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- [00:00]
Monster.com
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- [00:28]
Daria Burke
Success for me looks very much like having a sense of well being and that feels very much like I feel whole. And it looks a lot to me right now. Like having a life that nobody else needs to understand. Like it doesn't need to make sense to anybody else. And it took a long time for me to get to a place where I could say, you know what, I know this may not make sense to you and that's totally okay, go. But this feels great for me. I'm much more interested in the exploration and the journey and the ways in which I expand as a result of that.
- [01:06]
Tracy Thomas
Welcome to the Stacks, a podcast about books and the people who read them. I'm your host Tracy Thomas and today I have a special guest for you. It is Daria Burke. Daria is a businesswoman, writer, speaker and well being advocate. Today we're discussing Daria's memoir Of My Own Making, a book in which she explores her childhood trauma, growing up in poverty and Detroit and how she grew and healed from those experiences. The book also weaves in scientific data and research from experts in the trauma field. I get to talk to Daria today about survivor's guilt, the relationship between success, poverty, capitalism and trauma, and what she hopes other people will gain from reading this story. The Stacks Book Club pick for May is Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley. Kara Brown will be our guest to discuss that book on Wednesday, May 28th. So so please read along and be sure to tune in. Everything we talk about on each episode of the Stacks can be found in the link in the show notes. And if you love this show and you want inside access to it, go get yourself some exciting perks like bonus episodes, access to our Discord community, the forthcoming nonfiction reading guide, and so much more. By joining the Stacks Pack on patreon@patreon.com the stacks and checking out my newsletter. Tracy Thomas substack.com and now it's time for my conversation with Daria Burke. Okay everybody, I'm so excited. I am joined today by Daria Burke. Her debut book is a memoir. It's called Of My own making. Daria. Welcome to the stacks.
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Daria Burke
Thank you so much. It's so cool when you're a fan of a show and then you get to be on. It's kind of surreal and totally amazing.
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Tracy Thomas
Does it sound exactly the same? Except for now you have to actually respond?
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Daria Burke
Yes.
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Tracy Thomas
Okay, good.
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Daria Burke
Which I think is partly why it's surreal. Yeah, exactly.
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Tracy Thomas
We'll start where we always start, which is in about 30 seconds or so. Can you tell folks about your book?
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Daria Burke
Yes. At its core, I've called it a memoir and an exploration of how we choose who we become. And for me, I find myself in this book searching for the story beneath the story, trying to get to. To what it looks like and feels like to inherit trauma, to live through your own trauma, to metabolize that, and then to work through healing from that and trying to put language to the experience of that journey. But also answering this one question that I get the most when everybody hears my story, which is how did you become this person? How did you come from 1980s 90s Detroit with crack addicted parents where there was a lot of neglect and abuse, to become this person who's built a healthy, healed life? And so that's what this book is really about.
- [04:05]
Tracy Thomas
Yeah, I. There's so many pieces of this book. And what I think is really interesting is like, you have this memoir, but you also lean on, um, some other, like, experts in the field of sort of trauma, trauma therapy. And I'm wondering why you wanted to include their research and their work in your memoir.
- [04:25]
Daria Burke
Yeah, I will be honest. You know, I think that there's kind of two parts to this for me. First and foremost, when I learned the concept of neuroplasticity, that just set me on a tear and I was like, tell me more. What does that mean? That explains so much about what I think, about how we evolve, how we can grow.
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Tracy Thomas
How can you just tell our listeners what neuroplasticity is? Because they might not know either.
- [04:49]
Daria Burke
Yes, it's this complicated sounding word, neuroplasticity, that simply just describes the brain's ability to rewire itself, to adapt, grow, and form new neural connections in response to different experiences or things that you learn along the way. And so that also, that quality in the brain also allows it to be able to recover from traumatic experiences. So in learning that term a number of years ago, that kind of set me on this journey of just wanting to know everything there was about the science around healing. And so it was so important in my understanding that I wanted everybody else to know about it. I think also, if I'm honest, I could only ever imagine telling my story with someone, some other element to it. And it wasn't a worthiness issue. It wasn't like I didn't feel like my story was worth telling on its own. But when I thought about the memoirs that I loved, I think that there was always the piece of, okay, well, so what I can feel seen in this moment. I can feel understood through this person's lived experience, but I don't know what to do with this. I don't know what to do with these feelings. And so for me, when I first had the conversation, I hadn't even really architected what I thought the book was the first time I ever talked about it to somebody. And I described it as the Glass Castle or Educated meets Brene Brown. And I just kind of saw this world where I wanted these two ideas to coexist and to use my. Really, my life as the narrative structure for the exploration of those ideas.
- [06:24]
Tracy Thomas
Okay, I wanna hear about the first time you talked about the book. Like, what was that conversation? Who were you talking to? Like, what. What. What was the beginning of this for you?
