Stephanie: Hello, Rose and Jen, welcome to the show.

Rose: Hello, Stephanie?

Stephanie: Oh, it's so good to have you guys. So you are my first. You're not my first pair of people, but you're my first pair of unrelated gal pals. I'm so excited you. Oh,

Rose: This will be memorable.

Stephanie: I. I love that your story of transition is together in a friendship way, and how the friendship is actually what got you through the icky part of the transition at midlife life.

Rose: I mean, thank God for friendship,

Stephanie: No kidding. No kidding. Especially in midlife, right?

Jenn: Right, right.

Stephanie: I mean, dear God.

Rose: I didn't know how to be a friend when I was young. Did you,

Stephanie: Oh,

Jenn: I, I mean, I think, you know, right as you get older, you figure out different things that you have not been doing well and and what works for you going forward.

Stephanie: Yes. Yes. I am that girl. I was that girl. I was not a great friend, when I was younger, so I feel that so hard. Rose. Yeah. Yeah.

Rose: We're all kind of awkward when we're growing up. We're trying

Stephanie: Yeah.

Rose: who we are, and then, you know, a friendship is always something that I feel like we struggle with and we're still struggling with it. We're still evolving.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Rose: Friendship has brought us together and helped us survive this transition for sure.

Stephanie: Yeah. Alright, well then let's jump backwards a little bit and start out at the beginning. So what I would love for each of you to tell me just a little bit about how do we get to the beginning of our story? What were the forces that shaped you into the people you were when you kind of entered your transitionary period?

Who wants to go first?

Rose: Jen, you go first. You

Stephanie: Okay. All right, Jen.

Rose: the beginning. You

Jenn: Okay. Let's see how far back. I'm trying to decide how far back to go

Stephanie: You can go. So what I'm really trying to get at is you can go all the way back to childhood, you know, toddlerhood if you need to. What are the things that laid the groundwork for the transition you went through? And for a lot of people that is like, oh, when I was a kid, my parents this, or my family that, or my, you know, in school this. So you can go back as far as you want.

Jenn: Right. Okay. Let's see. I think part of it probably starts with, I was a traditional kind of stereotypical girl. I was actually really kind of nerdy, a nerdy girl. So like growing up I was into science and reading and that kind of thing. And, my parents kind of encouraged me to go into medicine and it was a great thing for me to do.

You know, I ended up deciding to become an ob GYN once I got to medical school, and that's a whole another hour long discussion about how I got to that specific, specialty. But I think, to get us to the transition point, I also just after finishing medical school and partway through my residency, I got married. And then when I was initially right out of my training, and working at a faculty job in New England, I had my first child. And so I started in my thirties essentially adding all these different pieces to the puzzle that I had believed way back when that it would be easy to do. Women were supposed to be able to do everything. I loved the job that I had chosen, but I didn't realize how hard it was gonna be to incorporate marriage, children, you know, writing, from a scientific point of view, taking care of patients, all of that kind of stuff.

Stephanie: So fast forward, when my husband finished his training,we decided we were going to go somewhere different and I let him choose where we were going. And so we ended up in North Carolina, which was wonderful, but I had a 1-year-old and a 4-year-old, and I was trying to figure out, you know, how to meet new people. Where did I fit into this community? I wanted to continue working as a physician, but it was really difficult. Holy isolation, Batman.

Jenn: Exactly. It was, and it was definitely even like a culture shock to go from New England to the rural small town south. So I was kind of struggling with that.

And, that was the beginning of my Ick. And that is when I met Rose. And she and I, hit it off. Yeah, hit it off really well. Some other people introduced us at her engagement party. So I didn't know her at all. Yes. But we hit it off and that's when our friendship started, which I would eventually go back and draw on for the Ick. I will let Rose kind of tell her part and then we can go from there.

Stephanie: Perfect.

Rose: I love that. I love, and I love remembering when I met you at the engagement party, 'cause I was like, oh my God. Somebody normal.

