parts of her early childhood, I'm writing about her origin story. I have a responsibility both as a writer and storyteller, but I also have a responsibility as her mom. And I'm not about creating something that later she's going to be like... she might be like, "What the fuck, mom?" Let's speak clean here. She might be like, "What the fuck have you done?"
Tembi Locke: We may have that conversation down the line, but my desire, my hope, is that she will look back on this, or this book will be a part of her life going forward and she'll integrate it as she will over time and decades, at different stages of her life. And maybe there're some parts of her early seven, eight, nine-year-old self that will be... again, this is her experience through my lens, but I was also aware that for her, some of those memories... I don't have a lot of memories from when I was nine. I mean, I have some, I have some key ones. Nobody wrote a book about what I was doing when I was seven or eight years old, so maybe she'll appreciate that. That's my [inaudible 00:38:55].
Jennifer Tracy: I mean, I haven't met her, I haven't had the pleasure of meeting her, but-
Tembi Locke: She's quite exceptional.
Jennifer Tracy: Duh.
Tembi Locke: She's fun.
Jennifer Tracy: Look at her parents, like, hello.
Tembi Locke: She's fun, she's fun.
Jennifer Tracy: That's so awesome. But I can imagine, again, just it's that amazing legacy of having that. Again, no one was writing about you, but how neat to have that beautiful tapestry and mosaic of your parents love. And not a lot of people can say, "Wow, my parents were crazy in love." And you guys were and still are crazy in love. And that's what I mean by the details, and I know some of the listeners will have pre-ordered your book and have it, some will be going out and rushing off to Amazon to order it right now.
Tembi Locke: Please do.
Jennifer Tracy: We're going to have links to everything-
Tembi Locke: Great, thank you.
Jennifer Tracy: ... in the show notes, and we're going to talk about all that as well.
Jennifer Tracy: Just the details of, I'm thinking of the moment in the prologue where you have the ashes in between your thighs, and it's hot in Sicily and you pull them out. I still can see the scene almost as if I'm in the car next to you, and you say, "You left a mark on the fleshy part of my thigh," and I'm paraphrasing obviously, doing a terrible job but, "Saro's favorite part of my body." And I was like, "Oh my God, he loved her so much." We all want that love, and to be a witness in the book, I'm literally inside the book with you guys. I don't know. It's so freaking awesome.
Tembi Locke: Saro was exceptional in his... I don't know. He was just incarnated in this time for that kind of heart love. I can see that now, but I have to say, he was my teacher. He was my teacher, and he taught me many things. Some things have to do with the kitchen and food, some things about your take on life and the world, but he was also just that capacity for love in that unwavering sense.
Tembi Locke: I didn't know that was possible, but he just brought it. He didn't do anything halfway when it came to affairs of the heart. He was an all-in kind of person. So you can imagine, after he passed away, that sense of... it was not only that the air had been sucked out of the room, it was like every cell on the planet felt rearranged in some way.
Tembi Locke: I remember asking my sister in a moment of desperation, I said, "What do I do with all of this?" And what I meant was one, what do I do with in part everything I learned in 10 years as his caregiver through his illness, because that's a certain skillset, and I didn't know where to put those last 10 years of my life, but then it was the bigger question, was, what I do with all this love? All this love that he gave me, left me, taught me, showed me, where does all that just go? Where does it go?
Tembi Locke: And that was a question that just, [inaudible 00:42:28] at me. Not that it had to have an answer. There was no answer for it. And in some ways, maybe, my attempt to write the book was in some ways my attempt to try to answer this. Where does the love go? Which some people might ask as like, "Where do we go when we pass?" all of that, but for me it was like, what does this love... do you die? It was just vexing. For a big primary loss like losing your lover and spouse, and I know every widowed person, every loss is unique and personal, but losing Saro because of who he was and the kind of relationship we had...
Tembi Locke: And yes, that moment in the prologue, when I lived that, that was one of the hardest moments, but it was also so clear because he'd asked me to do this thing. So as hard as it was for me... I think my cat just farted.
Jennifer Tracy: Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. I didn't think I could love any more, and in this moment...
Tembi Locke: Well, that's [inaudible 00:43:39].
Jennifer Tracy: I love you so much.
Tembi Locke: I'm so sorry that you're in my home right now and we are subject to this. May I crack a window?
Jennifer Tracy: You can, you can, but I don't smell anything because my nose is stuffed up.
Tembi Locke: Okay, well then we're fine. I will suffer-
Jennifer Tracy: But I need to share with you and we'll get back to the prologue. You're like, "It was the most difficult thing I've ever... my cat just farted." I couldn't write that better.
Tembi Locke: That's my life.
