S4 EP197: Amy Weinland Daughters, Author of You Cannot Mess This Up: A True Story That Never Happened

Hello My Happy People,

Imagine waking up in your childhood home, with your ten-year-old self still living there. How different would your past look when seen through your adult eyes? That’s the wild premise at the heart of You Cannot Mess This Up: A True Story That Never Happened by award-winning author Amy Weinland Daughters.

In this week’s episode, Amy joins me to talk about memory, forgiveness, and what really happens when you face the ghosts of your own past. With her trademark wit and raw honesty, she shares her author journey and why she believes that none of us are quite who we remember.

You’ll laugh, you’ll question your own memories, and you might even call your mom after this one.

Born in Houston and raised in Spring, Texas, Amy is the 2020 Next Generation Indie Book Awards Overall Winner for Humor and Comedy. Her work blends hilarious truth-telling with heart-punch insight into how our stories make us who we are.

If you’ve ever wondered what you’d say to your younger self or what she might say back, this episode just might reshape your self-image.

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Transcript

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Dianne Burckhardt 0:02

Welcome to BookBanter with me, your host, Diane Burkhart. I hope you will join me every Wednesday as we explore all things to do with well books. Let's get on with our show today. Hello my happy people. Today is November 18th, 2025, and of course we have got another fantastic author for you. Have you ever wondered what it would be like to travel back in time and observe your childhood as an adult? Well, that's exactly the theme that we explored today with our guest and her debut novel. So let's not waste any time, we're gonna get right to it. But don't forget to stick around till the very end because we do have a few announcements. Since this interview ran so long, I am going to try and keep things a little bit shorter than usual, but I still have a few things to share with you. So let's get right to it. Please welcome to Book Banter with Diane Burkhard, Amy Weineland Daughters. The way that I like to start these out is just to have my guests tell everyone who you are and what you do.

SPEAKER_01 1:04

My name is Amy Wineland Daughters, and I'm a author, a freelance writer. I I think I'm funny, and uh I'm the the wife of one and the mother of two.

Dianne Burckhardt 1:17

You actually started out as a freelance writer and you did a lot of sports writing. How did that kind of a background give you useful skills to be able to use as an author other than just general writing practice?

SPEAKER_01 1:31

And that's a great question. I did not start out to be a freelance writer. I have a business degree, and I worked in purchasing for five, 15 years, and then my husband's job gave us the opportunity to move over to the UK for two years, and then it turned into three. So my job went on hold because I didn't have a work visa and he did, and I was like, this will be a great adventure. I had one small child who went to this village school, and when he went away to the school, I was like, wait a second, what am I gonna do with all this time I have on my hands? Because I'd never had that amount of time. And uh I went to the local university and took history classes, but that wasn't gonna fill all the time. And so I had always written on the side, Diane, like I'd written short stories, and uh at work I'd like written emails and thought they were profound or hilarious. And so almost out of desperation, I started writing. And that was kind of the beginning of the high-speed internet, so I realized I could sell what I was writing, and I kind of got in this niche of sports writing early on. So when we came back from England, I had another kid and I worked myself into I was a national columnist with the Bleacher Report for college football, and I created this whole other job for myself and became a writer. That experience of all the traction I gained with the sports writing really allowed me to take myself seriously enough to write my first book and then then my second book, and then the rest, you know, now I speak, I do a lot of things with the writing, and I still freelance, right? But that's kind of how that sports background led to the authorhood.

Dianne Burckhardt 3:04

I would imagine that doing the books was a lot more freeing for you because your humor definitely comes through in a lot of things. And I would imagine that you didn't get to really use that as much as you would like in sports writing, but it's definitely coming through in your books. I love the titles.

SPEAKER_01 3:26

Yeah, well, I appreciate that. And you know what? No one's ever said that to me, and thank you so much because I never even thought about I did try to use the humor in sports writing, and the editors, you know, they would allow some of it, and then I get shut down. You know, there's like a mid-level college football team, and it's William and Mary, the College of Virginia. And I used to say William and Mary, who playing as a couple today, you know. I mean, I was it was funny. And I had one guy who would let me, he'd be like, Yeah, that's funny, go ahead. And another guy would be like, Look, that's not professional, you know. But but what a great point you just made, Diane, because no one's ever said that to me. You're right, though. And and that's what books do. They give you the leeway to do things that are vulnerable and to use the gifts that are, you know, whatever it is you have that you can put out on the table for everyone else.

Dianne Burckhardt 4:11

Your first novel, You Cannot Mess This Up, A True Story That Never Happened. Explain that title.

SPEAKER_01 4:20

Yeah, that's you know, it's a great, and I love the second line of that title because that kind of says what the book is, because it's basically a time travel memoir. I write myself back to my childhood. I returned to my childhood home as a distant cousin back in 1978, and I spend 36 hours with my nuclear family as an adult. So you cannot mess this up. A true story that never happened. So it's a memoir, it's actual memories rolled up into the tortilla of fiction, which is the time travel.

Dianne Burckhardt 4:54

See, and I love that because one of the things that you do talk about is that memories can be questionable. We don't always remember things exactly how they happen because we're seeing it through the lens of ourselves and our own perception of everything. So it's not always exactly what happened. And I love that that's kind of what you're saying with this. You know, this is what happened, maybe.

