Rebecca
Hey Nat.

Natalie
Hey Bec.

Rebecca
How are you?

Natalie
I’m really excellent, and I’m super excited about the interview that we’re going to do today.

Rebecca
Hi Carley!

Carley
Hi!

Rebecca
We’ve just done about five intros, just to test out…

Carley
And they have all been so charming and delightful.

Rebecca
Each one better than the last.

Natalie
I am super excited about this interview. I feel like I’m fangirling a little bit, and I think it’s because of what our theme is today. I’m going to give a little intro, if that’s ok Carley, just read why we’re pumped to have you here.

Rebecca
before, I just want to respond to that fangirl thing because it’s true. Nat was like, “I really want to interview Carley Fortune.”

Natalie
It’s true, I did!

Carley
I like how you just said my name.

Rebecca
We each have these people — we randomly hit on certain people in our lives, or that we get attracted to, or infatuated with, or interested in — and you were one. She was like, “I just like her, I’m interested in her. Maybe she’s pretty.”

Natalie
You know what, it was. It was a full on, “I see myself in this pretty woman, and this is happening.” Ok, reading her bio, and then we’re going to talk about the theme, which I’m really pumped about. So Carley Fortune is author and an award-winning journalist whose debut novel Every Summer After, which is a nostalgic story of childhood crushes and first loves and the people and choices that mark us forever, will be released on May 10th. So that is coming up. She is the former executive editor of Refinery29 Canada, which is a job that gave her a lot of pride and joy and a few migraines. She was previously before that the deputy editor of Chatelaine magazine, where she oversaw the brand’s digital transformation — which by the way, Carley, I just put an article in that digital part of Chatelaine, just earlier this week, so that was kind of kind of fun. So after being promoted to editor-in-chief, she produced one whole issue — I love this part of your bio — and then left to launch Refinery29 Canada, making her the shortest serving editor-in-chief in Chatelaine’s 94-year history, which is not a fact that you will find on its Wikipedia page. Carley’s 16-year tour around the Canadian media industry has included editorial positions at the Globe and Mail, Toronto Life magazine, and the much-beloved now defunct weekly paper The Grid. Not surprisingly, she likes to come up with new ideas and prefers the beginning of things. She was born in Toronto, has spent much of her young life in the suburbs of Sydney, Australia and then in Barry’s Bay, a tiny lakeside town in rural Ontario. She now lives in Toronto with her husband and her two sons, and is currently writing her second novel. Thank you so much Carley for being with us today as we reframe big transitions.

Carley
Thanks for having me. Delighted to be here.

Rebecca
That is a big transition to solo entrepreneurship.

Carley
Oh yeah. I just figured out how to pay myself this week.

Natalie
That’s a win.

Carley
Yeah, there was a lot of swearing involved. Administration is not my jam.

Rebecca
You mean literally, “Which accounts am I going to keep stuff in?”

Carley
Yeah. This is very boring, but you set up a corporation, and then you become a salaried employee. Figuring out all of that stuff, I literally just did that this week. It was very difficult.

Rebecca
Right, because you want to know, do you pay yourself through a dividend, or do you…? It is really boring, although we all need to know these things.

Carley
Yeah. That’s all part of these transitions.

Natalie
And they’re not really taught, are they? It’s not explicitly taught by anybody necessarily.

Carley
Not in journalism school.

Rebecca
Or theatre school.

Natalie
Or teacher’s college.

Rebecca
Which is weird because you’d think every school should have some portion of, “If you go out on your own…” Shouldn’t the government institute that, to help people?

Natalie
And to help themselves, they’re going to use the money.

Carley
I did hire an accountant, so that is the help that I need. Still there was swearing.

Natalie
Well, swearing is something that we do on here every once in a while, so feel free. Just let ‘er rip, it’s all good. So in terms of reframing some big transitions, obviously we sort of gestured to them in your bio, but tell us a little bit about yourself. What are some of the multiplicities that make up who Carley Fortune is as she talks with us today?

Carley
As you mentioned, I’ve been a journalist for basically my entire career. As soon as I graduated from high school, I started studying journalism, and as soon as I graduated from university, I went to work and I’ve been working ever since as an editor. It wasn’t until recently that I decided to make that full-time transition into writing. That was a really hard decision to make because I’ve defined myself by my journalism career, and by my life as an editor. I never knew what I wanted to do in high school. When I was little, I had lots of different ideas about what my career would look like — my first love was writing. I didn’t see myself as a writer, I didn’t think that writers could live financially, which is not probably something that somebody in sixth grade typically thinks about, but it was something that weighed heavily for me.

