Episode 52: Transcript
"Carolyn Sklar couldn't find a children's book about mastectomies, so she wrote one."
Magda Pecsenye Zarin: By the way, I'm finishing the book where the 57-year-old takes aspirin and uses bobby pins. And the 57-year-old has figured out who was the murderer.
Doug French: Taking aspirin and bobby pins? Is that a dating reference?
Magda: Was I bitching to you or to somebody else about how this book, the 42-year-old female author is writing this 57-year-old character as if she's like 75? Nobody our age takes aspirin.
Doug: Well, I take aspirin every day for my heart.
Magda: Yeah, for heart. But if you had a headache, would you ever take aspirin? No.
Doug: No, I take an Aleve the size of a golf ball.
Magda: Right. And this woman who also is between your age and my age uses bobby pins in her hair. It's like, we don't use bobby pins. Use a claw clip like everybody does.
Doug: People use bobby pins, don't they?
Magda: I mean, if you go to a professional and get an updo for an event, they will use bobby pins. But we don't use bobby pins on the daily. I'm going to offer my services as a sensitivity reader for 50-year-old characters in books.
Doug: We will add that to the rich tapestry of ideas. To vet books for 50-year-olds for 50-year-old life details.
Magda: Right. Are we going to talk about the episode we recorded with Carolyn?
Doug: I mean, yeah, we can talk about that. We can get right to it if you want. Sure.
Magda: Because you said, “Hey, I know this woman who wrote this book.” And I was like, oh, OK. And then we talked to her and I was like, wow, her story is totally fascinating.
Doug: That's the joy of this podcast, I think, is even you get a glimpse of what a story is and then you talk to somebody and it's deeper than you even thought.
Magda: Yeah. What I thought was really interesting about it was that she had something happen to her and she wanted to buy a book about it to explain it to her kids. And there was no book about it to explain it to her kids. And she thought that was wrong and weird, so she wrote a book about it and then published it. And other people can use the book to explain this to their kids, too. And I just think that's like, it's proactive. It's cool.
Doug: She's a blogger at heart.
Magda: She's a blogger at heart. Yeah.
Doug: She's an honorary 50 year old because she's not 50 yet, but she's living a 50-year-old's life in this particular way. I mean, her kids are still very young. And the book is called “M is for Mastectomy” because she wanted to talk to her young kids about the mastectomy she had just chosen to have for herself. I didn't know it was a prophylactic one.
Magda: Yeah.
Doug: She was really cool about how personal a choice it is and how you confront things like your sexuality and weighing that against your health. She was always a smart cookie when I knew her. And what I also like, too, what we touch on is she works for a French company, Danone, and she can work at home. At the time when she was talking to us, she had a five-year-old who was home from school throwing up. So how about that for a multitasking woman of the 21st century?
Magda: So when she wrote the book about mastectomy, she was very careful not to say in the book that mastectomy was a result of cancer because she hadn't had cancer and she didn't want to claim that. And she also wanted to leave it open for people to use as they needed to. So if you had a mastectomy because you had cancer, the book is useful for you. If you had a mastectomy for proactive reasons or for some other reason, the book is also useful to you, too. And I liked that, that she was trying to make it universal.
Doug: So librarians, this is a kid's book. It has boobs in it, but it still belongs in the kid's section.
Magda: Right. It's a great interview. She's a lot of fun. She's a very kind, sweet person.
Doug: All right. Enjoy your blowout.
Magda: Thanks. You know, in my calendar, it says “Blowout in Watertown.”
Doug: Oh, I read that! Wasn't that Sue Grafton?
Magda: Mike was looking at me and I'm like, well, hair blowout, blowout of your tires, like, blowout of diapers.
Doug: Oh, well, either way, that's a hell of a true crime trilogy. I’d read that.
Magda: Yes, it really is. It really is.
<music>
Doug: Man, it's good to see your face, Carolyn. It's been, what is it, 12 years, I want to say?
Carolyn Sklar: Oh my gosh, something like that. Yes, it's so good to hear you and see you and be reconnected.
Doug: Now, was that your first PR job or were you a grizzled veteran of the PR world?
Carolyn: How far back do we want to go? So my first job in PR was at a small boutique New Jersey firm. And I have told my kids this story. They get a real kick out of it. I was an intern at a PR agency, and then they hired me at an entry-level position. And you know in PR, but also at small agencies, you just wear a lot of hats. And so I was, you know, pitching the media and doing all the things that a young PR person does. One of our clients was French's Mustard, and they were a sponsor of all of the hot dog eating contests nationally. And so at one point, the guy that was wearing the French's Mustard costume just like didn't show up one day. And they turned to me and they said, “get in it.” So for a summer, I was wearing the French's mustard costume all around the tri-state area, including the Coney Island end final hot dog-eating contest. I mean, talk about a way to earn your stripes. And then I was in publishing for a stint, working at Doubleday at Random House in their policy department.
Doug: Oh, okay. So that brings in the book connection. Got it.
Carolyn: Yes.
Magda: But I bet the hot dog costume was the hottest summer job.
Carolyn: It was so hot, Magda. Like there was this sad small fan in the costume room that didn't even work. It was just, but I got to move out of my parents' house because I was earning a paycheck and I learned a lot. So yeah, those were my early days. And then, so Edelman was like, Oh, my gosh. Talk about a step up.
Magda: You had a desk and you didn't have to wear a hot dog costume.
Carolyn: I didn't have to wear a hot dog costume. I didn't have to trek out to Coney Island.
Doug: So do you feel real passionate about this drama around Joey Chestnut now that he's been banned from eating hot dogs in Coney Island?
Carolyn: You know, I'll be honest with you. I didn't even want to click on it because I was getting like a pit in my stomach about those early days. I mean, they really stick with you, those experiences. So I have not gone down the rabbit hole on that whole thing, to be honest.
Doug: Well, then you can probably empathize with someone who's put away 72 hot dogs in 10 minutes.
Carolyn: Yes. Yes. It is pretty gross, to be honest.
Doug: You're familiar with this story, Magda? You know who Joey Chestnut is?
Magda: No.
Doug: Champion eater.
Magda: Am I supposed to know who Joey Chestnut is?
Carolyn: There's really no reason to know, to be honest with you.
