The Christmas Hanukkah (Chrismukkah?) Hallmark-style romance novels you've been waiting for!

Content warning below
On the first night of Hanukkah 2024, I give to all of you, by way of my seventh-grade bestie and USA TODAY bestselling author Helena Greer, the story of Carrigans Christmasland! Inspired by rage-Tweets about Hallmark movies, these steamy stories dare to ask the important question: "what if this beloved trope was gay?" (and Jewish). Helena and I did the math, and we have known each other for nearly 30 years now (yikes...). We met during the formative, chaotic, defining days of trauma that is middle school in our hometown of Tucson. Those experiences, and more, are central to who we have become, and the exploration and identity we began to discover in those days, like so many of us, has shaped much of who we became, and in Helena’s case, her return to writing and the birth of the Jewish Christmas-tree-farm-owning Carrigans. 

This episode will probably resonate with a lot of '90s kids, but we do discuss some of our and our peers' struggles, including sexual assault, disordered eating, self-harm, addiction, and sexual identity. While we reflect on these as part of our own lives and in compassionate, nuanced, and meaningful terms, it may be a lot for some people to take on, and we recognize that. But, perhaps the most important part of the discussion is how friendship and community can--and did--mean the difference between life and death for alienated, traumatized kids like us and our small band of misfits. 

While you will not find anyone with a more wise, loving, hilarious, nuanced take on these and a million other topics than Helena, if you need to skip to around 37:00 where we dig in more to the books themselves, go for it, and if you don't wanna hear about it at all and just wanna get those books, go to: https://www.helenagreer.com/books and pick your bookstore poison! 

Other topics include: how Jewish is Jewish enough, and can the daughter of a convert father ever get there? How do you know what flavor of Judaism is right for you? Also: the glory of approaching your forties, the power of rage-Tweets, and some Tucson deep cuts that are surprisingly relatable to anyone with a hometown.

GLOSSARY
Sitting Shiva: From the Hebrew word for seven, sheva, the tradition of mourning for seven days including customs like sitting low to the ground and covering mirrors, bringing the family of the deceased food, and sitting in silence together.
Reconstructionist Judaism

BONUS MATERIAL
Utterback Middle School was the arts magnet school in Tucson.
IBT is Tucson's legendary gay bar, open since 1985.
Meet Richard Siken
More on Tu Bishvat with Tobin Mitnick.Alcoholics Anonymous today "is not affiliated with any religion," but there's more on its Christian origins in Ken Burns' amazing Prohibition documentary, and many

Transcript

***This is an AI-generated transcript and has not been copy-edited. The robots are good, but not perfect, please be forgiving!***

[00:00:00] Helena: My agent would say that my books, like my brand is, um, angsty, queer millennials obsessing about what home means. 

[00:00:08] Hannah: Have you ever heard a more millennial hallmark? 

[00:00:11] Helena: Okay. So like. What does it mean to come home? What does it mean to be a part of a family? And I think when you're talking about going back to the faith of your childhood, that is a big part of that piece of home.

[00:00:28] Hannah: Today is a very special day, y'all. It is officially Krismika. For real. It's Christmas today, and Hanukkah begins tonight. And I have for you the perfect gift. Meet Helena Greer, the author of the Kerrigan's Christmasland series of books that asks the very important question, what if this beloved trope was gay and Jewish?

[00:00:52] Hannah: We're going to get into some heady stuff in this episode, so I just want to give a heads up right away. We will be talking about some core identity things and [00:01:00] life experiences, which include Some disordered eating, some discussion of other trauma that we experienced in our adolescence, including sexual assault and self harm of various kinds.

[00:01:13] Hannah: The reason we discuss some of these things is not just because they're a fact of life for a lot of us, including myself and Helena, but because she and I shared a lot of those experiences. growing up together in Tucson. Big reveal, Helena is my seventh grade best friend. So yes, there will be some heavy topics, but as you may also be able to tell, we face it with humor and grace because, you know, what are you gonna do?

[00:01:37] Hannah: This episode was recorded a while ago, when I was in Houston. for the launch of Helena's second book in her Kerrigan series, which features a fabulous lady with some hair issues named Hannah. So I went out to support her and see the book launch and you know, see her because it, uh, it had been a while.

[00:01:56] Hannah: Since the recording of this episode, she has released her third and I [00:02:00] believe final book in the Kerrigan's Christmasland series. So go to helenagreer. com Check the show notes if you need the link or to your local independent bookstore and treat yourself to some magical holiday madness Merry Christmas all y'all.

[00:02:16] Hannah: I

[00:02:23] Hannah: had no friends until seventh grade. You guys were my first actual friend group I had one friend third fourth fifth sixth grade one friend and when I came to Utterback I was so ready to just be, you know, bullied and ignored and, um, you know, made fun of because I was, you know, the hyperverbal kid. I'd always hung out with grownups.

[00:02:44] Hannah: I was reading books that nobody else had ever heard of. I was using words that other kids didn't know. And, uh, that was my reality. And so I came there and there was a clan of weirdos who was ready for me and like pink hair and it was the first time that my [00:03:00] weirdness was embraced. I also felt like it was my chance to like start over and reinvent myself and write an identity for myself.

[00:03:06] Hannah: And, and I cut off my one friend because she was like the nerd who was going to forever remind me of and be a part of my nerd past. And I still like, when I think about it, I feel so because I'm sure she just had no idea why. 

[00:03:20] Helena: And I never like, I mean, I think that's a thing that happens in middle school. I was very good friends with a kid named Joel in middle school.

[00:03:27] Helena: Um, and then he, one day just cut me off. Joel and I have talked about it as adults, right? And he has said, like, I thought I had to be cool and be with this friend group. And I had this whole thing and I was trying to restart. It was the exact same thing, exact same thing. And I, a person who like works with middle school and high school students.

[00:03:43] Helena: Like, yeah, I totally get it, man. It was fine. Um, I think that that shifting attempt to figure out what our identity is and how it relates to other people and how to sort of like feel like ourselves around other people [00:04:00] causes us to do very harmful things to each other. almost constantly. Like I did things that I really read in middle school.

[00:04:07] Helena: Um, things were done to me that I really, you know, I, I know that the other person really regrets cause we've gone back and talked about it. And I think that our middle school experience was maybe a little bit different than other people's. Um, in that, well, for a couple of reasons, partly because we went to a magnet school for the arts.

[00:04:30] Helena: And so like the cool kids were the kids who could sing. Or who could be in theater or right who were creative or 

[00:04:37] Hannah: who could draw. Yeah, we're 

[00:04:38] Helena: great in band. Yeah. And so who would be the nerds were actually like the coolest kids. For sure. Right. That's so true. So the like boy that everybody had a crush on in our middle school played saxophone really, really well.

[00:04:53] Helena: Not football. Right. 

[00:04:55] So true. 

[00:04:56] Hannah: Um, and so we loved the guy with the [00:05:00] weird. Like hairdo, like he was the cool kid. 

[00:05:02] Helena: Um, I had this huge crush on this dude who never spoke to me all of middle school. He just drew constantly. 

[00:05:08] Hannah: We became friends because he sat behind me in, um, homeroom or whatever it was. And I remember getting him to draw the cover of our yearbook.

[00:05:15] Hannah: Remember? Yes, I do. 

[00:05:17] Helena: So I had a friend group in elementary school, but then In middle school, only one of them came with me and she like went off to be friends with other people. Mm. Not that we didn't stay like we were friendly, but we weren't in the same French group. Mm-hmm . And you and I built this French group mm-hmm.

[00:05:33] Helena: Of like real weirdos. Yeah. This was the island of misfit toys in the back of the life. Absolute. Like it was great. The weirdest kids . We were 

[00:05:40] so weird. It was great. 

[00:05:41] Helena: So, you know. I don't have super close friendships with anybody from middle school. Like you are my closest friend that I have maintained from middle school.

[00:05:52] Helena: Um, and you and I don't talk nearly as much as we should, but we also have the kind of friendship where it's like, Oh, I haven't talked to you in a year every where [00:06:00] we doesn't matter at all. Um, 

[00:06:02] Hannah: the other problem is that Because of the way that we talk. It's like this. It's like, if we talk, it's going to take three hours, right?

[00:06:08] Hannah: It's never going to take. We just don't have time for that. 

[00:06:11] Helena: Um, I know you're like, we should have a phone call. And I'm like, when can I schedule five hours on the phone into my day and you would think it would be better if we talked more often, but it wouldn't, it wouldn't, it would just take more time like this, but we did have, it was very, I think healing to me as a kid who like, wore vintage dresses and like was a real like outlier in the social structure of middle school.