Jenn: Somebody

Rose: normal in this space. Thank you. So, like Jen, I'm a Northerner. In many ways I still feel very much connected to, northerners and in just a lot of different ways, especially culturally. We moved to North Carolina when I was 10.

Stephanie: Okay.

Rose: My father was convinced I was going to go to Duke at 10 years old. So he thought, oh, we're just gonna move the whole family. You know, the colleges are great in North Carolina, and I was in New Jersey. I moved from New Jersey, and the colleges were not, he, I mean, it was what do we choose between Princeton and Rutgers?

So he's

Stephanie: Right,

Rose: yeah, not a lot in between. So we're

Stephanie: right.

So I started the trend, all the Northern Jews moving down. So that was hard within itself. But, I think for me, my, my transition to where I am today was I wanted to be a journalist. I went to Chapel Hill. I became, I was a journalism major at the time. And then my sister passed away,

Stephanie: Oh.

Rose: My only sibling. So that really, at that point, something shifted inside of me.

I thought, you know, I don't wanna be running all over, having a camera chase me. I mean, I'd probably start in like North Dakota. I didn't wanna be that far from my family. So I decided to stay in North Carolina and I decided to become a therapist of all things.

Stephanie: I went from journalist to therapist, in a matter of about five years. And during that time, I also met my husband. And, I kind of always hate saying that because I feel like I am my own person, but he did determine a lot of where we stayed because his job,he was the breadwinner in our marriage. So we ended up staying in North Carolina and of all places a rural town, Gastonia, North Carolina, which is about 30 minutes, give or take traffic outside Charlotte. And that was also a challenge. I felt like I was going deeper into the south. I was trying to kind of move away from the south.

Rose: I kept kind of, you know, plunging myself deeper into rural, into the rural south. But, meeting Jen, I really think was my saving grace in many ways because I did feel very isolated and alone. And, you know, when she came into my life, it was just this moment of like, I don't feel alone anymore.

Stephanie: and that, which is why we're gonna transition to how we wrote the book and why.

Yeah.

Rose: I'll, I'll, I'll

Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah. No, that's good. And it's funny, I, I also went to journalism school, so I can sort of relate to some of that. Couple of quick questions. So you guys met at Rose's engagement party. Rose, how old were you then?

Rose: 29, when I got married.

Stephanie: Okay.

Rose: Yeah. So Jen, you're what? A decade older than me.

Jenn: I think I'm about 12 years older than you actually, so I was probably just in my early forties when we met.

Stephanie: Okay. Okay. So I'm curious. I get that you guys met and sort of hit it off and there were some common sensibilities there, but Jen, was there stuff that you were going through around that time that you were sort of already kind of in a bit of a transition personally and individually that maybe Rose wasn't quite there yet? Just 'cause of an, you know, the age difference?

Jenn: Absolutely. I think that's one of the things that's been really fun about our friendship in a lot of ways is like I'm just a little bit ahead of her. And we both have two boy children. So we have that in common. And, and I, so I was just I was going through all these crazy things. When we met, they were about middle school age I was struggling with.

Rose: I was childless.

Jenn: Yeah. And she was just getting married. Right. So I was struggling at that point more with, okay, how do I, how is it possible to feel productive within my professional life and also my family life? And also how do I have friends outside of that and pull all those things together as well as taking care of myself and my own needs.

So that was where I was. In the last 15 or 20 yearsI have tried almost every possible way to be a working mother. And I have also had many years not working outside of the home, but, you know, taking like two years off to make sure this child can transition through this. Taking two years to help an aging parent through some of their medical issues, that sort of thing.

I was always the one who, who sort of was supposed to take on everybody else's problems. And, and I think having a friend like Rose who was in a different stage of her life, but who shared very many of the same kind of ideals and that sort of thing. It was great to have somebody to talk to who, who didn't necessarily have to understand everything I was going through, but she could just listen.

and then.