Magda: I watched my share of Coney Island hot dog eating contests on ESPN2 in the middle of the summer, like everybody did, right? But I have to say, I'm not a specific fan of any of the big players. Like, are you telling me that Joey Chestnut is like the Magnus Ver Magnusson of hot dog eating?
Doug: He's won a bunch of years in a row, and I won't go into it in great detail, given the emotional damage that inflicts on Carolyn. But
Magda: Chestnut doesn't seem like a surname that would guide you into competitive hot dog eating, though.
Doug: Well, then there's where you'd be wrong. But the quick and dirty is that he signed an endorsement deal with Impossible Meats. And Nathan's was like, we're not having that. So they kicked him out.
Magda: That's interesting. Does Impossible Meats make hot dogs?
Doug: They make everything.
Magda: Interesting. Now, I have recently, as in, in the last half hour, come home from IKEA, which I went to specifically to purchase the IKEA vegetarian hot dogs because they are the best vegetarian hot dogs I've ever had.
Carolyn: Are they really good?
Magda: They are really good. It's because they're made with actual real foods, right? It's like quinoa and like walnuts and kale and stuff like that. And then they season it. No lingonberries on the inside of the hot dogs. It's kind of like a vegetable dog sort of. And so they just season it well. So like the texture is a little bit off. It doesn't have that, you know, the spurt of a meat hot dog when you bite into it, but it actually tastes good. So I would be interested to compare the IKEA vegetarian hot dogs to the Impossible hot dogs. I stopped eating mammals two years ago. And so there are occasional mammal-based things that I'm looking for substitutes for.
Carolyn: You're looking for an alternative.
Magda: Yeah, but only for specific things. Like I found turkey pepperoni to go on top of pizza. It's delightful.
Doug: Well, that's all the, you know, it's not the meat itself. It's the way it's seasoned, right? I mean,
Magda: Exactly. That's it. It's just like you need a carrier for the seasoning that mimics the texture.
Doug: I mean, you could have flip-flop pepperoni if you wanted to, as long as it's aged.
Magda: Yeah, I totally could. I would prefer to ingest cardboard pepperoni than flip-flop pepperoni, but.
Doug: Well, this is another weird parallel that Carolyn and I share. I mean, for her to have been in a French's mustard costume, there's a link. And we also mentioned that, you know, you and I, Magda, when we were married, lived like half a block from Washington Irving's home. And Carolyn lives in Sleepy Hollow.
Carolyn: I live in Sleepy Hollow. That's right, Doug.
Doug: So we can talk about Ichabod Crane sightings at a later date.
Magda: I know somebody whose kid went to Ichabod Crane Elementary School. I don't know where it was. I mean, obviously it had to be in the like Sleepy Hollow, Headless Horseman zone, right?
Carolyn: That's so funny. None of our schools are called Ichabod Crane, which is kind of a mess when you think about it. That's funny. I wonder where that school was.
Magda: I don't know either. I guess I could find out. But, you know, it's funny to me because having moved very recently from Michigan to Massachusetts, it's like the lore has completely changed. You know, there's this like, people are like, “Oh, well, you know, the Battle of Concord and Lexington,” as if it was something that happened like five years ago, right? Wait, what? Yeah. Yeah.
Doug: Ichabod Crane, whatever school, I mean, what a mascot option there. An opportunity for someone to ride in as a headless horseman during halftime.
Carolyn: We do have one that goes around our farmer's market and it is quite detailed. And the little kids are kind of, they don't know quite what to do about it, to be honest with you.
Doug: See, I have to take issue with that because one day a real headless horseman is going to come in, and they're going to be accustomed to the one in a costume and they're not going to freak out the way they should. You can't desensitize people to headless people riding around on horses.
Carolyn: I think that's a benefit to living here is you could develop thick skin.
Doug: It makes kids tough.
Carolyn: Yeah, it makes kids tough.
Doug: Steel sharpens steel. Well, speaking of making things tough, I'm so glad you're on here to talk about your story. I mean, and when we met, you weren't a parent. And now that you are a mother of two and you can look at parenting and marketing around parenting, do you look back on what you were doing with us way back in the day with a different lens? Or how do you feel about parents as influencers and how that overall market has evolved?
Carolyn: That is such a good question. I view it very differently. And I feel like with the explosion, like when we met each other, I don't know, the internet was such a different place, right? And now it's sort of like I get all of my recommendations from real parents and social media. I'm not looking for like a company to tell me why I should use their product, or you know, buy their toy. I'm really looking at influencer parents who I like, friends of mine, Wirecutter, and I don't know. I think it's very different. It didn't really strike me just how ahead of its time the community was, to be honest with you, like the 2.0 community, the Mom and Dad 2.0 community, because that's what you guys were doing. That's, I think, the insight that you guys had was, well, two things. One, parents listen to other parents and how can we sort of harness that? And then two, parents are activists and how can we activate against issues and organize against issues that really matter. And I feel like that was really a pioneering step and goal. And so if you organize in our community, you can change policy, you can change workplace culture and norms, you can change sociological patterns.
And it's yeah, I think my brain is in a very different place than it was back then. And my eyes are probably open to a lot of things in terms of appreciating what it was than I probably could have even appreciated before I had kids.
Doug: But I'm really glad to hear that just because, you know, we're bringing you in here kind of as an honorary 50 year old. You're not there yet, but you've had a very 50 year old experience in terms of your health, because like you say, there really isn't a lot of discussion about mastectomies, especially for the sake of children.
Magda: We should say that we're talking about discussion, for children, of mastectomies, not discussion of mastectomies for children.
Doug: No, I'll say it here. I am against mastectomies for children. I don't care who disagrees. I'm going to go out on a limb and say no, no to that.
Carolyn: A brave opinion, a very brave opinion from Doug.
Doug: But you're thinking like a parent blogger, Carolyn. You understand you're creating content that you wish was there.
Carolyn: Yeah. So my maternal grandmother died of breast cancer when she was in her early 50s. And my mom and aunt were both really ahead of their time, I think, looking for science, medicine, any tool that could help the women in our family not have the same outcome. And so when gene testing became available, this was decades ago, my aunt and mother got tested. And my mom has the BRCA2 gene. She decided to get a preventative double mastectomy when she was in her early fifties. And I just kind of grew up with the conversation around me of breast cancer, gene testing, science is our friend. These surgeries are not scary.
