Episode 359: Burn It Down with Maris Kreizman
Maris Kreizman joins Forever35 to speak about her new collection of essays I Want To Burn This Place Down. Elise and Maris discuss Maris’s connection to Doree, what she’s dreaming of for our society today, and what it means to her to live a good life.
Mentioned in this Episode
Olive oil, any kind (for hair!)
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Transcript
The transcript for this episode is Ai generated.
Doree Shafrir (00:10):
Hello and welcome to Forever35, a podcast about the things we do to take care of ourselves. I'm Doree Shafrir.
Elise Hu (00:17):
And I'm Elise Hu. And we're just two friends who like to talk a lot about serums. Welcome to the show. This is a Monday episode. Usually the line on Wednesdays is, and this is a mini episode, but this is not a mini episode. This is a Monday episode. This
Doree Shafrir (00:30):
Is not a mini episode.
Elise Hu (00:32):
And on Monday episodes we have amazing guests on, and we do kind of longer form interviews. And today we have on Maris Kreizman, who is an old friend of Doree's who we'll formally introduce later, but we catch up first. And so yeah.
Doree Shafrir (00:49):
Did Maris tell you that we went to college together?
Elise Hu (00:52):
She sure did. She sure
Doree Shafrir (00:54):
Did. We go way, way, way back?
Elise Hu (00:57):
Yes. We actually have, I don't want to give too much away, but at the start of the interview, we started talking about how the two of you are connected, and we got into Penn, and then that led us down the road of G Love who has been a character on this podcast who has been a surprising recurring character.
Doree Shafrir (01:18):
Yes, he's recurring. It's
Elise Hu (01:19):
True in our Forever35 conversations
Doree Shafrir (01:22):
Of
Elise Hu (01:23):
2025. So yeah, it was really lovely. She has an essay in her forthcoming collection about starting at Penn, and she doesn't mention you specifically, but she mentions another classmate of y'all's Donnie Trump Jr.
Doree Shafrir (01:39):
I'm a year older than Maris. Donnie was her year, so yeah.
Elise Hu (01:45):
Did you ever see him around campus?
Doree Shafrir (01:48):
I don't think so. We were in different worlds.
Elise Hu (01:51):
Yeah. Okay. I'm assuming he was Wharton or something. Right? He was studying business.
Doree Shafrir (01:55):
He was Wharton, but more than that, he was in a very fratty frat. Ah, shocker. Shocker. That I believe actually got kicked off campus while he was there. He was also, I think his roommate was a guy I'm sort of friendly with who has some interesting stories.
Elise Hu (02:20):
Oh, I'm sure. No doubt.
Doree Shafrir (02:23):
Yes, yes. No
Elise Hu (02:26):
Doubt. No doubt.
Doree Shafrir (02:27):
But yeah, the interview is only with Elise because I was in Boston and Connecticut because my sister-in-law passed away last week, and so I went to the funeral and spent some time with the family, and so I was not able to make it to the interview.
Elise Hu (02:51):
We're so sorry, Dora. Thanks. There's a lot of love coming from all of us in the Forever35 community. I hope you feel it and that your
Doree Shafrir (02:59):
Yes
Elise Hu (03:01):
Has received lots of condolences because your sister-in-law seemed like just such a light.
Doree Shafrir (03:06):
She really was. And that really came across in everything that people said about her at her funeral and just the number of people who showed up. There were 700 people at her funeral. Yeah. So it was rough for sure. I mean, it was just so sad, but I'm glad I went. So
Elise Hu (03:30):
Yeah, no, it's so important that you were there. And how's your brother doing?
Doree Shafrir (03:34):
I mean, I think he, it's like the thing where you're mourning, you're grieving, but you also have to get your kids out of bed, do you know what I mean? And make them breakfast. He has two little kids. He still has to do those things, so it's so heartbreaking. Yeah, it's really, yeah, I think it's a lot. But I was glad I got to spend some time with him just at his house, not with the hundreds of people who were there for the funeral, so that was really nice. I'm really glad I got to spend that time and hang out with his kids also, because 10 and eight, they're pretty young.
Elise Hu (04:21):
It just feels so wrong.
