How to Write About Healing, with Author Kevin Barhydt

Kevin Barhydt is the author of the memoir, Dear Stephen Michael’s Mother. He is also a YouTube creator and actor, and refers to himself as a “disability technology evangelist.” I’m fascinated by how he has so successfully navigated the difficult territory of how to write about healing. Listen in, and read along, as we discuss that and more on this episode of the QWERTY podcast.

Kevin: Hi Marion. Thanks for having me.

Marion: Delighted to have you here. Thank you so much. Let’s set this up for the listeners, I’d like to do so by reading the biographical paragraph you offer on your website. It says this, “I was adopted at birth, molested when I was nine years old, started smoking when I was 10, drank my first six pack of Schlitz when I was 11. OD’d on barbituates in school when I was 12, was put in the back of a cop car when I was 13, taken out of my home when I was 14. Lived in two foster homes, a group home, a detention center, was raped when I was 15.

My oldest daughter was born when I was 16, my youngest was born when I was 17. I joined the Navy at 18, got married at 19. My wife left me for another man when I was 20. I was thrown out of the Navy, robbed my childhood’s friend’s mother’s house and sentenced to 45 days in county jail when I was 21. Was arrested for assault in a DWI couldn’t remember when I was 22. And then when I was 23, life got hard.” Wow, Kevin.

Kevin: Yeah, I know. I’m smiling ear to ear right now.

Marion: Wow. So as a memoir coach and memoir editor, I deal with stories all day. And what I first have to say to you, were we working together, is that you’re burdened with great material. And I know how cold-blooded that sounds, because that life sounds horrible, but when people come to me to talk about writing memoir, we have to talk about that. But I mean this, on its own, it’s an amazing story. But many people are burdened with great material. Many of those writers listening right now have the same challenge of great stories, but few can find their way out from under the reality of the life. In order to write about it, how did you get some perspective on it? When did that perspective begin for you?

Kevin: First of all, it was wonderful to hear you read it aloud. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone, but me say those words out loud. The trial and error, I think, over time looking at those different line items, really bullet points of my life and saying, how can I bring this from where I was to where I am now to telling the story? That process really was, I think, part iterative in a therapeutic way, but also a spiritual walk for me. I had to find worth and value in myself. I had to find a way to say these line items aren’t just line items, there’s actually a summary here. What’s the summary? What’s the bullet points pointing to? And when I found out it was pointing to healing, when I found out it was pointing to all these traumas were pointing to something that could transcend those traumas, and maybe help others transcend those traumas, I gave my myself permission to grapple with those. A lot of people ask me, was writing the book therapeutic? And I often say no, but thank goodness I had a lot of therapy before I wrote it.

Marion: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. And that makes sense. Let’s talk about that idea of therapeutic. That’s something that I grapple with all the time. People come to me in my classes and they say, oh, this is incredibly therapeutic. And I think your answer is great, but was it transcendent? Was it helpful? Where in there in your life experience does the actual writing of the book fit? Was writing this some form of therapy, or where does it work in your life’s story?

Kevin: One of the most beautiful parts of writing the book, and again, the therapy that I had and the work that I did in 12-step groups and in spiritual walks that I have, really allowed me to sit down and not panic every time that I put my fingers on the keyboard. What really came to light for me, which was surprising, was when I looked back at all those bullet points and found that there were still beauty in that time of my life. There were moments when I was, one of those bullet points was my wife left me, but before she left me, we had some days where we laughed. We had some days where we met in high school and we had that first kiss. And I got to write about that, but I hadn’t thought about that in so long that when I did, I almost had to sit back and take my hands off the keyboard and let the tears flow, because I didn’t know that those would bubble up.

Some of the most beautiful parts of the writing process for me were talking about my daughters when they were born and being there at their side, watching them come to this world. And knowing that, even though my life was tragic all around that, there were moments that were just exploding with life and say, beauty, and I had to own those too. When those came into this story, that’s when I knew I had something to say, because if all this was, was going to be a story of those bullet points, and I’ll tell you in a second, if you don’t mind where those bullet points came from, where that original writing came from. Well, what happened was when I was writing the story and I had written say three good chapters, I showed it to someone. And it’s a professor that I know and someone that I really respect. And she said, “Kevin, you need something, just one page that grabs everyone and brings them in.” So ,what you just read, I hadn’t thought about it for years, what you just read was the original first page of the book. I wanted to draw people in and tell them, this is what you’re getting into. This is what you’re going to hear. Now, if you remember, if you’ve got the book in front of you, what it is now, it’s more of a story of talking about my mother, talking about being Dear Stephen Michael’s Mother, and how that really leads into the story and the way I wrote it.