[00:06:37] Helena: For sure. And to have found a French group that really embraced me in that way. 

[00:06:42] Hannah: Yeah. 

[00:06:43] Helena: And I don't know that everyone gets that experience in middle school of being able to find their weirdest group. Yeah. Um, I think very few. Yeah. And so even though there was stuff in middle school, obviously, um, I wasn't eating.

[00:06:59] Hannah: [00:07:00] Um, I was cutting when I came back from Zypress and you guys all knew and understood. 

[00:07:04] Helena: Yeah. 

[00:07:05] Yeah. 

[00:07:05] Helena: I mean, you knew I wasn't eating. Yeah. Like we just, And we held each other in a way where we were able to say in a way that I think is unusual for like 13 year olds. I am not okay with the fact that you're doing this, but I'm not going to like call your mom.

[00:07:18] Helena: I'm not going to freak out. I understand why and I need you to know I'm worried about you. And I'm 

[00:07:24] Hannah: going to continue to tell you why you're worth it. You are lovable and you are loved. And I'm just going to keep banging that drum and banging that drum. It was 

[00:07:31] Helena: a very nuanced way to respond to all of us being in a lot of pain for a group of 13 year olds.

[00:07:37] Hannah: Yeah, that's a really good point. That was such a tortured, first of all, the nineties were rough. It was so hard to be a kid in the nineties. Yeah. No one was fucking paying attention. Like just not at all. Nobody was watching. Not at all. The parents. The parents were not watching the, not at all. We were all sort of trying to like look out.

[00:07:52] Hannah: We literally all just had to take care of each other and we did. But 

[00:07:56] Helena: like part of the not watching thing is [00:08:00] that like we all had cable. Nobody was watching what we were watching. We were all ingesting a lot of media. That wasn't developmentally appropriate for us. And obviously like. I'm not a person who thinks that children should only read things that are like the right, the right book, whatever I'm a librarian.

[00:08:15] Helena: I'm like a free speech advocate, but I do think that unfettered access to things that are made for adults without context, when you're without context, when you're 11, it's not great, is not great. For Children's emotional development. And so all of us were constantly ingesting stuff that no one was sitting down and talking to us about or even aware of or even aware of.

[00:08:40] Helena: Um, and I do think that it made us feel like we were much older than we were. And it didn't allow us space to be young kids who were our real age developmentally. I think we, when I think back on that time and then I look at the middle schoolers that I [00:09:00] teach, what I think about is How much I feel like we skipped early adolescence.

[00:09:07] Helena: Oh my 

[00:09:08] God. Same. 

[00:09:09] Helena: And went straight to middle to late adolescence. Much younger than was appropriate for us. Totally. 

[00:09:15] Hannah: I feel like we are because we had to not just feel, but be so much older than we should have had to be at such young ages because we were so self guided. And so like, we were just taking care of each other.

[00:09:26] Hannah: We were monitoring each other. I know, at least for me, and I think for you, and probably most of the other kids in our friend group, we are alive. literally physically alive because of that bond. Right. And that ability to like nurture one another as that, we were each other's crisis group. We were the cash team.

[00:09:45] Helena: Absolutely. And we were 

[00:09:47] Hannah: always in crisis cause we were fucking 13. Everything's a crisis when you're 12 and 13 years old, it's always crisis. But like, as you said, you know, greeting each other with that nonjudgment and also being weird artists is so helpful because we actually, without [00:10:00] knowing it at the time had relatively healthy coping tools.

[00:10:02] Hannah: Like we made stuff. Yeah, we wrote on walls. We like Made things out of clay and made each other bracelets and like wrote on our bodies and you know cosplayed at the Rocky Horror Picture Show 100 percent and haven't we have been there in our underwear 

[00:10:16] Helena: smoking 

[00:10:17] Hannah: at 12? 

[00:10:17] Helena: No, 

[00:10:18] Hannah: probably not But at the same time it was a wonderful open space where we were safe and accepted.

[00:10:24] Hannah: We met queer elders 100 percent IBT is the first bar I went to And I remember I was 13, 14 maybe years old and nobody ID'd us and now I go there and I get it. I have no doubt that when we walked in that door as kids, they were like, Oh my God, thank God they're here and not somewhere else. 

[00:10:41] Helena: But do you remember, I also think this is really important to me as a queer kid who wasn't out in middle school, but did come out very early.

[00:10:48] Helena: Like I came out at 

[00:10:49] 14. 

[00:10:50] Helena: There were a lot of kids who were out as bi in our middle school. I remember that. Yeah, for sure. Borer. 1994 or whatever it was, right? [00:11:00] 1995, 96. Yeah. That was not maybe necessarily true outside of an arts magnet. I think that's 

[00:11:06] Hannah: right. 

[00:11:07] Helena: Right. And so I wasn't the first person I knew who came out and I had the language that bisexuality existed.

[00:11:16] Helena: Um, and I, my mom, God bless her is wonderful, but she's like hardcore second wave feminist. She did not believe bisexuality was real, right? She thought it was like, A thing people did on their path to being gay until they were like, ready to admit that they were gay. It was a transition. Yeah. So, but I had been around other kids who were out as bi and who had dated people of multiple genders.

[00:11:37] Helena: And who had, um, even if those people ended up like as adults not identifying as bi, I don't know, right? People's sexuality changes over the course of their lives. 

[00:11:50] Hannah: And depending on their situation. 

[00:11:51] Helena: Yeah, that's normal. Yeah, some people, like I have been in a quote straight marriage unquote for 20 years except that like my marriage is not straight because I'm not [00:12:00] straight.

[00:12:00] Helena: And, um, You know, I haven't stopped, like, being attracted to women or non binary people, I'm just monogamous. Right. Um, and bisexuality includes men. By the way. Sometimes. By the way. Um, for some people. Yeah. And so, you know, I fell in love with one. Um, but some people, obviously, like, as adults, go back into pretending that part of their life never happened.

[00:12:20] Helena: Yeah. Because it's what's safe. 

[00:12:23] Hannah: Yeah, 

[00:12:23] Helena: or because that's the situation that they're in but I do think because I grew up in a middle school where I already Had been exposed to that being pretty normalized. Yeah for the mid 90s. 

[00:12:33] Hannah: Yeah, 

[00:12:33] Helena: you 

[00:12:34] Hannah: weren't sure if it was you but it wasn't stigma Yes. Yeah, that's huge.

[00:12:39] Hannah: Yeah, 90s were crazy, man And I remember that too because there was never there was never a time that I wasn't aware of people being gay or bi or whatever. And then I ever thought it was weird, which is so interesting because you know, most again, our sexual awakening I think was a lot younger than most people and certainly younger than probably at quote unquote [00:13:00] should have been.

[00:13:01] Hannah: But like from the very beginning of the, you know, quote unquote, sexual awakening years, there were always people who were not straight. And I never, Like I never lived in a society where it was only men and boys and girls and that's it You know, like it was never that and I think that was our group. It was because of that That's where we established it and I got lucky because I went to the arts high school, too 

[00:13:22] Yeah, 

[00:13:23] Hannah: and it came with me.

[00:13:24] Hannah: And so I really did watch a lot of people go through their journeys of discovering themselves or finding their home sexually or whatever their identities were. And so the actual process part of it seemed really natural too. I think that that's a huge reason that, for example, our connection has always been so, so real.

[00:13:46] Hannah: You are responsible for it continuing though, because when I moved back to Tucson, You reached out to me and you were like, Oh good. You're back. I was like, okay, okay. And it was just like, here's a person that [00:14:00] I've known for 15 years at that point. Yeah. And now we're at how old are we? Oh my God. 25 years.

[00:14:07] Helena: More than that. I'm 41 and we met when, and we were 12, 28 years, 29 years. Yeah, I know. So you and I have talked about this over the years that I think there's something really. Crucial for me and people who've always known because and I make new friendships, you know, I don't, people are always like, it's hard to make friends as an adult.

[00:14:28] Helena: I don't. 

[00:14:29] Hannah: I actually don't have that experience. I don't have that experience. 

[00:14:31] Helena: Me too. 

[00:14:32] Hannah: I'm an extrovert. I make friends really easily. I actually feel like I've never met a stranger. That's 

[00:14:38] Helena: terrible to say. I'm not great at keeping friendships long term when people are like outside of my field of vision because I have like a lot of difficulty with object permanence.

[00:14:46] Helena: Same. Same girl. Same. And I value those friendships that are like for a season, quote unquote, right? But there is something about having people who've known you all your life, who you don't have to go [00:15:00] through any of the baggage background. 

[00:15:02] Hannah: You don't have to explain any of your behavior or your weird, odd reactions to things.