Rose: Oh, I was good at that.

Stephanie: And I was gonna say, and sometimes I felt like as she started to follow behind me, she probably learned from some of my mistakes. Right.

So I think,that was a big part of it. I was in that place where it's like, how do I feel good about trying to do all these different things? And I was really struggling with that.And you said something too, Jen, about women tend to be the ones who take the breaks, who take the step back, who are the people who sort of step in and out of career as life happens in a family situation. So talk a little bit about that.

Jenn: I think that's one of the hardest things about trying to be a working woman. And or maybe just being a woman in general. I think we are all expected to be the one who does what everybody else needs us to do as opposed to what we necessarily maybe want to need to do for ourselves.

And I don't think that women get a lot of credit for doing that. We're often. People are often sort of belittling to women who decide to stay home or who decide to work and know, hire a nanny. There's never a good answer for what you're trying to do. Somebody's always gonna be placing some sort of judgment on the decision that you've made, and that's, it's really, it's really unfair.

Stephanie: Well, and Jen, 'cause you and I are, I think roughly the same age, and we also grew up during that time, I don't know if you remember this as a kid, but thethe Helen Gurley Brown, book, You Can Have it All, had come out like in the late seventies, right? And so, I don't know if you remember, like in the eighties, it was like, you know, you can do it, you can be anything you wanna be.

And I remember having this vision in high school of like, oh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna have the husband and the, family and I'm gonna drive a Porsche and have a white picket fence. And like, like, I don't know where any of these things came from, but it was like, you know, the life that I actually have has none of that.

But there was somebody I spoke to, last year who was talking about how that was supposed to be so aspirational, like, Hey, look, kids, you know, girls, you can have it all. You can do it all. But very quickly it became like a command and a prescription for you must do it

Jenn: And then

Rose: secret to your happiness

Stephanie: Yeah.

Jenn: Right. And then you feel guilty about any part of it that you might decide not to follow through on.

Rose: Yes. Oh my goodness. Let me ask you one other thing. You said you went to medical school but it was really at the suggestion, I think, of your dad. Is that something you think? Tell me. Yeah. Talk a little bit more about that.

Jenn: Honestly I would say that if either of my parents were the one who sort of nudged me more into medicine, it was my mom. And I think it was because of that time period I think that she was in the generation that just came out of, well, you can go to college, but you're gonna get a teaching degree or a nursing degree or a social work.

You know, like you were, there were like three or four potential options and that was it. And I found out years and years later that my mother always really kind of secretly wished she would've gone to medical school. But I didn't know that till much, much later in my life. So I think when I even voiced a tiny interest in it as a younger person, she was like, yeah, do it.

Stephanie: You know? And, I don't think that she meant to necessarily push me into anything. But I do think it was a really, a big part of that, how women are perceived and what women should be doing at the time. Get out there and do everything you possibly can. Yeah, and I think there's another element of it too that, you know, our parents when we're young push us to do things that they think are gonna make us happy, healthy, successful, and safe. Right? Your mom probably thought, not only can you be a doctor now 'cause the world is changing, but also you'll make a lot of money. You'll always have a job, right? Like she's thinking all of these things. And I'm curious to know if you were to think about it now, would you have chosen the same path on your own or would you have chosen a different flavor of it, or would you have gone a different direction altogether?

Jenn: That's a really tough question, and I think about it all the time. I don't know that I would necessarily do anything differently. Although I feel like maybe I closed off my options earlier than I should have, but that's one of the reasons why I love what I'm doing now, because I found a different way, a different path.

So I went down that one path and now I'm like, you know what? Let's take a little circuitous turn and try something different. And I think that doing what I did as a physician and working with the people I worked with, both from a training perspective and all the patients that I've had, it's really shaped what I've gone on to do next.

So.

Stephanie: Yeah. All right, Rose, and now I want, I. I know.

Rose: I'm just, I'm totally enraptured.