And I also grew up like on the art side of it, where like, my name is Carolyn. My grandmother's name was Carolyn. We look identical. When I sat down in the gene testing chair at NYU, when I was in my early 20s, I was like, I have this thing. Like, I know I have this thing. I am her. So when they told me, you know, with a very somber tone, like, you have this gene, I was like, okay, now I know. I put the file in a drawer. I was in my early 20s. I was like, I'm not thinking about this right now. And then I hit 40, and I had my kids, and, I'm sure you guys are experiencing the same thing. Like every month. I either have a friend of a friend or someone in my community who has either been diagnosed, is going through treatment, and I was just thinking to myself like, you have the gene. You've been in a surveillance program. MSK, for anybody who's going through this, has an amazing surveillance program.
Magda: And MSK is Memorial Sloan Kettering.
Carolyn: Thank you, Magda. There are so many surveillance programs available. I am wildly responsible at work, wildly responsible with my family, wildly irresponsible about my own health. Like I miss doctor's appointments. I put things off. You go into one of these surveillance programs. They really help you. They like make the MRI appointments, stay on you.
And so when I hit 40, I was like, you could mess around with this for the next two or three years and wait for a diagnosis, or you could have the procedure. And it really, it's like a 99% risk deduction. Whereas my risk was significantly higher with BRCA2 to have breast cancer in my lifetime.
Magda: Something that I think is interesting about the way you're telling this story is that there seems to be like an absolute lack of magical thinking because of your family, right? And I think sometimes people have magical thinking one way or the other, right? Either that it's so, “nothing is going to happen to you,” right? “If you just think positive,” it's not going to find you.
Carolyn: Or it's in the distant future.
Magda: Right, in the distant future, one day.
Carolyn: Maybe I'll deal with this. Yeah.
Magda: The other kind of magical thinking is that it's so horrible and it's so inevitable that it doesn't even make sense to do anything that could try to prevent it because nothing can really save you.
Carolyn: Yes. And I think too, we have to talk about this more because I think sometimes people don't even really think about it as a viable option for them. Like if my mother had not had a preventative mastectomy, I don't know how strongly I would have considered doing it, but it's, I mean, look guys, it's a big deal, right? You're going in for major surgery, but now coming out of it on the other side, I'm great. My body feels great. My husband feels great about it. My kids feel great about it. It's a big deal, but it's not a big deal. Bigger deal is getting cancer. And I think too, like women really have to just be their own advocates because I have many friends and different stories, as I'm sure we've all heard where, you know, no doctor's perfect, no practice is perfect. And of course it's a guessing game a lot of times, but it's like, you're good. You know, you're not at the age where you have to worry about this yet. Just go get your annual mammogram or, you know, maybe get an MRI. And if you have a family history that is not, even if you don't have the gene, that is not always the case. And so I think women taking matters into their own hands is definitely something that I am on the pro side of.
Doug: Again, before we go much further, we should say that the name of the book is M is for Mastectomy.
Carolyn: Thank you, Doug. Doug should have been in public relations because I am a terrible publicist. So I work in communications and I'm a terrible publicist. It is the first children's book about mastectomies and mastectomy recovery, ever. I was getting ready for my procedure and the doctors gave me loads of packets of information about the soap I should buy beforehand, my medication afterwards, but obviously nothing about recovery as a parent. And when I realized that I hadn't yet talked to my kids about the procedure and it was a week or two out, I Googled “children's books for mastectomy recovery,” thinking there's gotta be some like brightly colored, cool millennial book that will look great on our shelf and we'll have so much fun reading together. And there wasn't. So that's why I wrote the book. It's a children's book, right? About mastectomies. So it's supposed to be fun for parents to read together, but also kind of like lift the mental load from mom of having to explain all of this on her own. I was healthy. Mine was preventative. And I felt it was really daunting to explain this to my kids. So I can only imagine if I was sick and dealing with God knows what else, how I would fit that in. And so I'm really hoping that the book can be a resource for women and families to talk to their kids ahead of the procedure and help with recovery afterwards. Cause the book really gets into like what you can't do with mom after and how you need to be with her physically, but it also hopefully will normalize mastectomies for Generation Alpha and the next generation.
Like it was definitely not something that I was talking about when I was younger outside of my home because of our family history. And now like my kids know the word. They don't think it's a weird word. They don't think the procedure is odd or strange. And hopefully by bringing it out into the open a little bit, we can shift culture too about the procedure.
Magda: Yeah. And it seems like the fact that there wasn't a book already is just even more indicative of all the stuff that you were talking about that they think, you know, you should start getting mammograms. You know, it used to be when you were 50 and then, you know, when you were 45 and stuff like that, right? It just seems like there was an assumption that everybody who was getting a mastectomy didn't have kids or had kids who were adults already at that point.
Carolyn: Yes.
Magda: So why would you need a book to talk about kids, right? If it's something that doesn't hit younger parents with younger kids.
Carolyn: It's that for sure. And I think it's also, oh, let's not talk about this. You know, like this is such a horrible procedure. Like, It's really dated, the information that is online about the procedure. I mean, you have everything from why would a woman do this to her body? Or you won't feel like a sexual being afterwards. Like the Wall Street Journal just last month, talking about it like a boob job. It's so odd, the conversation.
Magda: Well, the Wall Street Journal is sort of a bastion of the wrong perspective on like everything.
Doug: That's in their masthead, I think.
Magda: Like “We fundamentally don't understand the right way to look at this.”
Carolyn: It was very odd. It was very odd. And I just feel like this is the wrong way to be looking at this procedure. This procedure can extend your life. This procedure can make it so that you don't have to say goodbye to your kids when you're 45 to 50 years old or live in fear of the risk. And nothing's a magic bullet, obviously, but it greatly reduces the risk. So I just find it very odd. And especially with some of the reconstruction processes that are available today, it just does not have to be viewed how it is. And I think that's why there's no children's books either. It's like, why would we talk to children about this procedure? It's because people aren't viewing it as beautiful or positive. And it is.
Magda: Well, I think people are, people are just weird about breasts in general. I mean, when I was nursing my children, like people were so weirded out about it. And then when I had my second child and my first child was over the age of three, they were like, “well, does he know what's happening?” Like, yeah, he does. Like he pretends to nurse his toy truck.