Doree Shafrir (04:23):
Yeah, it's just very unfair. Yeah. So anyway, thank you
Elise Hu (04:32):
So much love from all of us, truly. Yes,
Doree Shafrir (04:35):
Thank you. Anyway, how are you?
Elise Hu (04:40):
I was just in the East Coast also despite the oppressive heat because I have two sets of friends who are getting the fuck out of America. So I have one set of friends that's headed to a tour, like a foreign tour. They're diplomats. So I figured since I'm not going to see these guys for three years, I should be at their sendoff brunch. And then on the same day, my college roommate, Amy and her partner Allie, they were planning their sendoff brunch because she has taken my college roommate, Amy has taken an editor job at the New York Times London Bureau, and so they are off to London. And it's the same thing for journalists too. We also do three year or four year stints abroad. So her contract abroad is at least three years. So I don't know if I'm going to see her again.
(05:30)
I mean, I have these dreams of going to watch Wimbledon with her maybe next summer, but who knows? And so I thought, you know what? If all four of these friends are leaving the country and they're doing send offs on the same day and they're going 3000 if not more, more than 3000 miles away, then what is it for me to fly 3000 miles to go see them? So I was really, really, really grateful and nourished by being able to go out there and spend time with them because not only was it them, it was also their tribes of people. And Garrett has friends from all over the world. Garrett the diplomat. He has friends from all over the world, from his various tours. He's been in Bangladesh and the UK and The Bahamas and Seoul, all these other places of the world. So all his friends he collected, they showed up if they happened to be in DC there was a diplomat from New Zealand who happened to be in town, but we all knew each other when we lived in Seoul.
(06:30)
And so that was great. And then Amy, because we went to college together, there were friends for 20 plus years of mine. We've been friends since the early two thousands when we were all in college together, so at the University of Missouri, MIZ. And so that was really lovely. What was a fun surprise was Garrett saved a seat at the brunch in the morning, his goodbye brunch for one of his friends who wanted to chat because she is a Forever35 listener. And Garrett was like, oh, my friend's coming. And she's been listening Forever35 forever. And so she came and we got to catch up and talk about how surprised we were that Stacey Abrams likes Reacher and other Forever35 materials. So it was really fun. We do have some listeners among the federal government core, so that was cool. Love that. Yeah, that was very cool.
(07:31)
And just being at DC I went back to my old house in DC too, the one where we lived when Ava was born, and so I had these memories of Ava taking her first steps in the kitchen, and I just can't believe it's been like 13 years since that and we're nearly, nearly 13 years. It's just strange. I saw my old next door neighbor who's still there, Ms. Alice, because she came out, she saw me there checking on the house and everything because we rented out and I thought that I was going to go back to DC maybe after Seoul and never did. And Ms. Alice, Ms. Alice saw me, she's like, is that you? And then she had tears in her eyes because we hadn't seen each other in so long. And I showed her a photo of she only knew Ava because Issa and Luna were born abroad, and I showed her a photo of the girls and it was all very connective and touching and hot. My overwhelming feelings were of deep connection and gratitude, but also just being overheated, my body overheating.
Doree Shafrir (08:39):
Yeah,
Elise Hu (08:41):
It's been such an up and down couple of weeks with you losing your sister-in-law. And then my best friend Justin, who was staying at my house, suffered a very surprising tragedy as well. It's just like, God, it really teaches you to just hug your loved ones and hug them tight and just show up when you can, whenever you can.
Doree Shafrir (09:03):
Yeah, I mean that was definitely a theme of my sister-in-law's, the things, all the speech, all the eulogies that people gave. It was just like she always showed up. She loved nothing more than getting people together and she just was that kind of person. So trying to channel that a little bit more. Well, should we introduce our guest?
Elise Hu (09:29):
Yeah. And this interview is really special too. A lot of the themes that we're talking about right now in the intro to the interview came up in my conversation with Maris too. I'm really excited for y'all to hear it. Dorie, I'll let you take it away with her
Doree Shafrir (09:42):
Bio. Maris is an essayist and critic with a biweekly column at Lit Hub, and her work has appeared in the New York Times, New York magazine, the Wall Street Journal, just the list goes on and on. And her essay collection is called I Want to Burn This Place Down. It is Out tomorrow, July 1st. She also hosted the Maris Review, an intimate literary podcast in which she interviewed her favorite authors about their latest books, and that ended in 2023. She now runs a newsletter of the same name, and for those of you who have been around the internet for a while, she was also the creator of Slaughterhouse 9 0 2 1 oh, which was an amazing Tumblr where she would put quotes from Slaughterhouse five with images from Beverly Hills 9 0 2 1 oh. It was so like of a time and it was so popular, and she turned it into a book that came out in 2015 and that celebrates the intersection of literature and pop culture.