But those bullet points, when I looked at those and I wrote those the first time I gave them to my friend and she said, “You got it. That’s exactly what you need. That’s what you want. You wanted a direction to point the readers in.” In the end I didn’t want to use it for that first page, but I had almost forgotten until you read it aloud that I had thrown it on the back.

Marion: Yeah. It’s deeply powerful. And the writing, getting the perspective enough on the life to perform the act of writing and to write in a way that other people can read is such a challenge. And every day in my work, as a memoir coach and memoir editor, I get asked why someone would go back and re-inhabit some horror, or shame of one’s past? And you’ve touched just now about how the moments of beauty percolate up. And I have an answer when people ask me, why should I do this? I have an answer for that, but I’m far more interested in yours. Is that what we do when we write memoir? Do we re-inhabit the past, or do we reanimate it, or do we reawaken it, or what kind of language do you have for what the process is that you engaged in?

Kevin: I’m so glad you used the word, because what is the language? What does language mean to me? I was thinking about that a lot today. And for me, I’m an actor. I went to school for theater, and that was after, of course, I was a high school dropout and before I got sober. And while I was thinking, should I write, can I write, will I write, what will I write? I had to ask a lot of questions of myself. Some of them were, do I have anything to write? And as you said, I’ve got a whole laundry list that I can choose from. How I can write is a whole ‘nother story. There’s the process, but why I love the language? What is it that I’m trying to say is important, but how am I going to say it? People talk about finding your voice.

And I think for me finding my voice was a real interesting phrase because I’m an actor and I like to speak, I like to stand up on stage in front of 500 people and create a character. And so what I realized is in order for me to really understand how I’m going to write, I have to really understand how is it that I read, what is it about language that really touches me, that resounds in me, that lifts me up, that turns me? What does it smell like? What does language feel like? Does it make my hair stand on end? And what I really thought was important in the end was I found that I did have a voice. And as I’m reading, when I read other memoirs, when I read Tobias Wolff or Frank McCourt, or some of the other writers I love like James McBride, I find myself sitting with the book and my lips are moving. I’m not just reading the words. I’m not just thinking about the words. I’m inheriting them almost. I’m bringing them into me.

So when I was writing the book, when I was really thinking about how do I write this? How do I express this? I said, well, do you love the story that you have to tell? Do you care enough about the story to put it into words? And if I do, how am I going to do that? I had other options. I could have made it into a one man show, so to speak. I could have made it into a two act play, but it seemed like for me, no, I needed to sit with it, and I needed to find a way to express this, that others could ingest it, could inherit it, and make those words their own.

Marion: So, you don’t feel, and I love that that language gives us the ability to have the look that we need with the perspective we need to get back to that question, but we’re not actually, it seems to me, you’re not saying that we have to go back and reanimate the horror, or the shame, that we don’t have to, I say to writers all the time, in fact, I’m asking you to keep some distance on it, I’m asking you to have a look at it. And that’s what it seems like you’re saying, is with the language you’ve got at your fingertips, literally you can have at it without having to go into it, or am I reading too much into that? Obviously there’s some pain, there’s some shame that reawakens, but I’m not ever asking anybody to go and relive anything. That’s what I’m trying to get at. I think there’s a lot of fear in memoir if there’s trauma that it’s going to be too painful. And I think you’re saying that the language allows you to identify it, give it a name, but not necessarily reanimate it.

Kevin: Exactly. Most of us know what PTSD is, and I have little catchphrase I use, I don’t want to re-PTSD myself, of course, just making a little pun there, but I wanted to be able to, and I was just talking about it to someone yesterday, they reminded me of the way I say it, which is I wanted to be able to remember without reliving. Now, how do I … I wanted to remember without reliving. And the issue is for me, but I want to put it in words that allows someone else to live it, and how to do that was the journey for me. I wanted to be able to remember it in a way that I could express it in words, on paper, so to speak. And as I sat sometimes as you know, sometimes for five minutes at a time saying, what sentence am I supposed to write? How do I say this? I’ve kept thinking over and over again, Kevin, you don’t need to throw up all over yourself. You don’t need to pour out every word, you need to find the right words. And that was exciting for me. Over time I’ve started to realize that was the intimacy that I could have with my past, I could have that intimacy with the words that were already bubbling up inside of me, that I didn’t know how to get out. And I had to trust that those words would get out in their time, in the right way, just like I healed in my time, in my right way.

