Tembi Locke on "Someday, Now," Legacy, and the Courage to Begin Again.

In this landmark 100th episode of At the Podium, Patrick Huey sits down with Tembi Locke , New York Times bestselling author, actor, and producer, for a deeply personal conversation about love, loss, legacy, and what it takes to begin again.

Following the success of her acclaimed memoir and Netflix series From Scratch, Tembi returns with her new memoir Someday, Now—an intimate, audio-first work that explores midlife, remarriage, motherhood, and the quiet ache of letting a child step into her own future. Returning once more to Sicily, this time with her new husband and her daughter, Tembi reflects on grief that has changed shape, the courage required to integrate past and present, and the possibility of renewal after profound loss.

Together, Patrick and Tembi discuss the nature of time, the emotional terrain of the empty nest, blended family dynamics, and what it means to live fully inside change. It’s a conversation about presence over prediction, and about the legacies we build not only through what we leave behind, but through what we carry forward.

This episode is a reflection on becoming—and a reminder that sometimes the bravest thing we can do is stay with the questions.

👍 Like and Share
📝 Subscribe
💬 Review below to support the channel

At the Podium on IG
Patrick on IG

For more information contact Patrick at patrick@patrickhueyleadership.com

Transcript

Patrick: 0:00

So, what I've been doing this season is setting intentions with the person that I'm filming with, because I think it's a great that we hold together. Um, and I just want to make space for Sato to be here or Robert to be here, or some of them be here in this conversation. Because that's who we're talking about. So that's the intention, just to hold space for them to be present in this conversation because they have generously given up their lives to be a part of this process.

Tembi: 0:33

Yeah, yeah.

Patrick: 0:35

Tem Block is a writer, entrepreneur, and thought leader in creativity and resilience. She is an actor, screenwriter, television producer, and New York Times best-selling author with a passion for connecting with audiences both on the page and on the screen. You may know her from her memoir from scratch, a memoir of love, Sicily, and finding home. It was Arisa's book club pick that was later adapted into the hit Netflix series that she co-created and executive produced with Hello Sunshine. Or you may know her from her on-screen work, where she has appeared in more than 60 television and film projects, including a recurring role on Netflix Never Have I Ever. In her newest memoir, Someday Now, Tembi turns her attention to a different kind of life threshold: midlife, remarriage, motherhood, and the quiet ache of letting her child step into her own future. Returning to the backdrop of Sicily once again, Tembi explores what it means to stand inside change, to hold the past with reverence, while learning how to live fully in the present. Someday Now asks a tender and essential question: how do we let go while still holding on? And what does it mean to come home, not just to a place, but to ourselves when the future and who that self is are still constantly unfolding? This is Athapodium, and I'm Patrick Cuey. Today we're talking about love, loss, reinvention, and the courage to live in the present moment with Tem Block. But before we begin, make sure you like, subscribe, and comment below to support my channel. This conversation also marks a milestone for this show. This is my 100th episode about the podium, and there felt like no more fitting voice to stand here in this moment with me than Tembi's. So, Tembi, welcome back to At the Podium.

Tembi: 2:56

This is the centennial episode.

Patrick: 2:59

It's been one.

Tembi: 3:00

Kudos to you. Uh, let's just stop for a moment and acknowledge what does it really mean to have 100 deep dive conversations to curate, produce, develop, execute, deliver, and share 100 times.

Patrick: 3:20

100.

Tembi: 3:22

That is amazing. And I'm honored to be here. Um, I'm honored to be here. I'm just honored to be here.

Patrick: 3:29

Well, thank you. I'm glad to have you. Um, because you know, we go back. We go back before, before all of it.

Tembi: 3:40

You know, people call COVID the before times. Well, what is the before, the before, the before? Like now, somewhere between when Moses came down with the tablets and COVID. That's where we are. We're somewhere in that timeline.