Stephanie: Well, and now I wanna weave you into the story here, because when you first met Jen, you were 10 or 12 years younger than her, and she was in a totally different stage of life, and you got to, as you guys became better and better friends, you got to watch her going through some of these stages and some of this midlife transition ahead of you. I'm curious, ah.

Rose: She made it all look good. Stephanie. I don't care what she said. She made it all look easy.

Stephanie: I'm curious, like were you able to, well let. Before I ask this question, part of the reason that I do this podcast is because I made such a mess of my transition. I had no idea it was coming. I had no idea what to expect. I had no idea how to comprehend what was going on in my life and why different things were breaking down, and job and friends and relationship.

Like it was just all a mess. And so I, my whole point of this is like, if I can showcase some of these stories and help other people make it through it a little bit easier because maybe they've picked up a sign or a way to get through it. So I'm very curious 'cause you guys are the exact template of what I'm talking about.

Tell me a little bit about what you learned from Jen going through it, like watching her and getting to see how she was managing this transition. Even if she wasn't saying like, you know, I'm in a transition, or anything like that. But you were seeing what was going on 10 years down the road you were kind of seeing where you were headed.

Rose: Yeah, I was. It's so, because we do have very, we do have a very similar life in the sense that our husbands are both physicians and we're both professionals. We both have boys.

Stephanie: Yep.

Rose: I mean, I will say we,and Jen, I do wanna, you know, talk about our oldest children for a second. We both have challenging older children in their own ways.

And I think Jen has helped me in so many ways,

navigate that path. I've learned just how to at least look like I have it all together, even if I'm rotting on the inside. But, I was just in awe of Jen, I mean, an absolute awe of her. She was able to maintain a job. She was working at the time. She had two boys. She had a husband who worked 90 plus hours a week,

Stephanie: Whew.

and she did it. Yeah.

Rose: a fricking warrior.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Rose: And I was just starting off with, in, in regards to having children. I was just starting that path and I already felt like I was drowning. And as a matter of fact, I remember when, you don't know if you remember this, Jen, when you came over my house, I think Max was,what, two weeks old. And you came over with a friend and you just were like, I don't care how the house looks.

Jenn: Right?

Stephanie: Right.

Rose: if you haven't showered. I don't care if you smell like breast milk, I'm coming over.

And I was like, thank God. Because I mean, you saved me, but you also showed me that there was a light at the end of the tunnel. It was going to get better. And I think just seeing you that day, you came and you sat down and I was in tears. I had horrible postpartum. I thought, oh my God, I just, I'm just so calm by you. And also I know that I can get through this.

I was always in awe of you, but you were also such an inspiration to me

Stephanie: and still are. So it's a testament, I think to our

so lovely.

Rose: friendship. No, it, it truly, truly, I mean that.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Rose: And even though we're gonna talk more about this, but we're a writing team and even when we write, in so many ways that comes through. Her wisdom, her calm, her steely composure. You know, that's such a foil to my more erratic, comedic, side, my comedic flair.

Jenn: right.

Stephanie: But it works for us. Yeah.

Rose: We're friends, we're writers, and we just, and thank God we have each other, 'cause

Stephanie: Yeah.

Rose: life is hard.

Okay. It's a great to understand the foundation of your relationship and kind of where you were at the beginning. But now let's flash forward like, I think close to 10 years and talk to me about, obviously friendships, deepening families are growing. Jen's sort of in and out of working and taking care of different things, parents and kids and things like that. And now we come to Covid.

Jenn: Yep.

Stephanie: So tell me a little bit about what Covid was like for you guys.

Rose: Trauma - and it all flashes

Stephanie: I know. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, but it's important.

Rose: Because, I mean, for us it was, yes, it was traumatic in a lot of ways. Me, I had a 2-year-old and a kindergartner,

Stephanie: And let's just start there. That was so challenging, navigating that and being at home. I was trying to do Zoom therapy at the time.

