EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Have you ever stopped to think about yourself and your story? If someone were to write your memoir what would it say? We all seek some level of authenticity but have trouble removing the labels and finding our whole story. Welcome to Dropping In with Diane Dewey. In this program we’ll explore diverse stories on identity to help determine what is truly yours. Now here is your host Diane Dewey.

Diane: Welcome to Dropping In everyone. Hope you’re doing well this morning. We are here today with Martina Reaves author of I’m Still Here published this week by She Writes Press. Congratulations and welcome Martina.

Martina: Thank you so much. It’s been a big week. This is a highlight to end the week.

Diane: I’m glad that you’re with us and I’m glad you could make time to be with us. If you hear a lot of little droplets that’s the rain coming down here in St. Petersburg Florida. You’re coming to us live from Berkeley, California. I am just so impressed with this book. I’m still here. You’ve written in it that there’s a rainbow out there somewhere. I think that’s true for how we feel today that beyond this pain and isolation and deprivation that we see and feel somewhere out there we know there’s a broader horizon, a future place where the situation resolves itself. We’re going to need to make some strong statements about our world and its disparities. For me the gift of your book is learning how to hear your own voice and what we might want to say when we hear it. I think that by reading the book people will also be able to understand how to hear their own voices. It’s quite an accomplishment.

I’m going to read your summary so that listeners are able to know your bio because unusually I think this is a great emerging. Your bio and your story are really one and the same which is a great commentary on how authentically you wrote this. I’ll just summarize. In 1969 when she was 20 Martina discovered San Francisco. She lived in a commune, married her street car driver and moved in with her husband or moved with her husband to Mendocino County, Ashland, Oregon and the Virgin Islands. Quite a sweep there. In 1980 Martina came out and found her life partner Tanya. Their son Cooper conceived by artificial insemination was born in 1986 during the early wave of lesbians having children. When Cooper was 19 the family looked up Cooper’s donor father and enfolded him and his wife into their family.

Meanwhile in 2008 Martina was diagnosed with tongue cancer. The memoir braids her cancer odyssey and her life story in a chronicle of hope, fear, family, friendship, perseverance and living with the terminal disease. Thankfully it wasn’t. Failing to die is one of Martina’s favorite accomplishments. Congratulations Martina. It’s just so lovely. I know that it’s not your only accomplishment however. You’re very accomplished and you’ve got this book to show for it. What are some of the other things you’re proud of personally, professionally?

Martina: Well I graduated from law school and became a family lawyer and fairly quickly realized that I felt terrible being in the middle of adversarial fights between people who used to love each other. In 1986 after my son was born I limited my practice to mediation which meant to me working with two people together in the same room in a gentle if possible way to do their divorce. At that time there weren’t very many mediators in the world and a lot of lawyers thought I was committing malpractice but it felt just right to me. I’m proud that I built a practice and had a really good career doing mediation. I’m proud of this book.

Diane: You have to be proud of this book. This book has so much clarity. It’s absolutely, it’s a stunning revelation the whole of it. I think that what you’re talking about with becoming a mediator and clearly it overlapped into this this lovely family that you’ve created with Tanya and Cooper but in the mediation there’s an integration I think that you write I learned that I could be myself as a mediator, that I could use the aspects of myself that I liked, empathy connection, problem solving. I no longer had to be a gladiator. You put down the warrior role and I think that this is something you talk about letting go of the adversarial. There’s enough to fight in life as it happens and you put down your sword at a certain point that I think it’s very reflective of your way of looking at the world in a very integrated sense.

You were worried about being a mediator. You were always concerned that being a lesbian would make you lose clients. I wonder if you had that experience or whether they embraced the role that you played.

Martina: When I was a family lawyer I worried a lot about being a lesbian but I was in practice with a woman who was highly established. I slid in under her good work and her good mentoring. It wasn’t so apparent to me that being a lesbian was a problem as a lawyer but I did worry when I got pregnant that people would not embrace that. Actually people didn’t.

Diane: She didn’t either, your business partner. She balked and sort of thought somehow you were supposed to be the very prosperous lesbian couple that didn’t have children in order to continue to prosper and be professionals. It was her agenda so we get that but clearly I think by listening to yourself you’re so candid in the book. You talk about all the parallel tracks, the worries that you have in your mind compared to what you really would like to be doing. It’s that I think, that braiding is such it’s so helpful to all of us to hear what your inner soundtrack was. I think that another thing that’s quite astounding about the book is that now that we’re in the midst of Covid 19 I found a lot of parallels. I’m sure everyone does but I’d like to for just today treat Covid 19 like you did your cancer and that is not to feed it too much energy.

