Eugene author Lauren Kessler has written a new book called “Everything Changes Everything: Love, Loss, and a Really Long Walk.” Kessler has written more than a dozen books of literary nonfiction. This one might be the most personal.
It chronicles her experience of losing both her husband and daughter—they died within the same year—and her walk on the Camino de Santiago in Spain. She spoke with KLCC’s “All Things Considered” host, Rachael McDonald.
Rachael McDonald: Let's start with the title. How did you come across that phrase, “Everything changes everything?" Because it definitely seems appropriate considering how much has changed in your life in a painful way.
Lauren Kessler: And I would say how much has changed in all of our lives. So, this book is about loss, which happens to all of us. It's not a choice. What the choice is, is what happens later, what you do with it later. So, everything changes everything is, I think is self-explanatory, but, those words came to me because they are part of a song sung by these Augustinian nuns that I listened to in a courtyard in this beautiful ancient village when I was on the Camino and that was part of their song, “Cambia Todo Cambia” – Everything changes everything.
McDonald: Well, you combine the story of your husband's death to cancer, and then the loss of your young adult daughter, Lizzie, to addiction, which are just heartbreaking, with the chronicle of your hike on the Camino de Santiago in Spain. And in the book, there's a moment where you have to answer the question of why you decided to go on the hike. So, tell us what that answer is.
Kessler: That is a good question. For me, it's about movement. I mean, I needed to figure out where I was and what, what state I was in and the way that I do that in my life, not just in this particularly trying moment of my life, is movement. So, I don't sit and think about this. I wish I could more than I did, but I just felt like I needed to move out there and maybe outpace my backstory, you know, be someplace far away where nobody knew me. Where I didn't have to encounter people who would look sadly at me and not know what to say because nobody knew me.
"I just felt like I needed to move out there and maybe outpace my backstory, you know, be someplace far away where nobody knew me."
- Lauren Kessler
McDonald: Well, as a reader, I appreciated that the book did go back and forth between Eugene and the daily challenges and joys of hiking the Camino. It was kind of a relief for me as a reader and I'm wondering if that's kind of what you had in mind.
Kessler: Thank you for asking about structure because I worked very, very hard on structure in this book. Most of my other books are chronological, even though they might not start at the beginning, they may start in the middle and then they go to the beginning, but there's chronology there. And for this one, I knew that the forward movement was walking the Camino, and I knew that that's what had to power this narrative, but how to tell the stories of my husband and my daughter and how to integrate them and when to integrate them. My husband's story I told backwards and my daughter's story I told forwards. And I was concerned that readers would be lost, but I'm, so I'm thrilled to hear that, that it worked for you.
McDonald: It definitely did, yeah. And it was helpful to be able to go somewhere else when things got difficult.
Kessler: Well, yes, that's what I thought too.
McDonald: There's a moment when you're hiking with your trail buddy, Kiki, and you feel yourself getting irritated with her for not asking for help with something, and you realize that you're actually irritated because that's one of your own qualities. So that felt like a big moment during your hike.
Kessler: It is a big moment. And I think that it doesn't just happen to me on the Camino. I think it happens with so many of us when a friend or an acquaintance, you know– what triggers you and it tends to be something that is in yourself. So, yeah, Kiki was my mirror and it was really interesting to see myself through her and to see what she was doing because I didn't see what I was doing. So, to be helpless is different than to receive help. And that is something that I've actually struggled with for most of my life. And Kiki helped me at least get slightly down the path toward a better, healthier relationship with that.
McDonald: This felt like such a different book, from others that you've written or that I've read of yours, because it's so completely intimate about your experience. Did you have to overcome any sort of fears about exposing that experience to readers?
Kessler: Yes, and I still am feared, like sitting here right now talking into the microphone and answering your questions. Yes. And if I thought that it was just my story, I think that that would just be a journal for me, but it felt like we all have challenges that come in our lives that we don't choose, whatever they are.
This one happened to be death, but it can be divorce, it can be your house burning down, it can be losing your job, it can be losing a friend, anything, and so I feel like that is universal.
And the question is, where are those wounds and how do you heal them and, and how do you take the help that other people might want to give you. So part of it, part of not feeling nervous, or feeling less nervous was understanding that I was talking to a much broader audience than myself. But also when you write something. This is a memoir, when you write a memoir and I think anyone who's ever written one will agree that you reveal but you also don't reveal everything.
McDonald: Well, and also, I wonder if this book serves as a way to pay tribute to both your husband and daughter, and to keep their memories permanent.
Kessler: I think that's a really good point. The book is dedicated to them. And in the acknowledgments afterwards, they are the last people that I acknowledge. So, for me, remembering those moments, especially the moments between my husband and my daughter, that was one of my favorite chapters to write, just seeing them together and the relationship that they had. So yeah, I wanted to remember that and, and I wanted the rest of my family to remember that. And I wanted there to be a way that people who have lost folks in their lives to not be yearning and nostalgic and sad about that loss but to kind of celebrate what they had when they had it.
Lauren Kessler’s new book is called “Everything Changes Everything: Love, Loss, and a Really Long Walk”.
She’ll be at Tsunami Books in Eugene on Wednesday, Feb. 25 from 7 p.m. until 9 p.m. for a book release celebration.