When I was 23 years old is when I got sober and started to look at all the things in my life that had really been tragic. I didn’t do that overnight, because I didn’t get there overnight, I didn’t get to that bottom as they say overnight, it took me years, what’s the phrase? It takes a long time to get into the forest, it takes a long time to get out. And that was the process of trusting. The words are inside of me. I just have to find a space to let them find their way out. And I have to give that permission to the words, to myself, to my experiences.

Marion: Yes. Yes. I do think that there’s a great deal of annotation that we do as writers pulling up from experience and using language to identify what it is we have felt. You have that, you have on your website some really wonderful language, and I’ll give the link in the transcript on my website to your website, because I want people to go and read the language you have. I’m fascinated. And we’re going to talk in a minute about the many ways you have utilized social media to promote this book. But on that website, you have some beautiful language. And one of them is this quote, “My most significant objective was to define for myself what I would or would not regret, I can live with disappointments. Regrets will send me in a much less desirable direction.” What do you mean Kevin?

Kevin: It is amazing to hear someone read those words aloud. I remember saying them to people, I remember writing them. What I mean is throughout my recovery process, and this is just even absent of the book, way before the book, I had to recognize that if I was going to trip over life and fall down over and over and over again, like we all do, I had to find a way to make some sense of that, I had to find a way to, the word would be accept that, I’m going to fail, I’m going to hurt. And one of the worst things is, even when I don’t mean to, even when it wasn’t my intention, I’ll probably disappoint others or hurt others. I’ll make some mistakes in life, I’m going to trip over some things, and I’m probably going to need to make amends. I’m probably going to need to fix some of those things.

My goal was never, in early sobriety, in my early recovery from everything, my goal was never to be a writer, my goal was never to transcend the traumas. And as I began to transcend the traumas, as I began to become the person that I am today, and still becoming, I had to really learn that I wasn’t going to fulfill that journey by trying not to make mistakes, by trying to just be so careful that I would never have a regret. So regrets became very important to me to recognize that a regret is something that I do, or do not do based on some fears, self-centered usually in nature, that are going to align me with a stationary place in life, rather than a place of movement.

So, as I said, and you read aloud, I can deal with disappointments. If I move forward, there’s going to be a lot of things I’m disappointed by, but I can have tool sets to do that. I can have people, therapists, friends in my life, I can have ways of finding peace. I have ways of making amends and the same thing with the writing. If I’m going to write, if I’m going to put something on paper and I’m, even if no one ever reads it, if I’m just even going to try, I may be disappointed in the writing, I may be disappointed in that process, but if I don’t try, that’s what I’ll regret. If I don’t move forward, that’s what will break me in two, that’s what will leave me in place. I don’t have regret for coming here today, and I can see Adam right now, and being here with this wonderful group that we have, I would have a regret if I didn’t make this journey today. It’s all about moving forward.

Marion: It is about moving forward. I so agree with you there. And you go on, on that same space on the website, you recount reducing your word count in during your drafts from a 139,000 to 101,000. And after many months of working with an editor, the word count finally rested at 85,000. And you knew there was some real hope. And you read the final draft twice. You write that you recognized you had done everything you could do. And while you didn’t feel much like a God, you say, “I knew that I had created something and that was good. And that’s when I passed the line of regret.” And I got completely choked up reading that then, and obviously just now reading it aloud now. Passing the line of regret, Kevin, this is healing in a language that I’ve never heard before. And I so appreciate you offering this to all of those people who are out there who are not yet been able to give themselves permission to get it down. Can you say just a little bit more about “passing the line of regret,” please?

Kevin: I can. And while you’re mentioning that, I will say one of the most important things was after I read that draft, that, not final, final draft, but that draft, when I read it the second time, and I got to those two words, the end, I sat with myself for a really long time. And I had to really acknowledge the fact that I didn’t want that to be the line of regret that I passed. There was a real, almost inner urge to move the line of regret. No, no, no. We’ve passed that line. No, no, no, I got to move it a little bit further down. I almost wanted to reset that. And it was really important to know what that line of regret was before I started, and not make it an immovable object, but make it something that was very hard to achieve, obviously, but along the lines, what I really recognized was, again, would I regret if this wasn’t happening today? Would I regret if I didn’t get to sit with Marion and have this discussion and the book was never published? No. Would I be disappointed? Sure. Regret. No.