SPEAKER_01 5:18

Right. You know, and I I went into writing that book thinking I'm gonna write a hilarious back in time book. Like that was my complete intention. Like, this is gonna be so funny. And then when I started imagining myself interacting with my 10-year-old self and my mother and my father and my brother and my sister, I was like, wait a second, if I was a middle-aged woman remembering, I mean, watching this go down, I would remember it differently based on the context of who I am now. And I realized my 10-year-old self didn't remember it wrong so much. She just wasn't gonna remember the same way I was gonna remember it as an adult. And so, memories, like you said, they're malleable. That's what I learned from writing the story that, you know, based on the context of who we are at the time, we're remembering something. And I think that probably goes into what we choose to remember and not remember, even though that's probably in our subconscious. You know, and it's powerful though, because it means that we can look at a memory, we can look at something we remember from our past and we can reshape it if we if we so choose to do.

Dianne Burckhardt 6:20

That's one thing. Whenever I started writing my memoir, which I'm doing now, I was so glad that I had journals to go back to because I would think, oh yeah, I remember that happened. I'd look at the journal at that point, like, oh wait, that's not what happened.

unknown 6:32

Yeah.

Dianne Burckhardt 6:32

Like, I'm so glad I wrote that down because I remember that so differently.

SPEAKER_01 6:37

Absolutely. And I think that was part of that the journey that I went on with that book, which ended up being a catharsis. And I certainly didn't mean that at all. But, you know, seeing my parents as the same age as me and realizing my mom's just trying to figure it out. And I do think I had some memories completely wrong because I just went based on my childhood memories as opposed to having a journal. And I realized that, and you know, and then of course my brother and sister challenged some of my memories, rightly so, because they remembered it differently because we were all doing the same thing together, but three different people at three different ages. And then my parents, we were all going to remember it differently.

Dianne Burckhardt 7:10

Was there anything that came about in those discussions that really shocked you that was very different than what you remembered?

SPEAKER_01 7:17

You know, there wasn't anything shocking, but there's a part of the book where I write about this adult party that happens after Thanksgiving. Like we all go to bed and there's this party that goes on. I wrote that because my mother said they either went to a party or had the party in my house. And that was surprising to me because as a 10-year-old, I just went to bed. I didn't realize there was anything that went on after, like my reality was my reality, but the bigger reality was these people had a life, you know, that didn't include their 10-year-old daughter, you know, a hundred percent of the time. And I don't know that that was shocking, but it was absolutely a surprise. But I think the things that were more shocking is when I was writing it, and I was realizing my mother, no one was really helping her with Thanksgiving. She was just pulling this whole thing off herself and no one thanked her or acknowledged that. I mean, it was just going on. I think those were more of the things that were shocking, like where are all the dirty clothes? There's five people in this house, and this woman's basically providing all these free services, and no one's even recognized that there's a line in the book where I was like, I would want a certificate for everyone's clean underwear from the president of the United States, you know, and this woman got no acknowledgement, especially because she was doing it in the 70s, yeah, when everybody just thought she should be doing it. And those were more of the things that shocked me, really. They were more minor things.

Dianne Burckhardt 8:30

Did writing this actually kind of reshape your opinions of your parents and your siblings? Oh, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 8:37

Especially with my mom, because I had a difficult relationship with my mom, which comes out in the book. But this woman was just trying to survive the whole thing. She had a mother who was oppressive and mean. And, you know, she had me who should have probably been on some kind of ADHD medicine, but that wasn't a thing in 1978. And then she she was supposedly living this perfect life in suburbia. She had this great house and this great husband, but is that what she really wanted? So I think I let her off the hook, which I should have already done earlier, but I just didn't see it. This book was a gift. The journey of writing the book was a gift because it made me see even myself differently after the process of writing it.

Dianne Burckhardt 9:15

You time travel back to 1978. Was there a particular reason why you chose that point in time in your life?

SPEAKER_01 9:22

Well, you know, the 70s was the bulk of my childhood. And so I wanted to go back to the 70s because that was my time period. But I picked my 10-year-old self because it was kind of that age where you're about to jump off the other side, but you're fully a child still, you know. And I think I picked that age because I was a camp counselor for a long time. And that was my favorite age group because those were the girls that would still put underwear on their head and go to the dining hall, but like they didn't need you to help them get dressed. And they also weren't the teenagers who weren't going to do the fun stuff anymore. So to me, it was like the sweet spot as a camp counselor. And so I wanted to write about myself at that age because I saw myself and so many of those girls because it's kind of awkward age too, yeah. And super fun where you're not aware that you're awkward. And so I think that's why I picked that age because I wanted to write about the 70s and then I wanted to write about myself at 10 because I loved those kids at 10 at the camp I worked at.

Dianne Burckhardt 10:18

A lot of your book really balances some very heavy issues with a lot of humor. Was it hard to try and find that good balance without taking away from those emotional pivotal points in your life?

SPEAKER_01 10:32

That's a great question. But in looking back at the book now, you know, and as an author, you know this. I mean, once it's in stone, because that's what it feels like, you go back and read and you're like, oh, you know, like some parts of it, you're like, oh, I mean, what was I even thinking? Like for the love of God, you know, and I don't have a lot of that, but I think that's just human nature, and I think that's very relatable, you know. It's like life almost. You know, you look back, you're like, oh my God, what was I thinking? But I think the thing I'm proudest about this book, and I really am kind of amazed by it, the balance of it hits a really serious note, and then zap, some zinger comes in on the on the side. And I think that that is just maybe a reflection of my personality. Like that's how I handle life. I handled life with humor because I think I'm funny, and it's my security blanket and my shield, you know, and I think that just comes across in the book because that's how I do life. And I think that's kind of what life is for a lot of us. You know, you struggle and survive, and then somebody says something funny, and we all laugh, and you're like, okay, we're good.