Patrick: 3:52

In that timeline, like literally a new epoch. Okay, so let's get into it. I read the book, um, and I have a lot of questions for you about the book, some process-oriented and some more thematic-oriented. But I want to start with two quotes, which I'm gonna pull up here. One that you wrote, one is a poem. The one that you wrote comes from the book itself, and you say, these roads evoked history. We were here to continue that connection. We meaning Robert, Zoela, and yourself. I was here to hopefully refashion and remake myself once again into what I didn't yet know. Still, I was excited to reconnect to joy and possibility. I was ready to walk into the past if it carried the potential of meeting a beautiful future. This place, I was hoping, just might show me the beauty of yet another second first. And then you reference one of my favorite poems and poets. It's probably, I think it's the first poetry book that I ever got, honestly, Khalil Gabron, the prophet. And he writes, Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of life's longing for itself. They come through you, but not from you. And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love, but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies, but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

Tembi: 5:52

Yes, uh, yes. Thank you for bringing that forward, and thank you for connecting those two. Well, first of all, anytime you bring Cobron into the discussion, it just elevates the discussion. So thank you for that. But I think that the connective tissue between what I was writing about, about the journey to Sicily and refashioning myself and trying to step into the past in order to have the possibility of a beautiful future. And then his quote, they both hang to me on a kind of a coat hanger, right? Of um, so much of life is unknown to us and can't be known to us. Even parts of ourselves and sometimes parts of our own history are opaque to us, and definitely the future is completely opaque. And just as though we can't fully know our children, we certainly don't possess them. To some degree we are not possessive of so many parts of life.

Patrick: 7:00

Any of it. Let's just be real.

Tembi: 7:04

I mean, you know. So that kind of hanging out in the unknown, that the the pulse, the energetic pulse behind the the quotes that you shared, I think are at the core of the book. You know, it's kind of like I was on a kind of um I I I think I I described it to someone who was like, well, uh uh asking about the book. I said it's it's really like an it's like an audio poem to the unknown.

Patrick: 7:30

Yeah. Yeah.

Tembi: 7:31

It's like an ode.

Patrick: 7:34

I think also what struck me about the Gabron piece in particular, in reflection and refraction of the story of Someday Now, in is that there is an idea that you address in the book of the empty nest syndrome, right? And there is the idea of motherhood and legacy and what we pass on. And what I love about the book and the poem is that you and Sato literally adopted Zoella. And there's this sense in the story and the poem that the parenthood moment is not about birth canal. It's about creating a space for another human being to dwell in the house of tomorrow and creating the circumstances for her or him to do that. And it just seems like it's a really important message for a time that is so fraught with what it means to be a parent. I mean, we read a moment ago, we were talking about cat ladies, right? So I just I think Well, yeah.

Tembi: 8:47

I mean, and what it means to care for children and to nurture the tomorrow. Right. In many ways, in your own life and in the life of another, whether you, as you say, you know the child comes literally and physiologically through you. But to parent a child over the arc of their, you know, infancy to the time that they essentially leave the nest is to birth their becoming. Right? Because you're there for it every day, day in, day out. And so um I do think you're right. And I love to hang out in nuance and in subtlety and in the gray, and inviting us to think and feel in big ways. And I hope that the book is a thought starter and a conversation starter around that. Yeah. You know, there are people who are reparenting themselves because they have arrived at an age where they realize there were aspects of their younger selves that were not cared for, and there's no adult out there to do that for work for them, and they invite to do it themselves. So I don't know, you know, I may be going off on a tangent, but that is just some of what, you know, this idea of parenting, I think, is a really rich and expansive conversation to have. And it has absolutely not defined or limited to a mother and a father and a stork.

Patrick: 10:33

Yeah. You gotta love a stork. You gotta love a stork. Um, okay, so I want to talk about a little bit about the structure of the book. When we first encounter Tembi in from scratch, you're driving alone, you're on a road in Ali Manusa, and you're carrying the ashes of Sato, your husband who has passed away when the book starts, and you're you're on his family's land because part of the conversation you had had with him was whatever, whatever may happen, this is where I want to be. You're 53. He was 53 when he passed away. When I read it, I thought the ashes are no longer present, but the grief and the complexity of all of that is still there. Time has moved on, you're married, Zoela is going off to school, and you're standing at this intersection of who you are, who you were, who you're becoming. And what does that road mean to you? And why was it critical to start both stories on that road to Ali Manusa?