Rose: I had a husband who of course was in the hospital, in the ER and exposed to Covid on a daily basis, and I was drowning. I was totally drowning and I needed a lifeline. Then simultaneously I was really unhappy with how government was handling Covid. I mean, I had, Jen and I both had husbands on the front line. And it was just unfortunate how there was this pushback to masking and there was so much going on in the political landscape that complicated, that made things even harder for us here, locally and just in our homes and just in general. So, you know, that for us, I mean, I swear I was drinking a, like, I felt like I was drinking like a bottle a night of wine. It was so bad. and I'll own it. I mean, it was a tough time,

Stephanie: Well, Rose, I actually wanna talk about that because one of the things you said when we first spoke, you said where you were headed wasn't great. It was probably towards the bottom of a glass of wine.And that's, I think that's so important because, I mean, just take Covid out of it for the moment, but there is a, it's not a trend. There's a, there's something I've seen out in the world where, I was, I, my husband and I have no children, right? But I was a party girl for, 25 years and, crazy and doing all this crazy stuff. And while all of my friends were,

Rose: Yeah.

Stephanie: I excelled at it, I want you to know. But all my friends were, you know, growing up, getting married, settling down, having kids.

And so for a long time, I was a little bit of an outlier because I was still doing the things that they had been doing when they were 24 and 25. And now I was 38 and 39. But now, I now have finally grown up and started settling down and becoming more reasonable. And now all these moms that I know are major winos, like I can't hang with them.

Rose: a problem

Stephanie: There's this thing, so I'm, you said this, you know, you were headed towards the bottom of a glass of wine, and I was so interested to dig into that a little bit because it does feel like there's a commonality there around people like moms.

Rose: Moms, I think it's a socially acceptable way to relieve stress. And it's also, it looks cool to have something, you know, in your glass. I don't encourage that. I don't think that necessarily has to be the answer. It's also the fact that I feel like that's all women do today. We get together and we have a glass of wine. And Jen and I can talk more about that 'cause we're actually trying to redefine what friendship looks like and what being

Stephanie: Yeah.

Rose: a mom looks like in a lot of ways. And you don't have to do that.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Rose: You can go hiking. There are ways to be together and not have to drink, but yeah, I definitely, Stephanie, I mean, I was in a bad place and I

Stephanie: Yeah.

Rose: feel like. had to be very conscious about that. I'mI have grown from that time. I can honestly say I really tried. I try hard only to drink on the weekends, a glass of wine on the weekends.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Rose: But it is, it's hard culturally, it's hard for moms, it's hard for women.

But I feel like,writing a book, our friendship, all of those factors help me get out of that dark place.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Rose: I do wanna say, you know, Jen's love and support, just being able to, you know, write and have some, and express my creativity. That's really, I feel like what saved me from that deep,

Stephanie: interesting.

Rose: dark, Covid yuck time.

Stephanie: Yeah. Well, and it's, I hear you so hard because I, got sick a number of years ago. I've been managing some chronic illnesses for, I think it'll be eight years in April. But, you know, I had to Oh, thank you. I had to, change my diet. And I drink very rarely now, and so it absolutely affected friendships. It impacted, because what are the things you do with your friends? You go out and you eat or you go out and you drink. And now I can't go to all the restaurants and know, I'm gonna drink occasionally and rarely. And when I do, I'm gonna, you know, have the most beautiful, delicious drink and enjoy it andyes. This this girl does not mind $14 drinks because she's only drinking one of them.

Jenn: Yeah.

Rose: That's right. That's our second.

Stephanie: and so I, I.

Jenn: So I totally get this, like, how do you socialize? How do you be with people? Because it is so hard to change the culture, right. I'm just one person. I can't drag everybody to come and sit at my house and visit with me on my couch. It's like, you know, trying to change the tide for crying out loud. So,

Rose: It's not easy, but

Stephanie: yeah.