[00:15:06] Helena: Right. They know they've been there through all of it. So and every big thing that's ever happened to me in my whole life, they were there for and knew about at the time. And so that is very freeing to me. And some people find it very stifling. I think. If you don't move away and come back, it can feel like you're stuck in a dynamic that doesn't fit you anymore and you weren't allowed to grow out of.

[00:15:26] Helena: Totally. But because I don't, I've moved away and I'm coming back to those friendships and checking in on them. Yeah. We're able to have this sort of depth of connection that, I don't even know that it's more than some of my newer friends, but it's different. 

[00:15:45] Hannah: Different. Yeah. 

[00:15:46] Helena: It's foundational. Yeah. In a 

[00:15:48] Hannah: different way.

[00:15:48] Hannah: Totally. 

[00:15:48] Helena: And it's very, um, comforting to me, right? It brings me a lot of peace internally when I'm in spaces with people 

[00:15:56] who I've 

[00:15:57] Helena: always known. Partly because I think I [00:16:00] have a lot of self narrative about being too much. And that's not all from self, right? That comes from other people. I've been told that a lot.

[00:16:08] Helena: Yeah, exactly. I'm too much. I'm too loud. I'm too weird. I'm too fast. Yes. Yeah. A hundred 

[00:16:15] Hannah: percent. 

[00:16:15] Helena: I take up too much room in conversations and sometimes physically as well. 

[00:16:19] Hannah: Yeah. Specifically. Yep. I get it. Same. 

[00:16:21] Helena: So people who have chosen to be friends with me for 30 years and continue to choose that is like, Oh, I don't have to do any masking.

[00:16:31] Helena: Right. 

[00:16:32] And 

[00:16:33] Helena: this, I think too, building community with people. Who are in different marginalizations, 

[00:16:42] right, 

[00:16:43] Helena: in a way that is really deep. Allows us to have incredibly difficult conversations about very thorny issues where we may end up on different ends of or at different conclusions, but we have heard each other [00:17:00] and like assumed best intent and known each other's values and known each other's perspective.

[00:17:07] Hannah: And engaged with one another's reasons for thinking what they think. Yeah. 

[00:17:11] Helena: And giving each other a lot of grace. And said, Oh, I really hear why you think that. I think I believe something different. But it allows for. A kind of much broader understanding of very difficult concepts 

[00:17:26] than 

[00:17:26] Helena: I would be able to have otherwise.

[00:17:29] Helena: And so those relationships from a personal perspective are very healing for me. But they're also from a perspective of like who I want to be in the world, allow me to be ethically the person I want to be, morally the person I want to be. I love that. Cause like, how do we find ourselves? I don't know. I mean, we're extroverts, right?

[00:17:52] Helena: But in many ways, I, if I'm left to my own devices in my own head, I have a lot of false narratives about [00:18:00] myself. Gets really weird. Real fast. Yeah. Being able to see myself reflected in lots of other people and do a check in. Do I believe that about myself? Do I not? Is that new information about me that I can take in?

[00:18:11] Helena: Can I kind of rewrite some of the wrong narratives about like, yeah, all of that allows me to have a better sense of self. 

[00:18:17] Hannah: Totally. 

[00:18:18] Helena: And a more grounded sense of self. 

[00:18:21] Hannah: Yeah. And it allows you to believe the best things about yourself that, again, not always from only internal narratives you have been told is not true.

[00:18:32] Hannah: You are not as kind as you think you are. You are not as smart as you think you are. You are not as lovable at the core as you think you are. And then you look around you and you've chosen all these people and they've chosen you back and they are people who you deeply respect and deeply admire. And also want to emulate often in very, very different ways.

[00:18:52] Hannah: And then you think to yourself as you get older and you start to battle those narratives, you, you have, you're sort of forced to believe that what they see in you, [00:19:00] cause there's a critical mass might actually be true. Yes. And that's how you start to take apart that narrative. Sometimes, at least for at least for extroverts, at least for me like that, I could not start internally by myself.

[00:19:10] Hannah: I could not start taking apart the I'm unlovable narrative by myself. I had to look to the people around me that I was willing to fight for their sense of being lovable. I was willing to fight their vision of themselves to show them how wonderful they are and start to help them take apart that narrative in their own lives.

[00:19:30] Hannah: I actually had to look at them and then face the truth that they were doing that for me and therefore maybe I'm not as big of a horrible piece of shit as I just assumed That I was. 

[00:19:41] Helena: Right. 

[00:19:41] Hannah: I had to start there. 

[00:19:42] Helena: My core intrinsic belief that is like written in my DNA, that I'm fundamentally unlovable, that is like the thing that I start 

[00:19:51] from, 

[00:19:52] Helena: for whatever reason, is it because I'm a child of alcoholics?

[00:19:54] Helena: Is it because like I was molested early? Is it because I'm like, well, who knows? Undoing that so [00:20:00] that I can be in the world and accept love. Part of it is building these friendships. And, very specifically, like, sorry men, with people of marginalized genders. Mm hmm. Right? That's fascinating. Yeah. Because, like, that's where I caucus.

[00:20:19] Helena: Mm hmm. Right? Do you know what I mean? Like, I'm a cis woman who did a lot of unpacking. Because I'm in queer community, right? Mm hmm. I thought a lot about my gender. And I did a lot of thinking about, like, what, is this, if it's the gender I was assigned. Yeah. The gender that I really vibe with, is that what's true for me?

[00:20:32] Helena: Right, right, right. And I came at, like, yes, and, even if it were not, mm hmm. Like, even if I had not been assigned a marginalized gender, right, or even if I like this side of the is where I want to caucus, where I always kind of want people I want to care for. And so being in community with people of marginalized genders has.

[00:20:56] Helena: been healing that because they will love you very, very, very, very [00:21:00] fiercely and they will not take you are unlovable as an answer. Like they will not let me, you will not let me say I am an fundamentally unlovable person. You're like, I have loved you for 30 years. I have 

[00:21:11] Hannah: really strong evidence to the contrary.

[00:21:14] Hannah: Please do not invalidate my feelings about that. This is one thing I will never validate you on. 

[00:21:20] Helena: So that's, I mean, That's a very important kind of way for me to experience the world is continuing to have those friendships.

[00:21:37] Hannah: I know that gender is and has always been a really important part of your identity. But one thing that really wasn't that present, and I think we were the same about this as kids, was like, we were Jewish, but we were always like Jewish, Jewish. But I think, and you know, we all get more religious as we get older.

[00:21:54] Hannah: Okay, fine. Sure. But the Jewishness is definitely a bigger part of [00:22:00] life. 

[00:22:00] Helena: Yes. So my dad converted when I was a kid. Um, my parents were second generation Unitarian Universalist. My dad converted to Judaism. And he, you know, when people are converting, they're really intense about it. 

[00:22:17] Hannah: Yes. I've seen that phenomenon.

[00:22:19] Helena: Our house was like really Jewish. And also my step mom at the time came from a family that like, um, ran a, uh, chain of grocery stores in the Midwest. And like, they were. Like this like big part of Jewish life and Jewish culture in the Quad Cities and like she grew up in a neighborhood where like no one celebrated Christmas and she didn't know what the Christmas story was, you know?

[00:22:46] Helena: She was like, can you tell me about this Jesus thing? It's 

[00:22:48] Hannah: so wild to think that places like that exist. In the 90s, right? In the US. In the US, yeah. That's an enclave, buddy. 

[00:22:53] Helena: Yeah, no, for sure. And so that family that we were a big part of, um, was incredibly [00:23:00] Jewish. And so I grew up in this very Jewish home, but I always thought of myself as Unitarian Universalist.

[00:23:05] Mm hmm. 

[00:23:05] Helena: Partly because my very orthodox relatives. 

[00:23:08] Mm 

[00:23:09] Helena: hmm. You're never really gonna be Jewish enough for it. Right. I wasn't born of a Jewish mother. Um, and then when my dad converted, I didn't have a bat mitzvah like I didn't go through that process. And so, but my dad was also not Jewish enough for them, right.

[00:23:22] Helena: Like it was, never could be. There was never going to be that. And so I As an adult, I started going to Unitarian Universalist churches and being really involved. And a thing that I found really regularly was that I wanted there to be less Jesus and more God in my church services. Amen? Is it a weird thing for me to say?

[00:23:45] Helena: So I, and then I was like, you know, maybe, is anyone out there doing this? Yeah, maybe. Who's 

[00:23:51] Hannah: doing more God and less Jesus? 