Tembi: 12:26

What is so interesting is that you are the first interviewer to explicitly point out that both books begin in this way. So I love, and clearly, if you're a writer, nothing happens by circumstance. No. It might initially, the impulse certainly does, but by the time it makes it into publication, you have thought very deeply, and there have been editors and you know, so the start of this book, um Someday Now, as well as from scratch, I didn't actually know where Someday Now would begin. And I creatively, I started it in many different places, but I structurally love first of all, they're journey stories. Both are journey stories. They are journeying to a place, and in in this case, to the same island, Sicily. And when I when I was finally writing about the piece when I wanted to go back to Gnomeness House, the story of a return. They're both kinds of stories of a return. And I was really listening to my footage, my audio footage, because a part of the process of writing this book is that I did a sort of two-handed creative process where in on the trip I recorded these ambient sounds everywhere I went, when I felt moved to it, when I was like, oh, that's interesting. I'll like just turn the recorder on. So, you know, I did this over the course of uh the arc of this this trip. And I think I came back and I had like over 200 and some odd audio files. And I just put them in my hard drive, my computer, and I was like, okay, that's there. Now what's the story I want to write? And when I would get stuck in the writing, one of my ways into the writing was to go back and listen to the actual recorded sounds from the place. Yeah. Because they would then inform the writing. And I oned to the sound that you hear in that first chapter of me in the car and turning the key to go into her house. Yeah. And I was like, done. That is where this starts because that is, I am trying to turn the key to the past, and I'm trying to turn the key to the future. And the ride up to it is what it is. And before, I in the in from scratch, I'm writing with in the for open in the prologue, I'm just writing alone. He's with me. His his has ashes, he is with me. And in this one, I'm alone. And you're right, there are no ashes, but there's the the specter of loss. Yes. Because I begin by saying that Nona has passed. And I begin by saying that in the Sicilian language, there is no future tense. Right. And so I don't know. It just was, it was, it was, it was, I can't say it was a happy accident because it was quite intentional. But I think you've invited me to think about um what the road means. And what the road means to me is it is a portal into that road specifically. And I have driven it countless times over now touching three decades. And it's unchanged. I mean, they cut down the eucalyptus trees and then they grow back. Sometimes you don't see sheep, but the road is the same. You, it's a winding road that takes you deep to the foothills that run along a valley into the interior of Sicily. And you do feel the world receding behind you. So any woes, any concerns, your life and my life in LA, all of it recedes as I am taking this winding road. And so I think energetically, I feel that and I try to communicate that in the writing as I'm going toward often, you know, Sicily is the same, but it's often always different in some ways because it's such a complex and rich place that I find every visit I learn something new about it. So I never know quite what awaits me, even though the roads may be the same.

Patrick: 16:43

The audio component, I I loved, I loved it. And I was like, I wonder if other books have the audio component.

Tembi: 16:50

But I'm a first, I can tell you.

Patrick: 16:53

Okay. Well, I I loved it. And it's it's so okay, it works on just so many levels because, you know, I think when we all read, we all have, we all hear voices, we all at least I do. I hear I hear what I think are the voices in my head that are on the page, and it gives an emotional texture that the word just can't give it. Which ties back to my other question about form and structure is the book is an audio book. I could not find a published book. Obviously, it's a deliberate choice. It wasn't just happenstance. And I want to tell you two things about that. First, as a person who's known you most of my life, hearing your voice that closely in my head over the hours that I spent listening to it after years of knowing you gave me a completely different understanding of who you are today as a human being, not who we were in ninth grade in high school. And I could hear in your voice the weight of living that we all experience. And it was incredibly powerful because it made me have an emotional response to the book that I think is the power of people reading books anyway, but because I know you, the journey of you was in the voice that was reading to me on the book, which was incredible to hear. And I also loved, and it's it's this is so esoteric, but to hear the language, the Italian spoken, to hear you speaking your English, to hear the Timbyisms that I still know in your voice gave me a really three-dimensional picture of you. And it made me think of how we in general as people are not one thing. We are many things, we are many voices that all reside within our bodily form. It was a it was it's a very spiritual kind of experience.