- [06:34]
Daria Burke
Yes. Okay. The. The OG beginning for me was 10 years before I actually knew it was time to write the book. So I'll give that one really quickly. Basically, I was, like, 30. I had read the Glass Castle. I was blown away. I had certainly read memoir before that, but for some reason, that was the book that made me think, maybe there's value in sharing my own story at some point for somebody else. I knew I wasn't ready. But I had gone to lunch with the one person I knew in publishing, and I asked her to. About how this all works. Like, just, you know, give me the rundown. I'm like, such an A student. I'm like, okay, so tell me all the things. And she worked at an agency that she wasn't even an agent, but she worked at an agency that specialized in fiction. And they repped folks like Nicholas Sparks and Emily Giffen, people whose books got turned into movies. And so she was like a great, credible voice. And I said, cool, cool, cool. I'm not ready. A decade later, I kid you not, I woke up one day and I just knew it was time. Like, no one thing had happened. It was just time. And I called it like a cosmic tap on the shoulder, because that's what it felt like, just this knowing. But with that in mind, I had no idea what the hell I was doing. So I hadn't. I didn't have notes, I didn't have an outline. I didn't have, you know, I didn't have a pitch. There was no pitch. But I pinged her. She was the only person that I still knew in publishing, in book publishing anyway. And I sent her a note on LinkedIn and I said, hey, I think I'm ready. And I don't know where to go from here. I don't know what the next steps are. Like, do I, do I need a coach? Or something like that. It didn't even dawn on me that I needed an agent or a book proposal, none of that. So she says, this is exciting. There's somebody I want you to meet. We have a nonfiction practice now. And two days later, from that message, I'm on a zoom talking to Emily and to an agent in their nonfiction practice. And I'm describing a book I've never talked about to anybody as, you know, the Glass Castle or Educated meets Brene Brown. Like, I, you know, coming from marketing, I knew enough to give comps to anchor people in something. And they go, they said, ooh, we like this idea. Say more. And I'm like, well, I don't know. I've learned about, literally I'm saying, you know, I've learned about all these concepts and I want to tell people I don't want to talk about them. I hope that they can be accessible in a way. And I think my story can be the example for some of these ideas come to life fast forward. They connect me with an agency who I wound up working with a senior editor. She had been in Penguin Random House for a decade. She came on as my book coach, really my developmental editor for my book proposal. And funny story, she had worked with Brene Brown on Daring Greatly and Rising Strong. And so as I'm telling the founder of the agency the same idea, he goes, oh, I think I have someone I think you should meet. And I met Jess. And that was how it worked. And as they were, as Emily and Anna were helping me paper the deal with Jess for my proposal, it dawned on me to ask them. I was like, wait, so does this mean that you all are going to rep me? Like, why are you still here? Why are you still helping me? And they were like, well, yeah, obviously, duh, duh. So that is how this notion of an idea not only manifested in this book, but did so vis a vis getting me an agent, getting me hooked up with my literary soulmate, Jess. And yeah, I love that.
- [10:07]
Tracy Thomas
Okay, I have two follow up questions. Well, I have one Follow up question, and then one totally different but related question. My follow up question is, how long ago was that meeting? And like, how long has it taken from that meeting? The meeting where you said, I'm ready to book publication?
- [10:21]
Daria Burke
Yes. That meeting was August of 2021. I had just resigned from my CMO role and. But I had given notice, I should say. But I was still actively in the role as all of this was happening. And I said, I need a break. And so we didn't actually really dive into the proposal until the end of 2021. So from end of 2021 to early 23, I worked on the proposal.
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Tracy Thomas
And.
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Daria Burke
And it was in fits and starts.
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Tracy Thomas
I. Oh, so like a whole year of.
- [10:51]
Daria Burke
I took a year. Yes. I renovated a house. I had a. My dog passed away. I had a breakup. Like all this other life happened. And so I just was in and out of it. But it took me three drafts to get it to a place where I felt ready for it to go out into the world. And so then in February, early March of 23, my agent went out with pitches, and then by the end of March, I had. I had a deal. And. And so it took a year on that. And. And then from there, call it two years. It's been from. Yeah. Since then.
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Tracy Thomas
A little over four years. Almost four years, basically.
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Daria Burke
Yeah. Like three and a half solid years.
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Tracy Thomas
Wow. Okay, so here's my other question. So you said your comps. Jeanette Wall, Jeanette Wallace.
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Daria Burke
Is that how you say Jeanette Walls?
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Tracy Thomas
Jeanette Walls, Tara Westover, Brene Brown. But obviously you're a black woman.
- [11:45]
Daria Burke
Yeah.
- [11:46]
Tracy Thomas
So I want to know about that piece of it about trauma, writing as a black woman. Because, you know, I've read some Brene Brown. I've read Educated. I've never read the Glass Castle. I know everyone's like, you should read it. And I sort of am, like, defiant against it. I don't know why. I'm like, I know I should read it, but I'm not gonna. But. But. So I'm curious about, like, you being a black woman writing in this space of trauma, that we're very comfortable with white narratives, but there aren't as many black narratives treated in the same kind of way. So I'm wondering, like, what comps, if you had any for yourself, what black writers were doing things that you admired, that you were thought interesting, or what. In which ways you sort of paved the way you feel, or like, you know, any. Any sort of. Anything on those.
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Daria Burke
Yeah, I would say it was a mix of both. You know, when I talk about the. When I think about the comps that we put in the actual pitch and the proposal, it was a much longer list. I didn't, you know, funny enough, I didn't have points of reference for black women's memoirs that I could point to. And that was frustrating. Somebody's daughter wound up being one of the first ones that came to mind. And certainly there are a lot of similarities in our stories. Ashley C. Ford's in mine. And then there are parts where they're quite stark departures. She's a stunning writer, and I think it was such a captivating story. And that one, for me was one example. But there wasn't this library or catalog, and certainly not ones that were trauma informed and trauma responsive, as Kennedy Ryan would say. I think they're raised my Menachem with my grandmother's hands. You know, he absolutely has that posture as somebody who does a lot of somatic healing work. Dr. Tama Bryant. So there. There were. There were. They weren't comps, but they were certainly sources of information that I could look to. But it felt. It feels light, if I'm honest. You know, I think we're starting to see more black and brown psychiatrists and specialists publishing books in this space. But when I think about who I've largely quoted in my book, it hasn't been them. And I also, because I speak mostly to pioneering research and when terms were first introduced into the zeitgeist, unfortunately, we're not there. And it's a shame. And so my hope is that this book. Yeah. Does a bit of both. That it's another black woman's memoir out there that someone else can look to and say, I see myself here. And that perhaps I've played a role in introducing some things into the culture that maybe we're not yet talking about.