Rebecca
You were already thinking about that in sixth grade — that that seemed like a not practical career?

Carley
Yes.

Natalie
So pragmatic. Wow.

Carley
I grew up in in a small town, with parents who own their own business, and I’ve seen financial struggle up very closely. In high school, we had a career fair. I was always really into magazines — I was one of those kids who bought every copy of Seventeen and YM and Teen magazine, and never threw them out, and had collages of all the spreads. My bedroom wall was just covered in magazine spreads. I would make magazines for my friends. My high school friend said, “What about journalism? Why don’t you look at journalism?” That’s what I ended up going into, because I loved magazines, and that’s what I wanted to do — is make magazines.

I’ve really defined myself by this journalism business. Of course, the magazine industry started folding as soon as I entered it, so my career as a journalist was always about trying to pick up on new skills and learn new things and evolve as the industry was evolving and changing. I’ve done so much — I kind of saw myself as a Jill-of-all-trades. I’ve done print, I’ve done digital, I’ve done newspapers, I’ve done magazines, I’ve done lifestyle, I’ve covered elections as an editor, sexual assault trials, homicide, but also fashion and parenting — a very wide range of things. I was always trying to keep up, really, and I’ve loved it. But as I rose higher and higher, the job became so stressful. As I found writing, I just realized that it was writing, and writing fiction, that was what was bringing me joy. When I sold this book, Every Summer After (and it was a two book deal), my husband and I talked about it and I just decided to make this big transition in my life and go out on my own.

Natalie
Wow. So it was a team effort, then — it wasn’t one of those moments where you dropped the mic and said, “I’m out.” This was a family discussion.

Carley
I always feel like journalists are my people, so there’s a lot to keep you in it as well. I don’t think I’ve necessarily left it forever. I don’t know what the future looks like for me. My team at Refinery29, I love them dearly, but for me I just wasn’t having fun anymore, as much as I needed to. I had a panic attack one day at work during a phone call. I’ve had panic attacks before — never during work. Never during a work day on a phone call, and I’ve dealt with a lot of stress in work and frankly pretty ugly stuff on the job. I had to get off the phone and I had a panic attack. I thought, “I don’t want this for myself anymore.” There’s stress, and then there’s your response to stress. It is a stressful situation, but also I’m just not able to cope with it anymore. My ability to cope with that stress, I just don’t have it anymore.

Natalie
You know, 20 years in to education — where I’m at right now — I would say that hits home for me, because I just understand that things I would have dealt with differently in my 20s, when I just felt like that’s all I had room for — that career. This many years later, my body responds to stress differently, so I get that. Even as we work through the word ‘reframing’ on this podcast — that’s basically our whole shtick, us looking at how we can reframe our way through hard stuff, whether it’s big or small. Does that word resonate with you in terms of how you’re making this transition? I mean, I’m kind of hearing intuitions of it.

Carley
Yeah. I was thinking about that. I think that the biggest way the word ‘reframing’ resonates for me right now is that I’ve been working — so my first book Every Summer After comes out in May, and I was I was writing that while working. I’d write early in the morning before work, so I’d get up at 5am and write until my kid woke up, or until I work at 8. I didn’t tell very many people I was writing the book, and there was no pressure. I had no expectations for it, only that I would finish it. With the second book, I had sold it, and I had a deadline, and an editor. There was more pressure. I had so much self-doubt about my ability to even write it. You know, I think that is a very common experience for authors — this second book pressure. Every day that I sat down to work on that draft, I would spend the first part of drafting just battling all the self-doubt and thinking, “What makes me think that I can do this? You know, I didn’t even write that much as a journalist. I’ve always been an editor. What makes me think I can be an author? Who am I to do this?”

Rebecca
I think that would be an extra challenge, or its own very particular challenge, being the editor where you’re in control and in the power position — that’s my perception of it — and then moving into the really vulnerable act of shitty first drafts.