Carolyn: There's the lactation cookie ad, right, that was pulled down, what, a month ago? There was like an uproar about this. Molly Baz had her lactation ad and it was on a billboard in Times Square. And I think it was Clear Channel took it down. And people are weird about breasts.
Magda: Well, because like people don't have problems talking to their kids or anyone about colonoscopies, right? I was thinking when you were talking about normalizing talking about mastectomies, because, you know, Doug and I are older than you are. And we're at the age now where everybody's supposed to be getting a colonoscopy. And so everyone I know who gets a colonoscopy posts about it later: “It wasn't bad at all.” “No big deal.” “This is what you do.” “You're knocked out for the whole thing.” “The only problem is the day before you might forget that you're not supposed to eat,” right? Like people are very much talking about like, you know, “and then you take this pill and drink a gallon of water.”
Carolyn: They're like talking about the whole thing.
Magda: It's fascinating that we can talk about diarrhea as part of a health diagnostic process but we can't talk about breasts!
Doug: Well, that's a gendered thing, too. I mean in general women's health is taboo for so many reasons, which is why it's so horribly misunderstood, which is why birth control is under attack for completely unrealistic reasons. People don't understand menstruation, menopause. They just write it off as gross. And they only want to look at women as opposed to understand how their bodies work. And I can say, once you see what a woman's body can do, once you watch your child emerge from your wife like that, it's a whole other appreciation for the mechanics of what women can do and how the biology is just, you know, amazing. And I feel very boring by comparison.
Carolyn: Well, you're not. I don't think anybody would find you boring.
Magda: Carolyn, did, did you ever read or see Valley Of The Dolls from the ‘60s?
Carolyn: No, I don't know how I never saw it.
Magda: So I was in a book club that did, every summer we read like trashy books that we called “Trashy Novels of Yesteryear.” We read these blockbusters like Peyton Place and Valley Of The Dolls and stuff like that. So Valley Of The Dolls is the story of three women who end up being movie stars and befriend each other along the way, and they start out in New York and they end up in California, and so Valley of the Dolls is supposed to be Valley of these three women. But “doll” is what they call uppers, amphetamines, whatever they would have had in the ‘60s, right. And it was that everybody was on drugs and all this, it's just this like dystopian Hollywood thing. And so one of the storylines is that one of the characters has these amazing breasts, and that's been her whole thing. And she ends up marrying this guy who's like in love with her breasts, and they don't have children and he's like “I don't care as long as your breasts are fine.” And so she ends up getting breast cancer, but she's so afraid to do anything about it because her husband loves her breasts, and she can't imagine that he could love her. And so she dies of breast cancer instead of getting a diagnosis.
Carolyn: How have I not seen this movie?
Doug: You totally spoiled it for her. I mean,
Magda: I know, I mean.
Carolyn: I actually am happy you spoiled it for me. I don't know about the two of you. I don't think I can't emotionally handle heavy things anymore.
Magda: How old are your kids?
Carolyn: There are five and eight.
Magda: You still legitimately have 10 years left before you can go back to heavy things at all.
Carolyn: I can't do it. I cry at everything. And like, I cried watching Wonka the other day, the Timothy. I was sobbing at the end when she, you know, I don't want to ruin it for anybody, but there's a mother kind of component to it. And I just like, I am rewatching Brooklyn Nine-Nine for like the 10th time, because that is all I can emotionally handle. So I might have to wait until, as you say, the kids are a little older.
Magda: I mean, it literally is just a trashy novel from the sixties, but there is that, like, I think about that all the time when I hear about women who are afraid of certain diagnoses because of the way it'll mess with whatever place they've carved out in their world. Right. Like if it's aesthetics or some specific thing that they do for someone else that they would have to take a break from or something like that. Right. And I think, you know, the book's trashy, but it was really telling a lot of truths about women and women's places and how women were taught to see themselves and that kind of stuff.
Carolyn: I mean, don't get me wrong, right? Like, like Doug might remember, I'm a very glass half full person. It would take a lot. It would take a lot to bring me down. And after my mastectomy, I was like, I'm good. Like, I'm changing my dreams. I've got like, some weeks off work to recover. Like this is now I'm done. Great.
And then six months later, I had the reconstruction and I was feeling good. I was doing all the questionnaires. They were like, how do you feel about your body? I was like, great. Check. They were like, how do you feel? Great. Check. Five out of five, all these questions. And then I got out of the reconstruction, came home, you're bandaged up for a while. And like, that was much harder. And I was not prepared for being down about it. We went to a farmer's market the Saturday after, and I just was feeling so not myself. My daughter looked at me and she was like, not smiling. What's, are you okay? And this is like a four-year-old at the time. And it took me a beat to figure out like, oh man, you're like, really thinking about your physical appearance right now. And you're really thinking about, are you happy about it? And this is kind of new for you. Ultimately, like weeks later, I was back and I was fine. And I think everyone should know that like, you're going to be okay. But I also don't want to be one of those people that's like skirting over the fact that yeah, it comes with some hard times and you don't feel yourself for a little while and that's okay.
Magda: I mean, they say that surgery usually comes for most people with a like a depressive few weeks after it. And I'm wondering if the first time you just had so much adrenaline because there was this like “I'm taking care of myself” that it, like the adrenaline sort of rode you through that.
Carolyn: It might have. I think, too, I was like steeling myself for the worst possible outcome because I didn't know what I was going to look like. And then when I saw, like for those who are listening that aren't familiar, like if you have reconstruction, they're basically scooping out the tissue inside your breasts. And if you want to get reconstruction, they put in these really cool expanders and they're like little balloons and they, you know, pump them up full of air for, you know, some weeks to help your skin sort of like adjust. And then depending on your reconstruction plan, you go in for some more pumps. And I was like preparing myself for the worst. And with the expander phase, I was like, oh, this is not bad. This is great. And I kind of like got used to my cage, if you will, with the expanders. And then when I had reconstruction, it was, I think I just wasn't ready for that moment. And I think you're probably right. There's something chemical that happens in your body for those big life moments. And that kind of probably hit me more the second time than the first.
Doug: When you thought about distilling this experience into this book, how did you kind of put together what the book would cover and how much of your experience you could kind of pour into it so that a kid could grasp it?