(10:42)
She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, her dog, and her books. Before we take a little break, just a reminder, you can visit our website Forever35podcast.com. We have links there to everything we mention on the show. You can follow us on Instagram at Forever35podcast. Join our patreon at patreon.com/Forever35. Shop our favorite products@shopmy.us slash f 35. Sign up for our newsletter at February 35 podcast.com/newsletter. And you can call or text us at (781) 591-0390 and email us at Forever35podcast at gmail. Do alright, we are going to take a short break and we will be right back with Mars.
Elise Hu (11:29):
Maris Kreizman, welcome to the show.
Maris Kreizman (11:32):
Thank you so much, Elise. So just delighted to be here.
Elise Hu (11:35):
As you probably know, we start all our interviews by asking what folks are doing for self-care. So what are you doing lately that you would consider a way of taking care of yourself?
Maris Kreizman (11:46):
We adopted a new dog three months ago and going on a long walk with her and listening to an audiobook is my favorite way to create a little space for me. And I signed up with Libro fm, which is a great alternative to Audible and it's great.
Elise Hu (12:08):
Do you have any audiobook recommendations off the top of your head, something that you really enjoyed listening to while walking the new Pup?
Maris Kreizman (12:16):
Yeah, I just listened to Jeremy Iron's read Brideshead Revisited. Wow. Sometimes I feel like the narration, especially by a stuffy British guy, it could be too much, but this was on point. Perfect.
Elise Hu (12:34):
I'm a big fan of any books narrated by the goat, Julia Whelan, I think that's her name. Oh,
Maris Kreizman (12:41):
She's great.
Elise Hu (12:42):
She's great. There's so many books that I would have never consumed, but for the fact she was narrating it, and so I'm like, okay, I guess I'll listen to this murder mystery set in New England, which is totally usually out of my wheelhouse, but
Maris Kreizman (12:57):
I love that and I think she just narrated the new Taylor Jenkins read, so that's a fun one to put on the list.
Elise Hu (13:04):
Yeah. Well, you're such a book geek. I love it. So Dory isn't here with us because she sadly had a death in her family, but I know you and Dory go way back. So how do you two know each other? How are you connected?
Maris Kreizman (13:20):
Dory and I met in college at the University of Pennsylvania.
Elise Hu (13:26):
Wow. You and Dore and Donald Trump Jr.
Maris Kreizman (13:31):
All three of us in the same place at the same time. And if she were here because we've had this conversation before, I think she would say the same thing that I say in my book, which is that I thought I was there because I was smart and talented. And then when Donald Trump jr's in your class, you kind of have to revisit what you think a meritocracy is.
Elise Hu (14:01):
Yeah. Was that your first awakening
Maris Kreizman (14:05):
To
Elise Hu (14:05):
The problems or the fallacy of this idea of, oh, so long as you work hard you'll get what you believe you deserve?
Maris Kreizman (14:12):
I think so, because I do feel like admission to college was my reward for working very hard in high school. So it wasn't until I got to Penn and realized that so many of my classmates came from remarkably different backgrounds than I did that I started to consider that perhaps some people start on second base, third base.
Elise Hu (14:43):
That's what former Texas governor Ann Richards always said about George W. Bush. He was born on third base and thought he hit a triple right.
Maris Kreizman (14:51):
100%. Yeah. I mean, when we were in college, Donnie was just a typical frat boy, very drunk. I get to say it in the book, so I'll say it on this podcast too, but not any worse than any other frat boy. So I think he's really proven himself to be a real monster in a way that I hadn't given him enough credit for in college.
Elise Hu (15:18):
Who knew he would achieve such heights of evil? He was so mid, but it turns out he attached himself to such a cruel and historically cruel regime.