Dianne Burckhardt 11:31

That's definitely the kind of personality that I have. I'm like the person that you cannot sit next to in a serious situation.

SPEAKER_02 11:37

Right.

Dianne Burckhardt 11:37

Because anytime that I feel anxious, I start finding things to laugh about. And so I'm like that person that's like, if you have to be serious, please go sit over there because I don't want to corrupt you.

unknown 11:49

Right.

Dianne Burckhardt 11:50

But there are a lot of people who can miss out on that. They they don't get that humor, they don't appreciate that humor. Do you worry that some of this might lose some of your audience?

SPEAKER_01 12:00

Yeah, and that's a great question because humor, we all have like some kind of superpower. And I'm not saying humor is my superpower. I'm I'm good at being funny, and it also deflects, like I said, it's kind of a security blanket. But humor, humor can go absolutely too far. You know, it and especially when self-defecating is one thing, but making other people the humorous thing, it's just a dangerous thing. And it's a very careful balance. And I don't know that in this book that I lost anybody. I probably could have, because people like you said, I'm like you, I'm the girl you don't want to sit next to at a serious, you know, and some people want that levity and some people don't. So I I don't know, I don't know if I can answer like if some people were turned off of it, because they probably were, because you know, if you're not somebody who wants humor, then this isn't going to be something that probably not resonate with you. And I'm sure, but you know, you got to dance with who bring you to the dance, and that's me. And like I said, I'm proud of it, but I can also a hundred percent see how that wouldn't resonate with them.

Dianne Burckhardt 13:00

Do you think that this kind of falls along with your philosophy that it's better to live in the land of honesty than living as a slave to fear?

SPEAKER_01 13:07

Oh, absolutely. And I think that's one of the biggest takeaways for me personally about this book is when I started writing the book, I spent a weekend, or probably in the middle of the process or at the middle beginning. I spent a weekend at this hotel locked away with like a VCR poked to a TV and all the family photos. And I watched this video of my younger self at about 10, and I was so off the chain, Diane. I was dancing around in this woman's face with mom's friend to come to visit. And she's literally standing in the living room, and I've got some Christmas costume on, and I've leaping around and like her personal space has been so, it wasn't just broken. It had been, I should have been arrested for the personal space barrier I've broken. And I was just mortified of myself. I was like, what are you doing? And that really is reflected in when I write what it feels like to see my younger self for the first time. But as I lived through writing the story, which I kind of felt like I lived the story through writing it, I started by being like, oh my God, please get me away from the younger version of myself. But by the end, I was like, wait a second, we live the best parts of us away. And I didn't mean to, I didn't do that intentionally. And so I went from wanting to run from her to when I finished, I wanted to be her and I want to honor her for the rest of my life. And she was zany and not afraid to be herself. And so that goes back to the part of living in the land of honesty. The level, I mean, the land of honesty for big Amy and little Amy is, you know, we're a bit off the chain. We're a lot for some people, you know. But that's okay because that's who I am. And I want to honor that kid who wasn't afraid. You know, I can't fully be not afraid like the bowl cut girl, but the best parts of us I can try to bring back out in myself, and that's honesty, and she makes me want to be braver, you know.

Dianne Burckhardt 14:56

Yeah, I love that. That's perfect. And and I have said this so many times as somebody who has had some death-defying experiences in my life, I don't ever want to live my life in fear. That is like such a waste of energy. I always want to go for everything that I want to do. I want to take chances, and I don't care if I fail because I'll just learn something from that. And then next time maybe I'll do better. I always look at all of these things as like learning opportunities, and I want as many of those as possible. And I don't care if I look silly or stupid doing it. It's an experience and I want them all. Right.

SPEAKER_01 15:30

And if we could all live that way, that's such a healthy, not just healthy, but we can take ourselves not seriously enough, but go on those jump-off points and jump off and just be like, you know what? If this works out, it's great. If it's not, it doesn't, especially in the world of social media and comparison. It just makes it a really difficult culture to do those things. So bravo to you. And I think that's very it's inspirational to me, and I'm not afraid in a lot of situations, but I find a lot of inspiration in that. And I hope people who are listening do too, because that is such a it's not just a brave way to live, it's just freeing, you know. I mean, it's just a lot less work if we just be ourselves.

Dianne Burckhardt 16:07

Well, you know, and and I'll be perfectly honest, that mentality came from the time that I died. That really changed my whole perception of life because up until that point I had been very OCD, very neurotic, I worried about everything. And then once you actually experience being dead, you're kind of like, you know, it's not so bad if I walked out of the women's room with the back of my dress tucked in my pantyhose. I don't care, I'm alive. You know, how bad is it really? So you had a death experience, and that put everything into perspective, like you said. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And it's like, I wish I could give everybody that mental shift without having to go through what I went through. If I could like gift that to people, I would be spreading that like glitter all over the place.

SPEAKER_01 16:54

Well, maybe by sharing it, because I know I didn't know that about you. And I know that I will get off this interview and I will have to give that some serious thought and try to put myself like I can't do it, like you said. It's like going back in time. You can you can make that up, but you can't do it. But I could sit here for an hour and seriously think about what that would mean and how that would affect my own perspective. So I think sharing it, that's the way you can spread the dust, the magical dust, you know.

Dianne Burckhardt 17:19

So thank you for doing that. When you're talking about the life in the 70s, you share a lot of wonderful nostalgic memories that brought back my own childhood. You were talking about like lunches at Bonanza and the constant cigarette smoke. And I immediately remembered you could go anywhere and there were cigarette machines, and anybody could go walk up and get cigarettes. There was no behind-the-counter ID showing anything, everybody smoked. And it was just those kinds of things just took me back so hard to my childhood and remembering what the 70s was like. It was such a different time.