Carolyn: So I wrote the book for my own kids, which I think was helpful from a very functional and personal place because the book exists because there was nothing else that existed. So I was writing it for them to really talk to them versus, “oh, I think I want to write a children's book about this.” It was more “I need a way to communicate with my own children about this” and I felt really strongly that a children's book was the right way to do it, because they're big readers and I know that they could digest serious topics that way. And I wanted them to feel like they had a role in this recovery process, and I wanted them to feel like they understood what was happening.
And I also wanted them to understand that I was excited about this. This was something that I was doing because I love them and I love myself. And I wanted them to know that this was a positive thing. And then I was thinking like, I have a four and a seven year old at the time. How am I going to engage their little minds around this? And so the way the book is written is really giving the kid who's reading the book a mission. And their mission is to take care of their mom. And I found like with my own kids, that really made them light up. Like they had a role to play. Usually it's mom that's like taking care of me. And this time I'm going to take care of her. And I had some really good conversations with my surgeon about like, okay, so what exactly are you doing? Because I'm going to be asleep. What are you doing? And she was like, you know, we do the scooping and there's warm towels.
And at the end, we stitch you up. And so I don't know. I had a lot of fun thinking about like how to talk about that with kids. And we have this whole scene in the book where the way we talk about scooping out the tissue behind the mom's breasts is like, have you ever scooped an avocado before? It's pretty cool. You kind of scoop out the tissue and there's avocado cheerleaders in the surgery room. And I just really tried to have fun. The seriousness of the procedure and bringing in characters that could bring some levity and like, dare I say some humor to the mastectomy conversation so that they could feel confident in what I was about to do. And, um, that was the point, right? If you're scared, that's okay, but mommy's going to be okay.
Doug: Yeah, they're already accustomed to headless horsemen in the neighborhood, so they're not worried about it.
Carolyn: There was no headless horsemen. I feel like for a lot of reasons, that would have been a weird message to send with the illustrations.
Doug: H is for a headectomy.
Carolyn: Yes. No, it was a lot of fun. I think, too, you just read enough children's books with, as you're bringing up your kids that you kind of, I don't know. I still think in children's books, like the way I talk, I have a five and eight year old and I'm just getting out of that phase where I'm like talking like a children's book to other adults. So I don't know. Something about it felt really natural.
Doug: Yeah, this work at home thing you've got going, that's got to be a challenge too if you're switching from working with adults online to attending to a five-year-old who's not keeping anything down.
Carolyn: I don't know, I feel like the working from home culture is strong and there's a lot of colleagues at my company and at agencies and other companies that, you know, people are more out as a parent. It's great. Like it's not just the working from home. It's that, no, I'm sorry, I can't make this call at this time. I'm gonna be picking up my kid, dropping them off somewhere. I just can't do it. Or I'm doing this call in transit with my kids. Sorry if there's noise in the background. Guess what? I'm still doing a killer job at my job. So that's fine.
Magda: It really doesn't matter if people are offline from three to four every day.
Carolyn: No.
Magda: You know, like as long as they're doing their job.
Carolyn: As long as you're getting it done. I mean, I think we have a lot of conversations now about, and I, I really value the feedback just because that's my choice of getting work done. Let's say from eight to 10 at night. Cause that's when I can catch up. That doesn't mean that like other people need to adjust that way. And so I do think there's a level of like making sure that you're being really inclusive to non-parents on a team who are you know, they have a very different schedule. And that's a whole next chapter of this. But it's a really positive thing, the working from home culture and how much more adopted and accepted it is now than pre-pandemic, certainly, I think.
Doug: Well, I would love to talk more about that. I know Magda has a big interest in that, having studied that, and especially for working mothers. I wanted to ask, speaking of inclusive though, because you've mentioned that your experience was specific in that you were never diagnosed, you were never sick, you never had chemo, you took a prophylactic stance and made a choice. But I'm sure you were keeping in mind there are women out there who have far different breast cancer and mastectomy experiences. So when you were thinking about how to include them in this book what's universal about the message versus what's specific to your case versus what others may have gone through?
Carolyn: I'm sure I had blind spots. I tried to do a few things. I was pretty intentional that I wasn't going to mention cancer in the book because that's not an experience that I have, and I couldn't credibly like bring that to the book. I also know that there are many, many books, groups, organizations that are dedicated to helping parents and young parents through that. So I kind of felt like there is nothing about mastectomy and mastectomy is a procedure that women are having for a variety of reasons and needs and in life stages. And like, let's just really focus on doing that well. But I did want to make sure that there were nods to the book to number one, if you are not a mom and you just are a grandmother or an aunt or someone who has a small child in your life that you feel you need to have this conversation with, we do say the word “mom” in the book because I just felt like that was important. But I think that the message and the story could be applicable to other relationships. I also really tried to make sure that we didn't like over-stereotype who the mom and the child in the book was.
Like we have a lot of pictures that actually don't have people in them because I didn't want for this to be about like one type of mom, one type of person. One of my favorite parts in the book is we have these little hearts that are mastectomied and there's hearts with two stitches, there's hearts with one stitch. Women go through mastectomy journeys differently. I know many women that have just had a mastectomy on one breast and they never need it for the second breast. And we really wanted to make that something that was more open. And then we talk about reconstruction as a choice in the book. That's not something that every woman decides to do. And that's great. You know, that's a very personal choice. So if and when there's a point where we could get it translated to Spanish, I would be really happy about that as well. But we're not quite there yet.
Doug: And who contributed to it as well? Who read your first draft? How did external feedback shape the narrative before it made its way to the printer?
Carolyn: Oh, that's such a good question. So my husband and I met in publishing and he went through the Columbia publishing program. He no longer works in publishing. But he read it. I'll be honest, it was a really scary experience. Like I'm in the business of talking about other people's stuff and other people's projects. And it was really nerve-wracking to share with people that I was writing this. I didn't want it to feel, I don't know, I wasn't really ready to share it with people until it was done. But my husband read it a lot of times and gave me a lot of really good feedback.
The editor I worked with also gave me really good feedback. And then I would like covertly, as I was saying before, like ask my doctor questions along the way. And then I learned a lot from friends of mine who have been through the procedure, who were just sharing things with me, not necessarily knowing that it was about a book, but just sharing experiences and anecdotes with me. Some who had friends that were sick, some who didn't. So I think it hopefully helped the book to come across as a little more sensitive to different women that were experiencing different things.
