Hi, I'm Zibby Owens, and you're listening to the award-winning podcast, Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.

If you like this podcast, you will love my new anthology called Moms Don't Have Time to Have Kids.

Check it out, and you'll hear from 49 authors about all sorts of things moms don't have time to do.

All the authors have been on this podcast. Also, check out my TikTok

at with Zibby and Tracy, my other podcast, Sex Talk with Zivie and Tracy. Check out

moms don't have time to write on medium. And of course, my new publishing company called Zivvi

books. And now back to our daily author interview site and a quick hello from some of my kids.

Hi. Hi. Hello. Enjoy the show.

Erica Shickle is the author of The Big Hurt, a memoir, and you're not the boss of me. Her essays and

journalism have been featured in the Los Angeles Times, Tin House, Ravishly, Bust Magazine, Salon,

and the Los Angeles Review of Books, among others. She lives in Los Angeles.

Welcome, Erica. Thanks so much for coming on moms don't have time to read books to discuss the

Big Hurt, a memoir. Thanks for having me, Zibi. It's really exciting to be here. I love this show.

Oh, thank you. So in this book, I want you to tell listeners what it's about and sort of what made you decide to write this memoir.

But in the memoir, there's a character writing a book called The Big Hurd.

And so is it really okay for you to call this book The Big Hurt too?

That needs a little explaining.

To answer your first question, I wrote this book because I absolutely had to in order

to understand and save my own life. I mean, just at a very sort of visceral level, you know.

And I started writing it about in 2008 after my first book, which was a funny memoir called You're Not the Boss of Me, Adventures

of a Modern Mom, that came out. And it was time to write my second book. And what am I going to

write about? Oh, I'll write about my very colorful, fun, zany bohemian boarding school.

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