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Tracy Thomas
Yeah. Speaking of people that you write about in the book, you write about the Body Keeps the score. Guy Bessel.
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Daria Burke
Van der Kolk. Yes.
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Tracy Thomas
And he's sort of a controversial figure.
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Daria Burke
Yes.
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Tracy Thomas
So I'm curious about his inclusion in your book, why it was important to have him in there.
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Daria Burke
Because it was my honest truth. You know, I think that there are. You can find controversy with so many different people and there's so many opinions out there that one could debate. I mean, that's part of the role of science, is that it's a constant test and learn. You have a hypothesis or a thesis for something, you test it, it gets validated or invalidated. Obviously, the realms, I think, of Neuroscience and psychology are so much more complex and we're still learning about the ways in which our bodies are physiologically responding to all the stimuli around them. But it would be disingenuous for me to not include somebody whose work gave me aha. Moments and who introduced ideas to my. Brought. Brought them into my consciousness. And so do I agree with everything that everybody that I quote has ever said? Absolutely not. That would also be strange, I think. But I think that I don't personally, I've yet to read anything that has made me question the validity of the work that he has done. And I think that there's a lot out there now about the ways in which trauma lives in the body that certainly validate a lot of his initial assumptions.
- [15:49]
Tracy Thomas
Yeah, I think he's a really interesting figure because what I'm fascinated by is like, the people who become the sort of face of a certain issue or like, become the, like their thing becomes the thing. I'm thinking about, like, bmi, right? Like now we know BMI is like, super fudgeing racist and like, it's not real for many of us and it wasn't made for us. And I think about him and sort of, you know, the things that I've read about, like the exclusion or the like, disregard of people of color. And so I think that's why when I read your book, I was sort of fascinated by your. Your inclusion of him, because I know that he's an important figure when it comes to trauma, but I also know that many people of color have struggled with some of his work. And so that's, I think, sort of where the question comes from. Not that you answer for him or that you believe in everything he says, but just sort of the dissonance between this figure who's done a lot of work that people really have been impacted by, and also this figure who sort of has erased a lot of experiences of people who, you know, black and brown people and to some extent women, is, you know, a little bit.
- [16:55]
Daria Burke
Yeah, I think that's a really fair point. I think that we've seen that consistently throughout science, unfortunately, full stop. Right. The fact that women's health is just now being researched, not to totally go on a tangent, right. But it's an area that I spend a lot of time in and it is connected, but it's also an area that I personally care a lot about. And, you know, women's health research, for example, is something that is only just now starting to become a priority where we have specialists who are looking at the ways in which heart disease manifests in women and chronic stress and its impact on women. The fact that the majority of people who get diagnosed with autoimmune diseases are women and the majority of those people are black. You know, I think that all of this is new. And trust me, there were so many temptations to want to go down other rabbit holes. And it's really hard, especially with a debut that you still want memoir first and not be this other sort of kind of nonfiction, which part of me really loves and would jam out on writing and researching. But it was really hard to kind of say, okay, but what matters here? What matters in this moment? But I love that question and that interrogation. And I suppose there could have been perhaps a way to question. I don't want to say his thesis because, again, I think the thesis, at least as far as I share it in the book, even if his work was done at the exclusion of black and brown people and women in some cases, although white women do figure into a lot of his research, particularly those who've experienced sexual assault, I do think that there's a consistency as well in terms of the ways in which some of those experiences have shown up for us. I think what he doesn't account for is the legacy of trauma.
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Tracy Thomas
Yeah, like the systemic trauma and the systemic violence and the ways that that impacts our personal traumas. I think that's like, really the criticism is that there's an erasure in his work of, yes, maybe a black person experienced, you know, a form of sexual violence and they responded in this way. But there's no accounting for, you know, this person was also had a parent that was incarcerated, or this person grew up in a neighborhood. And I think some of the things that happen in your book is you are talking about both your personal traumas and your systemic traumas. And so I think that to. That's sort of. To me, why I. What I found interesting is because I was like, oh, sure, Daria is talking about her life, and Daria is also talking about our lives coming collectively sort of this black experience. Obviously, not every black person has experienced the same traumas, but that because of the way the systemic traumas work, even if you haven't experienced it, they are connected to you and your family and your ancestors and your legacies and all of these things. And so I think. I think to me, his lack of doing that work felt like in direct opposition to some of the stuff that you're doing. And maybe it's not opposition. Maybe what I'm hearing you Say is that your work is like additive in some ways to sort of this foundation that maybe he set this foundation that's maybe not like. That has maybe some cracks in it that you're, like, filling it out.
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Daria Burke
Yeah, look, I think all of us could do that if we actually took the mantle of filling in the gaps. And so I see this book as a but. And also, and chapter four in particular, you know, in chapter three, I talk about ACEs and the work of Nadine Burke Harris and the ways in which she brought that into my consciousness and my understanding of adverse childhood experiences. And then in chapter four, I really do, I think, try in zooming out and looking at Detroit, looking at giving context for where I grew up, also wanting to give context for how Detroit got there. So it wasn't just to say, look, I grew up in a really tough place at a really tough time when crack was being lobbed into inner cities and the automotive industries had largely moved out. Most white people had left the city and moved to the suburbs. Oh, and by the way, they were raising black neighborhoods and throwing freeways in the middle of them. It's easy to just talk about what Detroit looked like by the time I showed up in 1980. And I tried to zoom out and really give context because to that point, right. There is a lot of systemic violence and consistently. And you see it locally, you see it at the national level, too. So, yeah, it's. It's all complex. I hope that we. When I say we, I mean black writers of all kinds can show up. Not with the responsibility necessarily to say it's my job to fill in the gaps where a lot of people have left off, but I think by nature of writing more and publishing more, we do that.