Maris Kreizman (15:32):
May I be as evil as a mediocre white man?
Elise Hu (15:38):
Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. Yeah. It's so funny. The Penn years, I didn't know so many Penn folks until our Penn alumni, until I moved here to Los Angeles, but y'all have a real diaspora, if you will, all over the world and especially in big cities. And my partner went to Penn and I think he overlapped with Dory when she was, well, I guess when y'all were freshmen, and he was a senior and glove of G Love and Special Sauce is out of Philly and around that era. And so recently Glo played here in Los Angeles. He played a golf course and my partner Rob took us and I was like, okay. But Dory still had a ticket stub from seeing him in 1995.
Maris Kreizman (16:20):
I love that. I wonder if I have my tickets st stuffed too. My husband will laugh about this all the time with me, how earnestly I rep for G Love and his special sauce. Oh,
Elise Hu (16:35):
So talented. I mean, he truly is a one-man band because we watched as he played guitar and harmonica and percussion with his foot all at the same time. Incredibly talented artist.
Maris Kreizman (16:48):
He's so good. Yeah.
Elise Hu (16:50):
Yeah. Okay. Well, you were also a podcaster, so in addition to being cultural critic and now an author of this essay collection, I want to burn this place down, which is excellent, and we'll get more into it later in the interview. Thank you. You were also a podcaster for a long time, and I really enjoyed listening to your conversations with authors on the Meris review. What do you feel like you got out of all those in-depth conversations with big thinkers over those years?
Maris Kreizman (17:14):
I love that question. First, I got an enormous amount of personal fulfillment that I don't think I got from any other job. I was picking all of the authors I wanted to talk to and talking to them in the way that I wanted to talk to. And the freedom of that was just so wonderful. And then, it's funny you should ask this question because I have a piece running in Lit Hub tomorrow about some of the advice I give to authors as they're about to publish that I had to tell myself, and it's everything. Everyone is neurotic around pub. I mean, that's a broad, but most people are neurotic around pub date and it's a good thing to remember to have fun and to not be stressed out the entire time because this is the culmination of a lot of work that you've done,
Elise Hu (18:17):
Right? It's like those who are planning for a big event and then you get this sort of
Maris Kreizman (18:24):
Post
Elise Hu (18:25):
Event, post wedding, post, whatever, post-graduation kind of come down if you've built too much toward it. So can you give us a sneak peek some of the advice that you give folks besides have fun?
Maris Kreizman (18:39):
Well, don't look at good reads. That's the first rule of being an author. It's not for you. It's none of your business. I also think for me in particular, taking time for yourself, I think this is a good message for this podcast too, is really important because I feel like I'm an extroverted introvert and I will still need recovery time while I'm on my book tour, and if I don't get it, I know that I will be flagging.
Elise Hu (19:12):
Yeah, yeah. Something that I did. I'm an extroverted extrovert, but I also need Elise time, and I tried to build in a ritual, especially knowing that I would be traveling and I'd wake up in Dallas, but then at night go to bed in Houston or whatever, New York and then dc. And so I tried to build in just kind of a ritual, a morning ritual of doing stretches I love or trying to do a plank for a minute and just doing that every day over the course of the two weeks or however long I was traveling just to have something to anchor me.
Maris Kreizman (19:45):
I love it.
Elise Hu (19:45):
And it sounds like you're talking about something similar.
Maris Kreizman (19:48):
Yeah, I think so. Even just if I have to remind myself that where at the bar and everyone wants another round of drinks, maybe it's not the best idea for me right now in this moment.
Elise Hu (20:06):
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Let's turn to the collection because this is very personal. It's a lot about your awakening and you're coming of age and then where you're at now. We came up around the same time and our women who internalized this notion that we were talking about earlier of the idea of meritocracy, that there can be enough individual achievement to arrive at financial security and fulfillment,
Maris Kreizman (20:36):
All of the things that you want from a fulfilling life.
Elise Hu (20:40):
But what are all the sort of falsehoods in that idea that were revealed to you over time and what are you pressing for instead now?