And I had to back into that. Would I regret if the book never got published? No, but I’d regret if I didn’t try. Would I regret if I didn’t put everything I could into it? Yes. I would regret if I didn’t try, but I wouldn’t regret it if I tried and it didn’t get there. So much of what I had to do was really define for myself personally, and that’s got to be different for everyone, I’m sure it is, I’m sure it has to be different for every human being, every writer, every creative entity, every decision we make in life. And I had to realize more than anything that when I got to that line that I had set for myself that I would stop, and I would say, don’t reset that.

In other words, sure, I’ve got the book ready to go. I know I need to get a couple of editors on it, maybe do some proofreading and get it out, but now I’ll regret if I don’t get on Oprah, now I’ll regret if I don’t sell a million copies. Now I’ll regret if I don’t do a world tour. Now I’ll regret if it doesn’t become a… Now I could have all those dreams. You’re listening to my head, these are all my dreams.

Marion: Uh-huh (affirmative). Yep.

Kevin: Sure. I want to be on, well, I want be with Marion, this is really a dream come true, but this is it. Once I pass that line of regret, the rest is gravy. This is beautiful what we’re doing today, but this is the tinsel on the tree.

Marion: It’s wonderful. It’s wonderful, and it’s adoptable. It’s adaptable per person to person, it’s adoptable in whole. And I so appreciate your generosity with that. I read that line and I said, oh, I just cannot wait to offer that back to him and say, have at it please. And it was absolutely worth it. You braid together two stories, your almost disastrous life from which you recover. And then the story at 45 years old of the search for your birth origins. And braided memoir is a phrase that people use, braiding together two stories, I am asked all the time, how to do it. Why did you do it this way? I know it’s the truth. I know it’s the story, but you could have stopped at recovery. You could have stopped. Just give us an idea of that moment of aha, where you said I’m going to braid these two stories together.

Kevin: I do know, and you’ve asked, I’ve listened to all of the podcasts over time since I’ve listened to QWERTY. And I know this is a question that gets asked a lot of times, just what’s the story you’re trying to tell, and why did you write this story at all? And a lot of people will say, people have asked them, oh, you got a story there. You should write it. And when I completed the search for my biological family, when that search was over, everyone said, my gosh, Kevin, what a story? You got to write that, you got to write that, you got to write that. And I kept hearing it over and over again. And I kept saying, yeah, something’s not right. Something’s not working for me. And I didn’t want to write that story. There was something about it that I said, sure, this is important. Sure, this is beautiful, it’s powerful, and I’d been writing it already in all these emails and places that I’d communicated with people. I had the basis for the story.

And then one day, and I don’t remember exactly what day it was, but I knew, I think it was probably three in the morning, like most of us. And I said, oh, I know the problem with this, it doesn’t juxtapose. It shows you a slice of life, which is beautiful, but it doesn’t juxtapose, it doesn’t tell the story of me, doesn’t tell the story of the man, but more importantly, the name of the book is Dear Stephen Michael’s Mother, because I was adopted and I had a biological mother and adoptive mother. And I felt like if I was going to write this story, it had to be a love letter. It had to be a, something I wanted to share with both my mothers and with the world, of course.

And if I was going to do that, I didn’t want to just tell one slice of it, I hate to say this because I don’t want to beat up on Hallmark, but I didn’t want it to be a Hallmark card. I wanted it to be the truth. I wanted it to be the daring to really trust that if I was going to sit with both my mothers and say, let me tell you, let me tell you, it had to be that story. And that’s when I really realized that I wasn’t writing a book about me, I was writing to someone. And that’s how I’ve approached the whole book, is I was writing it to my mothers.

Marion: It’s a lovely perspective, and it works. Absolutely. You chose to self-publish this book. And I love the fact that you called the publishing company, well, I’ll let you explain how you chose to name, let’s say the publishing company. How did that come about?

Kevin: Sure. I did like a lot of people do, I went to the right conferences, I met the right agents. I pitched it. I was at the Harvard Writer’s Conference a couple of years ago, and I was doing everything that we want to do. I had a final draft. I was pitching agents and I got some bites, things were moving along. And I always knew that that may not work, and with memoir it’s very difficult. So I always had that understanding that I may go down the self-publishing, or go to an indie publisher and do different things. But I thought, no, this is a valuable creative work, and I’m going to treat it like that. And I presented it and then the pandemic hit in the middle of me sending out all my query letters.