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Tracy Thomas
Yeah, I think that's right. So I think what's interesting about your story, and I think you sort of started here when you were explaining it, is like you. You have this very traumatic childhood past, and you have gone on to become, like, an extremely successful businesswoman. You are so well regarded by so many other other people in business and beauty, Black women in business. And I'm curious, just, like, what. How do you measure success? What does success look like for you? And how do you know when you're there, when you're in the moment that feel like success?
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Daria Burke
Gosh. I mean, that definition has changed a lot over my life. I would say for many years, it looked like being the right kind of black girl. You know, it meant going to the right schools and having the right companies on your resume and getting the certain titles by 30. In my case, director of makeup marketing for Estee Lauder's North American Business and then chief marketing officer. You know, it was very much the performative success that I consider it to be now, which is very much held against somebody else's standard of what a good job looks like. Right. Somebody could look at that and say, oh, okay, she's doing well now. Not to say that it's wholly irrelevant because I'm still a very driven and ambitious person. But success for me looks very much like having a sense of well being. And that feels very much like I feel whole. I feel like I have made a home in. In the self that has rooms for all these different versions of myself that I didn't think could survive the journey or the ones that I've had to sort of resurrect and reclaim in the process of writing this book. And it looks like living without resistance, you know, it doesn't. It looks like having the capacity to create conditions for joy and for awe and for wonder. It looks like freedom. And it looks a lot to me right now, like having a life that nobody else needs to understand. Like it doesn't need to make sense to anybody else. And it took a long time for me to get to a place where I could say, you know what? I know this may not make sense to you and that's totally okay, but this feels great for me. And I see that much more a success. I think I'm much more interested in mastery. I'm much more interested in the exploration and the journey and the ways in which I experience expand as a result of that. But there's nothing that I'm. I'm seeking to accumulate in the ways in which we have been taught to, frankly.
- [24:19]
Tracy Thomas
Yeah, well, that's sort of my question because I feel like, you know, even where you started, like saying, like, it used to look like a certain title or like a certain thing. And your book made me think a lot about the ways that capitalism and trauma are intertwined and how success is tied up in that. And so I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about how the desire to collect things sort of manifested in you in relationship to having experienced what you did as a child.
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Daria Burke
Oh, my God, I love this question. You know, look, I come from when I say extreme poverty for your listeners who are uninitiated. So just read the book.
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Tracy Thomas
People of my own Making. Hello.
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Daria Burke
Yes, obviously. But for the uninitiated, you know, I grew up below the poverty line. We, my mother collected public assistance and, and that looked like about $300 in food stamps a month and about $200 that she received in a check payment. And that was meant to cover everything for our entire family. And that probably should have for me, my mom, and my sister, based on the way that we lived. Except for the fact that her drug addiction meant that she would do one big grocery store run, sell the rest of the food stamps for money, make sure the mortgage was paid most of the time because it was the house that my grandmother owned and had left to her. Often my uncle was paying our mortgage. And we would go without running water, we would go without electricity, we would go without gas to heat the house. I've taken one inch baths before. And so when you're in survival mode, you are solving for the very basic need of, do I have a roof over my head? Do I feel secure in my surroundings? Can I eat? And so school was my way out of that. And I will never, I would never suggest that that's not still a viable path for people who have nothing, because often it is. And so that being bright, being studious, and being laser focused on getting the hell out of Detroit got me out. It got me to the University of Michigan, and it got me to, you know, build the career that I built along the way. Though at some point, you're not in survival mode anymore.
- [26:34]
Tracy Thomas
When did that shift happen for you? Do you remember when you. When you, like, felt like, oh, I'm not in survival mode anymore? Because I know, I've heard, I think even Ashley C. Ford talk about how even still now she sometimes struggles with, like, really expensive purchases or doing something that's, like, extravagant. And she talks about that, the connection to, like, like, sort of like a poverty.
- [27:00]
Daria Burke
You know, I don't have that problem. I don't have that problem, but I never did. I was the little girl who could, like, pick out the most expensive thing in the store and, you know, we couldn't afford it, but I could always spot it. So definitely not difficult for me, I think, to indulge. I very much feel like I've earned the things that I'm allowed that I, you know, I could afford to buy. But I think it was, it probably was incremental, if I'm honest. You know, there's levels to this, like getting out of Detroit and being able to just go to a dorm cafeteria and eat whatever I wanted. That was level one. Sure, okay. And then, you know, level two was, oh, I have a job and I can actually pay my bills. I didn't necessarily feel like I was in survival mode. Of course, in hindsight I can see how that may have shown up in whether it was overspending or feeling really afraid of just fucking up. It was like, you know, don't fuck this up is kind of like the mantra that ruled my life for many years. I felt think though I, as I began to trust myself along with the ability to live comfortably, that probably happened in my mid-30s, like mid to late-30s. And I'm 44, so that was not that long ago. But it doesn't show up in the scarcity of hoarding or things like that. I think if anything, I'm always like, oh, money will show up. It'll, it'll come from somewhere, you know. But I also, I work really, really hard. But I think the trauma of capitalism, right to your question is so deeply wired in all of us. Right. I mean just from what sneakers you wore as a kid to. And I, yes, I was not the kid with name brand stuff. So I didn't have cable growing up. So, you know, just even that being around kids who could talk about certain things in pop culture, I couldn't relate to it or I didn't have the same fluency in it. You know, there is a way in which we get ostracized or left out of participation in, even in community sometimes because there's a cost to being a member of a certain community and that is deeply traumatic. The scarcity of not having is one thing. The risk of exposure and then the risk of isolation that comes with that is another. And I don't know that we talk enough about that.