Carley
Yes. Then when I’m leaving my job, and I have a family, and I’m like, “Alright, I’m taking these other people on this journey with me.” Just battling that every single day. I was recently emailing with my editor in New York, and we were working on the cover for Every Summer After, just where little lines of text would be on the cover. We were just having a very quick email back-and-forth about things, it was kind of a little ‘da-da-da-da-da’ in the morning. It was really fun and I was like, “This sort of reminds me of cover line writing for magazines. It’s not the same, but it kind of reminds me of that.” And she was like, “You have been training for this for your whole career. You’ve been training for this author gig your whole career. It’s so fun to watch.” And I was like, “Yeah, that’s kind of true.” That reframed the whole thing for me.

Rebecca
You were like, “I’m meant to be here.”

Carley
I mean, there’s still the self-doubt, and I think that’s just part of it — writing in general, for me anyway, there’s self-doubt. But it really did reframe things for me. The idea that I’m not supposed to be here kind of took that away.

Natalie
Do you remember Bec, we did a whole half an episode on imposter syndrome? That’s where I’m leaping to in my head when I think about that. I just listened to a podcast the other day that tried to reframe that idea of imposter syndrome as actually healthy. The woman pushed back a little bit, the host of that one — oh my gosh, I’ll have to remember, we can throw it in the show notes later what episode that was. She was basically like, “Well, but for who, and for what community would that imposter syndrome be useful for?” It was a very fair question. But I like the idea that sometimes there’s something about the undercurrent of self-doubt that those of us who are trying new things have to fight and counter because perhaps that keeps pushing us forward. If it doesn’t dissuade you, then it keeps it trucking.

Carley
One thing that I talked to my therapist about — I have a therapist, I see her once a month.

Rebecca
A long-standing relationship with a therapist?

Carley
Yeah. I started seeing a therapist when I got my job at Refinery29, actually. It was a big job, a dream job, and I was not happy. I thought, “Why am I not happy? I’m the most unhappy I’ve ever been. I need to see a therapist.”

Rebecca
That was pre-children?

Carley
No. My son was born when I was at Chatelaine.

Rebecca
Ok, cause that feeds into that interesting article — your Refinery29 article?

Carley
Yeah. My son was about two when I started at Refinery29 — my first son. And she helped me see that it’s ok to have a bit of self-doubt as long as that’s not the only thing that there is. Pushing against it too much, if it’s a fight — when you’re fighting what’s going on in your mind — that’s where sometimes there’s tension.

Natalie
It can take root in your body as a negative thing. That’s when your body can speak back to you. Like, “This is not ok.”

Rebecca
Was she thinking that a healthy dose of self-doubt can be useful? Was it that idea, or not?

Carley
No, she was just more like, “Maybe for you self-doubt is just part of your process. There’s the self-doubt. There it is. Let’s move on.”

Rebecca
Just love all those parts of yourself, or whatever.

Carley
Or you don’t even have to love it. It’s just like, “Hey, there it is.”

Rebecca
I appreciate actually, that ‘no, I don’t have to love that’ part. That feels next level, and that bugs me too — you know what, I don’t want to love that thing.

Carley
No, she’s very real. She’s not about loving it. She’s more about like, “Yeah, I see that.”

Natalie
Naming it, yeah.

Rebecca
Before we we jump to our next question, that was a totally new term to me from that moment in your life. This idea from your article that I read was matrescence. Can you just talk about that for a second? Could you even remember?

Carley
Yes, I do remember. So the article that we’re talking about is a piece I wrote for Refinery29 in 2019 called Why I’m Okay with Being a Good-Enough Mom. It was about the struggle that I had when I became a new mom with my identity. I felt like I didn’t know who I was anymore when I became a mom. What I learned was there is a term for the period of time when you become a new parent, a new mother, called matrescence. It’s a developmental stage like adolescence, and it’s marked by the same kind of biological and social shifts. There are changes in our hormones, in our sleep patterns, in our relationships that dramatically shift our relationships to ourselves, our bodies, the people around us, our finances. With matrescence, we don’t really see it that way. We feel it, but we don’t really see that we’re undergoing this huge kind of shift. It’s like puberty. It’s not just women or moms that go through this, or people who experienced pregnancy. Dads go through this too — anybody who goes through the parenthood journey goes goes through big shifts as well.

Rebecca
Is there a term for it when dads go through it?