Jennifer Tracy: I had an interview recently where the woman, Andrea Abbate, who's amazing, had four dogs, and one of the dogs is very old, and was under the piano sleeping, and she was just farting the whole time horrible-
Tembi Locke: And there's nothing like an old dog-
Jennifer Tracy: ... turning the air purple dog fart-
Tembi Locke: There's nothing on the planet like an old dog's-
Jennifer Tracy: So we spun it, and we were like, "You know what? It's good for your skin. In fact we're going to open a fart facial pop-up in the Brettwood Village.
Tembi Locke: Oh my God. Hilarious.
Jennifer Tracy: We went all the way with it.
Tembi Locke: No, you have to-
Jennifer Tracy: Because it's just part of life.
Tembi Locke: It is, it is.
Jennifer Tracy: And the cat farts, that happens.
Tembi Locke: Yeah. [inaudible 00:44:39].
Jennifer Tracy: You're so adorable.
Jennifer Tracy: You were saying about the prologue, that you lived... and he had asked you to do this thing, which I wanted to interject and just say for our listeners who haven't had the pleasure of reading the book yet, Tembi's husband, Saro, had asked her to take a portion of his ashes and bring them to Sicily.
Tembi Locke: That's my quest.
Jennifer Tracy: You were doing this in this private way because there there's all this cultural boundaries where you couldn't do it that way. So she's in the prologue, climbing over fences, and doing this in secret.
Tembi Locke: Yeah. And that whole quest piece, I took a great, right back to writing, I took a great class with [Marie Murdock 00:45:24]. I don't know if you know her name.
Jennifer Tracy: Sounds very familiar, yeah.
Tembi Locke: I did a workshop with her about the heroine's journey. I was reading Zoela's, my daughter's books on mythology, which all have to do with these female heroines. And one of them is set, if we look at Persephone, that whole set which is... you know, Sicily's called Persephone's Island, that's one of the-
Jennifer Tracy: I did not know that.
Tembi Locke: Yeah. Apparently, Hades took her to... you know, she's in the underground in Sicily. So in the mythology of Sicily, Demeter and Persephone... bless you... were all very much... But that idea of quest in mythology. And there's also all kinds of ruins all over the Island of Sicily. So this all idea of mythology and quests, and Saro loved all the Homer, and he loved the Odyssey. I remember being in that car, and I have this... bless you. Bless you.
Jennifer Tracy: I'm so sorry.
Tembi Locke: That's why I have this task at hand, and I thought, "Oh my God, I am on a quest," and I have to do this quickly because there's a time constraint. I have to get back to town. And once I finished it, I didn't know as it was happening, but I thought about it the next day, I was like, "That could be the beginning," because that was kind of the beginning of the quest. I had to release in order to get something... anyway.
Jennifer Tracy: Oh my God, no. You don't have to stop talking. Are you kidding? I could listen to you for hours.
Jennifer Tracy: Can we talk about The Kitchen Widow?
Tembi Locke: Yeah, absolutely.
Jennifer Tracy: Okay, let's hear about that.
Tembi Locke: Absolutely.
Jennifer Tracy: Was that birthed before the novel?
Tembi Locke: Yeah.
Jennifer Tracy: You started doing that several years ago.
Tembi Locke: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I started-
Jennifer Tracy: So you were already writing the novel at the time.
Tembi Locke: Ish, but I didn't know I was writing a novel.
Jennifer Tracy: Got it.
Tembi Locke: You know what I mean?
Jennifer Tracy: Got it.
Tembi Locke: The Kitchen Widow really came about, and I can tell now, I can see in retrospect. In the moment I was just doing what I felt, had the heartfelt desire to do, but then hindsight gives you all of this perspective about your life.
Tembi Locke: So I was on a plane coming back from Sicily, and I remember being in the Rome airport and chatting it up with someone who was waiting to get on the plane, and she was like, "Where are you from?" She says, "Where are you coming from?" "Sicily." "Where are you going?" "L.A." And then she said, "Oh," and I said, "Widow," all the key sort of... and she said, "That's really interesting. I have a friend whose husband has cancer. What would you think I should say to her?"
Tembi Locke: Then I'd be sometimes in all kinds of social situations and people would hear key aspects of my story, in brief, you don't front load at a new meet and greet with, "Hi, I'm a widow, cancer." I mean, they'll flee the room.
Tembi Locke: But as those things would come forward, people would often ask advice, and I thought maybe what I could do is if I could create some resource, something somewhere, use my storytelling skills, my skills as an actor, all those resources I know about being in front of the camera, and put it somewhere digitally where people could find it.
