Our Mother's Day Read: TV and Comic Book writer Amanda Deibert
We go deep into what it feels like to live longer than your mom and the self-induced pressure of creating memories for your child.
Good morning, everyone.
Today’s Mother’s Day issue focuses on my conversation with TV and comic book writer Amanda Deibert, which was an absolute highlight of my week. She is currently writing for the animated series He-Man and The Masters Of The Universe for Netflix as well as Face to Face with Becky G on Facebook Watch, and her comic book writing includes a story in the New York Times #1 Bestseller Love is Love, multiple DC Super Hero Girls graphic novels, and Serving Up Justice featuring Serena Williams and Wonder Woman.
Amanda is also a member of the Dead Mom Club: When she was 14, her mom, Diane, died from melanoma at age 35.
If you feel like you want to read and feel seen today, I hope you head over to the Modern Loss website for a huge variety of Mother’s Day-related content. If you feel like digital interactions are way too much today, I hope you stay #off social media until tomorrow. If you made elaborate plans and woke up wanting to bag them all and watch WeCrashed instead, I hope you do that. I shared some more advice with NPR’s Life Kit this weekend. Whatever you do, just let the day be the day. Monday is close.
— Rebecca Soffer
Amanda Deibert on growing up too quickly, mothering without her own mom, and the surprising power of strawberries
REBECCA SOFFER: You had to grow up really quickly.
AMANDA DEIBERT: Yes. I remember being in middle school and one day, my friends were trying to talk about crushes and stuff and then I ended up in a conversation with my teachers about what we were all going to make for dinner that night. That conversation felt more correct, but I was 12 or 13. That's when I really realized the experience I was having was not the same as my peers.
SOFFER: Right. You weren't talking about Tiger Beat. Well, maybe you were. Did I just age myself?
DEIBERT: It was Jonathan Taylor Thomas that everyone was talking about and I didn't realize I was a lesbian yet.
SOFFER: When did you realize you were a lesbian? What age?
DEIBERT: I was a teenager.
SOFFER: So your mom was dead already. How was that for you?
DEIBERT: I never got to come out to her. She has no idea about any...I mean, it's all the things that you mourn. When you lose a parent young, the grieving process becomes kind of this: There's the grieving process that happens at the time but then there are the milestone grieving process. I mean, my mom's been gone for 25 years so I'm old hat at this in a lot of ways in that, "Oh, my mom never even knew I was a lesbian." And so, I don't know what that would've looked for our relationship and how that would've even changed her initial reaction versus how that might have changed over time even.
SOFFER: How do you envision that might have gone?
DEIBERT: Because she was a very conservative, very religious woman in Central Florida, I assume it wouldn't have gone well initially. But I also know people grow and change and I have this amazing daughter and she would've loved to be a grandmother. That's another thing. My kids, my sister's kids, all the grandchildren, she never got to meet, our weddings that she didn't get to attend that. And I found that becoming a mother caused me to grieve in a new way.
SOFFER: What’s your experience of being a mother like as it connects to your mom?
DEIBERT: Having Vivian, being a mother myself, seeing things from this side made me grieve my mom for her, grieve what she lost, grieve what she lost as a mother by dying so young by leaving behind three little girls. I had that experience again when I turned 35 [the age she died] and then really, when I turned 36. Now, I'm the older woman in photos. I'm the woman who's had more life experience, who is the wiser older woman. I've lived more life than my mom ever got to and that's only going to continue, hopefully. Now it’s not, "What would my mom do in this situation?" Because now, I have even more life perspective than she ever did.
SOFFER: It’s amazing as how time goes on, the longing is still there, and the new layers of grief keep revealing themselves. It’s all very nuanced.
DEIBERT: It really is. I remember I had this glimpse of that without really understanding it. The day my mother died – she died in our family living room – I happened to look at this calendar on our refrigerator, where my best friend had written all the birthdays of my family and her family on it. I saw that my mom's birthday was in 10 days and that she wouldn't hit it.
Suddenly, I just had this moment – and I mean I was 14, so I couldn't completely grasp it, but I kind of did. It was that moment where I suddenly realized the infinite amount of time in front of me: "Oh, she's going to miss this birthday and every birthday and my birthday and my sister's birthdays and literally every important date for the rest of eternity." This is the first moment. This is the first hour of…
SOFFER: …forever.
DEIBERT: Yes. Of never again, of she's going to miss everything from every hour, and I couldn't breathe. Just for a minute, I grasped the magnitude. In a way, almost of how I would feel now, of like, "Oh, well now I've lived so much more life without a mother than I ever had with a mother."