The healing man says to you the way to eliminate cancer is not to fight it and not to focus on it but focus on living. Imagine yourself in 2021 healthy and vibrant. Don’t spend all your time talking to people about the cancer. I feel like we can all use these words. It also has to do with this dynamic that you’re talking about stopping being the warrior, the adversarial. I think that the amazing thing about it is that when we do succeed in these challenges what you end up with is an absence, an absence of sickness and the fact that you’re with us is extraordinary because I think I’m quoting it successfully you’re part of 0.1 percent of survivors of the particular…

Martina: Less than 1%.

Diane: Less than 1%. We are talking here to a true survivor. You have the tongue surgery. We’ll talk about it just a bit but also what’s important from it. You have the tongue surgery on Valentine’s Day in 2008. You and Tanya are writing notes to one another in the house following your surgery as you’re not able to speak. You’ve been patronized by the medical community and told to relax and that’s something that doesn’t come to you naturally. In I’m Still Here you write “but as I live these two weeks without the spoken word I realize that talking is highly overrated. There are far too many words that just fill space, unnecessary, unimportant words that don’t pierce the heart of things.” I just want to say thank you for that and you have continued to kind of strip down the layers in really understanding yourself. Do you feel as though you’ve understood yourself better even through the writing of the book?

Martina: Oh absolutely. I started writing just stories about my life in the beginning but when I was diagnosed with the cancer I wrote the cancer stories along with my life stories. Of course when you think you might die it is a time for reflection. Between the memoir and facing death I took a pretty deep dive into what my life meant. I think that the parallels are drawing to Covid 19 are really interesting. My son did that too. Not too many people have drawn the parallels but I hibernated a lot when I had cancer. I stayed home because my immune system was so weak that I couldn’t afford to get sick.

There were times when I would stay home all the time and not have company and get my exercise at eight o’clock at night when everybody had gotten off the street by walking around the neighborhood. It’s not so different in some ways than hibernating with cancer for me. I know what to do. I have my happy places in my house. I can sit on my back deck and I’m lucky. I live by a creek that has lots of trees. There’s a lot of nature and birds and flowers and I’m lucky that way. I can be home and still feel part of the world.

Diane: That’s lovely. I think as writers we are used to a certain degree of isolation so there’s also that layer of it. I looked at your photograph. Of course I wanted to see Cooper’s little cottage in the back but because you were photographed on your deck on pub day with your book in hand looking just serene and stunning and beautiful but I’m like looking through because Cooper lived in your backyard.

I’m going to also keep the analogy going because I also think the thread of Covid has given us the glimpse of it’s the great equalizer. We are all subject to this. It is not a denominational and it has created the possibility of a life sentence for us. Collectively I think you did an enormously deep dive and it really shows in this writing. I think we’re all kind of ruminating in that way of sorting out this from that, what means something, what doesn’t. I think you go into this here’s another part of this excerpt after the tongue surgery. “One morning I have a thought as I awaken. I’ve been biting my tongue so long it finally bit back. My mind floats to life-sized ceramic sculpture I once made of a woman’s face with her hand resting across her mouth cutting off her voice and to another wooden sculpture I carved with an inscription take seriously my own voice. Lying in bed I contemplate what it would mean not to bite my tongue, to speak my mind. Despite everything legal training, assertiveness training, feminism, therapy I’m still hardwired to be nice.”

This is just to me this is brilliant. It is resonant. It is applicable to everyone. Have we just been too nice in dealing with a lot of the disparities around us? If nice is peacekeeping and honesty is peacemaking then maybe we need to get into some more honesty. That’s your journey going towards it seems to me. I don’t want to put words in your mouth but it seems to me this that’s your journey.

Martina: Well I am trying to be authentic and part of coming to terms with my voice actually was also recognizing that I don’t get to just blurt out whatever’s true for me. I mean I think some people would hear me say that I was hardwired to be nice and they’d start laughing because I wasn’t really known to be a nice girl but the truth is I was pretty motivated by what other people thought and what other people were feeling and oftentimes bit my tongue. Sure I started speaking my voice but then I had to learn how to be skillful at it and more gentle and it came out naturally but that is part of the journey.