Rose: you can make some mean appetizers. I bet they all come running.

Stephanie: If only I had the energy.

Rose: Yeah, that's true. But yeah, I think we have to be conscious and we have to create the change in our own lives, and we hope that we

Stephanie: Yeah.

Rose: can bring people along with us.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Rose: Jen, let's talk about, you and I have really made an effort. When we're together, we're not drinking. We're talking or we're walking or we're exercising, or.

Stephanie: Yep.

Rose: You know, we're presenting our book at book clubs. We're doing all this really constructivestuff where we're not, I feel like doing anything that's making our bodies feel worse.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Rose: So we're trying to make ourselves feel better, be healthier, but it's a process.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Jenn: Yeah.

Rose: Not an overnight thing.

Stephanie: It is, it is. So we've sort of dropped a hint a bunch of times about this book. So the book was born out of Covid and your experiences with Covid. So tell me, Jen, tell me a little bit about the genesis of the book. I know that Rose is the writer, that's why I'm asking you to sort of tell.

Rose: both the writers

Jenn: Well, yeah.

Rose: the

Stephanie: Well, right. But you have the journalism background. So,

Rose: True, true.

Stephanie: yeah. Yeah. So, jen, tell me a little bit about how the book was born.

Jenn: So honestly, Rose and I have a couple other women that over the last few years we've sort of, just like you're talking about, we've tried to kind of find our little tribe that we're comfortable with and who are accepting of whatever we're gonna do.

So, as we spent time with them and watched the world around us, we would occasionally throw out the joke, like, oh yeah. Did you hear what that city council member said, that is going in our book? You know, like that kind of thing. We would just kind of have this running joke. And once we got to Covid and kind of all the isolationism and not being able to be out there and then just having to sit back and watch and listen to things happen around us.

Finally just one local government official kind of pushed us a little bit over the edge. And I was like, Hey, let's just really write the book. You know what I mean? We were like, can we really do this? And so Rose and I were talking about that. We invited the other women who were like, we don't wanna do, we're not, we don't wanna, we will contribute our stories, we will support you in your endeavors, but we don't wanna, we don't really wanna do that.

We were just joking. So, you know, so, so in a way, Covid, like, kind of inspired us to actually sit down and do it. And you had to pick somebody to bubble with, you know. You had to pick somebody who you were allowed to be around. And so Rose and I were like, this is our chance to take some something from the difficult time we're having. When we're able to be together, let's be together. Let's start writing this book and, and that's kind of how it started. And then we just for the next, about a year and a half, we wrote the story. We rewrote the book, you know, to restructure and all that stuff. But it was a really fun process for the two of us to, you know, bounce ideas off each other and create this. I mean, it's completely fiction. We were just inspired by what was happening around us.

It gave me anyway great joy and it felt like I was doing something so different, but I, it was so worthwhile for me personally, but it also, I dunno, it was just kind of fun to get out of the grind that I had been in and to have Rose there with me doing that. It was just hard to explain how amazing it was. I mean, how much fun we had and, uh.

Rose: She's just, she's just remembering how I would act out the parts of the story.I would be like, I would role play and I'd stand up and I would, you know, emote and she was just like, oh God, this is life changing. Just being there watching Rose act all this stuff out.

Stephanie: Yeah, so I'm really curious. We're this, we're in the middle of Covid. You guys, your husband's are on the front line, rose. You're doing some telehealth. You both have kids,

Jenn: Mm-hmm. I was actually working at the public,

I was working at the county health department actually during Covid, so, so, yeah. So yes, it

Stephanie: That was, that's my question, rose. How is it that this project became, something positive and something, you know, beautiful and hopeful and versus one more goddamn thing to do. Do you know? You know what I'm saying? Like how do, how is it that you guys were able to position that in your lives? Because I'm sure there's so many people out there who are like, well, I'd love to do a project, or I'd love to have something for myself, but like, where's the time and how am I gonna do it?