Tembi: 18:53

Thank you for for you know for saying that. And I, you know, it's interesting, and we could like go so deep because I know your background in the theater and in the creative arts, you sort of understand. I knew as a storyteller, right, that I was doing sort of three things at once. I was telling a written story that I written, like here is just the story, which you will not be able to find exclusively in print, but here's the written story. I knew I was giving you the auditory diary of what spoke to my soul while I was on this trip. And then the third thing that I was giving you is my first person telling of the story with my actual voice and how all of those things coalesce to pull the listener in, to hold the listener close, to be as intimate as possible. You know, I am I long for and I seek intimacy and I long for it in my life. I seek to communicate it in my writing, and so that. This form, this audio radio play diary slash, you know, sound documentary of a ref, you know, of a particular summer was like a way to kind of say, let's get as intimate as possible. And you're right. The other thing about sound is that I was aware that the sounds I recorded that summer will never happen again. It will never happen that way again. My daughter's voice will never sound the way it sounded the summer between her high school year and her freshman year of high school. Right? The sounds of that island will never sound that exact way again. Yeah. And so capturing all of that was something I felt moved to do. And I think you're right, in my own voice, you know, should we be having a conversation 10 years from now, the sound of my voice will sound different.

Speaker 3: 20:57

Yeah.

Tembi: 20:58

I'll have 10 more years of living, right? At just a physical, you who've studied voice, and you know, like at the physiological level, the voice will be different. But also the soul is different. It has more living. And so I really wanted to bring that, and I'm glad that that comes through. And I think what I'm hearing from listeners is that that intimacy slows down time. That particular summer, I felt as though time was like a slingshot and they were, it was being pulled back only to be like, you know, shot away from me. And I didn't want that. And so I tried to the cadence of the reading of the story, the cadence of the writing, the particular sounds that I chose are all very intentional to create a kind of an auditory mood to tell the story. And I, you know, yeah, you you heard my my ninth grade voice, and I sure it did not sound like this.

Patrick: 21:50

No. There's a great quote that you wrote in the book. Um, and you you alluded to this earlier. There is there is a tension in the book of time. Present, past, questionable future. And when people read this book or listen to this book, there are so many Italian truisms and, you know, ways of viewing the world that are just like sprinkled throughout, which are like little Easter eggs in the book. So enjoy it as you read it. But I loved this quote: My future held the ancient heart of my past. I just love that quote. And I wonder what it felt like for you to make that realization that it's deep and it's not arbitrary, what these futures are, this becoming is.

Tembi: 22:47

I think I am, and perhaps my entire life on some level, have been struggling to understand the continuum of time, how time functions, you know, is now now or is now the past, or am I already in the future? You know, like it's like there's sort of like these sort of like I remember being like a kid and being like past, you know, like I would I was a weird kid who would ask those kinds of questions of myself. I would clearly not articulate them out loud because I think people would have thought I was insane. However, now as a writer, I can artfully and in narrative explore these, but I think you began this conversation by talking about motherhood. And there was something about watching your child form, fully form in front of you. And I almost in her growth as a mom, I could see almost like the Russian dolls, you know, when I see her, I still see the baby in her. I see the baby, then I see the toddler stacked on top of the baby, the school age stacked on top of the toddler, the middle school stacked on top, you know. And so for me, I'm always when I'm with her, I'm engaging with all of these present and past forms of who she is. And I think about that sometimes, you know, and sometimes as a parent, you know, when your kid comes to you and they really are acting like a younger version of themselves, you're like, oh, okay, we're doing that now. Okay, sure. I'll open this top for you because you just can't do it. No problem. I'm here for it. Let's let's let's role play like we were back, you know, when you were seven. That's cool. Um so watching her grow up also, and that this particular summer that I write about in Someday Now, where I was really wrestling with the past, present, and future because I was watching this person that I had sort of oriented my entire, you know, um adult life from the time she was born around her growth, her care, her nurturing. And she was leaving. And what did that mean for the relationship that I'd created? What did that mean for me as a mother? What would our the future of our relationship be like? And so this tension between past, present, and future was very much there. And also we live in a culture wherein there is a lot of talk about the power of now. And I am here for being in the present. But often we show up in the present informed by our past. The present isn't its own abstract separate thing. We are in the present, often making snap judgments or evaluations based on experiences that are informed by all of who we are.