- [29:20]
Tracy Thomas
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- [33:48]
Daria Burke
Oh, my gosh. I have a complicated relationship with it, personally, because I think that when you. There is such a thing as survivor's guilt. There is a world in which you can look at where you come from and recognize that not everyone is going to make a version of that journey that you've made. And P.S. mine isn't meant to be a blueprint or a template. You know, I don't share anything about my life. In fact, I didn't used to talk about my life very much at all. But, you know, it's never meant to be more than an offering of possibility, maybe for someone. And so that idea that I now have privilege, I very clearly understand it. I am very aware of how it shows up in my life, whether that is how I present. It's the access that I have now. It's the calling card that maybe certain companies on my resume or whatever those kinds of things are, have offered me. And I also feel very clear about the ways in which I hope to eliminate barriers for other people. One of the things that sort of straddles this question for me, anyway, that I write about in the book is post traumatic growth, because it was the piece of research that kind of had me, like, shaking the table, pounding my fist and like, oh, my God, this is it, this is it. And because we don't. We don't hear about it a lot, it's not in the lexicon and in the zeitgeist, the way that PTSD is. And I'm going to try to bridge these two ideas with your question and where I'm going with this because There is something really important to me that says that blackness is not equal, does not equal struggle. And it is important to me that not every story that we tell, even if we understand and we are informed by and responsive to or at least acknowledging of our history, that that is not struggle. Right. This idea that, oh, because I was born poor and black and female, my life's going to be hard. That is one way to see the world. And there are plenty of people who are ready to prove you right. And the research around post traumatic growth, which is simply a phenomenon that happens to some people on the heels of a traumatic experience, where they come out feeling a greater sense of resilience, a stronger appreciation for life, deeper relationships, or greater spiritual growth, or just a broader sense of possibility, right. That those people are more likely to have come from poverty, they are more likely to not be white, and they are more likely to be women. And so all the research and the conversations around epigenetics, as it speaks to generational trauma and the intergenerational transmission of trauma that we inherited. And if that's true, then it's also true that we inherit wisdom and strength and fortitude. And so this idea that I am my ancestors is, for me, it's really deeply embedded in that idea, because the research also shows how we can scale it. Like, what are the conditions under which a person can experience post traumatic growth? And. And it's not to say that it's a guarantee, and it's not to say that it's easy, but it's to say that it can be done. And we have just as many examples of that as we do of people who've had hard times. And P.S. my life looks like both. But if I sat deeply and squarely in the wound, first of all, I would never fully be able to understand it, and I would never. I don't think I would ever actually feel a sense of healing. Yeah.
- [37:42]
Tracy Thomas
One of the things you talk about a lot in the book early on and throughout is your journey with therapy. And I'd love to know, if you remember, if you're willing to share sort of in the beginning, what that felt like for you and then sort of where you are now in your life with therapy.
- [38:03]
Daria Burke
It was brutal because I didn't walk into it thinking, I'm gonna sign up for therapy now it's time to heal, or even this idea that I have trauma to work through. So for that to be presented to me, you know, in the evidence of my life, it was. It was deeply devastating, and I think so at that or in those early years, so much was coming up that I didn't know what to do with it, Right? And it was enough to have the space to sit with someone to just talk it through, cry it out, and then take a long walk home. And I could sort of like, start to get it out of my system, just giving it air. But it was the hardest thing in the world. And I will tell you, if somebody had given me any sense for the ways in which therapy is very much a version of scratching at and opening all the wounds that you have, I wouldn't have done it. I would have been like, fuck that. There's no way. No, thank you. But that's not how healing works. And so it was really tough. But many years later, 18. Gosh, almost 18 years later, I have so many other modalities that I use beyond talk therapy. And so that is still important to me. It's useful, but I'm careful with it because I can intellectualize almost anything.
- [39:24]
Tracy Thomas
Okay.
- [39:26]
Daria Burke
But I integrate by speaking. So I use it as a starting point for those aha moments, those revelatory moments, those things that come up even in this conversation, right? You'll ask me something, I'm like, ooh, how do I feel about that? And I get to really kind of riff and nod and rumble with it until I land on where I feel about it. But that doesn't mean that you're done. That doesn't mean that it's left the body. And so now I've done everything from emdr when paired with talk therapy has been a lifesaver for me personally. So eye movement is desensitization and reprocessing. This idea that you can actually land on the starting point where a trauma was seated or a limiting belief or a belief that you're holding onto that's not serving you in some way that was seated in you. And that through this eye movement processing, it's almost. I won't call it like a hypnosis, but it has. It rhymes with hypnosis in a way that it's really a phenomenal way of kind of getting to the root of something and realizing as you go through round and rep and round and rep with your therapist that, oh, wait, my relationship to that feeling has actually changed. So that has been really powerful for me. I have meditated and journaled like a wild woman now for almost a decade. I walk, I solo dance party. You know, it's a mix of things. I do a lot of breath work. I have an incredible practitioner that I'VE worked with Nicholas Pratley. Shouting him out.
- [41:09]
Tracy Thomas
Shout out. Nicholas.
- [41:10]
Daria Burke
He's. I mean, like, otherworldly in his breath work. And so, you know, finding people who practice other healing modalities that are just in the body. You know, you're not buying anything. I'm not. You know, these aren't supplements. These aren't tools that you go purchase. A lot of this stuff is free. You know, in many cases, you can get an app and, you know, go. Or if you can't, go sit in a sound bath, put in your headphones and listen to one. So many of those kinds of things that, really, honestly, Tracy, are about putting me back in my body and putting me in contact with the feeling that's connected to the thing that I verbalized. Yeah.
