4.8 • 952 Ratings
🗓️ 9 May 2025
⏱️ 28 minutes
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In this deeply reflective episode, acclaimed poet and author Jill Bialosky joins us to share the heart behind her newest memoir, The End Is the Beginning: A Personal History of My Mother. Unlike traditional memoirs or self-help books, Jill’s latest work offers a poetic, emotionally rich narrative told in reverse—from her mother’s death to her birth—unfolding a tender portrait of a woman shaped by love, loss, faith, and resilience. In this episode, Jill reflects on writing through grief, the unbreakable bond between mothers and daughters, and how memory shapes identity. A powerful listen for anyone navigating loss, caregiving, or the quiet beauty of remembrance.
Jill Bialosky's newest work of prose is The End is the Beginning: A Personal History of My Mother. Her most recent volume of poetry Asylum: A Personal, Historical, Natural Inquiry in 103 Lyric Sections, was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. She is the author of five acclaimed collections of poetry, four critically acclaimed novels, most recently, The Deceptions, a finalist for the Gotham Book Award, and a two memoirs, Poetry Will Save Your Life and New York Times bestselling memoir History of a Suicide: My Sister’s Unfinished Life. Her poems and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, O Magazine, The Kenyon Review, Harvard Review, Paris Review and Best American Poetry among others. She co-edited with Helen Schulman the anthology, Wanting a Child. She is an Executive Editor and Vice President at W. W. Norton & Company. In 2014 she was honored by the Poetry Society of America for her distinguished contribution to poetry.
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1:05.8 | The other takeaway, I think for me, is that loss can also be renewal and that even through my mother |
1:15.3 | went through a tragedy of losing my 21-year-old sister to suicide and the loss of her husband |
1:23.4 | and her mother. Those are very traumatic tragedies that most people don't have in a lifetime. |
1:31.7 | And I think that that is one of the reasons why I wanted to write the book is to show that so |
1:37.5 | many of us go through these tragedies or these difficult periods, but we still remain a full individual. |
1:47.0 | In this deeply reflective episode, acclaimed poet and author, Jill Bialoski, joins me to share |
1:53.8 | the heart behind her newest memoir. The End is the Beginning, A Personal History of My Mother. |
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