[00:23:53] Helena: So um, I did a lot of work around my relationship with my dad and realized that some of my [00:24:00] disconnect from Judaism was that I had a very difficult relationship with my dad. And it wasn't necessarily that I was upset with Judaism as I was upset with my dad.

[00:24:10] Helena: And also the synagogue that I was raised in was like relatively conservative reform. And I didn't know the Reconstructionist movement existed as a kid. And I feel like Reconstructionism is like the part of Judaism that's right for me. So that process of like, Figuring out how Jewish I am and if I'm Jewish enough, and if it's a community that will accept me and a community that I want to be a part of and like, um, cause I'm in this in between space 

[00:24:43] of it 

[00:24:45] Helena: and really loving Judaism from a religious and theological and spiritual perspective and feeling very drawn to it, but not in the way that my kid is where my kid from birth has been like, I'm Jewish.

[00:24:58] Helena: He was raised 

[00:24:58] Hannah: in it. 

[00:24:59] Helena: Yeah. 

[00:24:59] Hannah: Yeah. [00:25:00] Yeah. 

[00:25:00] Helena: Um, and that's it. But feeling like, you know, I walked away for a long time, which a lot of adults, a lot of people do with their religious, you know, whatever they were 

[00:25:08] Hannah: raised with. Yeah. 

[00:25:09] Helena: And the fact that I can't quite just be like, no, I'm not Jewish tells me that there's something there that needs to be unpacked, right?

[00:25:17] Helena: Like there's some piece there that, that is drawing me continuously to Judaism. 

[00:25:22] Hannah: That you remain literally attached to. 

[00:25:25] Helena: Yes. And I don't want to detach. Yeah. 

[00:25:27] Hannah: Yeah. 

[00:25:28] Helena: Um, Cause Judy is an extraordinarily beautiful community of faith. So trying to find what my space might be there, I think is a lot of the work of my late thirties and early forties.

[00:25:43] Helena: Um, and maybe it's a lifelong work, right? I think it is. I think our 

[00:25:47] Hannah: spiritual journeys are eternal, no pun intended, but kind of, but I also think that it's like, As you get older, especially, I think, in your 40s, like, it's so exciting. Coming into my 30s was [00:26:00] fucking incredible. So 

[00:26:01] Helena: much better than my 20s. I can't even, it was like night and day.

[00:26:03] Helena: You couldn't 

[00:26:03] Hannah: pay me an eternal, an infinite amount of money to be in my 20s again. Never, ever, ever. But the transition through my 30s towards 40 has been so beautiful. And like, Your life distills in such a way that the crystals that it forms are so pure and so wonderful. And for example, I have found myself leaning into friendships like this that are 30 years old.

[00:26:27] Hannah: And building relationships with family. We just did our first family reunion and we somehow became that family that wears matching t shirts. That shit sneaks up on you. I'm telling you, we, I didn't, you just turn around and one day you're like, Oh fuck, we're wearing shirts. We're wearing shirts now. We're the people wearing shirts.

[00:26:43] Hannah: We're the gaybergubers. The gaybergubers. That's a lot. By the way. Yeah. It was group effort. We started by talking shit in the group chat. Next thing you know, there were t shirts. There were shirts. But like the beauty of it is that also allows you to narrow your focus. And you, you distill it down to the like, honestly, what three to five things that [00:27:00] you really care about.

[00:27:00] Hannah: And one of them is spirituality. Yes. And you get serious about it. You get serious about asking yourself questions that lead you to answers that make you feel purposeful and like you have affirmation of your direction and once again, of who you are and want to be. 

[00:27:16] Helena: So When I was started drafting Season of Love, my first book, the way that this happened is that I was rage tweeting about the lack of queer people in Hallmark movies.

[00:27:28] Helena: And I was like, you know, woman goes to a small town, falls in love with a butch lumberjack. And my dear friend, Rachel, who is a extremely devout conservative Jew and a non binary person in the South, and a brilliant librarian, slid into my DMs and said, um, you're a writer. You could write this book. I have an idea.

[00:27:52] Helena: Start the Google Doc and share it with me. They also said, this has to be Jewish. And I said, Rachel, [00:28:00] I'm not Jewish. And Rachel said, you have a Jewish parent, we're raised in a Jewish household. How are you not Jewish? In what way aren't you? Yeah. And I was like, I never had a bat mitzvah. I never did a conversion process.

[00:28:12] Helena: Like I never this, I never that. And Rachel was like, well, I'm like, yeah. Really Jewish. And I am telling you that this book should be Jewish. And you, you're Jewish enough to write this book. That's big. So they also said, Um, it's got to take place from Sukkot to Tuba Shabbat. Why? I don't know. That's so funny.

[00:28:39] Helena: I think it was the concept of like a full Jewish season, right? Oh, and it also, it's on a Christmas tree farm. So like harvest to, to like New Year's for the trees, right? This is the most hilarious. Okay. And also because. Hallmark movies, even when they have Jews in them, are just about [00:29:00] Hanukkah. And so Rachel was kind of like, anything but Hanukkah, right?

[00:29:05] Helena: Like it has to be bigger than that, right? I love that. Like more expansive than that. So, um, I wrote the book and then I was querying it to agents and my agent, Becca Potus, who's Jewish, had a call with me about it. And I said, I don't know if I'm Jewish enough to like publish this book, right? And Becca said, You have a Jewish parent.

[00:29:27] Helena: You grew up in a Jewish household. Again, what boxes are you trying to check? I read this book. It's very Jewish. Like, 

[00:29:34] Hannah: I'm 

[00:29:34] Helena: not really sure what the problem is. What would more 

[00:29:35] Hannah: Jewish look like? 

[00:29:37] Helena: Um, I mean it is set on a Christmas tree farm. Yeah, I have questions. It turns out that many Jewish families own Christmas, like many Christmas tree farms are owned by Jewish families.

[00:29:47] Helena: But why? I don't know. I, I 

[00:29:50] Hannah: don't 

[00:29:50] Helena: know. I 

[00:29:50] Hannah: don't know. They were like, this Christmas thing, this seems lucrative. We should get it. It's not 

[00:29:54] Helena: a thing. I mean, I did make it up, but then a bunch of people were like, Oh, I know a Jewish family that owned a Christmas tree [00:30:00] farm. And I was like, wait, this is a real thing.

[00:30:03] Helena: So my editor, who's a queer Jew acquired the book. And when we were talking about marketing it, I said, you know, I have reservations about marketing it as a Jewish book. Uh, I don't, you know, I feel like I need to like be honest with people about the fact that I'm. Jew ish and my editor was like, you know, I feel like The question of whether or not someone who has a Jewish parent was raised in a Jewish home is Jewish enough is like obviously personal, but also it's a real complex question and certainly there are Jews and rabbis who would say that because like I didn't do a conversion process and I didn't have a bat mitzvah and My dad was my dad not my mom and he converted after I was born Like, certainly, there are people who would be like, no, you're not, right?

[00:30:58] Helena: And also, I've talked to a lot of [00:31:00] rabbis, mostly Reform and Reconstructionists, right? I mean, this is the reality, who are like, of course you're Jewish. You were raised Jewish. What? By a Jewish parent. Right. And so, a lot of really phenomenal Jewish authors have been like, we're so excited about your book.

[00:31:15] Helena: We're so, you know, and Jewish reviewers have said, like, thanks for, you know, writing such a Jewish book. And so. It's been a very interesting process for me because the response from not everyone, because obviously like ask two Jews get three opinions, but a lot of, um, Jewish writers and reviewers and readers I really respect and admire have been more accepting of me as a member of the Jewish literature community than I am.

[00:31:46] Helena: Was of myself. 

[00:31:48] Hannah: Full circle again, back to the whole, like, sometimes we have to just believe other people when they tell us what they see about us. 

[00:31:54] Helena: Yes. So that has been interesting because when [00:32:00] I, Miriam, the main character in the first book is sort of going to synagogue weekly and she's like a member and involved, but she's not really close to her big Jewish family.

[00:32:13] Helena: Sort of a little bit, 

[00:32:14] um, 

[00:32:16] Helena: apart from. And I was interested in the idea of books about 30 somethings who were involved in their religious community. Because most of my friends are pretty involved in some religious community or another. Like, I'm friends with people who are in a lot of different faiths. But like my 30 something and 40 something Muslim friends are religious and involved, you know, and their kids are in Arabic school and they're, you know, like every week that's what they're doing.

[00:32:49] Helena: My Hindu friends are doing that and my Unitarian friends are doing that and my like Catholic friends are, you know, it's to me a really normal thing for like [00:33:00] Xennials to be pretty involved 

[00:33:03] Hannah: in a faith community. Which is so funny because I feel like we grew up like pretty cynical and nihilistic. I feel like when we all were growing up, we were like, religion, stupid.