So,

Rose: gotta do it, man. You just got, you gotta put one foot in front of the other and do it. I mean, I, this is what I tell people in therapy. you just have to get yourself started.

Stephanie: yeah.

Jenn: Right.

Rose: And I hear you, I hear

all the people out there who can't, who I can't do it. I can't do it. You can't.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Rose: literally, like, you just, you painted the picture of just chaos and it was for us, but was our hope. I had to have hope, Stephanie, I had to have hope in something. Jen had to have hope in something we

Jenn: It was like the one thing we looked forward to, you know, the, the two or three times a week that we would, we didn't spend a lot of time together on it, but we carved out the time and I,I think we both felt like that was. The time that we looked forward to, to sitting down and using that part of our brain and working together.

Yeah. Well, and to your point, rose,I'm reminded of the old adage, how do you eat an elephant?

Yes. One bite a time. Yes.

Rose: One

Stephanie: Right.

but yeah, you, to your point, right, it's, you know, the, how do you climb a mountain? How do you, right. It's like you don't look at the end product. You don't look at the big picture. You don't look at the, you know, the mountain.

You have to scale. You just one step.

Yeah, yeah,

Rose: can do a, I truly believe that anybody can do

Stephanie: lot of noise, a lot of times in our lives, a

yeah,

Rose: our head, a lot of distraction. But I just, it was my guiding light. The book,

Stephanie: it gave me purpose. it restarted my life. I was what, gen 40 at the

Rose: That was my big four. Oh.

Jenn: Right.

Rose: starting a book and.in this way that just gave my life new purpose and meaning.

Jenn: And I think even, covid sort of threw so many things into relief for everyone, right? But it was definitely a time where a lot of people felt like there was very little we had control over, but for me this was like the one thing we could control. You know, I can do that hour of writing or I could, we can, you know, that kind of thing.

It was like a little thing, but it meant so much in the grand scheme.

Stephanie: Yeah.

window of hopee, but we did it and we love our book. Women Coming Together, taking Over Local Government. I mean, who doesn't wanna read that? That's great. So Rose, I'm so curious, right? So it's covid and you're 40. are you feeling any of that? Are you feeling that same kind of transition? Are there other things going on in your life? Right? So you're 10 years, 12, 11 years behind Jen, but here you are at this same point that she had been at the beginning of the story.

What kind of transitionary stuff is going on in your life, sort of aside from Covid, that kind of was the great equalizer. We all went through that, but were there bigger shifts that were going on in your life as well?

Rose: Sure. I mean, I mean, I'm still new to the whole mom thing. I'm still trying to mom it. I'm trying to, oh gosh. Just, I just, so many things. I'm trying to, you know, picture it all again

Stephanie: Yeah.

Rose: without feeling. Just, I wanna go running high. 'cause

Stephanie: Right.

Rose: it was just so much. I was so alone because my husband was gone.

I was trying to, I always havereat ideas for what I wanna do, and I was trying to like, oh, maybe I'll start this business.

Stephanie: which I'm still always trying to start in my mind, but, but I think just transitioning many ways, right? Like I'm done having children, but yet I have these two boys here who I'm trying to take care of, So much going on in the world. And I think just transitioning all of those things going on or just was creating just all this background noise. And I just knew that if I didn't change something, I was going to continue to drown.

I think when Jen and I finally made this step toward writing a book, that was where things really started to get better for me and

Yeah.

Rose: I had hope, I had purpose. What would you say, Jen? Kind of same. Same thing?

Jenn: Same. I think. I think it was, and it was fun because you know, friendship is great and important and we were there for each other, but it was just like. Looking back on it now, it's even more exciting to me that we took our friendship and made something like from our friendship,

it was like a byproduct of our friendship to having this creative outlet with each other to help each other through these hard times, and then having a book at the end

Stephanie: It's like your friendship had a baby,

Rose: See.