Tembi Locke: So I thought I would do one video, and have a landing page. I was like, resources. And I called my friend who's a TV producer. And I knew I wanted to something around food because I'd just come back from Sicily and had literally suitcases of food, which those readers will learn about that in the book.
Tembi Locke: But anyway, I had these suitcases of food. So I got back to L.A. and I was unpacking, and I was like, "Maybe somewhere in this story I have some friends over and we'll just film ourselves talking around the dinner table, and that will be the video." So I literally started the... I backdoored my way into a whole platform, and advocacy piece that I didn't consciously know that's what I was doing.
Tembi Locke: I think I did a total of maybe five videos, and there's resources there, there's some writing, there's a blog that I kind of put there and then I backed off of because I didn't know really how much I wanted to reveal in this space. It felt like not quite the format to contain the sort of expanse of the story, but it could dip in and out of parts of it.
Tembi Locke: And it became a tool that people found me. One of the best things that ever happened is, my acting agent got a call from someone in Arkansas who said, "We would like a speaker to come to our conference and we Googled, 'Art Grief and Food.'" They put those together in the search engine and guess who popped up? And the only person who popped up was Tembi Locke.
Tembi Locke: I was like, "Oh my gosh. Well, that's the universe speaking. So yeah, I'll go talk to those people because who put three words in a search engine and only has one thing pop up?"
Jennifer Tracy: That's incredible.
Tembi Locke: And that turned out to be me. So The Kitchen Widow really at that point in my grief, was a way to kind of move forward and be expressive and do a giveback as I tried to move forward. And I really did want to thank everyone who was a part of that long journey of caregiving.
Tembi Locke: So the objective The Kitchen Widow really is to provide a space for people to think and talk about what it means to care for someone you love, or a friend, or a family member, or a coworker, or a colleague, in a time that's a critical time. Illness, a life-altering illness is a critical time, and loss, in the immediate weeks, months, years after someone passes, it's a critical time. And often we feel like, "What do I do? What do I say?"
Tembi Locke: And since I started, you know, there's the conversation project, there's the dinner parties, I'm sure you know about them, and there's so many ways, but I think we're all hungry for that conversation. And for me, it felt very natural to do it through food because Saro was a chef.
Tembi Locke: So The Kitchen Widow, I launched it, it put it out there, and then I was like, "Gosh, to maintain that whole thing is a big thing. It's a lot to do." So I've left it there as a calling card, and it's interesting now, it's kind of coming back and I'm getting messages from people, so now I'm thinking, "Hm, how am I going to grow that as well?" Because I think the book, people read the book and some find their way on that page, to that site, and they want to know more.
Jennifer Tracy: So if you guys want to find that, it's TheKitchenWidow.com and you can also find it through Tembi's personal website which has all about her book, and her speaking engagements, and her acting career. There're some fun-
Tembi Locke: Fun clips.
Jennifer Tracy: ... little snippets of her-
Tembi Locke: Those clips, I know.
Jennifer Tracy: ... acting.
Tembi Locke: Being an acter, such grace. I mean, I know everybody sort of, "So you're an actor," and I'm like, "I love it. I've always loved being an actor." When I was a kid, I was the kid who, back in the old day, I would walk behind the TV and try to figure out how people got it. My family has these stories of me as two and three, I would literally walk behind it looking, how did the people get in there? I want to get in there with them. So I feel blessed that I have made a career for myself-
Jennifer Tracy: Which is not an easy feat.
Tembi Locke: Please. Are you kidding me?
Jennifer Tracy: The rejections. But that's what-
Tembi Locke: But it teaches you tenacity.
Jennifer Tracy: Totally. And I think that's-
Tembi Locke: It's a theme.
Jennifer Tracy: Only having known you for 45 minutes, I sense that that's a big part, and everything else that you've been through, that gave you the moxie to say, "Actually guys, I'm going to write this book and I'm going to write it the way I want to write it."
Tembi Locke: Yeah. Because one of the things I have learned as an actor is that you've got to bring your vision for the character, bring your vision first, then let the collaboration begin. And you owe it to yourself as a creative person to follow that piece, your vision, with the idea that it will change, it can grow, it can expand. If I don't show up at a rehearsal like, "This is how I'm going to perform it. Everybody else step away," what is that? I don't even know what that is.
Tembi Locke: So when I started writing the book with that in mind, like, I'm going to bring my best draft that I could possibly ever write to my editor, and then we'll start the process, and then she'll help me make it better, which is what a director does on set. You're their actors. That's the collaborative piece.
Jennifer Tracy: Now your book is out. Yay. Happy dance-
Tembi Locke: I know, what a feeling that is. It is such a happy dance.