[00:33:14] Hannah: And yet here 

[00:33:15] Helena: we are. So what I see a lot in romance novels, especially about white people, unless they're Christian, inspirational romance novels is. No one goes to church or any, right. Nobody, it's not part of it. We've like, it's either like explicitly super Christian or there's no religion at all. And in black contemporary romance, you're more likely to see characters who are like, just going to church because it's part of their life and it's just a realistic representation of what happens in their lives.

[00:33:49] Helena: And in like Latin X, you know, romances, you're more likely to see it. Confirmation or you like, there's more likely to 

[00:33:57] Hannah: be, there's a life, the ways in which 

[00:33:59] Helena: [00:34:00] religion is integral to the community and the family just shows up in the book growing up. Yeah. And, but I was not seeing a lot of just like people, especially like progressive people of faith 

[00:34:12] who 

[00:34:13] Helena: like were involved in their faith communities.

[00:34:16] Helena: And like, that was just like a normal, regular part of their lives. Even though it was like a normal, regular part of my life and most of my friends. And so I was interested in that, especially as someone who, my bachelor's in comparative mythology and has always been, when I was a kid, I was like, I'm going to go to the Quakers and I'm going to go to all the different places and see what church I want to be a part of.

[00:34:39] Helena: And 

[00:34:40] Hannah: yeah. 

[00:34:40] Helena: Um. That's awesome. I always was, because I grew up in, my parents were in 12 step programs, and I grew up in Alateen. Mm hmm. There was always like a higher power concept. And a. That's what 

[00:34:52] Hannah: I was gonna say, is those, those, I mean, first of all, of course, AA starting as a Christian organization. Right.

[00:34:57] Helena: I think a lot of atheists and also [00:35:00] non Christians. Are able to be very successful in them. 

[00:35:03] Mm. 

[00:35:04] Helena: I obviously don't think the 12 step programs work for everybody. And I also will say I think different 12 step programs work differently. So Good point. I like AA is very different from like Al-Anon, which I, you know, I credit AA for saving my parents' life and I, Al-Anon was very great for me.

[00:35:19] Helena: I tried to do overeaters anonymous and it was not successful for me. Um, it's not to say that it's not successful for anyone, right? It wasn't the me treating my eating disorder in that way was not right for me. But because I grew up in the kind of community where talking about finding your own. Like path to a divinity or to, you know, the creator or the universe or a power greater than yourself, um, was like a very normal topic of conversation.

[00:35:50] Helena: I was always interested in that. And then, you know, as an adult kind of went away from anything and then came back to Unitarian Universalism, like we talked about [00:36:00] in, um, so I, I kind of wanted to write books just generally where like people go to places. Some kind of church or something. Or just shows up in their life at least.

[00:36:08] Helena: Yeah, right, yeah. Sometimes you gotta go to somebody's bar mitzvah. Like you just gotta go do that. Like some weekends that's what you're doing. Yeah, that's just, it's part of life, right? You have 

[00:36:18] Hannah: to do that. That's so funny and it's so true and like I didn't even think about it. It's like, in our real lives, like every now and then a kid has a birthday party and you have to 

[00:36:25] Helena: go.

[00:36:28] Helena: Right. It just seemed natural to me that that would show up. Yeah. But I felt like, like, I don't want to be intruding on, like, people who have earned their Judaism or their right, right about it. 

[00:36:40] Hannah: I'm sorry, but we had a poppin social life in 7th grade. I'm going to people's benign mitzvahs. Bar, I've never had a more active social life than Saturday nights in 7th and 8th grade.

[00:36:52] Hannah: Like, we always had a party to go to. So, like, I think you fucking earned it. Like, [00:37:00] you did your time. How many conga lines do you have to walk in before you're allowed to write Jewish fiction?

[00:37:14] Hannah: We embarked on this conversation sort of without even thinking about like, of course, it's going to end up being a conversation about identity. And like, do you think that the books are because it reads this way to me? As a bit of a fusion of the two perhaps most dominant identities that at least you're dealing with now, which is sexual romance identity that we already talked about a little bit and the spiritual Jewish being Jewish as an adult identity.

[00:37:40] Helena: Yeah, so it's, I do think, I mean, my agent would say that my books like my brand is Um, angsty queer millennials obsessing about what home means. Have you ever heard of more 

[00:37:53] Hannah: millennial 

[00:37:53] Helena: hallmark? Okay. So like, what does it mean to come home? What does it [00:38:00] mean to be a part of a family? Like found family, family of origin.

[00:38:04] Helena: What does it mean to really be truly in the process of healing? Who do we forgive and who don't we, why do we go back to our hometowns or don't, you know, all of those things are kind of baked in. And I think, um, when you're talking about maybe and maybe not going back to the faith of your childhood, that is a big part of that piece of home, right?

[00:38:29] Helena: Because a spiritual home, especially if you're a member of a congregation or synagogue. is a big part of for a lot of people what home means. Right. And so choosing a home spiritually is a big part of sort of figuring out what home is going to mean for you as an adult. And a lot of times that is our found family.

[00:38:51] Helena: Like that's a big part of our found family. Yeah. 

[00:38:53] Hannah: But you were saying it's. And it's not even really reflected in romance novels, even in like the day to day lives of characters. And it's [00:39:00] like, but people live that. Yes. So even if it's like, I just went to church on Sunday and when I was leaving, I ran into my ex and that kicked off this conflict, like that's how life happens.

[00:39:08] Helena: Yes. Yeah. And even people who are in, well, first of all, you never see progressive Christian communities in romance publishing. 

[00:39:15] Hannah: Interesting. 

[00:39:16] Helena: Because it's like either. Inspirational romance, which is its own genre with its own genre assumptions and or it's totally secular. There's never just people who are like, I'm in a Episcopalian at a like super open and affirming church and my priest is a, Or just hot and I have crush on him.

[00:39:40] Helena: Like that's a normal life experience that people 

[00:39:44] Hannah: have. I would love to read a book about a like seminarian who has just graduated and gotten his own congregation and like, so now he's like, okay, my life is about to be kind of finally settled and like maybe falls in love. Like do you know? That would be a romance novel I would be interested to [00:40:00] read and I would love to hear and like see how love is constructed through those norms.

[00:40:04] Hannah: I would love to see that. 

[00:40:05] Helena: I have a friend whose husband is a minister and when I first met him, I asked him what he did and he was like, I'm a minister and I 

[00:40:12] Hannah: was 

[00:40:13] Helena: like, that's so cool. 

[00:40:14] Hannah: And he was like, oh, thank 

[00:40:15] Helena: you for saying that. I keep getting called to ministry but I keep changing religion so I have to decide which ministry to go into and also I don't want to do it.

[00:40:22] Helena: So 

[00:40:22] Hannah: you wrote books? I wrote 

[00:40:23] Helena: books and sex. That makes perfect sense. Also I teach sex ed which is my ministry in whatever religion I'm in. So 

[00:40:28] Hannah: sex is your ministry? Books? 

[00:40:30] Helena: Yeah. Schools? Relationships. Ethical sex? Love. Ethical. Yeah. Ethical human sexuality. 

[00:40:35] Hannah: I love it. I love it. But so this is the whole thing. is like.

[00:40:39] Hannah: I mean, how did you know that you were a quote unquote romance writer or did, is that just the genre that you, that spoke naturally to you for wanting to explore these questions that you had? Or was it more like, I think I'll just try this cause I like to read it. Like where did it all come from? 

[00:40:53] Helena: So I was trained as a poet.

[00:40:55] Helena: And I grew up at the safe house in Tucson, Arizona. It was a very [00:41:00] sketchy coffee shop that was basically a dive bar. It was dirty. It was really dirty. 

[00:41:07] Hannah: Also, there were shady people there all the time. I mean, you know, downtown Tucson in the 90s. 

[00:41:12] Helena: It was a, um, it was a dive bar for coffee, it was open till 2am, you could smoke inside, there were bikers, and also a very, very, very famous poet hung out there all the time.

[00:41:25] Helena: I didn't know he was a very famous poet at the time, I just thought he was a grumpy guy who smoked cigarettes and drank too much coffee and yelled at us, and we talked about poetry a lot. Um, it turns out he is incre like there are bots that live tweet his poetry once an hour every like multiple of them.

[00:41:40] Helena: Is he 

[00:41:41] Hannah: that famous? 

[00:41:41] Helena: Yeah. 

[00:41:42] Hannah: Damn, you never know your hometown hero's Right? Real stature. 