Doug: You know Tig Notaro, yeah?
Carolyn: Yeah, yeah.
Doug: Did you see her comedy special when she just removed her shirt?
Carolyn: Yes. She's amazing.
Doug: You know about this, Magda?
Magda: No. I mean, I know Tig Notaro, but I don't know that she removed her shirt.
Doug: Well, she became famous when she had a monologue, a special about coping with her mom's death right about the time where she had both her breasts removed.
Magda: Okay.
Doug: And she never got anything reconstructed. As you might imagine, she's pretty fearless when she talks about what she went through with her body because going through that kind of does make you fearless. And so she had a comedy special subsequently and she just took off her shirt and did like half the special. She was topless and just scarred here, no nipples, just like a, you know, like a mannequin's chest with scar tissue.
Magda: Interesting.
Carolyn: Yeah. I've talked to some women who've just decided that reconstruction is not for them and they sound like it's a really freeing experience.
Doug: Well, I keep thinking about Elaine's monologue when her nipple shows up on her Christmas card.
Carolyn: Oh, right. In Seinfeld.
Doug: And she's like, “You spend your whole life making sure nobody sees them!”
Carolyn: I mean, though, isn't it funny? I mean, I love all those shows, right? But it's like you watch some of them now and it's just like wild how different things are. I watch Seinfeld now. I watch Friends and I'm just like ooooh. And I can take a joke. I can take a joke. But it's just like, ooh, guys.
Magda: Friends didn't age well at all.
Carolyn: Did not.
Magda: I think Seinfeld is just as cringy now as it was at the time. Like, the whole point of Seinfeld was that they were horrible people. And they're still horrible people. So I think it aged exactly the way it was. But Friends, whoa, is tough to watch.
Carolyn: It's tough to watch. Some of it is tough to watch.
Magda: There was one summer when our younger kid who's 19 now, I think he was probably at the time, 11 or 12 at the time, one of the TV stations had back-to-back Full House, you know, the one with Danny Tanner and right, John Stamos.
43:15
Carolyn: Yes.
43:16
Magda: And then Friends right after it. So every night Thomas and I would watch Full House and then Friends for, and we watched like seasons full of them because it was on every night and we were watching it every night during one summer. And Full House aged so much better than Friends did. And that was shocking. But I mean, it was about...
Doug: Even with Lori Loughlin having come out of prison?
43:42
Magda: Well, she never was she was never faking her kids' sports accomplishments to get anyone into college on Full House. It was just all these kid problems. And then, you know, like Jesse and the whatever the name of the band was. Jesse and the Runaways? Jesse and the Rockers?
Doug: Jesse and the Mullets
Carolyn: I can like remember sitting in my living room watching Full House, Family Matters, Step By Step, like yeah, all those shows. Some of them might be a little tough now, but probably the ones about the family. You probably have very familiar.
Doug: Especially after Seinfeld made it to Netflix and you could rewatch them and you realize that like 90% of the plot device problems would never have happened with cell phones.
Magda: Well, and like 95% of the plot problems would never have happened if even one of them had been a decent human being.
Carolyn: Yeah.
Magda: Right. Like that's the bottom line.
Carolyn: It's really, but I mean, it's hilarious. You can't,
Doug: I'm really glad you were sharing the experience of publishing this book. And as you say, you work to amplify other people's stories. And now all of a sudden you're coming out with one of your own. This is one of my favorite questions to ask people: Once you've embarked on something that you weren't sure about and you've emerged on the other side of it, what's the most surprising thing about the process of writing this book? What kind of feedback have you gotten? What didn't you anticipate about being an author about this subject, if anything?
Carolyn: I think I didn't anticipate how hard it would be to actually talk about it when it was out. I really enjoyed the time and work it took to create something, even though it was happening at like one o'clock in the morning, many nights.
Doug: Well, isn't that anybody with a job? That's when you do it.
Carolyn: It's like you do, if you're going to do something else, it happens at one or two in the morning.
Doug: When you're at your best mentally.
Carolyn: When you're at your best, making no grammatical mistakes. I think I didn't anticipate how hard it would be to talk about it afterwards because it didn't really dawn on me not to write it because it was a really personal topic. I was not held back by that at all. And I don't think talking about it is difficult because of the personal nature of the topic. I just am not used to talking about projects of my own. And I found that to be very difficult. I had friends, we would be at a bookstore together–this happened in Massachusetts recently–and they were like we're here, we're at a children's bookstore, you should talk about this book to the owner of the bookstore! And I was like frozen, and they had to go out to their car, get a copy of the book, bring it in, kind of push me to the counter, and I work in communications. I am not shy. And I wasn't really anticipating that. I don't know if that's something that other people sort of experience, but it has not been easy to talk about on my own.
Magda: We talked to somebody who had written a very, very successful blog. And in the heyday of her blog, she created another email address and a fake identity as her own assistant, so that she could turn people down and not feel bad about it.
Carolyn: That's so smart. I mean, I'm not turning anybody down, let's be clear. I would love any exposure.
Doug: You could create a whole other persona as Carolyn Pilkington Sklar's assistant.
Carolyn: That's so – you know what's so funny about you saying that is even as I'm, like, sort of emailing folks or sharing information about the book, I do sort of, like, fall into this cadence of, like, talking about myself in the third person. You know? Like, “the author – Me,” but yeah, I could get it.
Except she was in the position of, you know, wanting a delicate way to turn people away. I will stand outside on the street, like talk to anybody you give me.
Doug: Yeah, she needs to create a persona that will bring people in and promote her.
Carolyn: That will bring people in, yes, yes.
Doug: Here's an armchair psychology question. Do you think that's kind of specific to people who go into your line of work? Because I've met several of them over the course of Dad 2.0. And if you're kind of really into promoting other people's stuff, it's kind of like being an actor. You'd rather be somebody else than focus on who you are. Do you think that's kind of part of the psychology of what's drawn into amplifying other people's work because it kind of gets the attention away from yourself?
Carolyn: I think there's probably something in there. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of communications folks are obviously agency side, and that's a very customer service sort of role. And maybe. I'll have to ask some old colleagues who have put stuff out in the world if they had a similar tension around it.
