Melissa Febos, Memoirist

The Confessional with Nadia Bolz-Weber

Society & Culture, Personal Journals

4.6 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 9 June 2020

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

“You know, it was like very hot - with that particular hotness of a terrible, terrible thing driven by desperation beyond the immediate situation.”

Melissa is a literary phenom who has won a gazillion awards for her incisive, honest, colorful writing. Her third book, Girlhood comes out in the Spring of 2021. I was her camp counselor for 3 years when she was in middle school.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	There was a period of time in 1996 when I tried really hard to seem as normal as possible.
0:17.7	Pretend I didn't have my past, pretend my heart wasn't just a little bit dark, pretend I could small talk.
0:26.4	It was when my ex-husband and I were newly wedged and he was a seminary intern in a small
0:31.1	church in Oregon and I was new to this whole Lutheran thing and I just really didn't want to
0:36.9	screw it up for him in his new church. So, you know, I covered all my tattoos. I took out my tongue
0:43.0	ring and I'm ashamed to admit this now but I even wore clothes from the gap. But it didn't matter
0:51.1	because the truth about who I really am was still there and all the chinos and cardigans in the
0:58.0	world couldn't cover it up. And the fact was that no matter how normal I tried to look,
1:03.7	it was as if in this almost animalistic way the nice church people didn't buy it. It was like they
1:10.5	could smell it on me like this one isn't from our pack which was true. And that's the thing about
1:17.6	the truth. The truth will totally ignore our desire for it to just go away. It will hover around
1:24.8	us buzzing annoyingly in our ear. Often the truth will show up uninvited and often disguised as
1:32.0	something else. The truth about ourselves and our lives, if ignored, will just repackage itself
1:39.6	as anxiety and wake us up at 2am. The truth is a bitch like that.
1:47.7	I'm Nadia Bolzweber and you've stepped into the confessional. It's like a carwash for our shame
1:54.4	and secrets. My guest today is someone who also tried to ignore her truth but despite her best efforts
2:02.4	it showed up in her life in surprising and harmful ways. For listeners joining me in the confessional
2:09.3	for the first time, stay tuned after the interview for a blessing I've written just for my guest
2:15.2	but maybe also for you.
2:24.8	Hey confessional listeners, I just want to thank you for supporting this podcast and I wanted you
2:30.2	to know that there's a place called the Corners where I regularly engage with readers, post essays
2:35.7	and prayers and bonus content from this podcast. It's called the Corners because it can feel as though
	...

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