[00:41:45] Helena: Right! It's so weird. People are like, you know that guy? Yeah, I mean, shout out to Richard Sykin. Shit. The grumpiest. Who is apparently mad famous. Right on, Richard. Um, so, I like, I grew up like writing poetry and arguing about it with Richard Sykin and like that's my grow up.

[00:41:59] Helena: [00:42:00] And then I went to school for poetry and Then I quit writing for 12 years. Why? Um, I didn't get into the MFA program I wanted to get into. I went to library school instead, and then I had to build a library career. Then I had a kid, you know. I think a lot of it was that the work that I was doing writing, Involved a lot of unpacking of deep emotional stuff and I needed to like be old enough to be able to process that and Work through it.

[00:42:26] Helena: Um, but I also was in a place in my early 20s where I kind of needed to have a job That would pay money And poetry was not it and I didn't know I know Uh, I didn't know what to do with that. I didn't want to teach poetry at a college level because I hate college students 

[00:42:44] Hannah: High school students way better.

[00:42:45] Hannah: No, they 

[00:42:45] Helena: are I love them. They are I complain about them all the time, but they're much better than college students. And they also 

[00:42:50] Hannah: love to be complained about. They're 

[00:42:51] Helena: less drunk to begin with. 

[00:42:54] Hannah: Well, now we were. No, I mean, some of my kids 

[00:42:57] Helena: are drunk, but they're not as drunk as [00:43:00] college kids. True. 

[00:43:00] Hannah: College kids are all drunk.

[00:43:01] Hannah: Yeah. 

[00:43:01] Helena: Yeah. Yeah. So I quit writing, bunch of stuff. I needed to do some work on myself. I needed to exist in capitalism, right? I was building a career. Librarianship was very fulfilling to me. I just, you know, but it was always a piece of that needed to eventually come back to you. Because if you are an artist who has stops making art, it will like either really mess you up very badly, or like it will feel like an empty piece of puzzle piece of you that you're not feeling.

[00:43:36] Hannah: And you can make yourself very sick looking for replacements. 

[00:43:38] Helena: Yes. Yeah. And my husband who met me when I was writing a lot and then watched me stop writing every couple of years would be like, are you, What's happening? With writing 

[00:43:50] Hannah: good for him. 

[00:43:51] Helena: Where how can I support you? Yeah in writing again. 

[00:43:55] Hannah: Where's where is that?

[00:43:56] Helena: Which has been wonderful. I know a lot of writers who's [00:44:00] Women writers whose husbands are not supportive of the amount of time it takes To do and my husband has always been like I'm parenting during that time. I'm making sure that you can hit deadlines. I'm setting up your office. I'm, he, he printed out these massive, like three foot by two foot posters of my covers and like hung them on my wall in my office.

[00:44:24] Helena: He's because he watched me not write, you know what I mean? And he sees how much different it is for me emotionally to be writing all the time than it was for those years when I wasn't writing. And I think a light went off and it's not that I wasn't fascinated by librarianship or whatever. But I think there was always a way in which I was a little bit frantic, like everything that I did during that time was a little bit.

[00:44:50] Helena: Almost 

[00:44:50] Hannah: unstable. 

[00:44:51] Helena: Yeah. Like running really hard. Oh, yes. Phrenetic is exactly the right word. And I didn't know why. And when I started writing again regularly, [00:45:00] that calmed so far down and I didn't have to be. Constantly looking for the thing that wasn't working to try to fix it. Because the answer was as it had been since I was four years old and wrote my first poem that I'm a writer and I wasn't writing.

[00:45:16] Hannah: I love that he saw that and 

[00:45:17] Helena: that he 

[00:45:18] Hannah: was able to reflect it back to you finally. Not that I'm giving him credit for your whatever, but yeah, 

[00:45:22] Helena: but I mean, he had been kind of consistently like, what's going on with the writing? And then when I started writing and he was like, um, what I mean, like, I love you and I don't want to see your light be dimmed by this, not doing this thing.

[00:45:33] Helena: Yeah. 

[00:45:33] Hannah: Yeah. 

[00:45:34] Helena: And so I've been reading a lot of romance novels, um, since grad school and, um, I got hooked onto this, uh, amazing website, which has a great podcast. It's called Smart Bitches Trashy Books, which is run by an amazing Jewish woman named Sarah. Um, and, uh, they do, you know, reviews of romance novels and I started going [00:46:00] through romance novels that they reviewed well and got really into it.

[00:46:03] Helena: And so I had been writing romance, reading romance, but then thinking about writing as something where I had to do like poetry or lit fic or memoir. You felt like you had to 

[00:46:14] Hannah: be very serious about 

[00:46:15] Helena: it. I think so. Yeah. Yeah, I get that. And, um, I started listening to an actual play D& D podcast. That was very silly, but also really beautiful storytelling and it made me feel like I wanted to tell stories again But like tell them in a creative like a fun way fun way.

[00:46:32] Helena: Yeah, and allow it to not be as Literary. Mm hmm. And then this thing came up where I was like tweeted about it and my friend said like maybe you should write this book 

[00:46:43] Hannah: Um, hey girl. I Think I remember cuz I had just gotten back from Cypress I remember that, where you were like, I think I did a thing. 

[00:46:51] Helena: Yeah, I was like, I think I did, I think I did a thing.

[00:46:54] Helena: I had never thought of myself as a fiction writer, partly because I had a [00:47:00] teacher, a professor in college who told me that I was better at poetry than fiction and I probably shouldn't write fiction. Cause I was like good at dialogue but bad at scene setting. Okay. 

[00:47:08] Hannah: As opposed to just, how about you grow 

[00:47:12] Helena: in your scene setting?

[00:47:14] Helena: Sure. Um. Also. Though. It took me a long time into adulthood to get good at editing. Because I finish something and the energy, like the impetus to get it out is done and then I'm like okay it's done. Mhmm. Someone give me accolades. Yeah. I'm done thinking about it. And, like, I started writing Season of Love in 2018 and it came out in 2022.

[00:47:38] Helena: Wow. I started writing For Never and Always in 2019 and it came out in 2023. You can't be done. 

[00:47:44] You're 

[00:47:44] Helena: never done. You have to, like, do a set of revisions and, like, do another set of revisions. And plus you're still dreaming about shit you should have put in the book. Right. It doesn't, you can't just be like, okay, I finished it.

[00:47:54] Helena: Give me accolades. Like it is not a one time art making process [00:48:00] and building that muscle of not quitting it when I was bored with it. Cause I had gone past the first time. Was very difficult for me. 

[00:48:09] Hannah: But if I don't feel passionate about it, it's dead now. 

[00:48:11] Helena: Right. It's gone. It's in the past. It's behind me.

[00:48:14] Helena: Object permanence. Yeah. No, it's over. I'm not obsessing about it. So it's done. It doesn't exist. How could I possibly finish this book?

[00:48:31] Helena: I don't know that I'll always write romance. I have a women's fiction novel with like a romantic subplot, but I'm not sure if they end up together. About a woman who moves to Tucson. On a 

[00:48:45] Hannah: spiritual journey to rediscover herself. 

[00:48:47] Helena: Yeah, it's sort of, it's sort of Eat Gay Love. Oh no, please tell me that's the title.

[00:48:51] Helena: No, that's already a title of another book, otherwise it would be. Damn it. Okay, shout out to Eat Gay Love. Yeah. We'll link it in the show notes. Um, [00:49:00] it is, yeah, I mean it's about a woman who like can't figure out her life, and so she moves to this town that she's sort of heard about and, Um, meets a hot bartender woman who has always 

[00:49:10] Hannah: lived in Tucson 

[00:49:11] Helena: and wants to get out.

[00:49:12] Helena: This is the most Tucson story of all time. And she's like, the woman who moves there is like, I'll pay you to show me what it's like to be a Tucsonan. Oh, that's cute. You know, I assume this is true of other hometowns. It's certainly true of our hometown, that there are things that have been there for 50 years and are still there.

[00:49:29] Helena: Mm-hmm . Even if you're like, why is this still here? But we are a town, Tucson is a town. We don't, neither of us lives in Tucson or half we, for decades, we're Tucson ins in our, we're still, that really supports small local businesses. Yes. In a way that a lot of places do not like rabidly, rabidly support small local businesses.

[00:49:46] Helena: Yes. So there will be small local businesses that stay in. in business for decades and decades and decades longer than they might in another town. Yeah. Right? Like that little tiny coffee shop drive thru on [00:50:00] Speedway, coffee time. 

[00:50:01] Hannah: Oh my god, are they still open? Yeah, 

[00:50:03] Helena: it's been there forever. 

[00:50:04] Hannah: I thought they were, maybe, I thought they were gone.