Doug: Now that this book is out, do you have any thoughts about expanding the series at all? You know, Harry Potter did a whole thing, and you could be on that pedestal. Your husband could write V as for vasectomy.
Carolyn: Right. Not yet, but...
Doug: I'm just picturing a bunch of really happy cartoon frozen peas wandering down your husband's pants.
Magda: Yeah. Well, C is for colonoscopy.
Carolyn: Yeah. One thing I'm trying to do and be better at, I don't know if either of you can relate to this, is to not spread myself too thin and to like the things that I'm going to do, I want to do really, really well. And I feel like I've only scratched the surface on doing this thing really well. At some point, I would love for it to be in hospitals. You know, when I gave birth, they gave me these board books to take home with me. Yes, none of them had any useful information in them. They were just silly little books. For me, it's like, could this book exist as a real resource that organizations are investing in to proactively give to young families as they go through something like this? I would love that. So it's going to take work.
Magda: And the answer to that is yes, it absolutely could. There's no reason that breast cancer support groups, BRCA gene support groups, regular hospitals, surgeons' offices wouldn't just be buying 100 from you every six months to hand out to people.
Carolyn: I tend to agree with you. It's just really much more challenging than I had anticipated to find the right people. And I get it, like everyone is really busy and also they're dealing with a very very serious topic. So I think it's just going to take elbow grease and time to make one by one, make the connections. And that's not daunting to me, it's just going to take some time. But that's like just writing the book was going to take some time. Like I could have still been talking about writing this book in 2024. And I was really happy that I didn't waste time, just like I still could have been talking about getting the mastectomy. And instead, you just have to do it, get a plan and do it. So I just need to, to your point, Doug, I think like the next phase of this to me is like implementing a plan to actually get it out there and hopefully be successful at that. It's going to take a little bit of luck, I think, as well.
Doug: Well, I'm also thinking in terms of there are people our age, and you may age into a situation where you want to be a bit more creative and you want to have a bit more personal effect on things. You could choose to be the Ectomy Queen if it came to that. And this is a great starting point for that.
Magda: Oh, don't call it that.
Doug: The Ectomy series, no good?
Magda: Oh, yeah, no.
Carolyn: No. I think that's part of it, though. Like there's no doubt that as you get older I think you start really, and I'm not saying that people that are younger don't think this way, but like there's a sense of, okay, what am I doing? Am I doing something really worthwhile? Am I leaving the world better than when I found it? And like, yeah, there's a huge sense of, like purpose and creativity and fulfillment that comes with creating something like this, especially for me. And I'm sure for many women with what they choose to do, I just think I'm a highly distractible person. And instead of getting like distracted with other things right now, I'm just like, “focus, Carolyn. Focus on getting this into as many places and hands as you can.” Right now, it's very grassroots, but in a year from now, maybe I can email you and share that like, we've got five hospital networks that want to carry the book.
Doug: And I would be the biggest cheerleader for that because I love it when just an idea becomes a thing and that thing hits. Just the idea of committing to doing it, regardless of how it turns out, that's really the
Carolyn: Yeah.
Doug: That's the achievement.
Carolyn: That's a really big lesson. It's really hard to learn that lesson. Just doing it is part of it. It doesn't have to be the best thing that ever was. I'm really trying to learn that lesson.
Doug: As far as distractibility, because you do have a lot of plates in the air at the moment because you do have young children and you've got an executive job with Danone. I want to give Magda a chance to talk about this flexible schedule that you guys have. That fascinates me, too, in terms of how we came out of COVID and how we're reacting to forced returns to the office and the paranoia around employers who really want to follow their employees and are really convinced that being home just kills productivity, even though there's no evidence to suggest that. And maybe it's something that you work for a French company that seems a bit more progressive in terms of making work-life balance a little easier for working parents. What has your experience been with that?
Carolyn: I'm so thankful that I have found a flexible work arrangement and that my company is very supportive of flexible work. It's game-changing. I was doing something the other day where I was trying to ballpark the amount of time that I had gotten just by not having to drop my kids off somewhere at seven.
And instead it's like eight to five. And it's like a meaningful amount of time. But I also think, have you guys followed this whole like Jim VandeHei, who's the founder of Axios? I think he calls it like his “happiness matrix.” His whole philosophy is that he's like, you need to be able to figure out what is going to make you the most effective person possible. And he's like, for me, these are my four quadrants. If I feel like one of them is not where it needs to be, the whole thing comes crashing down. And so he was like, it's in everyone's best interest, the individual, the employer, to understand how people can really make their happiness matrix thrive. And they all benefit from each other. And so I just feel like there's more of a conversation that is happening. Like this is the CEO of Axios who is talking about this and having a very open conversation as a man, by the way, about how when his relationship with his wife and kids is not where it needs to be, like absolutely the other things suffer. And it's very freeing to hear someone like that talk about this, and PS have a whole newsletter and media infrastructure where he is giving real awesome guidance and tips and advice to people like me who are trying to like navigate this for the first time. I feel like it's kind of new territory that we're all figuring out, but I feel like embrace it. And just, this is going to sound kind of harsh and weird, but like do a good job at it and don't take advantage of it one way or another, because like, this is a special kind of thing and we all should really want it to work. And it only works if it works.
So, um, I think that people are doing a really good job at it as far as I can tell. And of course you're going to have people that are not doing a great job at it, but like, wouldn't they be doing a not great job in the office too? Like, I don't know that it's because they're home.
Magda: We're not there yet culturally with it. So we have to, you know what I mean? Like 30 years from now when everybody works from home or a huge segment of people work from home, people will understand that people who aren't working well from home are people who wouldn't work well from anywhere. But at this point, we all have to really pull our share of the weight to get the whole work from home thing established enough in the culture that, you know, so our grandchildren can slack off from home.
Carolyn: Like it used to not be normal to have this. And I had a great conversation with my father the other day and he was like, until the Blackberry, I used to not be able to go to your high school tennis matches. And like, that was a big deal. That was like a thing that you had to like, figure out how to tell people you were actually gonna be online working, but not in the office. So you're right, 10, 20, 30 years from now, we'll be in a completely different phase on this.