Maris Kreizman (20:52):
Yeah, I think for our parents' generation, I don't want to presume about your parents, but for my parents working hard really did get them the house and the car and the kids and the financial security, and I just don't know if we live in that world anymore. Of course, so many of these systems that I thought were designed for me and they had been stopped working for me, but they had never been designed for most other people, and I think it's important to acknowledge that too, that I was taught this fantasy about what American life could be, and if it didn't work for me, then how much worse is it for other people?
Elise Hu (21:40):
Yeah. It's such a lonely kind of mindset too that if we don't arrive at some sort of security and still or don't arrive at a marriage or children or all these other sorts of cultural norms that are baked in as goals that somehow it's a personal failing.
Maris Kreizman (22:01):
In my book, I talk about being diagnosed with diabetes type one diabetes, which is the kind where you need to take insulin every day or you die, and how much, even my blood sugars, if there are too high or too low, I feel like a failure and the moral weight of that is so hard to overcome sometimes, but we get it in every area it seems of American life.
Elise Hu (22:34):
How have you learned self-compassion and grace and learn to see things differently?
Maris Kreizman (22:43):
One of the things in my book that I didn't realize until I had finished writing it that was important was learning to ask for help and to depend on other people. Because for me, I will donate to my mutual aid organization and I will seek a community that way, but I never thought of myself as someone who also needed support, and that has really changed how I see the world.
Elise Hu (23:19):
Yeah. The other myth that we grew up with is the one that the checks and balances of our political system and that those checks and balances would hold and that they would prevent corruption.
Maris Kreizman (23:37):
Elise, we are just living in the aftermath of checks and balances, absolutely not working the way they should.
Elise Hu (23:46):
And so how do we get to the after if we arrive at the after of whatever this moment that we're in is and how are you coping with it as we try and push through?
Maris Kreizman (23:59):
I don't entirely know. I could not pretend that I know how to get beyond this, but I have started voting for candidates who vow to take action rather than just a blue sky about it when something goes awry. Chuck Schumer Mutual Aid for sure. The thing that I learned as a diabetic is that every kind of politician loves to talk about the price of insulin, but no one's coming to save us except for ourselves.
Elise Hu (24:39):
Really important lesson for this moment that we're in. The other thing that you wrestle with in the book is propaganda. I thought that essay was so timely.
Maris Kreizman (24:50):
Thank you.
Elise Hu (24:51):
As I am recording from la, which is still militarized, so you wrote a whole essay about the culture that we came up with or the culture that we grew up in and how much cops were portrayed as the good guys. So what do you think all of that did to us as a society? And first maybe define propaganda and what it looks like and how it
Maris Kreizman (25:15):
Yeah. Propaganda is in the terms I'm talking about it, any kind of culture that valorizes what police officers do. And growing up in the eighties and nineties, you couldn't turn on the television without seeing cops being valorized, whether it was on late night TV like a Miami Vice or on the evening news, which when we were growing up, it was the war on drugs time and the cops were the good guys and the bad drug dealers were the bad guys, and we all needed their protection and their health. And I think we also, what a weird time that we grew up in because we also grew up in the time of stranger danger, and we were told constantly, and this I think really speaks to rugged individualism. Again, we were told not to trust anybody. We were told that the only people that we could trust were our parents, our teachers, and policemen men.
Elise Hu (26:23):
This brings up such a strong memory for me of being maybe in fifth grade and coming home on the school bus with my little brother who's in third grade, and then the key to my house not working and not being able to get into my house and kind of panicking there on the front porch, and then my neighbor across the street who we knew and who was out there with his son, and he would play basketball with his son. He saw that we were struggling and offered to help, and I was terrified. I remember I had been taught that we cannot have anybody help, and so I was like, oh, no, no, I'll just wait for my mom.
Maris Kreizman (26:58):
Yeah. It really, not trusting your neighbors is a really way to have bad things happen in your neighborhood. I think part of the kand essay has me moving to New York City from the suburbs of New Jersey, and in that capacity too, I was taught everything that a 22-year-old white suburban girl is taught about moving to New York City, and that involves carrying a rape whistle perhaps, or carrying your keys in a strategic way. And I'm not saying that doesn't happen, but the amount of armor I felt like I had to put up just to get to work every day is astonishing. Now
Elise Hu (27:51):
What's the alternate affirmative vision for what we could see on TV that's not 54 seasons of cops?