Diane: That is part of the journey and when it first comes out it these are thoughts they’ve been in there for a long time. It’s like David White says by the time you speak they’re very old thoughts. To be able to articulate them in the world means putting them in balance with other ears and calibrating but in a different way. I think that you also are you’re also in pursuit of calm in this book, in your story and in your journey because you are eliminating the frayed edges of this conflict situations. You aiming at a more Zen-like place and let’s face it as a woman growing up your mother was quite euphemistic. Everything was perfect and wonderful all the time. Women are not taught how to handle their anger or their dark thoughts or their shadow sides. We’re afraid of them. We’re just afraid.

Martina: I think that’s true. There was no vocabulary in my family for talking about feelings. I certainly had feelings. I would express them pretty and artfully a lot of the time.

Diane: You’re not inartful now. That’s for sure.

Martina: Thank you.

Diane: It didn’t come naturally that is for sure. It wasn’t encouraged.

Martina: No, it didn’t. It came out as rage a lot when I was a kid. It was so difficult not to be seen that I thought the only way you could get seen was to just take up some space. I think all that commotion I made just made things worse for me in my family. Although now I have a wonderful relationship with both my brothers.

Diane: Which is super cool. I think too now you were talking about rage. I mean who cannot identify with this and the idea of making a larger footprint because we had none or felt invisible. When we come back, we’re going to take a short break in a few seconds here but Martina you’re going to have to tell the story of how you had the sword when you were fighting with your ex with the foam sword. You are going to have to tell us that story okay because that’s all about this. We’re going to take a short break here. Martina Reaves author of I’m Still Here a triumph in itself but the book is as well. Don’t go away we’ll be right back.

Become our friend on Facebook. Post your thoughts about our shows and network on our timeline. Visit facebook.com/VoiceAmerica.

Has your manuscript languished because you can’t find the direction it wants to take or have you lost the motivation to finish and polish it for publication because it can be such a big formidable task? Let Diane Dewey help you resolve your writing issues. Diane’s manuscript coaching offers help with sticking points like the arc of your story and how to flesh it out, finding the inner story and what you want to say, developing your message revelations that become your reader’s takeaways, helping to rally the motivation to finish your project and what to do next. We can analyze, edit and advise you on publishing. Who are the next collaborators on your writing path? If you seek resolution to these and other questions please contact Diane Dewey author of the award-winning memoir Fixing the Fates. Find her at trunordmedia.com. That’s T-R-U-N-O-R-D.com or on her author’s page dianedewey.com. Diane can also be found through social media. Connect with her through the links on the show page.

Are you finding your frequency? It can be described as that space between failure and success. It’s the future of digital media. It’s finding your voice. It’s engaging topics, content and ideas. Jeff and Ryan discuss the digital media space and all of its aspects. It’s about making the mistakes, taking the chances, summoning the intestinal fortitude to step out of your comfort zone and discovering what you can accomplish when you decide to try, decide to learn, decide that you have something to say and find your frequency. Live Fridays at 12 noon Pacific Time, 3 PM Eastern Time on the Voice America Variety Channel.

Stimulating talk, it gets those synapses in the brains firing really fast all the time. The number one internet talk station where your opinion counts voiceamerica.com

You are listening to Dropping In with Diane Dewey. We’d love to hear from you if you have a question or comment about the show. Send us an email to ddewey@trunordmedia.com. That’s the letter ddewey@trunordmedia.com. Now back to Dropping In.

Diane: Welcome back everyone. We’re here with Martina Reaves, who has written a memoir that was published just this week by She Writes Press called I’m Still Here. It is a very exquisite journey toward authenticity and truth through many challenges. Right now we’re talking about letting go of aggression, conflict, how that doesn’t come easily and how even expression of honest conflict doesn’t come easily.

Martina, you were just about to talk to us about this very fun, funny I think it was one of the first revelations that you had. You’re at the therapist’s office with your ex but you’re still married. You’re trying to work things out. They’re trying to reduce all the hard edges here. The therapist apparently perceives what’s really going on and suggests that you two pick up foam swords, instruments that you’re going to duke it out with and what happens then.

Martina: Well it’s so much like a Woody Allen view of California. It’s kind of humorous. She asked us to pick up these swords. She wanted to see how we fought. I was in five six. My ex-husband was six four and we picked up these swords and I just go after him. I’m pounding him with this sword and stabbing him with it. Of course it doesn’t do any damage because it’s just foam. My perception of him is that he’s sort of standing up there, protecting his private parts and doing absolutely nothing. He looks like a wimp to me. She says stop and we sit back down in our chairs. She says so what do you think went on. I decided to let him speak because he always let me do the emotional work and I just sat there and he didn’t say anything and he didn’t say anything.