Magda: Well, you know, when we were talking about working from home earlier, I was thinking about 10 years ago, if somebody was calling in from home and their dog barked, they would freak out and like to have to mute and stuff like that because you didn't want anyone to know you were at home. Now it's like, okay, bring your cat on the screen. Everybody, let's show everybody our pets. Okay, now let's move on to the meeting. And so, you know, like culture changes relatively quickly.
Doug: Can we please acknowledge the debt that we all owe BBC Dad? Remember that guy who was trying to report it?
Magda: Remember when the kid just walked in with the thing?
Carolyn: Oh, yeah. Oh, my gosh.
Doug: He lit the fire, man.
Magda: I mean, I think also part of the reason people are so scared of working from home is that they have a fundamental misunderstanding of both, A, how to manage people, in any location and they think that managing is walking around and talking to people in the office. Also, they don't understand how much work is actually being done in an office. Like study after study shows that in an eight hour day, five hours is the amount of work that any given employee is actually doing. So if they're expecting people to put in 10 hours of work in an eight hour day from home, yes, that is definitely not happening.
Carolyn: I was talking to somebody the other day that was also dissecting like, and it's different at any, it's like different at small companies, it's different at bigger companies. But it's like, what kind of work is done better when you're all together as a team? And what kind of work isn't? It's just a different kind of conversation, to be honest with you. It has nothing to do with, are you in the office or not? It's to do with like, what are you responsible for? And would this benefit from some creative process together in person? or not? It was a coach that said this, and it was like a really good discussion as a group. And I was like, oh, I'm not even thinking about it that way. That's very cool.
Magda: Another thing I think people aren't looking at is there were a whole bunch of studies done like sort of in the late ‘90s and the 2000s about physical setup and layout of like, what's the ideal office setup? What they discovered was that open office was the worst. And that was just when the open office and the hoteling thing started taking off.
Carolyn: It was like kicking off. Yeah.
Magda: And it was horrible. But what all of these studies found out was, A, it depended on what kind of work people were doing. Duh. Yeah. But for most people who were knowledge workers, the thing that seemed to work best was for people to have their own little rabbit warren in the offices, either just by themselves or with like one other person where you were separated, but to force everybody to go into common spaces fairly regularly so that they would see other people and strike up these informal conversations with them. So if you all had to go to a central area that the bathrooms all came off of or a kitchen or a lobby to receive mail or something like that, But you're forcing people out of their own offices. That was the correct balance of alone time to do work, but then seeing other people and talking to them to get ideas and collaboration. And that's easy to replicate from a dispersed perspective. And I think it's fascinating that we have those studies about what's the ideal workplace design and nobody's looking at them because they file them away under “property management” or stuff like that. It just hasn't been a field that people have looked at.
Carolyn: Yeah, I think you're right. I feel like I'm super lucky because, look, no company's perfect, obviously, but I think we have a lot of flexibility at my company and yet are really encouraging of proximity between teams and leaders because it's the proximity that you need to your team and your leaders. And that proximity can look a lot of different ways. And I think we're also trying to get better about just being open and honest about when the proximity is not great or who needs proximity and why. And these are very layered conversations versus remote work versus in-person work. Yes, no, three days, why? Which is like a very inhuman way of talking about it.
Doug: The one last thing I wanted to mention was I think that you can define the success of a work-at-home situation of whether or not you have to have a mouse jiggler. Do you have a mouse jiggler?
Carolyn: Wait, what is a mouse jiggler?
Magda:Oh God, stop.
Doug: I learned what that is this morning. There was a piece about it's an actual thing you can buy on Amazon. And you know how people who work at home, employers really want to like they put cameras in your camera so they can watch you work and stuff.
Carolyn: I've heard all those stories. Yeah.
Doug: This is a gizmo you can buy on Amazon that you can place your mouse in and it moves your mouse to simulate that you're actually working with it. So the employer thinks you're actually manipulating your mouse and working and earning however many hours that you're billing.
Carolyn: All I have to say to that is I feel very lucky that I have an employer that, as far as I know, is not doing any of that stuff to us.
Doug: Well, it's been a treat to talk to you today about your book and where people can find it. Again, the book is called M is for Mastectomy. And where do we find it online? Where are you active online? And how can we hear more about the Sklar journey?
Carolyn: You are both so generous and kind to have me on to talk about this. Just from the bottom of my heart, I appreciate it so much. Thank you. The book is available on major online booksellers. So if you Google it, you'll find it on Amazon, Walmart.com, Target.com, BN.com. And I am at the underscore CPS on Instagram. I've been having like really good conversations with people there. So if you want a book sent to you or just want to chat or have questions about the book, feel free to hit me up there.
Doug: And she's almost never confused with Child Protective Services.
Carolyn: I'm always confused with Karl Pilkington, though. I get that a lot. So for anyone who, if you know, you know. But no relation. I wish. That would be so cool.
Doug: Well, I wish you all the best of luck with the book. It's been great to reconnect with you after all these years. No surprise to see where you are. I want to say, in all seriousness, the two things you're doing, you might not think about this much because you're in it, but work is going to evolve because of the success of people in your position. Case precedent is going to drive the change, and you're a big part of that. And writing this book is a big deal, too, because you launch something, put something out there that wasn't there before. And so on both those counts, I wish you all the best going forward. So thanks again for coming on with us.
Carolyn: Thank you so much. That means a lot, Doug. I really appreciate it. Great reconnecting and meeting you, Magda. Thanks for the chat.
Magda: Great to meet you, too!
Carolyn: I'm sure we will talk again.
Doug: And thank you for listening to episode 52 of the When the Flames Go Up podcast with Magda Pecsenye Zarin and me, Doug French. Our guest has been Carolyn Sklar. When the Flames Go Up is a production of Halfway Noodles LLC and is available on all the usual platforms and at whentheflamesgoup.substack.com.
Please subscribe for our weekly episode every Wednesday and our newsletter, Friday Flames. If you listen to us on Apple Podcasts, please leave us a review. We'll be back next week for episode 53. Until then, have a great week. Bye-bye.
Carolyn: Thank you so much!
Magda: Thank you for coming!
Carolyn: It was really wonderful chatting with you both. I really appreciate it. I'm going to go check on my daughter. Every time we go into her bedroom, there's just a new surprise. So I'm going to go deal with that. Thank you both so much!