Maris Kreizman (28:00):
Right. I always love books and television that center the victim. I think that's a big step, and that's the kind of true crime I love too, but I also think just moving on from cop procedurals in general would be revolutionary.
Elise Hu (28:28):
Yeah. I'm okay with more doctor shows.
Maris Kreizman (28:31):
We could do more doctor shows. I think firefighters are pretty okay. I realized that even Brooklyn Nine Nine, which I thought was such a warm and compassionate show, wasand simply because it portrayed all of these authoritative people as being silly and zany and funny and not to
Elise Hu (29:02):
Everyone. Right, right. Okay, let's take a break and we will be right back. Well, we're talking about one of the essays and then previously we were talking about the Meritocracy one featuring Donald Donny Trump Jr. As you call him, and you've written about diabetes to open the book. There's another essay about choosing not to have children. There's such a range of what you write about in this collection. What do you feel is the through line?
Maris Kreizman (29:35):
The through line is that the vision for my life that I grew up with was not the one that it turned out to be, and that's okay if not better. I think that another through line is that we like to think the media likes to portray that we all grow more conservative as we age, and I am just the polar opposite of that. I am dreaming bigger now than I ever did.
Elise Hu (30:13):
That leads me to a follow up, which is what are you dreaming for society wise, and then we'll talk more about you personally.
Maris Kreizman (30:22):
I always go back to mutual aid simply because I see the state of our government now and it's hard to trust that anyone else has our backs for sure. I think even just realizing that there are different paths to success and definitions of success is a big deal for me, and that does come up in the deciding not to have children essay. What if I could just be happy being me doing work that I enjoy, but not doing it all the time and then just being a person.
Elise Hu (31:07):
Yeah. I really have long wanted my career trajectory to be one of greater flexibility, even though that might mean not more money. Oh, for
Maris Kreizman (31:18):
Sure. Yeah. Freelancing has taught me that there are trade-offs.
Elise Hu (31:25):
Yeah, yeah. What does it mean to you now then to live a good life? What are some of your micro joys or joys that get put together to make you feel like, Hey, today was a good day, this was a good week, or I'm in the place that I want to be?
Maris Kreizman (31:41):
Yeah, talking about books makes me really happy, especially talking about books that normally wouldn't get as much as attention as I think they deserve. I think loving my husband is a big one and loving our friend group and loving our families
Elise Hu (32:03):
And
Maris Kreizman (32:03):
Our dog, and then connecting to other people I think is the main way to achieve happiness.
Elise Hu (32:14):
Do you want to shout out any books that aren't getting enough attention? This summer?
Maris Kreizman (32:19):
I really loved Meet Me at The Crossroads by Megan Giddings. She is a great writer who writes about the fantastical, but in a way that really, really relates to our world that we live in right now, and she's so precise. The dad Rock that made me a Woman by Nico Stratus, it's a memoir in songs that my friend Nico wrote about coming out as a trans woman to Bruce Springsteen and Wilco and all of the songs that I think she once thought she couldn't, like she were being cool. One more Vini Vara wrote Searches Selfhood in the Digital Age, and that is an essay collection about how she's about our age, about how the digital space has changed everything about the way we live, and it's really touching and scary and great.
Elise Hu (33:30):
Okay. Okay, fantastic. And occasionally, because you're a friend of the show and a friend of the co-host and founder Dory, we don't always ask all of our guests because it can be a little bit indulgent, but we ask kind of an older OG Forever35 question, which is, what are you doing for your skincare or haircare? Are there certain products that you can't live without?
Maris Kreizman (33:56):
So growing up, my mom taught me the best at home trick, which is that when you need to deep condition your hair, you get a little bit of olive oil and you put in a little dish and you heat it up in the microwave for 15 seconds and you slather it on your hair. And that works as well or better than anything you have to pay a lot of money for.
Elise Hu (34:20):
I need to try this, especially on my daughter. I have a daughter who gets very frizzy dry and the hair, and it's really thick too, so
Maris Kreizman (34:29):
Maybe
Elise Hu (34:29):
Just took the old home remedy. The old home remedy is
Maris Kreizman (34:32):
Probably what does the trick. I would also say that the way detox shampoo is also really great for my hair and then the good jeans, vitamin C oil.