Speaker 3: 25:34

Yeah.

Tembi: 25:35

So the present actually isn't separate. The now isn't separate from the past. And that's a nuanced way of looking at it.

Speaker 3: 25:42

Yeah.

Tembi: 25:43

Because sometimes when people say be in the now, I always think it's trying to sort of bypass the past, which is different than be with what is. Being with what is right now in this moment, is sort of saying, I'm here right now, that I'm I'm gonna not hang into a story of the past, although I know that the now is informed by that. And that is being present with what is in a kind of radical way. And it takes work to do that because to some degree you have to acknowledge that the past is also showing up in the now.

Speaker 3: 26:20

Yeah.

Tembi: 26:21

Whereas sometimes I hear you, you know, sort of like culturally or on Instagram or whatever, like, just be in the now, as if like it's somehow this magical state of being that is not connected to anything else. It's just this metrical now. And that's where, you know, part of me goes, well, wait a minute, hold on. If the invitation is to be present with what is, absolutely. There are so many times where we have to just be present with what is. And I know that as someone who experienced profound grief, I could not go around it. I couldn't go under it, I couldn't go over it, I had to be with it and go through it. I had to be in the power of the now that was a life that did not include in physical form someone who had shaped my my entire adult life. And there was a radical acceptance in that. And I had to be with the pain of that. But that was really the only way that I could also make space for or put curiosity around what a future might be. And and I I and having been through that process over many years and writing about it is I think what I seek as a human and as a spirit and as a soul is to be in a now that is informed by all of it. Yeah. That is informed by where I've been, where parts of me are dreaming yet to go while standing radically in the moment that is.

Patrick: 27:55

Radically.

Tembi: 27:55

As uncomfortable or as joyous or sad or whatever that it might be. And that's what I was trying to do this summer that I wrote someday now is I knew life was changing. It was a giant inflection point. You know, I didn't know what the quality of my newly blended family would look like on the other side of my daughter leaving home. I didn't know what the quality of my relationship with Sicily, a place that I'd been coming to and bringing her since she was a child. Everything seemed kind of up for grabs. But the one thing that wasn't up for grabs was my commitment to be as close to myself as possible. And I think what you asked me was when did I recognize that that summer that all these other former parts of myself were present? Yeah. It really happened on that drive that is the opening part of the book. Because on that drive, I wasn't with my daughter. I wasn't with my husband. I was just me. It was just me. And I was like, I haven't done this ride before. This is eerily familiar. I've done it at 27. You know, now I'm doing it as a newly remarried. Oh, me and these roads are the two constants. So given that, it gave me a perspective to sort of understand and sort of, you know, rub my fingers against the fabric of my own life. The rough parts, the smooth parts, the parts that tickled me, the parts that felt thin and frail and fragile. But that's the kind of stuff that happened for me in my heart space and in my mind space on that ride. And I try to bring the reader, the listener, as much as I can into that space with me energetically, with my voice and with my words.

Patrick: 29:43

I have a question for you, but responding to what you said, we're sitting in this moment in December of 2025. The world is an unknown at this point. Um can you believe your life? Can you believe where you sit and the journey?