Natalie
Yeah, cause I want to call my friend.

Carley
The expert that I spoke with said the word matrescence, she uses it very loosely — anybody who identifies with that journey. I’m not sure there’s a term for fathers specifically.

Rebecca
I found that so interesting, because I do think I went through my own matrescence in a large way. I found mothering in those early years quite challenging, but I didn’t know what it was — what was happening, I really did think, “I wish I could be more fun.” I always wanted to be just happy. So simple really, I thought I should be happy. I thought having a baby should make you happy. That’s what was said out in the media, or that’s what I had absorbed.

Carley
Well, that’s the thing. You get this image of a new mom being either in the state of bliss, or on the other side of this spectrum, it’s postpartum depression. The reality for many new parents is that it’s kind of in the middle, or it’s a bit of a rollercoaster. It’s also this relatively short period of time that is not really interesting to anybody, except for the people who are going through, and so it doesn’t get a lot of attention. It’s also really intimate — so we’re not talking about it, except in close groups.

Natalie
For me right now, I’m sitting with this thinking it’s wild how when you have a term to finally name an experience, what that does to reorient and reframe the whole memory of that experience. Right now, I’m sitting here and thinking back on a pretty major… my husband I, we’re not big fighters, that’s not really our thing, but I can remember a pretty major interaction between the two of us that was very unhappy, and it was all centered on this baby. I think now, he was going through that matrescence too, because he was on paternity leave at that point and I was back at work, and there were all these things happening. I can so viscerally remember that moment of angst between us, and now it’s not even just about naming that term for me, but actually being able to apply it to whatever he might have been navigating at that time as the person who was at home and trying to do all of the baby caring, and not having the boobs to help — those things that made him feel helpless. It’s interesting to consider.

Rebecca
Although if matrescence goes on for four years, then it’s something different? Is it not matrescence anymore, then it’s just need for therapy?

Natalie
Which is not bad either, Bec. That’s a good way of framing that. Ok, well that was a very helpful moment for me, because I’ve had my little reframe moment, but I didn’t mean to co-opt that one. But I want to turn it back for a second to your book, because I think that it’d be kind of fun for our listeners to get a little… what would you call it, Rebecca, in your writing world? A napkin pitch, or something like that?

Rebecca
I saw you write that and I don’t think I would ever use that term, Nat, and I really liked it that you said it that way. I mean, where did you get that from, napkin pitch?

Natalie
You know why? When I used to roach Rotman students on their narrative prep for their businesses, I was always like, “We have to have a napkin pitch, an elevator pitch.” Carley, interpret me — but go ahead.

Rebecca
We all like a short pitch.

Carley
The way that I am describing Every Summer After is that it is the book with all the feels, or that it’s a beach read with guts. It’s a story about Percy and Sam. Percy’s parents buy the cottage next door to Sam’s — it’s set in Ontario’s cottage country and in Toronto. We meet Percy at the beginning of the book when she is 30 and she gets a call to go back for the funeral of Sam’s mom. She hasn’t seen Sam for over a decade. The book is told over the course of six summers in the past and one weekend in the present where Percy is going back to Barry’s Bay. In the past, you see them grow up together, they become these childhood best friends and then sweethearts, and then something happens where they don’t talk for over a decade. In the present, you’re trying to figure out what it is that happened to tear them apart. It’s a love story, but it’s also a coming-of-age story. It’s really nostalgic. It’s set in Barry’s Bay where I grew up, on Kamaniskeg Lake, so it’s got all that summery, the glittery water and drippy ice cream cones and friendship bracelets. It’s a very emotional book, and it’s very close to my heart, and I think people are going to love it.

Rebecca
I do really love it.

Natalie
Yeah, thanks for giving us a sneak peek.

Rebecca
Actually, it’s interesting that you mentioned the friendship bracelets — friendship bracelets brings me back to a different time. I feel that you do that well, setting the this moment in time. Very visceral details.

Carley
Yes. It’s very nostalgic.

Rebecca
Yeah. It’s a super fun.

Carley
Thank you.

Rebecca
Of course. Interesting if you have a life from Barry’s Bay — you have your own life there.