SOFFER: Do you think that growing up quickly impacted how you are a parent?
DEIBERT: I have this idea of I hope I get to be around and see her whole life and I hope that we get to be there for her. And I think I go hard in trying to make sure that we have good memories for her just in case.
It’s always in the back of my head where I'm like Got to have good birthday parties. Got to do this. If she's like, "Mommy, will you play with me?" I'm like, Yes, I will because if I'm gone by the time you're 14, I want to make sure that you have this solid memory. because I, even as the older sibling, I have a lot more memories of our mother than my sisters do. I think that influences the way that I mother a lot. In some ways, it probably makes me a better and more prepared mother. My poor sisters got my practice run, my mistakes. I also think a part of me will feel that way until she gets older than 14, like this idea of I want her to have me longer than I had my mom.
SOFFER: What about other grandparents?
DEIBERT: I never knew my father. He passed away before I got to meet him. My wife's father also passed away before we ever got together. So the kid has one living grandparent between us. I feel this pressure for her to do stuff with Cat's mom because I'm like, "You have one grandma, we got to make grandma memories because this is all you've got."
SOFFER: Poor grandma. She has to go to all the things. Is she exhausted?
DEIBERT: She lives out of state. So fortunately, I think for her, she gets it in spurts and the expectation isn't too intense. Her husband is a good grandfather as well, but there's a lot of pressure on her.
SOFFER: Ok, let’s talk about Twitter. You’re such a great presence on there, posting specific, thought-provoking prompts and asking people to share their stories. Why did you start doing that?
DEIBERT: I started in 2016 and you may remember that 2016 was a fairly volatile time on Twitter as well.
SOFFER: I mean, what ever could you be referring to.
DEIBERT: (Laughs.) Exactly. Everything was so scary and toxic and just volatile, I wondered if I could trick people into thinking about the things we are grateful for, that we are doing right, that have been meaningful and lovely, and kind of give a respite. So I started asking questions, like you said, very specifically wording them in a way so that to answer it you do have to kind of really think about it and they generally have kind of a, not toxic positivity like everything's okay because bad things happen and they are shitty and we should be able to say that bad things are shitty, but it's about going like, "When you were going through something that was horrible, who showed up for you?"
SOFFER: What do you think drives someone to be like, "Screw it, I'll just put it all out there” on a very public platform?
DEIBERT: I think it's sometimes easier to open up to strangers than it is with people you know. People want to be asked, and people rarely ask. So, when you have somebody specifically asking a question, they can feel like somebody actually cares, and like their story didn't just go out into the ether. I try to respond to everyone, which is hard when it goes viral and there are thousands of responses. Everybody does have a story to tell, and I think few of us actually get asked for the story. That’s why what you're doing with Modern Loss is important. It's the same kind of thing, pretty much exactly.
SOFFER: That’s really nice of you to say. You create community and you create so many other things as well, like comic books and graphic novels and TV shows. Have grief and loss has shaped who you are as an artist and a creator?
DEIBERT: Completely. I think it helps me tap into empathy a lot and what characters have gone through. I mean, I think it shows up in a lot of things. And then because I end up working on a lot of superhero IPs, almost everybody ends up an orphan in superhero and cartoon stories…
SOFFER: Yes, why are there so many orphans?? I mean, I am one, so I'm in great company with Marvel, Broadway, and basically every Disney movie. That's where I feel the most seen and I feel like I, too, deserve a superpower.
DEIBERT: The first time I got to write for DC Comics was because I’d done a comedy video online making fun of myself for being an orphan but where I slowly morphed into Batman. It went around the DC offices, then one of the editors asked me if I'd like to write a Wonder Woman comic. So being an orphan did kind of, in a very real way, get me into my comic book writing career.
SOFFER: Well, should be at least one fringe benefit to having two dead parents. Last question, which I everybody: What was the best thing someone did in the relative aftermath of your mom's death?
DEIBERT: On the month anniversary of my mom's death, I was in eighth grade and hadn’t said anything to anybody at school. I was in English class and my science teacher came to the door and took me out of the classroom. Then she walked me across the street to a lake because we were in Central Florida so there are lakes everywhere…
SOFFER: Plus alligators.
DEIBERT: And alligators, yeah. So, it was an alligator-filled lake. We sat on a picnic table and she pulled out a carton of strawberries and said, "I just wanted you to know somebody remembered it's the one month anniversary of your mother's death." Then we just sat and ate strawberries and I skipped English class that day. That is still probably one of just my favorite sweet memories in my life because I hadn’t said a word about it to anyone, and it just meant so much.
Interview has been edited for clarity and length.
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