SPEAKER_01 17:56

Right. And that was really for me, Diane, the delight because I wanted to write a time travel book. I wanted to write a book about the 70s, and that was really part of my intention because I completely love everything nostalgic. I love everything vintage. I love eBay, I love all those things. And so the research, because there was so much stuff that got taken out. The research was the favorite part, and the humor was my favorite part of writing this book. And really one of my favorite parts of the journey after the book is just like your comments right there, is readers and fellow people who grew up in that age or know people who did, is remembering those nostalgic bits, you know, because uh because I think it opened the floodgates for everyone else. And what an absolute delight for me, because I enjoyed the research more than I enjoyed anything else about the book.

Dianne Burckhardt 18:43

From this time period, what is something that you think that we have lost that was better than?

SPEAKER_01 18:49

Well, I think absolutely it was a slower pace of life without instantaneous communication and social media. You know, it was just a different flow to life. And I don't think it was the golden age, because I think that w we can feel that way, but it there were so many people discluded from the conversation, you know, and that's not a political observation, that's just the truth, I believe. Yeah. But I do feel like we were at a slower pace. There was a lot more one-on-one as kids, without, and I don't want to sound like I'm a hundred years old and I'm against because I I'm not against social media, I'm not against the phones, but without that, it freed us to do more creative things that we don't do now. We didn't know that was all coming. And I think it's put more pressure on our children, it's put more press pressure on relationships. And in 1978, we didn't have any of those things. There weren't the screens and the devices, and I think it was probably better for our mental health.

Dianne Burckhardt 19:44

Yeah. I can get so stuck on playing Xbox all day long and look up and it's like been four hours and I haven't moved and like, oh my god, you know, the only thing I'm moving is my thumbs when you know hit the buttons. Back in the 70s, the big game was Pong. So it's not like you would end up spending a whole day doing that. You would get up, you would go ride your bike, you would go play with your friends, you would go climb trees, you know, and people are not as physically active as they used to be. And I think that's one of the big drawbacks about all of the technology that we have that makes our lives easier, but it also takes us out of the world too. Oh, it does.

SPEAKER_01 20:18

And, you know, and then with the internet and the information age, you know, as adults and parents, we know so much that we're scared, you know, and so we're scared and the we're it's safer to have the kids stay in the house, but you lose something in that, you know, because the adventure and then that freedom of figuring stuff out on your own outside is gone. But it's hard though, because we live in this world where the reality is there's a lot of things that are scary that we know about.

Dianne Burckhardt 20:45

Yeah, there's a lot of that. And it's way too easy to open your phone and you just get bombarded with all of the bad things in the world. Right, it's incredible how everything that you look at, whether you know it's your favorite social media platform or just videos that you're catching, you know, emails that you're getting, people sending you information. There's so much bad. It just can really weigh you down if you don't disconnect every once in a while and go find the good.

SPEAKER_01 21:12

Right. And I really haven't thought about this book in the context of that, but I think that's what's refreshing about the storyline is because it brings up these conversations. It's like you you go back for 36 hours and it's like a detox. And I think just such a great question you asked because it challenges us again to think about what we're doing with our phones and our devices every day.

Dianne Burckhardt 21:33

One of the other things that you try to get across in this story is that every life matters, even if it's not considered exceptional. Like you're not the president, but your life still matters. What do you hope that a reader will carry away from this message?

SPEAKER_01 21:49

Yeah, I think that what I found with the book is that people immediately put themselves in Big Amy's shoes. Like, what would this look like if I went back on time? And I say that because even my uh older Kid who's 28 now, but he said, you know, I immediately, Mama immediately said, What would it be like if I went back in my child? And I think that's what people do. They immediately think, What would it look like? And I think the great thing about Amy's story, and I'm talking about myself in the third person, but the great thing is Amy's life wasn't exceptional. She was just a kid who grew up in suburban America in the 70s. So, and we lived in a social media world where the way you get celebrated the most likes if it's something exceptional that has happened that you can share with everybody. But Amy goes back and there's nothing really exceptional. She has a rough relationship with her mother. She has a her life goes by like a quote unquote normal track from everyone else's. But it matters enough to share. It matters enough to investigate. It matters enough that she came in one person in that story and came out another person. Our lives matter profoundly. Our individual human experiences matter profoundly enough to investigate, enough to think back through, enough to remember, enough to share with a trusted friend, enough to reinvestigate, to look at our memories, enough to explore our own truths. And that matters more than any, and not more than anything else, but it matters enough to each of us. You know, each of us have a life that matters that much.

Dianne Burckhardt 23:17

And that's one of the things I was just talking with some of the people in my memoir writing group about, was that so many memoirs, they will mention bigger events that are going on at the time, like you know, the Cold War. And you can pick up history books that talk about the overall global effect of what was going on during the Cold War. But a book like this, whenever you get to see a snapshot of how it affected one person's life that was living at that time while this was all going on globally, you get to see a bit of history that will not be recorded in any textbooks in universities or grade schools or high schools, whatever. You get a snapshot of history that could otherwise be lost. And it gives a much more personal viewpoint of what life was actually like for individuals at that time. And I think those little snapshots are invaluable.

