Hello Merry Christmas! Happy Hanukkah!
I hope you all are having a beautiful holiday season and that 2023 brings you joy beyond your expectations. Today, as a kick off to my new series interviewing women (mostly my friends! But (mostly) not about me! About women’s issues! Relationships! Careers (don’t worry, I’m interviewing people with real ones)! Family!) I am bringing you a Q&A with my sister, Parry Thompson. Parry is a maternal mental health advocate and a certified labor, postpartum, and death doula. I asked her if she’d prefer to speak about her work or about me and our family and she chose the latter. I hope you enjoy this new format (it will be occasional, not every week!) And if you’d like me to speak to her (or try to speak to her boss) about maternal mental health, I have a strong connection to force her to speak to me twice.
This conversation has been abridged for length. My questions and in the moment commentary are in bold, her answers are in normal font, and asides added later and descriptions of laughter, noises of surprise, etc. are in italics.
xx
Hannah
Okay, so what should I ask you?
(Laughing) Do you want to just hand me your laptop and I’ll do your work for you?
Very funny. What is my worst quality as a sister?
Um, I think that’s changed over time. I think when I was younger (Parry is 7 years my junior) and I was 18 I was coming to New York and you were an adult, I felt like you wanted me to want the things you wanted for yourself and I didn’t realize you were trying to teach me the lessons you had learned on your own and you didn’t want me to go through the things that you went through. Now, I think that it’s just that you’re not around as much.
Aww.
Ha, yeah. Now I think it’s a time factor. I was stubborn, I’ve always been quite stubborn (she has!) but especially in my late teens and early 20s.
That’s very sweet, you don’t think it’s that I’m unreliable? I think that’s my worst quality as a sister and friend.
(She think’s a little too hard.) Uh maybe. I mean, that doesn’t really bother me. (She laughs.) Because it’s like an expectation that’s been set. And I think, I guess, if I really really needed something you’d be there. (Laughing harder) you can’t let the things hurt you that are never gonna change. And it’s fine, I’ve gotten far less reliable with age.
That’s true, I don’t think you’re unreliable but you used to be, like, superwoman. I always thought it was weird, honestly. Like you were class president, cheer captain, on the basketball team, very social, you worked hard in school. I was always sort of like, why? I can’t handle structure like you can. I hate structure.
Yeah, that’s fair. But with time, it just didn’t… I think becoming less reliable has let me become myself. When I was that person there was a disconnect, I was defining myself by all of those roles and it felt like I was defining myself by those tasks and expectations. It made my early 20s very difficult.
(Silence as I’m typing.)
I think people would eat up an interview with Matt.
Well thank you, business manager. Maybe I’ll hand you my laptop and you can do that work for me.
Perfect.