[00:50:05] Hannah: Maybe I think they're still 

[00:50:06] Helena: there. Also, like the safe house just got built, bought by people who made you stop. Smoking inside of it and cleaned up the bathroom and it's still there in the same building serving coffee. It's just called Black Crown now 

[00:50:17] Hannah: They did change 

[00:50:18] Helena: the name and also the bathroom is not horrifyingly disgusting anymore blessing So we there is that so when you drive around Tucson, you can see The bones of the town you grew up in that's so true but there are also things that are gone that you you drive past where The mini golf place used to be La Fuente.

[00:50:40] Helena: Oh my god, La Fuente, 

[00:50:42] Hannah: RIP. 

[00:50:43] Helena: God, I miss you so much. So there's like overlaid ghosts. Like, like when you lay layers of like printed, um, cellophane on top of each other, you know what I mean? That's what it's like. There's these layers of old [00:51:00] ghosts of the old city. 

[00:51:01] Hannah: Yeah. 

[00:51:01] Helena: And if you've lived there for a long time, it can either be comforting or like really stifling.

[00:51:07] Helena: Yes. Yes. Yeah. Or like really heartbreaking. I was gonna 

[00:51:11] Hannah: say sad, yeah. 

[00:51:12] Helena: Because you have this vision of a city you'll never be able to go back to. Like you're homesick for a place that's gone. 

[00:51:18] Hannah: Forever. 

[00:51:19] Helena: Forever. 

[00:51:20] Hannah: Do you know what I feel that way about? Is the fourth half bridge. 

[00:51:22] Helena: Yeah. 

[00:51:23] Hannah: Which is so weird because it was the worst.

[00:51:25] Hannah: It was horrible. Disgusting. Smelled like pee. Smelled like pee and puke. There was puke the time. Everywhere. And, and it, but it was a, but it was a landmark of our youth in a weird way of like, you know, We knew what our friends were up to because of the tags. Mm hmm. Like they would tag themselves. Mm hmm I knew when my best friend since I was six who grew up down the street Yeah Me was not doing okay because I would walk under the fourth Ave underpass and she would be tagging that she was with This guy doing this stuff and I'd be like, oh I need to check on her.

[00:51:50] Helena: Yes. So yeah, so there's this nostalgia You understand that there was like messed up things about Tucson in the 90s, right? But you [00:52:00] also have this town that you grew up in and loved is gone. And the version that it is now is a cool ass town and you'll never go back to the town you're actually homesick for because it doesn't exist anymore.

[00:52:11] Helena: So I'm interested in that concept because I think a lot of people in their 40s are sort of thinking about going back to their hometowns and feeling that way. And my hometown very, feels very specifically that it's like that, but also a lot of people have the experience of moving to Tucson and feeling like it has a magic in the valley.

[00:52:32] Hannah: It's 

[00:52:33] Helena: Valley Fever. It's 

[00:52:34] Hannah: not. It's the monsoons. It's creosote. 

[00:52:37] Helena: It's creosote. And they are like, I've never been anywhere like this. And so people are drawn there, you know, people 

[00:52:49] Hannah: who get it. And this is a thing I, I don't know that everyone says this about their hometown. I know a lot of people do. It's one of those towns, too.

[00:52:56] Hannah: It's like the people who get it, get it. 

[00:52:58] Yeah. And people 

[00:52:58] Hannah: who don't never will. [00:53:00] Right. And we don't try to explain it. We just let them go to Phoenix. 

[00:53:02] Helena: Yeah. 

[00:53:03] Hannah: Go ahead. Oh, you like Phoenix? You should stay there. Just 

[00:53:06] Helena: stay there, please. 

[00:53:06] Hannah: Forever. 

[00:53:07] Helena: So that idea of sort of like people passing each other in the night of like two ships of like one person who's drawn desperately to To this magic place and one person who's like I got to get out of here Which is I mean kind of the plot of for never and always also But I I love the idea of also being able to talk about it in a way where it's really the main characters spiritual journey of I I need to You allow myself like a fully lived life in this beautiful place.

[00:53:37] Helena: I feel like this book that I'm drafting, which I don't know if it'll get sold or whatever, it's almost a romance novel with Tucson. Like the other, there is like another person in it. But Toussaint is the person that she chooses because she, she knows that her whole beautiful extraordinary life is about to start in this town that she's just moved to and sort of [00:54:00] experienced.

[00:54:00] Helena: So I'm interested in that because I'm someone who's like obsessed with my hometown and um, But also because of where I am in my life and where other people are of like do we go back? And a lot of my friends have moved home 

[00:54:12] Hannah: I know it's so interesting to watch a lot of my 

[00:54:14] Helena: friends who moved home because I 

[00:54:15] Hannah: think we all also had that feeling We all also had that feeling of I am suffocating this place sucks But I also think that that's such a metaphor for your family when you're young, right?

[00:54:23] Hannah: Yeah, like you're trapped in their house and you're just so angry at them and everything that's wrong is their fault You have to understand that some of that darkness and like dirt that you were running from is like you You Yeah. Yeah. to go somewhere else and realize, oh, it's here too. Wait, did I bring this with me?

[00:54:39] Hannah: Oh, shit. 

[00:54:40] Helena: In the Twelve Step Programs, we call it doing a geographic. What? Yeah. Trying to like get a geographic cure to an internal problem. Oh, 

[00:54:49] Hannah: I've never heard. I feel so attacked. You're like, I'll 

[00:54:53] Helena: just move and start a new life in a new place. I read a 

[00:54:55] Hannah: book one time. I'm moving there. Hello, Savannah. 

[00:54:58] Helena: Yeah.

[00:54:59] Helena: [00:55:00] You know, and there's this Ani DiFranco lyric that's like, um, they say that alcoholics are always alcoholics, even if they're dry as my lips for years, even if they're stranded on a small desert island with no place in 2, 000 miles to buy beer. Because, like, we are who we are, right? Yeah. And I know people who left Tucson and never want to move back, and like, sure, obviously, that's a perfectly reasonable stance to take.

[00:55:21] Helena: Um, it's very hot. Not as hot as Phoenix. To begin with. It's true. And we get rain. But being willing to understand that like the place that you grew up isn't the thing that caused every problem that you have, right? My family certainly caused some of the problems that I have. 

[00:55:37] Hannah: 100%. 

[00:55:38] Helena: Like, am I going, I'm not going to absolve them of that.

[00:55:41] Helena: For sure. Right? 

[00:55:42] Hannah: There are things also that you have agency in. Yes. 

[00:55:45] Helena: Absolutely. Yeah. And me taking myself outside of Tucson hasn't changed that, right? Um, it has made me lonelier. Because I don't have close proximity to those people who've known me for 30 years. A [00:56:00] lot of whom have now moved home. And I don't have a close proximity to the mountains.

[00:56:07] Helena: And the saguaros, and the smell of creosote, it's very, very difficult. I have a perfume that smells like creosote in the desert, in the rain, and I wear it on days when I just like, my heart hurts too much from being homesick. Because I think some people's home is a person, and some people's home is themselves, right?

[00:56:27] Helena: Or travel, or And for some of us, we have an extraordinarily deep connection to a city or a piece of land. And I can't disconnect myself from Tucson or the Sonoran Desert. And so, um, I think, you know, it makes sense that my books, whether they're romance or women's fiction or whatever, are like about home and about what it means to be home.

[00:56:53] Helena: And I think finding your faith community or figuring out what your spirituality journey looks like or your sexuality. [00:57:00] Is all kind of wrapped up in like, who am I 

[00:57:04] Hannah: and what is home 

[00:57:05] Helena: and what is home? Yeah. In their angsty because I'm a millennial. I'm an exennial. I'm an old millennial. I am the oldest of millennials, right?

[00:57:14] Helena: We 

[00:57:14] Hannah: grew up in the 90s. 

[00:57:16] Helena: The amount of time that we, you and I, spent sad about Kurt Cobain. 

[00:57:22] Hannah: It's almost as if we knew him. Right. He had also already been dead for a while when I found out about him. 

[00:57:28] Helena: Like I was 11 when he died, so it's not like I was deep into Nirvana at that point. 

[00:57:33] Hannah: It had been a few years.

[00:57:34] Hannah: That's a while. He was gone. He was real gone. 

[00:57:37] Helena: Really gone. People who are not having deep existential angst, don't listen to their counting crows as much as we did. 

[00:57:46] Hannah: I just love the symmetry of us talking about this, having known each other for, oh, 30 ish years. Sneaks up on you. 30 ish years and I came here.

