All lives contain the shadows of the lives we nearly lived: moments where we turned left instead of right, where we closed one door and opened another. The paths we choose create the story of who we are, but the unlived life – the wish unfulfilled, the need unmet, the question unanswered – has much to teach us, if we let it.
Whether we regret our decisions or rejoice in them, we rarely allow ourselves to explore the possibility of what might have been. We don't want to get lost in the past, stranded without a map back to the here and now.
This podcast is the map.
Each episode, host Miriam Robinson interviews an author about a path their life might have taken. They return to the moment their paths diverged and together, step by step, write the story of their unlived lives.
Most interview podcasts explore the story of our lives.
This podcast explores the story of our unlived lives
#MyUnlivedLife
Please send pitches to myunlivedlifepod@gmail.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
All lives contain the shadows of the lives we nearly lived: moments where we turned left instead of right, where we closed one door and opened another. The paths we choose create the story of who we are, but the unlived life – the wish unfulfilled, the need unmet, the question unanswered – has much to teach us, if we let it.
Whether we regret our decisions or rejoice in them, we rarely allow ourselves to explore the possibility of what might have been. We don't want to get lost in the past, stranded without a map back to the here and now.
This podcast is the map.
Each episode, host Miriam Robinson interviews an author about a path their life might have taken. They return to the moment their paths diverged and together, step by step, write the story of their unlived lives.
Most interview podcasts explore the story of our lives.
This podcast explores the story of our unlived lives
#MyUnlivedLife
Please send pitches to myunlivedlifepod@gmail.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The poet Maggie Smith and Miriam discuss what might have happened if she’d left her native Ohio to go to graduate school in Tucson, and thus also left the man who ultimately became her husband. Along the way they discuss the impossible questions one gets asked in the aftermath of divorce; how writing your trauma can help you through, though not necessarily in the way you might think, and ways to find yourself when you’re far from home. Maggie also teaches Miriam a very important lesson about band t-shirts.
Maggie Smith is the award-winning author of Good Bones, The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison, Lamp of the Body, and the national bestsellers Goldenrod and Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change. A 2011 recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, Smith has also received several Individual Excellence Awards from the Ohio Arts Council, two Academy of American Poets Prizes, a Pushcart Prize, and fellowships from the Sustainable Arts Foundation and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She has been widely published, appearing in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Nation, The Best American Poetry, and more. Her memoir, You Could Make This Place Beautiful, is out now and available in your local bookshop.
Make sure to subscribe to hear the rest of Season 4 – in each episode, Miriam Robinson interviews a guest about another path their life might have taken. Together, step by step, they write the stories of their unlived lives.
Produced by Neil Mason
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.