Jennifer Tracy: There're so many to list, but you're on Reese Witherspoon's... can you tell me about that? What was that like, getting that phone call? Corinne kept saying she couldn't tell me what it was. She was like, "Oh my God, okay, when you interview her, she's already going to have this news. It's going to be really exciting," I could feel her jumping up and down on the other end.
Tembi Locke: Oh my gosh. First of all, Reese is... what she is doing around women's stories, at the level of the printed page, through it being digitally, on screens, wherever, but what's she's doing with the book club... when she released that message saying that the book... I think she said, "It gives me all the feels..."
Jennifer Tracy: It does. It gives me all the feels. [crosstalk 00:54:58] That's exactly what it does.
Tembi Locke: You don't understand. I played that, it was surreal. Reese holding a picture of a book I wrote, saying my name. It was a surreal moment. And the best story was, I took a screenshot of it, sent it to my sister-in-law in Sicily. I was waiting here back from her through WhatsApp. I'm like, "Why is she taking so long to get back to me. What?"
Tembi Locke: Half hour later she texts me, she goes, "Sorry, we were in Mass, we were at church. I came out..." and she goes, "And I showed it to nonna," who's my mother-in-law, and my mother-in-law looked at the picture and goes, "Who's that lady holding a picture of my son?"
Jennifer Tracy: Hysterical. Hysterical.
Tembi Locke: She like, "Who's that lady holding a picture of..." I mean, she didn't say it with that accent because she said it in Sicilian, but the point is-
Jennifer Tracy: But if she were American-Italian, that's exactly how she would say it-
Tembi Locke: Exactly. Right.
Jennifer Tracy: She's would share in [crosstalk 00:55:53]. There we go.
Tembi Locke: Exactly. It's like the worse thing. And by the way, that and the writing, holding the Sicilian, the Italian, and the English, all simultaneously, not easy. And my copy editor wanted to kill me.
Jennifer Tracy: And yet, reading it now, again, it's so seamless. I never once have stopped and gone... and I'm on page about 160 now. It's 300 pages. I've never once gone, "Wait. I'm confused." Never once.
Tembi Locke: Perfect. Perfect. That was really-
Jennifer Tracy: It's seamless.
Tembi Locke: Okay. I worked really hard to be able to-
Jennifer Tracy: To make it look easy.
Tembi Locke: Yeah.
Jennifer Tracy: You worked hard to make it look easy.
Tembi Locke: Yeah.
Jennifer Tracy: So Reese is holding your book. And you're right now doing book tours, and you're going tonight to a place in Pasadena to do a reading.
Tembi Locke: Yes.
Jennifer Tracy: What does that feel like?
Tembi Locke: It's all wonderful. My sister reminded me, my sister's a novelist so she's been down this road before. Her fifth book comes out in September. She's my little sister, but she's my big sister in terms of book world, and literary things, and all things literary. She goes, "Tembi, let's just break this shit down." [inaudible 00:56:55].
Jennifer Tracy: Where does she live?
Tembi Locke: She lives nearby here. She's in [crosstalk 00:57:00]-
Jennifer Tracy: Oh, thank goodness.
Tembi Locke: So she says to me, "Okay, the hardest part is done. You lived it. Then you wrote about it. Now, just get to share it." And that reminder was so beautiful.
Tembi Locke: So tonight, when I get to go out and see people hold the book up, or asking me to sign it, or if the have read a bit, share something and the share is also the ways in which the story has so much, you know, the catch phrase intersectionality around so many things, but there is. The book has lots of points of intersection around culture, or language, food, geography-
Jennifer Tracy: Family, biology-
Tembi Locke: All of it.
Jennifer Tracy: Race. All the things, yeah.
Tembi Locke: Race. All of it is in there, while we're eating pasta.
Jennifer Tracy: Yes. It's all there. Handmade pasta.
Tembi Locke: Handmade pasta. So what's interesting is seeing people come up to me and the parts of the story that most resonate with them. And one of the most beautiful things someone said to me was, she was like, "I read your book," and she said, "And I loved it," she goes, "But I have a question." She was like, "That town in East Texas..." I don't know if you are there yet. I won't give anything away. But I thought to myself, okay, I kind of love right now the fact that in a book about love in Sicily-
Jennifer Tracy: She's going to take out the town in East Texas-
Tembi Locke: ... she's having to wrestle with this question. And that is the fun of it, is knowing what each reader plugs into.
Jennifer Tracy: Sure. But because you were so specific in each of those elements, that's what makes it universal.
Tembi Locke: Well, the specificity I have to say as a writer, I crib a lot of that as an actor. As an actor, a part of my job is to bring specificity to that character. How does that character hold that cup? How does that character walk? How does that character... does it chew gum? Did they pick their teeth? All those specific human behaviors, when I would get stuck in the writing sometimes I would do a whole exercise, which is what I would do as an actor, where I would just write two pages about how this character let's say would walk through a mall, or be at the store.