I said well I think I was really fighting with him and he was just standing there protecting himself not doing much. The therapist leaned forward and put her head about five inches from mine and she said you want to know what I saw? I said yes. I was totally terrified. She said you were absolutely ineffective and flailing. He had control the whole time. Then she turned to him and pummeled him with questions for about 45 minutes until the session was over. All this stuff came out about his control and his expectation that I’d act like a dutiful daughter and all that. Well it only took that one session.

Diane: Well it’s a beautiful thing that how we fight is who we are at that moment in time because you evolved from that point I think a big light bulb went on in your head about engagement and in engaging a person who is controlling. He certainly showed his true colors as being a person in control and a dominant force when he then proceeded to later out you to your own mother which I really almost had to put the book down and say wait a minute this guy was out of control. That was just that too, that was a bridge too far.

You saw him and by this time you could see I think in your mind’s eye now there’s starting to be an inner dialogue that’s maybe separate from the words coming out of your mouth but you’re starting to see him for who he is. You’re starting to get an inkling of yourself now because you also are you’re working and you’re acquainted with Diane. Diane is a co-worker and you have started to have some kind of a vicarious feeling or a longing you describe it as which occurs over time in a very organic way. I think the reader will start to just feel this as an incredibly natural kind of evolution.

Diane, I don’t want to give spoiler alerts but she does eventually, she does disappear from your life. I think that it’s incredibly, it’s significant, it’s symbolic that also you have written a braided memoir. This memoir is an extremely, it’s a complicated structure but it’s so emblematic of the way your mind was working and the way different strands of thought were coming together when you finally realized and acknowledged to yourself and did it occur around the time of Diane departing that you were attracted to women. I mean this must have been very revelatory for you.

Martina: Oh it was a shock. I was just clueless. I knew I had all these feelings but I didn’t have a word for them. It wasn’t until my husband said I think you’re in love with her that I actually realized that that is what was going on. I mean there was nothing sexual about it but I had a heart connection with her and a way of being with her that was so joyful and wonderful and connected and then she moved away. That was sort of the beginning of my awareness that I was definitely attracted to women but I learned very quickly that I’m also very monogamous. I loved my husband at that point. I just thought well if I weren’t with him I would be with women and that’s how I kind of put that to rest for a few more years.

Diane: Because you were still with him at that time.

Martina: Yes, I was still with him but at one point we decided we would try an open marriage which lasted about a month and was horrific for me. I had a brief relationship with Tanya whom I eventually later got together with but I could not be intimately connected to two people at the same time. It was wrenching. When Tanya left that brief affair, my husband and I said okay this is not, we’re not exactly Vita Sackville-West and Nigel Nicolson who had a long marriage in which they both have lovers.

Diane: They juggled.

Martina: I couldn’t do it.

Diane: I get that. It’s again a time when you wanted to somehow integrate. You couldn’t split yourself off. You couldn’t be two people at once. The relationship, the rapport that you had with Diane it had to have such a different feeling. It had to reside in you in such a different place than where you were with your husband so there was that contrast. Then there was the affair with Tanya which practically split you apart for the schizophrenia and intimacy for you belongs to one. I think that those are huge life lessons right there.

I know it’s painful to go through it but you really went through like a kind of a crucible for yourself. I wondered now that you’re back to living this, you did reconnect with Tanya. For once you’re an author who really describes people well. I really feel as though I know but for better maybe I do or maybe I don’t but I think I do. You describe Tanya so well. She’s a doer. She’s kind of enthusiastic. You’re kind of worrier. You’ve got the second voice always coming in. she’s proceeding. You’ve got the rat infestation in the house when you do move in together. I mean she’s setting the traps and you’re fretting about it. To me you become almost like one human being if you melded the two of you together. it’s really just it’s such a fantastic dynamic but I really do think okay so you do meet Tanya and you have met Tanya through work.

You’re working for a guy Jerry. He’s into EST, Erhard Seminars Training. This promotes the idea that we create our own destiny. Now partially this is true but not in a society where everyone doesn’t have the same equal playing field. I mean there are systemic problems. This is another revelation. You’re realizing this together with Tanya. Is that part of the dialogue you were having together?