- [41:47]
Tracy Thomas
I'm wondering. I don't normally ask this question about people who write memoirs because I generally think it. Well, first of all, I think it's a little bit rude. So forgive me, but I'm curious about it for you because of what's in your book and also because of how your book starts, which is with this sort of. You go back, you find this image of this car accident, which is how your grandmother passed away, how she died, and it. It sort of is triggering for you. I mean, it's not sort of triggering. It is triggering for you. And so my question to you is about the therapeutic or not therapeutic nature of writing this memoir and how that impacted some of the other work that you've been doing over the years. Was this something that shook you up? Was this something that felt healing? Maybe it was both. And the reason that I say it's sort of rude is because generally, I don't think that writing is therapeutic. Like, I don't think that people write a memoir to be like, I'm gonna heal or, like, I'm gonna release. And so I don't want to put that on you, but because therapy and trauma and sort of this major event of finding this picture. Picture. All part of your story that you share with us. I feel like it's a fair question, but if you feel like it's not, we can cut all of this.
- [42:55]
Daria Burke
Oh, my God. It's totally fair.
- [42:57]
Tracy Thomas
Okay. I. I just don't like it. I hate when other people ask, and it's like, was this therapeutic for you? And it, like, no, fuck you. I'm recounting the time, you know, like, so I didn't. I don't like to ask it generally, but it felt specific for you. So I just want to make sure that it's like an okay question for you.
- [43:13]
Daria Burke
It's very much an okay question. I think it's a fair question. I mean, my answer is no, it wasn't therapeutic. Right? I mean, you hit it on that regard. I think, though, that I needed to make sense of things. I think I needed to make sense of, in particular, the four years that I'm talking about where it did feel like everything I thought I knew about the ways in which I had healed were flipped on the other side, flipped on its head. And I was like, wait, I don't. This isn't. I'm not. What the fuck? You know, that was basically where I was in the book and how it begins. And that experience of finding that article and the picture of the accident that I had known about for 30 years. And I had told myself this story that my grandmother died in a tragic accident. We were somehow spared, and God knows why, because she was supposed to pick us up for church, and she had passed our house on the way to church when she was killed. And that was the catalytic event for my mother's grief. And, you know, she went to war with grief and lost, and addiction was her response. That was the story I had told myself, literally, up until that point. And then I sit down eventually, after, you know, learning all of these scientific ideas and kind of coming to a place where it's like, well, you'll always be healing. It is a practice. There is no. There is no endpoint, and there's no answer. And getting to sit, to think, sift through all of those questions was meaningful. It was important. And I think in that, came to the realization that, no, Daria, your mom actually had a drug addiction before your grandmother passed. And that memories, the more you remember, the more you remember. And so things were coming up that were making it clear to me that I had blocked out a lot. And so, so much of this book was about the reassembly kind of. This reclamation and reassembly of all these parts that I had let go of because maybe they were too fragile. Maybe I didn't think that I was worthy enough to hold on to them. And maybe I didn't feel like I could imagine a world where I could air quote, be successful and take care of myself and have stability and feel vulnerable and, you know, tend to these kind of wounds. And so that this book was me reassembling that and kind of coming to a place within my own understanding that it's a yes and right, it's a but. And also. And the last thing I'll say, because you kind of already hit on it. I mean, I was raw, I was fragile. I was like, probably my lowest weight. I had lost so much weight. I was just, like, nauseous. I couldn't eat. All I did was just sit with it. There were moments where I had to put it down and binge watch Designing Women.
- [46:07]
Tracy Thomas
Sure, sure.
- [46:09]
Daria Burke
Because I was like, I don't know what else to do. Mary Carr talks about this in the Art of Memoir. She says some version of, I'm not going to get it exactly right, but this idea that. But I don't know anyone who wades deep into memory's waters who doesn't drown a little. It very much felt like that. I felt like I was sort of suffocating in the story. And there were times I've not told this to anyone on a podcast before. I remember a conversation I had with my publisher, who was also my editor, and I'm sobbing, and she's asking for more, and she wants me to keep pushing and keeping digging and what else? And I'm like, I can't. I don't have it in me. This. Like, I don't know what to tell you. And I'm blubbering. And I was a fucking mess. What's been healing has been talking about it. It's been being on the other side of it and just being in dialogue with people and being a witness to other people's stories because they're sharing them with me now. That's honestly been the greatest source of healing in all of this.
- [47:19]
Tracy Thomas
This brings me to a question that I had for you both in listening to the book and listening to you talk today, which is, how has it been for you? How is it for you to be this, like, beautiful, successful, well coiffed like you? You have, like, I'm looking at your background. It's just, like, so tidy and neat and everything about you is, like, so put together. And as you said before, you're an A plus student and you have the resume and all of these things. How is it for you? Because you're with yourself your whole life, right? And people might come to you and people might know you from different parts of your life that are far removed from the little girl in Detroit. Do you ever feel like any type of way about people's assumptions about you, that maybe they don't know where you came from or that they don't know all you've lived through? Is that. What is that like for you? And. And especially now that the book is out, Are There people in your professional life or people who, like, look at you different or. I don't know. I'm just curious about sort of the. It's not really, like, coming out, but it is in some ways kind of is. It kind of is not. Obviously not like sexuality, but just like telling your full story to the world and what it was like before, maybe assumptions people made and like, what it's like for you now.