And because of my job, what I do for a living, I was really overwhelmed working from home. And when I got to the point of that calming down, which was the summer of 2020, I sat and I said, geez, I almost forgot I was querying, what do I do now? And the whole industry was just in an uproar. And I had to really think it through. And I said, Kevin, even if you get an agent right now, even if they get a publisher, we’re talking, it’s a year, it’s two, who knows. And I finally made the decision at that point, Kevin, you know what to do. And I decided to self-publish, and I did the work. I had a great editor. I had great proofreaders. I did everything I could. I hired a local designer, Doug Bartow from id29. He did a wonderful cover for me that you see, and I put it all together and I said, if I’m going to put this out there, it’s got to be something special.

And then I had to decide what the publishing company was going to be. My name is Kevin John Barhydt, my name is also Stephen Michael Waguespack. My mother, my biological mother, had put me up for adoption through Catholic Family Charities. And unbeknownst to me, this is in the book and it’s part of the search, so I won’t give too much away here, but they had allowed her to name me for my baptismal. And that’s how I found my name, Stephen Michael Waguespack. And I thought, this is Kevin’s book, but this is also Stephen Michael’s book. And I felt like I really wanted to honor both of those entities, both of those lives. And I also wanted to honor both of my mothers, my mother, Virginia Barhydt, and my mother Elizabeth Waguespack.

And so when I named the publishing company, and I had a choice, to be honest with you, Marion, one of the things that I don’t tell too many people is that, because of the subject matter of the book, some people suggested that I might publish anonymously, or under a different name. So I thought, boy, I could just publish as Stephen Michael Waguespack, and no one would ever know. And I decided to turn it the other way around. I published as me. I was proud of my life, and I wanted to share it with the world, but I also wanted to give credence to who I was, where I came from, and who my mother was and what my family origins are.

Marion: It’s lovely. I love the tribute. And I’m fascinated by how much work you’ve done in terms of promotion. I love the fact that you didn’t give up in COVID, I self-published something years ago and then took it to the market after that, my little book on how to write memoir, and it was because of the economic times we were in at the time and it worked out just great. But you then, and I know a lot about this, because I did the same thing. You have this decision. Well, how am I going to self-promote? At least with one of the big five publishers, we have this mistaken hope that we’re going to get a lot of publicity, we get some, but you took on a presence on LinkedIn, you’re on Instagram, you’re on YouTube, you’re on Facebook. You really embraced the online audience and built yourself a following. You’ve got some nice numbers there.

Kevin: Thank you.

Marion: … for those people who are reading your stuff and looking at this intelligent, lovely, provocative work you do on YouTube. So ,I’m thinking maybe this links back to these phrases I read about you, and I read that you’re a learning architect, diversity and inclusion technology, or that you’re a disability technology evangelist, let’s break this down. Are you just literate in online life, or did you have to learn chicken and egg this for me, and do explain what disability technology evangelist means, please?

Kevin: Disability evangelist is a, I think it’s a catch all phrase for me, and it allows me to present myself on LinkedIn and it allows myself to present myself in interviews like this for people who will understand. We talk about accommodations where I work in a college, we talk about accommodations for students with disabilities. And there are many ways in which there are students, or even at the workplace, employees, that really can use some accommodations, that could be for someone who has a disability, maybe they’re blind, maybe they have some sight impairment, or maybe it’s a hearing disability. I have tinnitus for instance, but it can be something even such as, I have people in my life that have ADHD inattentive, some are hyperactive, others that have different physical limitations and some of them have some mental health or wellness limitations. And all of these can be accommodated.

And that’s really my focus now in my professional career, which has been in technology forever for a long time, I fell into that role years ago, over 25 years ago when I was acting and I wanted to make some money on the side, I started working in technology. I never thought I’d be any good at it. That has parlayed into now what I feel is a real blessing to me, the ability to help others through technology in teaching and learning. And so I think a disability evangelist is, for me, someone who really feels strongly that it’s not just something that’s going to be helpful to others, it’s something that is necessary. And I care enough about it to evangelize, I care enough about it to bring my heart to the work, not just bring my head to the work.