Martina: Well part of our connection in in the beginning was that both of us could not stand EST and everybody else in the office had gone to EST. This idea that well they even got to the point where they could end world hunger simply by visualizing it.

Diane: Oh dear.

Martina: Now I’m the kind of person who thinks you end world hunger by redistributing things and you go to food things and you do all kinds of things to end world hunger but EST you just thought about it and visualized it and they believed they were going to end world hunger that way. It was really hard to work around for us. We sneak off from the office. This is well before we even had an inkling that we would be together. We were just really good friends. We’d go down the street and get cappuccinos and just get away from them.

Diane: You had to but I mean it’s also something that happens unfortunately with cancer survivors. There’s some sort of implication I think you broached this. There’s what were you thinking about or that there’s some self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s kind of related to this EST crap where you’ve created this destiny mentally. You’ve had that experience and you had to peel away from people who were making this kind of noise. You also get to the point where you’re with Tanya and you’ve actually gone to therapy.

I think this is also really healthy understanding how your dynamic works. Here’s what the therapist says and you’re coping about with your worrier nature and you’re also coping with your cancer diagnosis. The therapist says there’s no future. Only now. The therapist says to Tanya and you that’s how I cope and it works sometimes. You think about this for a moment. You write “Until now I haven’t detected any Buddhist leadings. This is new. If there’s just now I say it’s much harder to worry and every time I begin to worry
I take a breath and notice what’s around me and I’m calm at least for the moment. I practice living in limbo not knowing what’s next, living day by day, moment by moment looking for joy wherever I can find it. I suddenly remember a book about cancer that I was interviewed for in 1994 Dancing in Limbo: Making Sense of Life After Cancer but this limbo dance is really the only dance there is.” I just have to say how resonant is that for today we are in limbo again.

Martina: Actually that’s I think totally true. I think we don’t have a clue how long this will last. I will probably be hibernating much longer than our present thinks I should for sure because my immune system is questionable. I’m going to be very careful so it is. You just do one day at a time.

Diane: Absolutely and that’s all we’ve got.

Martina: We don’t plan vacations. You don’t imagine what you’re doing next year. You just appreciate what you have in front of you that day.

Diane: I mean that realization it’s really worth something and it’s completely resonant. I think that now it’s put it all in complete perspective that that really we only have this moment. Clearly you do have to protect yourself and how do we take care of ourselves. There’s a lot of centering in this book. There’s a lot of coming to ground in this book. I know that you didn’t write it as a self-help but it in a way that we listen to you going through your experience and we are the better for it.

I think that you also get to the point where you and Tanya you’ve now decided that you will get pregnant through artificial insemination. You’ve got Cooper on the way. I feel as though there’s this immense kind of cathartic release with Cooper because part of one of the one of the chapters about him is called nothing can steal your joy. That in and of itself there’s lots of people kind of suction energies out there that do want to steal joy. Focusing on what was happening to you with this child growing inside of you. We want to hear about Cooper and his journey. You also wrote a little bit about his journey in this book.

When we come back, we’ve got another break coming up. They’re so irritating sometimes when you’re deep in conversation but we want to hear about Cooper. How some of the things that he experienced mirrored or were very different in some ways than your journey with Tanya but in the end he provided another kind of voice for you, a voice of talking with the public about yourselves that you became, you outed yourself with Cooper on the stage and you talked about yourself as a family. This is also fascinating so we look forward to coming back with Martina Reaves, author of I’m Still Here. You can find her at her website martinareaves.com and Martina, you’re going to tease us too with your new blog Ebb and Flow which I see snippets of on your website. Totally exciting. You’ll have to give us clues on that when we come back okay?

Martina: Okay.

Diane: Great. Don’t go away. We’ll be back with Martina Reaves.

Voice America is on your favorite smart speaker. If you have Alexa or Google Home go ahead and give us a try. Hey Alexa play Finding Your Frequency Podcast on TuneIn.

Has your manuscript languished because you can’t find the direction it wants to take or have you lost the motivation to finish and polish it for publication because it can be such a big formidable task? Let Diane Dewey help you resolve your writing issues. Diane’s manuscript coaching offers help with sticking points like the arc of your story and how to flesh it out, finding the inner story and what you want to say, developing your message revelations that become your reader’s takeaways, helping to rally the motivation to finish your project and what to do next. We can analyze, edit and advise you on publishing. Who are the next collaborators on your writing path? If you seek resolution to these and other questions please contact Diane Dewey author of the award-winning memoir Fixing the Fates. Find her at trunordmedia.com. That’s T-R-U-N-O-R-D.com or on her author’s page dianedewey.com. Diane can also be found through social media. Connect with her through the links on the show page.