- [48:35]
Daria Burke
I mean, the assumptions that people make generally don't bother me so much as I think they're so revealing about what we believe people from poverty look like and what we believe that black people, in particular, with a certain level of air quote success, what their backstory must be. And so part of me is really happy for people to have the cognitive dissonance between those to. Because it's forcing them to interrogate their own bias around it. And I have had so many people say, oh, my gosh, on the one hand, certain things make sense. That. To understand that I spent so many of my early years trying to make sure that people thought I was cared for so that we didn't raise suspicion that our house was chaos. But also, I think, the confidence that I have when I move through the world without, like, I don't believe in imposter syndrome. I don't. You know, I've spent my life defying odds. I have no reason to question my ability to do the next thing that I want to do. Will it be hard? Sure. Will it be exactly the way I want it to be? Maybe not, but I'm still gonna try. Do you know what I mean? And so that. That is so deeply ingrained in me that I think it's been more positive in terms of people's reactions where they've just been like, God, I had no idea. You may have hinted at this thing here and there, but I couldn't have imagined. And then a few people who have just said, thank you for being an example of what it could look like, that I don't have to have come from this place and I don't have to look like what I've been through. Right. As the people say. So it's mixed, but, you know, it's fascinating, I think, more than anything, because I want it to be an invitation for all of us to say, what does it look like then? To come from any particular background. And, you know, and I mean that in all the ways, not just in my physicality and P. S. My room's a mess. Sure. If it makes you feel any better, you get the Lovely bag. Better.
- [50:53]
Tracy Thomas
And let's. Unless your room being a mess makes my room cleaner. It doesn't make me feel better. It just makes me feel sad for us both.
- [51:01]
Daria Burke
Yeah, but you get my point, right? That like no one is perfect. And of course, like there's a version of us that if we can contend with it and live with it, then that's the best I think that any of us can do.
- [51:14]
Tracy Thomas
Totally. Okay, I have to ask you about how you write. How often, how many hours a day, music or no snacks and beverages in your house, out of your house. Tell me about it.
- [51:24]
Daria Burke
Yes. I mean, yes. Right? Is the short answer to all of that. When I was deep in the book, my routine was really straightforward. I was up, went straight to Pilates and then went straight to the library. Like, don't pass go, don't collect $200 because you got to get this done. And so I would be at the library generally from like 10am to anywhere from 4 to 5pm most days. When I edit, I can kind of be anywhere. And it depends. Developmental editing. I still like to be still headphones in. I have a playlist that I call Deep in Thought. It is all instrumental and that I can kind of get in a zone. It's very much. What would I call it? It's like sort of like if. Yoga, yacht music. I don't know, like if I. If there was such a genre, it's certainly the kind of thing you might like work out to do a slow burn kind of workout too. But it's also can kind of like lull you into a little bit of a trance. And snacks, you know, if I'm really in a zone, I don't need food. I actually am not thinking about food. Water for sure. I have a big bottle of water right next to me right now. That's always just trying to stay hydrated. PS Is good for your short term memory. So.
- [52:48]
Tracy Thomas
Okay. Well, I have a really good memory and I do drink a lot of water.
- [52:51]
Daria Burke
So yes, that checks out.
- [52:52]
Tracy Thomas
That's empirical evidence, obviously.
- [52:55]
Daria Burke
But I do. I write daily in the form of journaling at a minimum.
- [52:58]
Tracy Thomas
Okay.
- [52:59]
Daria Burke
And if I don't do anything, I will spend that time in the morning anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour. I've been tinkering with different things and so I'm just kind of allowing whatever wants to come up to come up. And I don't right now. They don't have assignments, so it's kind of nice. I don't have the pressure. But I think at the same Time. I don't yet have anything that I'm working on that has gripped me in the same way. The book also came out a week ago of this conversation. So my. I mostly spend my time talking about the one that I've. I've been writing. And then as things come up, as I'm talking to people, I'm like, ooh, park that. And so I sometimes go visit and, you know, go revisit it and play with it a little bit. Yeah.
- [53:45]
Tracy Thomas
What about a word you can never spell correctly on the first try.
- [53:50]
Daria Burke
Occasion?
- [53:51]
Tracy Thomas
Oh, okay. That's a hard one. How many C's and S's are there?
- [53:55]
Daria Burke
Two C's, one S. Oh, so you.
- [53:57]
Tracy Thomas
Can spell it, but I have to.
- [53:59]
Daria Burke
Say that, like, if I go to type it every time, I'm like, two Cs, ones.
- [54:05]
Tracy Thomas
That's almost a word you can never spell correctly. But it sounds like you can now spell it correctly.
- [54:10]
Daria Burke
Yes, but I had to create a mnemonic for, you know, a reminder for myself what else is always hard to spell. They're probably words I don't use a lot. Like Massachusetts.
- [54:23]
Tracy Thomas
Someone else just said Massachusetts to me. Oh, really? Who was that? I know. I can't even remember, but someone just said Massachusetts to me, and I was like, that's such a specific one. But I can't. I certainly cannot spell that word.
- [54:35]
Daria Burke
Yeah, I mean, there are certain ones that, you know, There aren't too many that trip me up.
- [54:40]
Tracy Thomas
You're a good speller, generally.
- [54:41]
Daria Burke
Yeah, I was. I was the spelling bee.
- [54:43]
Tracy Thomas
You won the spelling bee.
- [54:44]
Daria Burke
Of course you did. I was a literature major. Y.
- [54:47]
Tracy Thomas
Yes.
- [54:47]
Daria Burke
Right. The things that people hear about me and they say. Of course you did. Spelling bee kid. Musical theater kid. Competitive.