Marion: I love that. And I laugh, I feel a bit guilty having laughed when asking the question, it’s because the phrase is just so surprising. Disability technology evangelist, it’s the evangelist part I think, I get disability technology, we get inclusion technology, but I actually really love the addition of evangelist and the enthusiasm that the language suggests. And thank you for that. That’s really encouraging, I think to people, to understand where your passion is. And you are able to bring that to this promotion, which I think is a very important piece. It’s a very important piece even if you do get your book published by the big five, self promotion is essential to launching a book. I spend months after writing a book doing all the promotion myself, even those books that I’ve published with Houghton Mifflin, Simon & Schuster, and Hachette. There is no absolute substitute for knowing how to do this yourself. So which did you start with? YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram? Where did you start with this really agile touch you’ve brought to the promotion aspect of this book?

Kevin: Because I have a background in theater and in acting, and the creative elements there, I was very comfortable with YouTube. It was actually pretty scary for me to sit down in front of a camera and turn the microphone on, and then actually put it up on YouTube, but the first one was awful, but it started with YouTube. That was just awful, it was just awful. I still look back on it now, and I cringe.

The most important thing about, let’s say the social media platforms, Instagram, YouTube, is when we start out with a very polished end product and we put it up there. We have to stay at that level. And also people can see through it if it’s, I don’t want to use the word inauthentic, but if it’s obviously so overproduced, but if I look back on that first video, or if you were to look back on that first video, you can see the trajectory of me becoming more comfortable in front of the camera, but you also see me on the trajectory of me presenting myself to this audience in a way that, again, I don’t want to say is more authentic. I think you can be authentically inauthentic, or inauthentically authentic, but it’s just the truth of me as I present myself.

And those, great word, those parlayed into Twitter and Instagram and now Facebook, some of these platforms are not my favorite. I will say none of them are easy, a lot of them take up more time than I would like, but you’re right, I am very good with technology, not natively. Remember I was an actor and I tell everyone that I teach when I teach people how to use technology, they say, oh, it’s so hard, but you make it look so easy. I say, it’s because I do it every day. It’s because I’ve been doing it for so long. It’s not because it’s native to me, I’m native on the stage, I’m native on the keyboard writing, but the beauty of it is I know that I have some skills there and I have some talent. So I parlayed that.

So I increased my time in the beginning on setting up those platforms, and it was a little easier for me than most, I’m sure, but what I recognized was if I couldn’t do that, and there were certain things I couldn’t do in this process, if I couldn’t do that, I needed to ask someone to have help me. I needed to pay someone maybe. And same thing with the book editing. I thought about that. I could write the book, but I needed an editor. I could maybe proofread it once, but I needed someone to really proofread it. But when it came to the technology, and when it came to the presence, the social media presence, that was something I felt that I could gravitate towards. I didn’t know if I could do it. And then once I got my feet on the path, so to speak, I just kept marching along, and I’ve enjoyed it.

Marion: Well, we’re very, very glad you did. Thank you, Kevin. I appreciate this conversation so much. I’m hoping there’s going to be more writing from you in the future. Yes, we hope. Yes?

Kevin: You do know how that feels to be asked that question?

Marion: I do.

Kevin: … it is incredibly daunting at times. However, yes, things are bubbling up more naturally now than they would’ve, say in the first month after the book was published, which is just when you either want to collapse, or run for the hills, or just coffee for weeks on end. I am excited about the next book. I am still looking at an understanding of, again, not just what I want to write about, I do know what I want to write about, and I know how to do it, but the big question is why? And I am very grounded now in the why. And I think I’m feeling very excited about the next part of that process, which will be to bring it past the outline and really, really make it into, and it usually takes less than three to four months for me to take something from outline to at least a rough draft. So, that’s coming, and I’m excited for the process.

Marion: Well, congratulations on that answer. And I’m delighted to hear that and we’ll invite you back when you publish that one. Thank you, Kevin. I so appreciate you coming along today.

Kevin: I’m so grateful. Thank you so much.

Marion: That was Kevin Barhydt, author of the recently published, Dear Stephen Michael’s Mother. See more on him at his YouTube channel, and under his own name at his website at KevinBarhydt.com. I’m Marion, and you’ve been listening to QWERTY. QWERTY is produced by Overit Studios in Albany, New York, reach them at Overit Studios dot com. Our producer is Adam Claremont, our assistant is Lorna Bailey. Want more on the art and work of writing? Visit Marion Roach dot com and take a class with me on how to write memoir. And thanks for listening. Don’t forget to subscribe to QWERTY, and listen to it wherever you go. And if you like what you hear, please leave us a starred review. It helps others to find their way to their writing lives.