Tembi Locke: Now, in this case they're real people, so I've observed them for 20 plus years or whatever, so I know, but I wanted to bring those things to the reader.
Jennifer Tracy: I could talk to you for hours, but we have come to the time-
Tembi Locke: We have?
Jennifer Tracy: Girl, we've been talking for 56 minutes. I mean, with a brief break for you to get me a box of tissue, and the cat fart in between. Yes. Oh gosh.
Jennifer Tracy: So let's see. I'm going to ask you three questions that ask every mom I'd like to follow who comes on the show. Here's to all moms. All moms.
Tembi Locke: Here's to all moms.
Jennifer Tracy: All moms.
Tembi Locke: In all of our forms, in all of our beauty, our flaws.
Jennifer Tracy: It's a damn hard job. I don't know. I've been having trouble... my son hasn't been wanting to go to school, and he's tired in the morning, and I'm just like, I want to do it right. I want to hold space for his emotion and the reality of his experience, and yet, "Dude, you're going to school." You know what I mean? It's really hard-
Tembi Locke: No, absolutely.
Jennifer Tracy: ... to balance that.
Tembi Locke: Yeah. One of the best thing a preschool teacher told me was she said, Give them 100% of your attention, 50% of the time." And that was so freeing.
Jennifer Tracy: Wow, that's [crosstalk 01:00:49]-
Tembi Locke: Because the toddlers are-
Jennifer Tracy: They're constant-
Tembi Locke: She's crying. Every cry I have to... at different junctures in her development I've circled back to that. I need to give this moment 100% of my time, but I can't give every moment of my life. Everything can't be 100% all the time. And that's freeing.
Jennifer Tracy: That is gold. I wish I would've heard that.
Tembi Locke: If that helps any mom out there-
Jennifer Tracy: That helps me, that help-
Tembi Locke: But when I'm in, when it's that 50%, I'm 100% in.
Jennifer Tracy: And they feel that.
Tembi Locke: Yeah, and some days I'm going to be doing something else.
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah. And that's good modeling for her.
Tembi Locke: I think so. Yeah.
Jennifer Tracy: All right.
Tembi Locke: Goodness. I'm putting my seatbelt on. Or should I take it off? I don't know.
Jennifer Tracy: What do you think about Tembi when you hear the word, "Milf"?
Tembi Locke: Well, you know what I think. Fucking. Lots of fucking. I'm all about the fucking. Oh God, I can't believe I just said that. Just get up in there.
Jennifer Tracy: Every minute I don't think I could love you more, and then something magical happens-
Tembi Locke: I go right there.
Jennifer Tracy: I love it. I love it.
Tembi Locke: I start thinking, "Milf... fuck." I go, "Milf, milfuck."
Jennifer Tracy: God. Yeah. Okay. What's something you've changed your mind about recently?
Tembi Locke: Flavored almonds.
Jennifer Tracy: Okay. Say more.
Tembi Locke: Okay. I tend to be a purist about things, I like things-
Jennifer Tracy: Wait a minute, because I just discovered that dill, pickle, almonds and whole foods and these of which you speak?
Tembi Locke: Well, that would fall into the category, but see, now that I have opened my heart up, [inaudible 01:02:26] to the flavored almond, I'm going to have to hit that aisle. I like a dill pickle, I like that, so I might be in for that. I will text you [crosstalk 01:02:35]-
Jennifer Tracy: But what kind of flavor almonds do you enjoy?
Tembi Locke: Pretty much now I'm into the mesquit, the smoke, the barbecue. I mean, I'm like, what the hell? I've become like, throw the flavor on it and let's go.
Jennifer Tracy: Well because here's the thing. I'm such a chip fanatic. I love chips, but it's really not good for you.
Tembi Locke: Yeah, but the almonds you feel like you could do that.
Jennifer Tracy: You feel like you're getting that salty, tangy, savory-
Tembi Locke: Totally. And you get the protein.
Jennifer Tracy: And the protein.
Jennifer Tracy: How do you define success?
Tembi Locke: Success is feeling though you gave it your best. That's it. That's it. It's not about any outcome. Success to me is actually being able to show up for the process willingly and openly, and then you don't know what's going to happen. None of us knows what's going to happen. That's one thing I am totally sure of. We don't know what's going to happen.
Tembi Locke: To me to be successful is to show up in all of our full glory to the best of our ability, in that given moment, and see what happens.
Jennifer Tracy: Just as you were speaking, I just got a flash of the scene where you just met Saro. He was obviously very much into you, and you were like, "Sure, I'll come have dinner. I'll bring my friends."