Carley
Yeah, that’s where I grew up. I was born in Toronto, but my parents had a cottage in Barry’s Bay. I was born in Toronto, then we moved to Australia, and when we moved back from Australia we settled in Barry’s Bay where our cottage was. So I grew up in Barry’s Bay, which is a very small community of 1,200 people east of Algonquin Park. Really beautiful, beautiful area.

Rebecca
It was funny because I was saying to Nat, “I wonder if she has a cottage that she can still go to, or how much is real?” And Nat, what did you say to me? Nat’s like, “I think this is called reader response, Rebecca, and that Margaret Atwood would say it’s a novel.” Because I really like to go, “Oh, how much is real?” I have that reader response.

Carley
Yeah. I don’t have a cottage there. My parents did sell our house on the lake about a decade ago. The story is not my story at all. I like to say that Percy’s high school experience has 99% more kissing than my high school experience. The book is very much a love letter to where I grew up. When I wrote the book, it was the summer of 2020. We rent a cottage in the area in the summers usually for two weeks, but in the summer of 2020 we spent the entire summer up there on a different lake. I was in the area, I was feeling very nostalgic for my summers growing up. I had never been back to visit the house where I grew up. I run, and I was trying to up my running distances to run back there. The day that I made it back out there, it felt like I was running back in time to a different part of my life. Then a few weeks later, I had a very stressful call with work — not the panic attack call, it was after that. I hung up the phone and I was like, “You know what, I’m going to write my book.” I didn’t have a book idea, but that day I started conceiving of my book — so being in that area definitely informed Every Summer After.

Natalie
That’s so interesting, because so much of my own research has been on place-based narrativity. Literally how our stories are formed by the places within which we pass time. A very interesting moment to have lived that out — and the fact that you can pin it, because I don’t think that memory often works that way, does it? It’s so hard, it’s actually so amorphous. Bec and I have spent a lot of time talking about that on here. To hear somebody’s story, who’s able to literally put a pin in that exact moment and then come back to it, it sounds like kind of a gift. That’s lovely that that happened for you.

Because I write about colleagues and collegiality, and your team has changed — now your team is not necessarily a team that you’re working with in your day-to-day in the same way you did at both Chatelaine and Refinery29. Now, it’s this very home-based team who are your day-to-day colleagues, in some way. Have you have you felt any need to reframe the word ‘team’ or ‘collegiality’ in the way that your new day-to-day is working in this writing life?

Carley
Working at Refinery29 was home-based as well, because of the pandemic. I think what has been different is that there just aren’t those daily meetings, there’s just not the same kind of community check-ins anymore — that team of people who forms your family in the same way. I do really miss that, especially my Refinery family was really dear to me. But I think that kind of was a problem for me in some ways. When we talk about me having a panic attack at work and being so stressed out from a phone call that I’m throwing up my hands and making life decisions like reading books, it’s like I’m holding my work way too close. What is nice about not having a team (who I care so deeply about being my team) that I am managing anymore is now I can be friends with my team. I am making sure to reach out to my colleagues. I am making sure now that I am reaching out to the people that I used to work with — so I still have those people in my life, and I don’t want to let those relationships slip.

I have this term, I did this package when I started at Refinery29 called Work Friends about the importance of work friends, especially when you start your career, because those early work friendships are so powerful and they can stick with you for your entire life. Right now I just realize how important it is for me to just stay in touch with these people. I’m seeing one of one of my colleagues tonight, and another next week. I make sure to text every once in a while and just see what they’re writing and just say, “Hey, I saw this and I really liked it.” Their relationships are important to me, and I don’t want to be a writer who sits in their room and doesn’t have relationships, because then there will be nothing to write about. I realized after I sent in the draft of my second book that my well was just so dry. I think with the lockdowns here in Ontario, and the cold weather, combined with how hard I tend to work up until a deadline, I was just out of everything. I needed to see people and reach out to people and talk to people, and I needed to get out of my house. Making sure that I have a family, even if it’s not my direct work family, but a family who is not my people-in-my-house family is really important.

Rebecca
Are your sons part of your team in a different way now? Are you able to mother and parent differently now, or does it feel equally stressful?

Carley
It’s so hard to tell — because of the pandemic, and also I have a second child now, it is so hard to compare now and then. I moved homes, I changed careers, I had a second child. I don’t even know. I’m not commuting to an office anymore. I have a lot more bandwidth, for sure. I was very stressed before, and I do have stress now, but it’s not the same. It’s just not.