Jenn: I never thought about it that way, but it is. Yes,

Rose: Thank Jen.

Jenn: that's right.

Rose: Yeah, that's, I love that, Stephanie. That's really like, that should be like our webpage,

Jenn: You are right.

Stephanie: oh our, this is the byproduct. This is Yeah. Yeah.

Rose: That's cute.

Stephanie: Well, and I love so much that this connection and this collaboration for both of you really felt like it was life changing, life saving, even, You know that is, that's actually, I don't love to say this word, but it's really profound that you know, that together you were able, you know, you were able to kind of, you know, come together in a really close and in a really close way.

and to your point, what you've said to me before is like, make some art, right? You, yeah. Yeah.

Rose: art and we hopefully in this process are changing how other people view friendship, because I, let's go back to what you said, Stephanie. It doesn't all have to

Stephanie: Yeah.

Rose: drinking and. around somebody's house, it can be writing a book together. It can be just collaborating in a new way and redefining who you are and that friend

Stephanie: Yeah.

Rose: through that friendship.

Stephanie: Yeah. Oh, that's so lovely.I'm actually, I'm a little cleed at how this all sort of came together.

Rose: We

Jenn: Yes.

Rose: for Clem in the south. I love it.

Jenn: give me a quick synopsis of the book. You said it was fiction.

Yes.

Stephanie: So just a quick synopsis of what the book is about.

Jenn: You wanna go? Go Rose. You can give the synopsis.

Rose: Well, I said it early. I don't know if anybody caught it, but I said, I just, my elevator pitch is it's

women coming together and changing local government, changing the status quo. leaders who are currently running a small town in the rural south. we used so much of ourselves, so much of the stories from the women we're, who are already friendly with here,

Stephanie: Yeah.

Rose: us to share their stories and we were able to maybe, maybe not, you have to read it.

Yeah.

a very. A very nasty local politician who was his only mission was to be picked up by a, a, a big national news network and just promote himself. So that's all he was concerned about. So the

Stephanie: Yeah.

Rose: together and were able to ruffle some feathers in their small town. Small town.

Jenn: And it's actually, you know, even more, It like we sort of explored the idea of most of these women didn't know each other at the beginning of the story, most of them. So how you find connection with people in your community and how you can come together and, you know, get outside your comfort zone to make new friendships and what can come of that.

So,

Stephanie: we've really the whole idea of connecting and friendships and different relationships, developing relationships. I love this so much. I have had a hundred and something conversations so far and and people have talked, all my guests have talked about how they've gotten through this transition period and what worked for them, what tools, what. You know, personal growth pieces. What, and you guys are the very first to tell me how friendship got you through this period.

So I am, I'm just loving this really. 'cause

Rose: We're social beings. We need each other,

Stephanie: Yeah, yeah.

Rose: I mean, you can't do it all by yourself, but you know it's okay to need somebody. You should

Stephanie: we have to have somebody at times. Yeah.

Rose: through it by yourself.

Stephanie: It is. It is. Oh, this is so lovely. Alright, so tell me where we can find the book and what the book is called, and give us, all, give us all the things.

Rose: Well, it's called Snowflakes in the South. And of course, where you can buy everything is

Stephanie: So it's on Amazon. It's also, on Good Reads. You can, we have some small local bookstores in North Carolina where you can find them. If you're in North

Rose: And I think Barnes and Noble, you can get it on Barnes and Noble online, but, you can get it, you probably can get it in most places, but I would say start at Amazon.

Stephanie: All right.

Rose: we hope you read it and you, we hope you leave us a review. We hope you find a friend at wherever you are and make some arts with that friend.

Stephanie: Oh. Oh, I love it. You guys, thank you so much for sharing your story and of friendship and of transition and how the two really came together. This is, this has been amazing.

Jenn: This has been really fun. Yeah.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Rose: luck with the big four. Oh, I can't, I hope you have us back

Stephanie: Thank you. Thank you. Yeah.