[00:57:57] Hannah: To see you launch the second book [00:58:00] because one not just because but be sure once upon a time We apparently had a conversation which I will admit I do not remember in detail, but it's important that you did 

[00:58:09] Helena: I did remember 

[00:58:11] Hannah: Because you wrote a character named Hannah and wrote a character named Hannah that I was like apparently she has to have hair issues 

[00:58:16] Helena: She has to have hair issues So each one of the Kerrigan's Christmas land books has, the main characters have a fairytale character who they relate to.

[00:58:28] Helena: There's like a fairytale element, because Kerrigan's is a little bit magic, and also because I have a degree in comparative mythology. Um, folklore tattoo, like I'm, you know, not folklore the album, 398. 2 the Dewey decimal number. Um, and so, yeah. Yeah. Yes. Um, so the first book, Miriam has. pretty extreme trauma and she's been in a dissociative fugue for a really long time and she's coming out of it.

[00:58:58] Helena: Oh, she's sleeping beauty? [00:59:00] She's sleeping beauty. She's like waking up and deciding if she can stay awake or if she can stay asleep, if there's an option, right? And what it means like, What it means to choose to be awake and fully present in the world. 

[00:59:16] Hannah: Even with your pain. 

[00:59:17] Helena: Even with your pain. And like making that choice.

[00:59:20] Helena: I thought 

[00:59:20] Hannah: romance novels were supposed to be fun. 

[00:59:22] Helena: Okay. Well, it's very funny. 

[00:59:25] Hannah: Angst is funny. It's also actually for Jews. It is also 

[00:59:28] Helena: a book. Where two people meet sitting shiva. 

[00:59:32] Hannah: Okay. 

[00:59:33] Helena: So like, 

[00:59:34] Hannah: this is a very Jewish book, Helena. It's a very Jewish book. 

[00:59:39] Helena: They like have a meet cute at a funeral and then Like, have to unpack their grief and then, like, their trauma and then also it's funny.

[00:59:48] Helena: It is funny. 

[00:59:49] Hannah: I'm just gonna have to read it. I mean, I'm sorry that I haven't, but I'm having trouble placing how this works, so I can't 

[00:59:54] Helena: wait. 

[00:59:55] Hannah: I'm excited. 

[00:59:56] Helena: Um, it's a, that's a very queer concept, [01:00:00] right? Like, camp and like, It's a very Jewish concept. It's a very alcoholic concept, right? Like talking about the darkest things 

[01:00:08] in 

[01:00:09] Helena: our lives with humor.

[01:00:10] Helena: And in a group and in a group. Yes. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So yeah, everybody sits down and fucking does it. In fact, can laughs at the worst thing that's ever happened to them in their entire lives. Yes. So, yeah, 

[01:00:25] that's where 

[01:00:26] Helena: I come from, 

[01:00:29] Hannah: right? Yeah. 

[01:00:30] Helena: Yeah. Very much so. Well, um. Anxiety. Queer people who grew up before protease inhibitors existed.

[01:00:39] Helena: So yeah, we just, we have a lot to unpack, right? Like, we got a lot of angst to unpack. But also it's funny, right? It has to be, for God's sakes. That's Sleeping Beauty. And then in For Never and Always, Hannah has locked herself in the Tower of Caragans because she doesn't want to go anywhere ever [01:01:00] again. But she can't because she has these like intrusive thoughts with her OCD about every time she tries to leave, like something bad's going to happen to 

[01:01:06] Kerrigan's.

[01:01:07] Helena: Um, so she doesn't leave like the Adirondacks ever. Interesting. And she has grown out her blonde hair because when her love of her life left, he like loved it long and she has this like real vindictive, like, he's going to come back and my hair is going to be so hot and it's going to like, he's, I'm going to like stop him.

[01:01:27] Helena: It's revenge hair. Kind of. Yeah. Interesting. Revenge hair. So she's got this like braid that she can sit on, right? So she's got this like Rapunzel hair while she's in the tower. And um, then he comes back and she has to like, she's like a big emotional moment where she chops off all her hair. So she's like letting him go.

[01:01:47] Helena: She's letting all of it go. The way that she talks about it is she cut all of the threads between them by letting him go and staying. And she felt like she had to keep her [01:02:00] hair almost as like penance. Interesting. For like, cutting all the threads between them. And like, It was like their one last existing 

[01:02:09] connection.

[01:02:10] Helena: Yeah, and then he, but then she realizes, They grew up together. They've loved each other all their lives. There's no cutting all of their connections. And he came back anyway. And he loves her no matter what her hair looks like, and like, she realizes that she doesn't need to do penance and have this hair that like, she can't get out of her way, and she has to hold it when she's peeing so it doesn't go in the toilet.

[01:02:30] Helena: Yeah! Yeah, like she doesn't have to have a physical weight that she's carrying around. And so she chops it all off, and she's like, oh god, is he still gonna want me? And then he's like, you're so hot.

[01:02:46] Helena: Yeah, which is also, I think this is true for straight women. I can't speak for straight women of not being one of them, but I think that there is often a feeling with straight women who are in, who have long hair, who are in relationships with [01:03:00] straight cis men that if they cut their hair, their husbands will be less sexually attracted to them because straight cis men have like a, thing about long hair, and I know a lot of women who have had big relationship questions if they want to chop their hair off.

[01:03:15] Helena: Weird. Correct. 

[01:03:16] Hannah: Sorry. Was that out loud? No, it's really weird. I'm 

[01:03:20] Helena: with you. As a 

[01:03:21] Hannah: person who has always had a fucked up relationship with her hair, that is the least of my problems. Right. And I would love to say I want to look in the mirror and not care what anyone else thinks, but it was always about what other people thought because my entire school called me Afropuff in 6th grade, and so I have hair trauma.

[01:03:34] Hannah: Right. Right. Right. Like all I want to do is not hate it when I look in the mirror. 

[01:03:37] Helena: Right. So yes, she like cuts off her hair and then she's like, I don't know if he'll still want me. And she's like, he's like, I literally moved to the ends of the earth and didn't speak to you for four years. And I like couldn't stop, could not stop wanting you.

[01:03:49] Helena: And I won't ever stop. So I have to read this damn book. I'm so excited. The first one, I will say like, technically they're standalone, but you should read the first one first. The second [01:04:00] book especially, the audiobook, is absolutely phenomenal. Because why? Because Mara Wilson, a. k. a. Matilda, is the narrator for the second one.

[01:04:07] Helena: So 

[01:04:08] Hannah: for all of those who enjoy a long form 

[01:04:10] Helena: audio 

[01:04:10] Hannah: experience, highly recommend. And also there's a way you can do it indie style, right? Yeah. 

[01:04:15] Helena: So Libro FM is like Audible in terms of the way it works. It takes money out of your account every month and then you get credits towards audiobooks. It has the exact same library of audiobooks, except for Audible Originals.

[01:04:28] Helena: Um, but you choose a local independent bookstore for those 15 a month to go towards or to purchase your audiobooks through. So all of that money is going towards a local independent bookstore instead of Jeff Bezos. Uh, HeleneGroot. com is where you can, um, subscribe to my newsletter. My Twitter is bloom again, curios, B L U M, bloom, like B L U M, bloom, yeah, like blum, but 

[01:04:56] Hannah: it's bloom, 

[01:04:57] Helena: but lots of people say that last name [01:05:00] bloom.

[01:05:00] Helena: Miriam in the first book, her last name is Bloom, and she upcycles antiques, so Bloom again, right? Cute. Oh, I like it. Um, Vintage and Curious. So Bloom Again Curious is my Instagram. I used to spend a lot of time on Twitter, but now I don't. And um, that's where I am. 

[01:05:15] Hannah: All right! Go give your independent bookstores and Helena Greer your money!

[01:05:21] Hannah: Yay! for doing this with me, and thank you for dragging me out to Houston, and thank you for being my friend for 30 fucking years. Holy shit. 

[01:05:30] Helena: What? It's not like it was a hardship. It was 

[01:05:35] Hannah: almost unavoidable. We couldn't help it. 

[01:05:38] Helena: It was also, like, pretty great the whole time. Also a lot of fun.

[01:05:48] Hannah: Thanks for listening to Jew ish. Produced, recorded, and edited by me, Hannah Gaber. If you like what you hear, please go ahead and leave us a 5 star rating and a review. I'd love to hear from you. [01:06:00] But perhaps most importantly, give us a follow and tell a friend. The whole point of Jew ish is to teach.

[01:06:06] Hannah: demystify whatever it means to be Jewish. So you don't have to be one to be here. Don't forget to check the show notes for links and a glossary of words that you maybe have never heard before, or maybe have and never knew what they meant and didn't have a Jewish friend to ask until now. Jewish is a Say More production.