Elise Hu (34:53):
Oh, I've been looking for a new vitamin C serum. So good jeans Good. That's the one you and you put it on in the morning
Maris Kreizman (35:01):
At night, actually,
Elise Hu (35:03):
And you put it on at night. Okay. Okay. Very good. Thanks for indulging us with
Maris Kreizman (35:07):
That. We love that
Elise Hu (35:09):
We're having this conversation during the summer of 2025. Everything kind of feels fraught. We've talked about what you're doing personally, what's happening systemically, and then when I heard you talk about what it means to live a good life, one of those keys is connection. So is there anything that you've learned or you've changed about your approach now that you are in your forties that has deepened your relationships with other people and deepened friendships or connection that you would want to share with the rest of us?
Maris Kreizman (35:40):
That's really great too. My friend Alison Libe just did a newsletter about getting small gifts for people you like just because, oh, spending $10 on a lip something, and that to me was just like a, oh yeah, just wanting to brighten someone's day because you know them and love 'em is really excellent.
Elise Hu (36:14):
Yeah. Yeah, I really like that. One of my micro jos has been, I mentioned this to listeners early this year, has been going to Dollar Tree and buying a Mylar balloon, like a Mylar heart balloon.
Maris Kreizman (36:25):
Oh, that's great.
Elise Hu (36:25):
And I'll buy it for my house for myself, but I should just buy people balloons.
Maris Kreizman (36:31):
I feel like that's a YouTube video waiting to happen.
Elise Hu (36:35):
Thank you for the tip. Thank you for the advice. How can folks find you Maris?
Maris Kreizman (36:39):
You can go to my website, Mariskreizman.com, and that's where you can sign up for my newsletter, which is called the Maris Review, and I'm also on Blue Sky at Maris and I'll be on book tour. So go to my website and you'll see all those dates.
Elise Hu (36:58):
Okay. Thank you so much for sitting down with me.
Maris Kreizman (37:00):
Oh, Elise, thank you so much.
Doree Shafrir (37:05):
Alright. I'm so glad you got to talk to Maris, even though I wasn't able to be there, so me too. So glad that that happened. So last week, my intention was to just kind of make it through because I had a very intense week and I did, I made it through, my son asked why he didn't come to the funeral and I said, well, but it was a lot of travel in a very short amount of time, some long plane rides. Then a three hour drive from Boston, I said, and also the funeral was almost two hours long and you would've had to sit still and be quiet the whole time. And he goes, oh yeah, it's good. I didn't go. And I was like, yeah, it's good. You know yourself. So he's like, yeah, no, he did watch some of it though. It's on it's streaming. So yeah, so this week, as I said before, sort of trying to channel her energy of showing up and spending time with friends. My friend from out of town is here this whole week and I'm going to see her tomorrow night and then I'm going to see her Thursday night and just trying to spend as much time with people as I can.
Elise Hu (38:31):
Yay. So good.
Doree Shafrir (38:33):
How about you? Did you unpack your storage stuff?
Elise Hu (38:37):
That Storage Mountain is still exactly as it was last week when we recorded. Oh dear. This is like a metaphor I think because the pile is so large, you just don't know where to begin and every time you look at it, it's more daunting to tackle it. So I have not gotten into it though. I was traveling last weekend and Rob is back from Phoenix where he was, and so maybe now that I have some help, we can tackle it together. That is not going to be my intention though. My intention for the forthcoming week, especially since I have some travel with the family coming up, we have our family trip coming up to Zion National Park with thanks to our listener who sent suggestions for what to do is just to really spend time with the girls and be present with the girls. There are so many of them and they're always around, but then I don't think that I'm fully present with them a lot of the time, especially during the school year when we're just rushing to our various activities and things. So I love unstructured time with the girls, so I'll just make that my intention to be really present for. I love that unstructured time.
Doree Shafrir (39:49):
Very cool. Alright, well thanks everyone for listening. Forever35 is hosted and produced by me, Doree Shafrir and Elise Hu, and produced and edited by Samee Junio. Sami Reed is our project manager and our network partners Acast. Thanks everyone for listening.
Elise Hu (40:05):
Talk to you next time.
Doree Shafrir (40:06):
Bye.