Natalie
Becca’s eldest is 13 — so it all of a sudden changes life between a baby and a teen. Mine’s only seven — I’ve got this little boy, and it’s just the one, and life feels very neat and tidy in my household. I feel like watching Becca’s all the time, there’s various dramas that come with different stages and ages, obviously. But then on top of that, Bec, you’ve had these various business shifts and all that. Do you parent differently? Is your experience of momming right now feeling new, or is it like Carley’s where it’s all just so new — just by the fact that you have a teenager — that it’s hard to even classify the experience?

Rebecca
I don’t know. I was just thinking about what you’re saying, Carley. You know when you’re doing food sensitivity things, you’re supposed to eliminate one food at a time so you can identify the cause of something? I feel like you’re identifying so many things happening, and I feel like in my own life I’m never good at identifying the one thing that is making the transition challenging. It seems like there’s always so many factors. I even think when I went from one kid to two kids, my second daughter had to have heart surgery. Who knows, one kid to two could could have been simpler, but in our case, it had this huge element to it. Shifting businesses and life and transitions, it’s crazy. That’s how I’ll sum it up, it’s crazy.

Natalie
It’s my last question, and I’m excited to hear the answer on this one. I’m just wondering if there is something because we’ve been focusing so much on the transition time and reframing that experience. It’s very much looking forward, but in the spirit of memory-making, is there something from pre-transition life that you miss, and is there any way that you see trying to bring it forward, like some new iteration of that in the now?

Carley
I do miss getting dressed and being at an office and just having little chats with people. I don’t miss commuting. I never liked getting ready in the morning, but I do miss the process of going out into the world and being in the world with colleagues. I love people. I get so much energy from other people. I am thinking more and more about how — not every day, I can’t get that every day, it’s just not practical for me — but how to kind of once things start opening up a little bit more, how to infuse that into my life.

Rebecca
Like more lunches.

Carley
Ah, probably not.

Rebecca
That’s not the thing you need, specifically

Carley
It’s probably not a lunch. I find lunches stilted, and I don’t find them energetic. So not a lunch, but something.

Natalie
Yeah. I totally agree.

Rebecca
I like that. It’s not a lunch, but it’s something.

Natalie
Can that be our title today, Bec? I usually come up with the titles, but let’s just call it, “Transition, It’s Not a Lunch.” I like that a lot.

Rebecca
And that speaks to you knowing yourself, Carley, which is really cool. You know that it’s not a lunch, and it’s going to be something that you will find.

Natalie
Yeah, seriously. Hey Carley, thank you so much for taking the time with us. It’s been lovely, just a chance to chat, and we’re really excited for you and the book and what’s coming.

Carley
Thank you so much for having me.

Rebecca
Are you doing a big tour? Is that the plan?

Carley
We are talking about the plan in a couple of weeks, so I don’t know what the plan looks like.

Natalie
Open hands, right? Just let it come. That’s exciting. Ok, well keep us posted.

Rebecca
I’ll definitely look out for it.

Carley
I well, I will.

Natalie
We can celebrate with you.

Rebecca
Hey, are you wearing a Horses sweatshirt?

Carley
I am.

Rebecca
Wow, yes.

Carley
I wear sweatshirts so often.

Rebecca
Actually, I keep noticing it, and I’m thinking that looks like a really cozy sweatshirt, and then I just saw the the brand name. But you know what, I wish I had the Horses sweatshirt as opposed to — I have the pantsuit, which I got just before the pandemic started. Is that what they call them?

Carley
Field suit.

Rebecca
Field suit. But the material is so stiff that I just never want to wear it, because I don’t have anywhere to wear this now. So I just need a sweatshirt.

Carley
I think I wear this 75% of the time.

Rebecca
You just pull on that same sweatshirt?

Carley
Yeah.

Natalie
I like it. Consistency. Ok, we’re going to let everybody go, because I think I have to walk over to your house, Bec.

Rebecca
For your not-lunch.

Natalie
For your not-lunch.

Rebecca
Ok. Goodbye!

Carley
Bye!

Natalie
And we’ll be in touch in terms of all the wonderful things going forward. Thank you so much.

Carley
Thank you. Bye!

Rebecca
Ok, bye. Oh, and please subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts. It would mean the world. Love, Sister On!