SPEAKER_01 24:11

Right. That was so well said. And I think that's beautiful. And it reminds me of, you know, I like history. And you can go study World War II, and you can read books about the generals and the battles and the bombs and whatever. But you know, then there's these journals that people kept. And I believe in the UK there was, and here I think in America too, there was government-supported writing. Like they asked people to write about it. And if you go read those things, like you said, it's this precious moment of like I'm talking about women's journals who had to live on rations and you know, have the coupons and all those things. You're looking at the snapshot of the war that's not told in those books. But without it, we would not have any sense of what it was really like to be there. You know, and that is so valuable. And that lends back to what you're saying, like for the memoir writers, like those stories matter. They are valuable. And when you share them with other people, they relate and then they look at their own stuff. And that's the value of memoirs. You know, not just the person who's writing it, but the person who reads it finds out something about themselves through your story.

Dianne Burckhardt 25:13

I have never been much of a memoir reader, but since I started doing the podcast, and people who have written memoirs have sent me their work, I have gotten to be very big on memoirs now. Right.

SPEAKER_01 25:25

Right. And you know, you think about because I've always liked biographies, and the biography of a famous person is always exciting because you can relate and you feel like you know that person. But the biography of a regular girl or guy, that's just as valuable because this and that goes back to the thematic point in this book, like every life matters, you know, because every life matters whether you were famous or not, because it's of value and it's of interest, and there's inspiration in it, and there's there's angst in it, and you see yourself through a different light through someone else's real human experience, which is messy and ugly and triumphant and tragic and beautiful all at the same time. And that makes us remember that, especially in this social media age, that all our lives matter. Like those experiences are profoundly important to the bigger world because they are.

Dianne Burckhardt 26:18

There was one question that was in your talking points on your one sheet that I'm really curious about. It says being a woman in upper middle class suburbia is as perilous as it is fortunate. What kind of perils are you specifically thinking about here?

SPEAKER_01 26:34

Well, I think the box was much tighter because I looked at my mother as a peer in the back in time part of the story and had always looked at her and thought, you know, she just lived the dream. You know, dad had a great job and we lived in a nice house and she didn't have to work. And then I watched her through the lens of this supposed time travel, and I'm like, wait a second, was this what she wanted? And what kind of choices did she have? And 1978 wasn't that long ago.

SPEAKER_02 27:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:01

And you know, when I did my research, I found out that, you know, I grew up in Texas and the neighboring state in Louisiana. Women couldn't even own property or have a credit card. And so, yes, they were very fortunate because there was this where you stayed home for the most part in certain pockets of America, you could be a stay-at-home mom and have that experience. Where now it's mostly both people working in a family. And I know that opens a whole nother can of worms. So I what I'm just saying, in the context of your question, though, you know, mom, what choices did mom have? Mom wanted to be a writer. You know, mom, mom had other aspirations that were completely shut down. She was expected to run this home at a certain level. She was expected to be so grateful for this situation she was in, but she was just shut down. And I saw that in the neighbor ladies when I wrote the party scenes too. You know, what did these ladies want to do? You know, and how frustrated were they because they weren't in the context of where they were living in the time they were living in, unless they were in an acceptable situation. They were not going to be somebody was going to be like, yeah, go be a professor and the internet wasn't there. You know, so those opportunities were shut down. And so I I think I saw in myself so many freedoms that I had that these forebearers did not have. And so I think what was perilous was it looked perfect, but it wasn't.

Dianne Burckhardt 28:16

That's one thing I'm telling my daughters, it's like, yeah, do you realize that in my lifetime in the United States that when I was young, women could not get a bank account on their own, they could not get a credit card, they could not sign for an apartment or a house. They had to have a man to sign for them and back them up on all of this stuff. Because everybody's always talking about it's like, oh yeah, back in like the 60s and 70s, marriages lasted longer. It's like, because women didn't have an option. Right.

SPEAKER_01 28:43

You couldn't get out if you got out and you were going to be left. Well, I guess you had to go get a job at minimum wage, but you couldn't even support your kids that way. And that's the thing. And you weren't as encouraged to go to college. It just wasn't the opportunities that even I had versus what my mother had. And I was born in 1968 and she was born in 1940. And the opportunities I've had in my career, she could have never pulled off being a freelance writer and a sports writer and the writer of several books and a speaker. She could have never done that. She could have never had that opportunity. Now, of course, I have a husband who's completely supportive of all my insanity. And she had a great guy she was married to. But she simply did not have the opportunities that I have as her daughter.

Dianne Burckhardt 29:27

Yeah. And I hope that that's one of the things that a book like this helps to spread that knowledge to young women who are growing up now, that they are very lucky for the opportunities that they have available to them as far as what kind of careers that they want to do. I mean, there's still so much that we need to do and so much that we need to work on, but it's still it is progressing in the right direction.

SPEAKER_01 29:52

No, it is, and I think looking back is so valuable. You know, I'm reading a book right now, and it's I can give you the name, but it's basically the story of it's a nonfiction book, but it totally reads like a fiction book. But her husband in 1860 has put her in this insane asylum, and it's called like social insanity. Like she did not go along with the program. Her husband was a preacher, and his church changed tack, and she disagreed with it. She got put in a mental asylum in Illinois because she did not agree with her husband, and she is trying to find her way back out of this, and she's a super intelligent woman. This is in 1860, and a bunch of these women in this asylum are in the same situation because their husband, all they had to do to get in there was their husband to sign and say they were insane. Yeah. In 1860. For me, who again was born a hundred years, 108 years later, you know, it gives me hope and it also makes me feel like I need to take advantage of the opportunities that people like this made sure I could have.

Dianne Burckhardt 30:51

I remember back about that time period that one of the criteria for having a woman committed to an insane asylum was actually reading books.