Tembi: 30:05

When I do, the moments that I do, and they don't come unbidden. They often come because maybe in a moment like this, a deep old friend who's held parts of the story with me sees it. And then I see it through that person. And I and what I what actually comes up for me and is coming up right now is a sense of tender vulnerability for even the ninth grade me that met you at ninth grade because somewhere in her dream psyche was this moment right now. Yeah. On some level, I wanted a life that was bigger perhaps than what I could see right in front of me. And if anything, what I know now is that I couldn't know the details, I couldn't know the circumstance, I couldn't know the players, I couldn't know the act breaks in the story, I couldn't know the plot twists, I couldn't know any of that. How could I know any of that? But what I did know, what I felt, was a sense that I wanted to live a life as fully as I am capable of at any given moment in time, and a life that is rich in love and rich in connection and rich in experience. And so with every plot twist, with every act break, it's like what is the most loving, expansive, generous thing I could do right now, even when I am, you know, a newly widowed solo mom underemployed, trying to figure out how to keep a roof over my head. What is the most expansive and loving thing I can do? And by the way, full transparency. It's not like I thought that consciously. I can I looking back, I can see that that's kind of, you know, through my journaling, I think I was always like, well, there's gotta be like this all can't be for nothing. Like what, you know, what what would you like, Tembi? What would you like? And so my life is really um continues to be, and I hope for for until I take my last breath, will be about seeking to live the most expanded version of it that I'm capable of seeing in that moment.

Patrick: 32:39

You said something a minute ago about these conversations are a reflection back to you. And in the book, the scene when you go to lunch with Franka before Robert and Zabella come and I I may have met his sister, I don't remember. Um, I do remember meeting his parents when they finally came to California. I do remember that clearly. But what occurred to me when you wrote that scene was she had her own. She had her own story of her brother, and he existed for her in a very specific way. That wasn't how he existed for you. And I found that to be a really interesting lesson. And that we all live in different ways for different people. And your sotto is not her sotto.

Tembi: 34:08

No, it's not.

Patrick: 34:10

And I thought that was really tragic and beautiful all at the same time.

Tembi: 34:16

And it was important to me that I dedicate some aspect of the story to her and to honor her and her, and not it's her story. I can never tell her story, but in including the scene between the two of us is a nod to saying she's having her own experience. I think the beautiful thing when two people are grieving the same person but have profoundly different relationships with that person, if they are able to come together, they each get a piece of their person back. When I'm with her, I get a piece of Sato that I never knew him as a teenager. I didn't know him as the squarny kid who played soccer in the fields, you know. And she didn't know the man who lived in Los Angeles, who built a life with his family there and who had friends. So we each get parts of our person when we get together. And I think that's the unspoken comfort that can happen. And I really wanted to acknowledge in the book her role, you know, for people who have read from scratch or who have listened to it or who have watched the series, his sister is a pivotal character in the reconciliation. And it felt only beautiful to bring her into Someday Now. And Franco is like my first stop. Like, you know, and we really for each other now, you know, I again I cannot speak for her, but I'm one of the last people who's close to her brother who is alive. You know, her mother has passed, her father has passed. You know, her children, he was already in America when her children were raised. So it's not like they had their uncle around them all the time and have a ton of memories of their uncle. So when she and I get together, that is that's present. And I appreciate you sharing for your listeners and for in for anyone listening now, pointing out that that is the possibility inside of the pain. You know, some people don't want to be around someone who reminds them of their beloved who's passed away because they think it brings up so much pain, and it does. Right. I know that it does for me. I suspect it has for Franca as well. But the pain is a gateway to a kind of human connection that can only happen by standing in that.

Patrick: 36:59

Yeah. A big theme of the book, a big, a big sort of red line thread through the book is this idea of preparing for Zabella to leave and the syndrome. And I have to say, my favorite out of all the book, my favorite moment in the book is when you guys are on the boat and she and and you jump into the ocean with her with the vest on. Because you, as you admit, you're not the best swimmer, which I never knew about you. Um, there was something about that moment, and it's it's brief in the book, and it's like literally, it's literally just like it's ephemeral.

Tembi: 37:38

It's ephemeral.

Patrick: 37:39

So beautiful.