Jennifer Tracy: And you describe it beautifully in your writing, I'm paraphrasing that, he basically made love to you with the food that he had brought out to the table, that he created. Again, that was again... I watched you guys falling in love again. And I watched your character, you, in the book, soften to that, and it was just so romantic, and artistic, and loving.
Tembi Locke: That's a successful-
Jennifer Tracy: My God, so yummy.
Tembi Locke: Thank you.
Jennifer Tracy: I know, I'm sorry I'm gushing so much but I'm just fresh off it and it's just amazing-
Tembi Locke: Well, and it's also nice to see Saro come to life in the heart and mind of another person. In some way, I realized recently, I was like, "I get to have him all over again in another kind of way." And that is something I didn't set out to do that, I didn't know that that could even be possible. But he's coming back to me, and sometimes we sit and we cry together because I've been doing that also during this time, but also mostly it's us, me going, "Can you believe? Can you believe? Thank you."
Jennifer Tracy: You're a remarkable woman. Yeah. I'm just blown away by you.
Tembi Locke: Thank you.
Jennifer Tracy: Okay. Now we're going to segue into some silly fun lightning round of questions-
Tembi Locke: I like silly and fun.
Jennifer Tracy: Ocean or desert?
Tembi Locke: Ocean.
Jennifer Tracy: Favorite junk food?
Tembi Locke: The potato chip. I don't actually consider pizza junk food unless it comes from Domino's. No slight against Domino in any way, but you can make a healthy... like, pizza doesn't have to be junk. Some people consider that junk food. I love pizza though.
Jennifer Tracy: Do you make pasta from scratch now?
Tembi Locke: I don't.
Jennifer Tracy: Because that's a lot of work.
Tembi Locke: It's a lot of work.
Jennifer Tracy: I've tried doing it and if you're not born into that-
Tembi Locke: No, no, no. And if you're also not doing it on the regular, no. No. I don't.
Jennifer Tracy: Because I tried doing it and it was bad.
Tembi Locke: No, no, no, no, no. And that's why they have artisanal people who do that.
Jennifer Tracy: And I get that. The whole foods in those places.
Tembi Locke: So potato chips are my-
Jennifer Tracy: Potato chips, what's your favorite kind?
Tembi Locke: I'm an equal opportunity potato chip-
Jennifer Tracy: Interesting.
Tembi Locke: ... consumer, but I do like cracked black pepper with salt. I can get down with the-
Jennifer Tracy: I'm a sour cream and onion girl.
Tembi Locke: I can get down with that, but I'm more into the barbecue-y kind of...
Jennifer Tracy: Okay. Mesquite, Chipotle. Those are the things you mentioned for the-
Tembi Locke: That's the Texas part-
Jennifer Tracy: Well, I love it.
Tembi Locke: Well, I'm there again. Yep. That's my flavor pallet right there.
Jennifer Tracy: Movies or a Broadway show?
Tembi Locke: Unless it's Hamilton, movie.
Jennifer Tracy: Gosh. So amazing. I've only seen it once here at the Pantages, but I was on the edge of my seat. I actually saw it with Kim. Yeah.
Tembi Locke: I took Zoela to see it there. Our mutual friend, Kim. Yeah. Beautiful. But no, movies. I love a good movie.
Jennifer Tracy: Daytime sex or nighttime sex? I think I know your answer.
Tembi Locke: All the time, right. That's right. All the time.
Jennifer Tracy: Texting or talking?
Tembi Locke: Unless you write a long text, because there are people... sometimes my friends make fun of me that I write very long texts, but I do think of them as like a little bit of a letter.
Jennifer Tracy: I love that. Cat person or dog person?
Tembi Locke: Animal person.
Jennifer Tracy: Have you ever worn a unitard?
Tembi Locke: Sister, maybe back in '82 for a school project.
Jennifer Tracy: Didn't we all?
Tembi Locke: God. I hated those things. One, they were not made for my type of body back in the day-
Jennifer Tracy: They're not made for anybody's body.
Tembi Locke: Well, you're long, elegant, lean. I was just to get it over the curvy bottom half, then it was nothing to do with the top. I was like, "Where the fuck did the material go?" Hated those things.
Jennifer Tracy: They're terrible. They're making a comeback, you know?
Tembi Locke: Ladies, ladies, let me do you a favorite. Stay away from the tard. Stay away from the leotard, unitard, any of the tards. Just be in clothes, have a seam, have some structure, put a button-
Jennifer Tracy: Alo Yoga leggins, or a Lululemon , or whatever it's called. Leggings.
Tembi Locke: The day you see me in a unitard, is the day you know I've gone batshit crazy. You'll know it's too much for Tembi. Somebody help her sit down somewhere in a corner.