SPEAKER_01 30:59

Oh, yeah. Absolutely. You know, if someone was a zealous reader, that was absolutely a reason to get put into the insane asylum. I think there was whole wards where it was just people who had mental insanity, something that needed to be addressed, like now in a in a way with medication. But that wasn't even addressed. They were just left on their own, basically. But there was a whole ward of people who read too much, who were progressive thinkers, who thought out loud and talked about it, you know, who wrote, you know, they would take all their pens and paper away because they didn't want them to have that power. You know, it's like when the Bible got translated into different languages that took the church's power away because they couldn't tell them that's what it said. It was a it's a similar tact to me.

Dianne Burckhardt 31:40

Well, and that's why having books like this is just so important. We have to have those snapshots of what it was like for people at that time period.

SPEAKER_01 31:48

Yeah, well, what a great honor to have you say that, because this is you know my silly black back in time story. But I do agree with you, though. I think those snapshots are important, and I really appreciate you saying that.

Dianne Burckhardt 31:59

Now, for a moment, I do want to touch on your second book because the title of this one also cracks me up. Dear Dana, that time I went crazy and wrote all 580 of my Facebook friends a handwritten letter.

SPEAKER_01 32:12

Yeah. And that's basically the story. It's the longest subtitle. I thought it was gonna get mixed by the book people, but they let me keep it. But it's basically this story, it's chronicles, this incredible story that happened to me. Uh, this journey I went on where I reconnected with this girl I worked at the same summer camp I referenced earlier. I worked with her in like 1986 for six weeks, and we were both loud and thought we were hilarious. Then we just went and did life completely separately, like zero contact for almost 35 years.

SPEAKER_02 32:41

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_01 32:41

Yeah. One day I got on Facebook and I saw her on there and like, voila, I I friend her. You know, she accepts my friendship request because you don't really have to do anything. And then I, you know, spent a delightful seven minutes stalking her and find out that she has five kids, so she's overachieved and one son, he's the youngest, and he has cancer. And I'm like, wow, I mean, that's awful. You know, you don't even want to think about that. And so I follow along on this social media journey and I watch this kid at he's at St. Jude Children's Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, which means this is a serious battle. Yeah. He goes to her mission, I'm like, oh, ooh, that's better. And then he gets sick again. And then on a Monday morning, she posts this on a Sunday, like, he's sick again. We're going back to St. Jude, and you could tell it wasn't good. And I sat down at my desk that Monday morning. It was like literally a lightning bolt hit me in the head. I'm like, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna start like handwriting her and him, Dana and Parker, little notes and send them to the Ronald McDonald house where they're staying. And uh I hadn't written anyone a letter in like 25 years, that wasn't my thing. And I just felt like I had to do something, so I start writing them notes. And I again I hadn't had any contact. I didn't even like or comment on her post because I felt like that was disingenious because I'm really a stranger to these people. But it was like a little bit of craziness, and so I started writing them, and I clearly I didn't hear anything back. I wrote for probably 10 to 12 weeks, and then you know, unthinkably, the kid passes away at 15 years old, and then I'm like, what do I do? And I knew it had nothing to do with me, but I just couldn't leave her hanging, like I couldn't just stop the notes because the kid passed away. That again seemed like like even if she wasn't reading them, that seemed wrong. And so I like went to another level of crazy, and I was like, Well, I can't ask her for our address. I know she lives somewhere in Louisiana, but I don't know where because it's social media, and so I look up her husband and he's got a law practice. I'm like, oh, I'll just send the notes there. And I mean I I realized how crazy this all sounds, but I couldn't stop myself. So I just keep writing her for like four months, and the cards turned into longer letters, and I'm a writer. So I just started writing about my life because I felt like I should keep saying something. Then she writes me back this 10-page letter, handwritten letter, and she starts talking about her grief and her kids and stuff I could have never known about through social media. And at the end of the letter, she was like, you know what? I wasn't gonna say any of that. I was just gonna thank you for the letters, but I kind of feel better from doing it. And so me and this woman, this stranger, spend two years writing each other. That's it. No texts, no emails. We still don't interact on Facebook. We see each other on Facebook, we comment about Facebook in the letters, which is hilarious. And then it just created this free space where we became like really, really close. We're to the point where we were saying stuff like, uh, I've never told anybody this, but I know I can trust you.

SPEAKER_02 35:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:20

And she would talk about her grief, but she said, you know, if she felt like she was going to bring the room down at home, she would write to me. And nobody had to really say anything about what anybody was saying. You didn't know when she was reading or if she was reading it. So you didn't have to respond. It just created this free space that I was just enamored with. I was like, How did this happen? And I was like, this is one girl on this list of hundreds of people that I supposedly know to different degrees. So, like, what happens if I go on this wild ride? What what what would happen if I wrote all of these people a letter? And so that's what I did, Diane. I wrote all 600 of these people a handwritten letter, not thinking that I would ever finish. I bought stationery, I bought a journal, and I went bananagrams. And once I'd written about 30 letters, I was like, wait a second, this is gonna change my whole life. And so I went from that to writing a book about it, to becoming the letter writing lady. I run around and talk about it, about the power of non-intrusive, tactile communication and the just the amount of hope that has in it. Because the great thing about Dane and I, these pen pal letters, where I didn't know what she believed. I didn't know what how she voted. Yeah. I had no idea. I didn't even care about any of that. And that was kind of the context of all the letters I wrote. It just took those differences, and especially where we stand right now as a culture, and it just started to just to hack away at it because the relationship and the connection between two human beings ended up to be more important than that. And so this little human tool we have in our toolkits, like write me a two-blind note because it doesn't have to be a letter, ends up to be this powerful, like off-the-chain thing we can do. And the universe gave me this great story with 600 letters that I can talk about it in my little story.