Are you finding your frequency? It can be described as that space between failure and success. It’s the future of digital media. It’s finding your voice. It’s engaging topics, content and ideas. Jeff and Ryan discuss the digital media space and all of its aspects. It’s about making the mistakes, taking the chances, summoning the intestinal fortitude to step out of your comfort zone and discovering what you can accomplish when you decide to try, decide to learn, decide that you have something to say and find your frequency. Live Fridays at 12 noon Pacific Time, 3 PM Eastern Time on the Voice America Variety Channel.

Streaming live the leader in internet talk radio voiceamerica.com.

You are listening to Dropping In with Diane Dewey. We’d love to hear from you if you have a question or comment about the show. Send us an email to ddewey@trunordmedia.com. That’s the letter ddewey@trunordmedia.com. Now back to Dropping In.

Diane: Welcome back everyone. We’re here with Martina Reaves having an intimate and enjoyable conversation. We’ve gotten to the next threshold which is the conception of Tanya and Martina’s son Cooper by means of artificial insemination. You make a kind of pact with one another. Describe your agreement with the idea of the sperm donor and his role in your life. How did you set it up for yourselves?

Martina: We thought a lot about it because the law was in flux at that time. Of course I did family law and I saw all the things that could go wrong. We thought about whether we wanted a donor we knew and for a variety of reasons we decided not to do that partly because AIDS was just beginning to be a serious problem and partly because the men we knew who weren’t gay had girlfriends who were not keen on them being donors which I think was smart actually in hindsight. We eventually decided to have an anonymous donor but it was important to us that our child be able to look up the donor when he was 18.

Diane: This I think is brilliant. I mean I knew enough of that kids having a missing parent from my work that I felt that that was critical. First we went to just our local sperm bank which was just a horrifying experience with all these sweet, young, perky heterosexual couples and then the two of us in our 30s. It was very unpleasant. They were not kind. The staff was not kind.

Then we heard about a woman named Sharon Mills who was starting a lesbian, a sperm bank for lesbians in San Francisco. We went there and it was just like the polar opposite. She was marvelous. Her staff was warm and welcoming. We picked our top four or three donors based on these long bios that we had. We knew a lot about them. We took the top three to the secretary and said okay, these are our top three choices. Who would you choose?

Diane: It’s like the bachelor.

Martina: We knew that the secretaries always know everything.

Diane: Yes, they do.

Martina: They know everything and they’re so under appreciated. I knew she met all these men and hung out with them in the waiting room and dealt with them and interviewed them and helped run the office. She pointed immediately, without hesitation. We reread his bio and it was just so sweet about just wanting to help people who want to have kids be able to have kids. We picked him.

Diane: It’s great. I mean I think that’s so wise that you talk to the person who’s the repository of all the impressions of these people coming in through the office that there was finally a place that was welcoming to lesbian couples. I mean there’s a lot of research that’s been done specifically about parenting by lesbian and gay couples and part of it is what you’re describing about yourselves. There’s so much intentionality that the quality of parenting is like a whole lot better. I mean one of the best kept secrets but it’s true.

The other thing I thought that was very interesting about your boundary making was that at 18 your child would be able to locate the sperm donor but up until that point it was going to be you and Tanya. You were the parents and you were going to do the parenting so you didn’t wish to have outside interference in that. You guided your own roles very specifically that way. I think that was equally brilliant that you allowed this solidification of yourselves as a family and it worked.

Cooper, he seems utterly charming and maybe a little bit like the two of you like also accomplished. He wants to get his job at the water conservancy. He’s very concerned about being perfect and getting it right. You have this completely sweet family and in the meantime all of this is happening with you. We can’t forget there’s this sermon drawing of the diagnosis that you’ve had but you endure and you persevere as a family.

Here’s a quote. You finally decide on legitimizing yourselves as you say the law is evaporating and materializing in different ways each day practically but finally there’s a way legally where you can be declared a family. Tanya can become a legal parent of Cooper. You go to the judge. You say no matter how wonderful things are lurking in the psychological landscape is a tiny sense that you don’t truly belong. I think this sense of belonging is palpable. You talk a lot about belonging in the book and ways in which you sought to belong.