Jennifer Tracy: Shower or bathtub?
Tembi Locke: I love a bathtub. I really do. And I've come to really love those. My step mother actually, when she was staying here after Saro passed, she would run a bath for me just as a soothing thing. That's a part of what I talk about in The Kitchen Widow, is that sort of art of comfort. Like, what is the art of comfort? There's an art to it. There's a lost art and we're trying to sort of reclaim. How do we know how to comfort each other?
Tembi Locke: And sometimes it's something as simple as, "I see you have this need. I'm going to run a bath and make a cup of tea for you." Those simple gestures that say, "Care." And I have not stopped taking baths since. I love taking baths now, and they kind of are my way to decompress, and actually they were part of my writing process.
Jennifer Tracy: Interesting. How so?
Tembi Locke: Well, when I would get stuck, sometimes I'd just go run a bath and light a candle and be like, "Let me just shake it off." Something about being in the water, and soothing, and just being vulnerable.
Tembi Locke: I hadn't thought of this until just now, but that vulnerability of taking everything off and getting back into one of the primary elements, water. So yeah, I used it in my writing process to kind of clear away the cobwebs.
Jennifer Tracy: I love that. I love that. I want to borrow that. I'm a big bath taker.
Jennifer Tracy: Ice cream or chocolate?
Tembi Locke: I like chocolate. Yeah. I like chocolate.
Jennifer Tracy: You said that so earnestly and sincerely, almost as if you were afraid of hurting ice cream's feelings.
Tembi Locke: Well because I do love gelato. My daughter is a gelato... we eat a lot of gelato, but I can eat chocolate any time of year, gelato, I have to say, I'm not into ice cream in the winter. I don't like the cold on cold thing. I really like ice cream in the summer, but chocolate...
Jennifer Tracy: Anytime.
Tembi Locke: It's all the time. It's evergreen but not green.
Jennifer Tracy: On a scale of one to 10, how good are you at ping-pong?
Tembi Locke: Is this scale going to the negative numbers? Negative five. Oh gosh, no. No. I have the worst hand-eye coordination. The worst. Like, the worst hand-eye. I actually asked my mom... I know back in the '70s when I was a kid, you know, they used to put people in the playpens?
Jennifer Tracy: Yes.
Tembi Locke: I actually am convinced that some of my motor skills did not develop because I was not allowed to crawl around on the floor. I actually think I would have better hand-eye coordination if I had not been just-
Jennifer Tracy: In the playpen.
Tembi Locke: In the playpen, just there. Now, I can think and stare at things, and observe-
Jennifer Tracy: But that's probably what made you a great writer.
Tembi Locke: Because I couldn't move.
Jennifer Tracy: Because you had to go to your mind. You were just like the zen baby in the playpen-
Tembi Locke: I guess so.
Jennifer Tracy: ... imagining these stories.
Tembi Locke: With no gross motor skills. She's just a brain in a blob.
Jennifer Tracy: What's your biggest pet peeve?
Tembi Locke: Gosh, I have so many. I do. I do, I have so many. Gosh. You need everybody in my life to answer these. I absolutely cannot stand... and my body's like I'm twitching. I hate plastic cutlery. No, no, no, you don't understand. Like, I would rather eat with my hands. I would rather lick the thing. It's something about plastic cutlery, it just feels-
Jennifer Tracy: It's terrible.
Tembi Locke: It's terrible. It's just awful. It feels awful in my hand, it feels awful in my mouth, it doesn't hold the food-
Jennifer Tracy: Looking at Tembi right now, friends, it's like she's talking about maggots crawling all over her body. That's how intensely she loathes plastic cutlery.
Tembi Locke: I do, I hate it.
Jennifer Tracy: I love it.
Tembi Locke: I hate it. I know, that's so stupid, but you know.
Jennifer Tracy: If you could push a button and it would create 10 years of world peace, but it would also place 100 year-ban on all beauty products, would you push it?
Tembi Locke: I would get 10 years of world peace, but there would be no aesthetic beauty-
Jennifer Tracy: Products.
Tembi Locke: Products.
Jennifer Tracy: For 100 years.
Tembi Locke: For 100 years.
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah.
Tembi Locke: Well-
Jennifer Tracy: Not a great deal.
Tembi Locke: No. But ladies, you're going to look rough for about 100 years, then you can get your pretty on again. But I'm going to need those 10 years of peace. I'm living through Trump right now, at the very same time that I have a teenager, so I am doing the Trump and adolescent years concurrently. So yeah, no, I need a little bit of peace-
Jennifer Tracy: World peace.
Tembi Locke: I love world peace, so we're going to have to just roll rough.