Dianne Burckhardt 37:02

Oh my God, that is so incredible. I cannot even imagine getting so deep into something like that. That is a major undertaking.

SPEAKER_01 37:11

Yeah, and I really think part of the magic was it was almost like the first book. You know, I wrote it not thinking it was going to be some topic we could talk about on a bunch of different levels that was meaningful. And I wrote the letters only because I was like, you know what, what would happen if I did this? And it ended up just being this incredible story that I'm going to share for the rest of my life. And it I it was magical because it was life-changing to me, and I didn't mean for it to be.

Dianne Burckhardt 37:35

Who knew? Wow. Yeah. Sometimes little decisions that you make can have a huge impact on your entire life.

SPEAKER_01 37:42

But it's back to what you said, and I think this is where we align. But it's about, and it is about notes and letters, and that's all great, and I really believe in all that, but it's back to what you said. It's back to allowing yourself to go to a jump-off point and jump off of it. And that's the great part of the story is that we all have something inside of us that we want to do that's maybe a little crazy, you know, like, oh, what are people gonna say when I do this? Because I I felt that way. It's so many different letters. I was like, what are you doing? Like, even when I was writing her, I was like, Well, and I understand that it the letters were a good thing, but also like, what are you doing? Yeah, you know, but if we can just believe our own crap just long enough to take one step forward, maybe that's when the whole world changes.

Dianne Burckhardt 38:25

Oh yeah. Now seems like the perfect time to do our five quick questions that never turn out to be quick, but I just refuse to give up hope. And today we're having the 70s version. Are you ready? Ready to go, yeah. So question one What is your favorite song from the 1970s?

SPEAKER_01 38:45

Oh, well, I'm gonna, it's in the book, so I'm gonna use it afternoon delight, because I think that yeah, it was in, and I had the 45 of it, the record. But you know, it's a groovy song, but it's also wildly inappropriate, and I sang it as an eight-year-old, and I think that should be celebrated across America.

Dianne Burckhardt 39:03

I really hate to admit this, but one of the songs that I listened to the most when I was a child in the 70s was Muskrat Love. Oh, Muskrat love. What a great answer!

SPEAKER_01 39:13

And what does it even mean, Diane?

Dianne Burckhardt 39:16

Someone call in the lyrics police. Captain and Neil, I think my parents probably went to kill me with that album because I played it over and over and over.

SPEAKER_01 39:26

Oh, I'm gonna go listen to it when we're done talking today. That I'm writing it down right now. So thanks for that.

Dianne Burckhardt 39:34

So, question two What is a food that is very nostalgic for you that takes you back to your childhood?

SPEAKER_01 39:40

Well, mom used to do this thing with peas, like you know, green peas, like little English peas. And she used to do some kind of like white sauce, and then she would have chunks of cheddar cheese in there. I have no idea what was going on with that. I I still to this day am I I don't think I like it, but I don't know what context she would serve that to anyone ever. No, she never made those aspects, the jellos with the meat floating around in it, but yeah, that's as close as she came, but I'm just mesmerized. So if she ever listens to she's 85, she's still living, she will uh I'll get shut down somehow. Yeah.

Dianne Burckhardt 40:14

I still I've said this more than once on this show. Craft macaroni and cheese. I remember my grandmother making that for us when I was a kid. I can just picture her using oleo. Oh yeah. Oleo, wow. Yeah. And it's bad enough that it's like such a nostalgic comfort food for me. I have gotten my husband hooked on it and we actually order it by the case here in Germany. Oh, you have it shipped over, wow. Yeah, we buy like three cases a year, and that way we just kind of like spread it out through the whole year. Because there's only like 15 boxes in a case, so it's like we'll have it for lunch a lot because it's something quick and easy, and it is such a childhood memory for me. I just absolutely love having that here with us.

SPEAKER_01 40:56

That's beautiful. I mean, that was you know, America girl that you are living in a foreign country, that's great. And I it still tastes good in my opinion.

Dianne Burckhardt 41:03

Oh yeah. 100%. I'd have it right now. I'm so hooked on that. And just whenever I'm feeling like I'm missing being back in the US, yeah. I'd go have macarena cheese. That's it's beautiful, it really is. You ought to tell the craft people. Yeah, no kidding. Maybe they'll sponsor my podcast. Oh, that'd be great. Yeah. So question three What is your favorite TV show from the 70s? Oh, I'd have to go with the Love Boat. Oh, that's a good one. There were so many people on that.

SPEAKER_01 41:33

Eight is enough for the love boat. Oh, yeah, the love boat though. And still the theme. I'd love to have my head in one of those little circles at the beginning, you know, the with the songs and all the guest stars. Because there was everybody was on that show. Everybody passed through that boat. Yeah, you know, and that was such a luxury. That, you know, the thought of being on that boat to be on the love boat. I mean, that's just I mean, that's 10 out of 10. And then it's like everyone's in the 70s in those evening sitcoms, but a longer one, like a drama. But it was just so good. The outfits, everything.

Dianne Burckhardt 42:02

Yeah. Mine was Quincy. Oh, wow. I loved that show. I think that's part of the reason why I actually ended up getting a forensic criminology degree. Was I always I wanted to be a medical examiner, but oh my god, I loved that show.

SPEAKER_01 42:18

I love that show too. I bet we could stream it. You know, I've used tried to stream it again because I would watch it again. I I think it's on Hulu. Okay. That's great. That's a great answer.