- [54:55]
Tracy Thomas
I was a theater kid. I saw that. You. But I couldn't quite tell if you were theater major or you just were into theater, but you went to Michigan. They have a great theater program.
- [55:03]
Daria Burke
They do. They do. I was. So many greats came out of there. Oh, my God, so many.
- [55:08]
Tracy Thomas
Yeah. And we share an NYU connection because I went there for undergrad.
- [55:12]
Daria Burke
Yes, that's right. That's right. Yeah.
- [55:14]
Tracy Thomas
So I was like, theater and nyu. I love it. But you were in the business school.
- [55:19]
Daria Burke
I was. I was at Stern for my mba.
- [55:22]
Tracy Thomas
You know, I'm glad that we weren't there at the same time, because we definitely wouldn't have known each other.
- [55:28]
Daria Burke
No, I don't think we would. Well, if you were there for undergrad, we wouldn't have.
- [55:31]
Tracy Thomas
Even if I was there for graduate school. That. The Stern kids. That's. That's a scary place, that building. Very was it. So I had one class over there and I hated going. It was so intense. You'd walk in and all those like, Jan Sport bros. I was like, this is tough. This is tough.
- [55:48]
Daria Burke
So funny. I was the one who was the odd man out because I was the literature major who worked in architecture interior design before going to business school. So I show up amongst all the fight, to your point. The Finance Bros, the McKinsey folks, you know, the cpgers.
- [56:04]
Tracy Thomas
And I was like, I want to go into beauty.
- [56:06]
Daria Burke
And I, you know, I come from outside high aesthetic world. I was very much an outsider, but I'm kind of. Of used to that in a way. So it was weird, but it was fine.
- [56:17]
Tracy Thomas
Just. It's a. It's a tough crowd. They're a tough hangover there. Yeah. Anyways, I just have a few more questions for you. One is for people who love of my own making. What are some other books you might recommend to them that are in conversation with your work?
- [56:31]
Daria Burke
Oh, gosh. Well, we talked about Somebody's Daughter, and I would imagine that, you know, in some ways, I'd like to think that those books are in conversation. Invisible Child by Andrea Elliott. I will tell you, that book changed me in so many. It was so foundational to how I wanted to try in some bizarro world. Even though it's not a memoir that she's writing, it spoke to me so deeply. Gosh, I mean, look, we did talk about the body Keep keeps the score. You know, it would be Maybe Homecoming by Dr. Tama Bryant. It may be a better version of a book that looks at coming home to oneself.
- [57:18]
Tracy Thomas
Did you ever read what My Bones Know, The Stephanie Fu book.
- [57:21]
Daria Burke
Oh, okay. So do you know, I actually intentionally didn't because once I learned her story, it felt too similar.
- [57:27]
Tracy Thomas
You got to go back and read it now.
- [57:29]
Daria Burke
But now everyone has said, of course.
- [57:33]
Tracy Thomas
It'S the obvious comp at this point. Obviously the book wasn't out when you were doing all of that. But. But just. Just to plug the stacks, we have had Andrea Elliott, Ashley C. Ford, and Stephanie Fu on this podcast. So you all can go listen to those episodes after you listen to this one. If you're like, I want to know more about those books.
- [57:51]
Daria Burke
Oh, my God. Will you do a panel with all four of us?
- [57:53]
Tracy Thomas
I know. I feel like I gotta start coming up with, like, episode packages where I'm like, if you liked this one, here's like, six other books that are in conversation that we've done ep because we've done so many. At this point, I think you're 370 or 371. You're 371. So, like, we're deep. We're deep in the weeds at this point of the book world. Last question for you. If you could have one person dead or alive, read this book, who would you want it to be?
- [58:18]
Daria Burke
My grandma.
- [58:19]
Tracy Thomas
I. I knew you were gonna say that.
- [58:21]
Daria Burke
Yeah. Yeah.
- [58:22]
Tracy Thomas
If you read the book, it's. It's the obvious answer. So I'm happy.
- [58:25]
Daria Burke
Yes. But definitely my second. My, like, one B was Toni Morrison.
- [58:30]
Tracy Thomas
Sure.
- [58:31]
Daria Burke
You know?
- [58:31]
Tracy Thomas
Yeah.
- [58:31]
Daria Burke
It's like, please edit my work.
- [58:35]
Tracy Thomas
Sure, sure. I mean, that's amazing. I mean, two. Two good picks, everybody. You can get your copy of. Of My Own making. Wherever you get your books, it is out in the world now. I listen to the audiobook. Daria reads it. She does a fantastic job. So it is both there for you on the page or in your ears, however you prefer. And, Daria, thank you so much for being here.
- [58:55]
Daria Burke
Thank you. This was a dream come true.
- [58:58]
Tracy Thomas
Oh, and everyone else, we will see you in the Stacks. Thank you all so much for listening. And thank you again to Daria Burke for joining the podcast. I'd also like to say a huge thank you to Joseph Papa for making this interview possible. The Saks Book Club pick for May is Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Moseley, which we will discuss on Wednesday, May 28th with Kara Brown. If you love this podcast and you want inside access to it, head to patreon.com the stacks to join the Stacks Pack and subscribe to my newsletter@tracy thomas.substack.com make sure you're subscribed to the Stacks wherever you listen to your podcasts. And if you're listening through Apple Podcasts or Spotify, please leave us a rating and a review. For more from the Stacks, follow us on social media at the Stacks Pod, on Instagram threads and TikTok, and check out our website at the stack stacks podcast.com this episode of the Stacks was edited by Christian Duenas with production assistance from Waikia Frillo. Our graphic designer is Robin McRite, and our theme music is from Tagirigis. The Stax is created and produced by me, Tracy Thomas.