Jennifer Tracy: That's right.
Tembi Locke: With bad skin, and-
Jennifer Tracy: We'll just make the beauty products from nature.
Tembi Locke: We sure will. We can do that.
Jennifer Tracy: We're resourceful.
Tembi Locke: We are. We are. We are women, we are mothers, we are mothers that I like to follow.
Jennifer Tracy: That's right. That's right.
Tembi Locke: That's who we are.
Jennifer Tracy: Anytime anywhere.
Tembi Locke: Anytime anywhere.
Jennifer Tracy: All day.
Tembi Locke: All day. With almonds. Maybe before, after or during. Who knows?
Jennifer Tracy: Superpower choice. Invisibility, ability to fly, or super strength?
Tembi Locke: Super strength. Invisibility doesn't interest me. I think so much about being a woman and being a woman of color in the world is about visibility, the idea of being invisible I think I've done that. My whole people, my tribe, all of women, we've been there for a while. Yeah, I don't need to be invisible. Visibility.
Tembi Locke: The superpower, whatever that would mean to me, I don't know.
Jennifer Tracy: You would make it your own.
Tembi Locke: I'd make it my own. I think I want that.
Jennifer Tracy: I love it.
Tembi Locke: I want that.
Jennifer Tracy: I love it.
Tembi Locke: What if our superpower would be love?
Jennifer Tracy: Would you rather have a penis where your tailbone is-
Tembi Locke: Stop sister. Stop the madness. I can't even wrap my mind around that one.
Jennifer Tracy: ... or a third eye?
Tembi Locke: Well, I don't want a penis. And the fact that it would be on my tailbone I would be sitting on it all the time, so nah. Nah. Nah. No. I'll deal with the penis in a different way.
Jennifer Tracy: Okay.
Tembi Locke: Penis and I will find each other in a different way. I want the third eye.
Jennifer Tracy: Third eye.
Tembi Locke: Third eye.
Jennifer Tracy: What was the name of your first pet?
Tembi Locke: TCO.
Jennifer Tracy: What was the name of the street you grew up on?
Tembi Locke: Dalton.
Jennifer Tracy: So your porn name is TCO Dalton.
Tembi Locke: Baby, that is me. Bring on the pole. TCO Dalton.
Jennifer Tracy: I mean, she's from Texas.
Tembi Locke: She is so from Texas. She is totally from Texas.
Jennifer Tracy: She is up there with a cowboy hat, and the cowgirl boots, in fringe.
Tembi Locke: And then, when she's done, she will count up her cash, and she's say, "Now get the fuck out of here."
Jennifer Tracy: That's right, that's right, that's right.
Tembi Locke: "I'm done."
Jennifer Tracy: I love it.
Tembi Locke: Oh my God, this is so fun.
Jennifer Tracy: Tembi, you're amazing.
Tembi Locke: This is so fun.
Jennifer Tracy: You're just amazing. We have to do more.
Tembi Locke: Thank you. We will do more. We will definitely do more, Jennifer. This has been such an honor. You are my first podcast.
Jennifer Tracy: I'm so honored.
Tembi Locke: Everybody's going to have to measure up to you now.
Jennifer Tracy: Well, I don't know if that's going to be a challenge.
Tembi Locke: They've got to bring the warm, the fun. They've got to bring it the way you brought it.
Jennifer Tracy: Thank you.
Tembi Locke: So thank you, it's an honor.
Jennifer Tracy: And if people want to find you, what it your website?
Tembi Locke: TembiLocke.com
Jennifer Tracy: And that's L-O-C-K-E.
Tembi Locke: Yes.
Jennifer Tracy: And all of this will be on my show notes at milfpodcast.com, but your Instagram handle?
Tembi Locke: It is TembiLocke, same thing with Twitter and same thing with Facebook. You can find me there, or you can go to The Kitchen Widow or find me at Tembi Locke.
Jennifer Tracy: Awesome. Thank you so much, Tembi.
Tembi Locke: Thank you everybody.
Jennifer Tracy: Yay.
Jennifer Tracy: Thanks so much for listening, guys. I really hope that you enjoyed my interview with Tembi, and that you'll go pick up her book, or order it on Amazon. Treat yourself. Trust me, you will thank me.
Jennifer Tracy: Join me next week when I bring Cathy Ladman on to the show. Cathy is a stand-up comedian and a writer. She's wonderful and I'm really excited to share that interview with you.
Jennifer Tracy: Also, just a reminder, pick up your tickets for the live event. Don't wait. Milfpodcast.com or DynastyTypewriter.com for the MILF Podcast Live Event in July.
Jennifer Tracy: I love you, guys. Keep going.