Dianne Burckhardt 42:30

Question four. It is question four, right? I don't have these things numbered. I think so. What was your favorite toy from the 1970s? Oh boy. That's tough.

SPEAKER_01 42:44

There were some good toys. Uh I would have to go with I loved all the Fisher Price stuff, you know. And we had this Fisher Price town. I'm talking about the little people, the wooden little people. Oh, yeah. We had the cat the castle was probably my favorite one. You know, there was a dungeon because you were at the top of the castle and you could send the person into the dungeon. And then there was this hidden, like a staircase with this hidden thing behind it. And we always put, my brother and sister and I would always like tuck a couple Oreos in there. Because if you got real big trouble at our house, you got your dessert taken away from you. And that was always the pool proof. Like somebody had Oreos in there. They lost their their dessert privilege. And plus, that whole set of stuff was just so fun to get all the stuff out in the wooden people. And we had the Sesame Street and the we had the airplane in the barn, but there were certain things, you know, how your friends would have the other pieces you didn't have. Yeah. Like we we didn't have the airport, but we had the garage, you know, and you would go play if someone had the barn and you had the school. So I loved all those sets though. Do you remember Weebles? Oh yeah, Weebles wobble, but they don't fall down.

Dianne Burckhardt 43:50

Yes, exactly. Oh, I had those. And I still have my viewmaster projector. Oh. And that's such a step up from the Viewmaster itself. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:00

I mean the projector was like having a movie room, you know.

Dianne Burckhardt 44:04

Yeah. I mean, that was such a big deal. You know, my friends would come over and we would shoot it up on the wall. And I have a Viewmaster reel of when the Queen of England was actually crowned. Wow. Yeah. Oh, that's I'm writing that down too. That's great. That's one of those things that was so nostalgic for me. And I kept it ever since I was a kid. It went everywhere. It's still at my mother's house in Kansas right now, but that's one of the things that I'm bringing over the next trip back.

SPEAKER_01 44:33

Yeah. That's incredible. I forgot about the View Master Projector. That's a great answer. And then it makes me think of the Weebles tree house because that was the iconic piece. Yeah. That was made by like play school because everything else was the Fisher Price people, you know. That was like their answer to that. But it makes me think of that Sunshine family too. You know, like the the the alternate Barbies. The guy had the weird facial here, the sun the Sunshine Family dad. And it was all kind of like it was kind of like they were a little bit hippies, you know, like they were they they would have been eating organic food now if the sunshine family came back. They'd be in Costco, buying spinach, you know, being Whole Foods. That is so good.

Dianne Burckhardt 45:13

Now let's remind everybody who you are and where they can find your books.

SPEAKER_01 45:18

Right. Amy one of the daughters, funny girl and author and writer. And the best way to find out about myself is Amydaughters.com, my website. And I love it when people reach out to me with their 70s memories. And I do have my mailing address on there because as a letter writing advocate, if anybody wants to send me a note, I'll send them one back.

Dianne Burckhardt 45:37

Oh, nice. That has got to be fun getting letters from all over the place.

SPEAKER_01 45:42

Oh yeah. Again, that story shouldn't have ever happened. And now I spend a part of every morning in correspondence, like I'm from 1873. You know, I get my correspondence back out. You know, when I'm doing my correspondence, you know, my kids are all like, be quiet. She's writing a letter.

Dianne Burckhardt 45:58

That is so good. I cannot thank you enough. This has been absolutely so much fun talking to you today. I wish we could make this even longer. But this has been so much fun.

SPEAKER_01 46:10

Yeah, well, I just appreciate the opportunity, Diane. This is one of the best interviews I've ever done, and I just really appreciate it. I've enjoyed every second of it.

Dianne Burckhardt 46:18

Oh, thank you. And of course, everyone can find all of your information in the description of today's podcast and on our website at Burkhartbooks.com slash podcast. And you will also be in our year-in book buying guide that we're going to be dropping sometime in the middle of November. Awesome. So there you have it, folks. My interview with the incredible and funny Amy Weinland Daughters. Be sure to go check out her book, You Cannot Mess This Up. A true story that never happened. You will truly enjoy this, especially if you're another child of the 70s. And don't forget, while you're at it, check out her book, Dear Dana. That time I went crazy and wrote all 580 of my Facebook friends a handwritten letter. Now, I don't know if you guys were counting along, but if you noticed in our interview today, I kind of goofed and forgot to ask Amy question number five, which is of course, whenever somebody asks you for a recommendation for a book to read, who is the first author that you think of? We're putting all of these in our year-in book buying guide, but until I hear back from Amy about her answer to this question, we're just going to have to wait for the magazine to come out. I had hoped to be able to get a hold of her and get the answer so that I could add it in here because I didn't realize I missed question five until I was editing today's episode. Isn't that always the way it works? Now next week we have another special returning guest. We're going to be talking again with David J. Gibson. He is a botanist who wrote the book Planting Clues: How Plants Solve Crimes. He was in season two, and now we're going to be talking to him about his latest publication, Elite Memories, a dysotopian sci-fi novel where memory transfers between humans becomes the norm until something goes horribly wrong, and the privileged son of an authoritarian leader finds himself unexpectedly transferred into the body of a dog. Find out more about this when we talk to David next week. I think that's enough for today. I'm working very diligently on getting the holiday book buying guide finished, and hopefully it will be out in time next week for your holiday shopping spree. So keep watching our social media, and I will have more information on that next week after we talk to David J. Gibson about his book, Elite Memories. So that's enough for today, folks. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and be sure to go forth and be really happy.