Just in case any listener out there thinks that this story of artificial insemination, lesbian couples in a time when it was really very much the pioneering thing to do. There’s no humor in this with the cancer. There is tons of humor in this book. You write you go to the camp, the family camp for lesbian and gay families and their friends. You started going to it in 1990 when Cooper was four years old so that he’d see other families that looked like yours. It wasn’t until cooper was 13 that he realized what our camp was about. He said have you ever noticed that there’s a lot of lesbians at this camp. This is great.

Martina: Oh my God all those years of sleeping on the tent, on the floor and the dust and the heat and he didn’t even know what it was about.

Diane: It’s kind of great though right? He’s looking at the important stuff. What you did together? How you spent your day? I mean come on. This is the important stuff. You do continue to gain your voice. You and Tanya, I mean inevitably that Cooper does grow up. He does get his job. You now are faced with your relationship with Tanya and being with one another again. You are asking yourself what to do with yourself and you have now started to devote yourself to writing. This is another signal that your voice is continuing to come through. Would you agree with that and that agree that it’s also essential in your personal relationship to not keep stuff to yourself, that you found this acceptance of yourself and one another through communicating and finding your voice. Has that been part of the evolution and the dynamic of your relationship?

Martina: Well I think one of the things that we got from going through this cancer experience was a period of time as I was getting well we didn’t know if it would come back but we got some really excellent therapy because by then we’ve been together like over 30 years. We had developed a few little habits that were not useful. We had this great therapist who worked with us and we kind of unjoined ourselves from being joined at the hip which we had been all the way through the cancer thing. I mean Tanya just was by my side the whole time and in many ways had to be.

We had to then step back from each other and say we’re two separate people. We do different things and incorporate our own interests into our own lives. I think that we’re happier now than we’ve ever been the whole time we’ve been together. I mean we’ve been pretty happy together most of the time we’ve been together but right now we’re really content. I think it’s because we recognize how different we are from each other. It’s okay. You go dance and get wild and crazy and I will write. We each have something we’re passionate about.

Diane: Yes and that was critical all along the way but then to recognize it again you don’t have to be in unison. I think that’s huge recognition for all of us. I know everyone’s wondering so let’s plunge ahead with the minutes that we have left here. Cooper did meet his biological father Stephen. The secretary was right. You feel as though he was he was so full of all the qualities that you sought after. You were quite taken aback at the mental, physical and emotional similarities to Cooper.

Maybe this is an offshoot of behaviorism but you express very candidly you’re kind of shocked that there was a lot of genetic unspooling that had been going on. Cooper had some learning disability issues so did his father. There was a DNA strand but you write but what I will remember is how connected I feel to Stephen, the biological father as if he’d been part of the family all along. Our intention to have our family be Tanya, me and Cooper was already a thing of the past. You have this coming together, this connection beyond predefinitions and tensions or roles and Cooper, you say is more grounded and calmer than ever. In a way you all came full circle.

Martina: Meeting Stephen and his wife who is one of the brightest lights in the universe. She is so loving. It was a revelation and one of the most wonderful experiences of my life. It’s like my heart was bursting. There are no words for it. They’re all trite. When I saw them standing next to each other the first time I couldn’t believe it. They looked alike. When they talked they talked alike. I had this obvious revelation that genetics are more important than, well at least as important as the way you’re raised and who you’re raised by right. It was astounding.

Diane: It is astounding and it resonates um very much so with me as well. You write about imagining yourself when you were afflicted with cancer. “I imagine arising from the chair and walking forward to the vision I have of myself in 2021. I merge with her and light emanates from me. Is it wishful thinking or thoughtful wishing?” I’d really like to end our conversation Martina on that because we need to have these kinds of visualizations. I hope that everyone visualizes ourselves post-pandemic and starts to really focus on both what’s right in front of us and what can be. Thank you so much Martina Reaves. It’s been a complete joy. Follow her on Facebook, Instagram luckymartina and her blogs, excerpts from her new book Ebb and Flow or on martinareaves.com. The book is I’m Still Here. Thank you Martina.

Martina: Thank you so much. I’ve loved talking to you.

Diane: Be well everyone.

Thank you so much for dropping in. please join Diane Dewey again next Friday at 8 AM Pacific Time and 11 AM Eastern Time on the Voice America Variety Channel. We’ll see you then.