Tembi: 37:40

To some degree, oh my gosh, Patrick, that moment gutted me in the most beautiful way. Because I realized like, if life, when we're born, if life is this ocean that we're jumping into, yeah, for a brief and shimmering moment, your hands touch, and that might be the lifetime that two people share together. But in the continuum of the bigness of time and in the bigness of the ocean, it's brief. And then that moment when we jump, when she jumped into the water, and then I got the courage to jump in with her, and she touched my hand and then she let go. I was like, that's what's happening. Now she's floating and I'm floating, we're here. But it's that moment has it's done. And that to me was the perfect summation of the entire book. And to some degree, the arc of early of parenting through young adulthood. There's this moment where you will actively let go. This Gen X person that I am and this generation, we're finally beginning to recognize this moment as a true inflection point for a family. And it bears making space and carving out time and taking a sacred pause to acknowledge that the family unit is about to shift and in profound and big ways, and everybody's about to go on a journey of change. I often call it renesting, not empty nesting, because to some degree, it is an opportunity for the parent to reimagine their relationship with their child. It is a time to recapture or return to parts of you that you had maybe had to put a pause on or put in the margins while you were a parent. Your child, should they be going off to live on a college campus, is about to nest inside of a whole new community. So everybody is in a change. And so I call it renesting, not sort of empty nesting, because to me, I looked, you know, when I think about my relationship with my daughter, nothing about it is empty. Nor is our house isn't even empty for that matter. When we left home, I left at 18 and I literally never lived at home again. Yeah, we didn't. But that is not the culture we live in today. So many children return home and there are periods and seasons where they may live inside of the family unit.

Patrick: 40:00

Right.

Tembi: 40:00

I get as young adults. And then what does that navigating look like?

Patrick: 40:04

So okay, so I have to tell you when I was reading the book, I don't know if you remember this, but when we were graduating from high school, I was the first person to leave in our group to go.

Tembi: 40:14

This is gonna scare me what you're about to say. I think I'm gonna be scared.

Patrick: 40:17

So I don't know if you remember that. So because I was going I I was the first to leave going off to Vanderbilt. Going off to Vanderbilt. And the day that I left to go to school. Oh goodness. To leave. You, David Philo, and Sharice Francis came to my house, picked me up, and we went to La Madeleine down over, it was in Highland Village over in River Oaks. We went to La Madeline, and then you guys dropped me at the airport.

Tembi: 40:50

Not your parents.

Patrick: 40:51

Not my parents. You guys dropped me at the airport. And then my excuse me. And then my mom met me at the airport to say like the final goodbye because she was, I was actually going to New York, which is why I left early. Um, it was my first time going to New York. It was like my high school graduation president or whatever. Um, and then she was gonna meet me. She and my grandmother were gonna drive to Nashville from Texas and meet me with all of my stuff. But I don't but it made me think about how we do things differently now, and it's not so that way. But do you remember that?

Tembi: 41:25

I hear in that I do now. I do actually now. And what I'm hearing in that is for me, I can I can't speak for everyone else in the group, but it resonates on my heart because I think I'm someone who has always had I make a moment of goodbyes. Like goodbyes are like a thing for me.

Speaker 3: 41:42

Yeah.

Tembi: 41:43

And so it's it's interesting that that story comes up for you in listening to the book. The book is about standing in the threshold of a goodbye and wondering what is gonna happen. And so, yeah, La Madeleine, the day you're going to go off to college, yes, let's do that. That makes complete sense.

Patrick: 42:01

And our 17, 18-year-old brave, we're like, it's gonna be fine.

Tembi: 42:06

No internet. Let's remind listeners, zero internet. We had no, like we had to wait for you to get wherever you were gonna go, then get a phone number, then somehow like write us a letter telling us your phone number or calling us and maybe leaving a message with our parents of your new phone number. Yeah. So that then when we talk to them, they would give us the new phone number that then we would call you and hope that you were there at the house because there were no answering machines. No, we're also talking, we went to, I mean, we're dating ourselves, but truly, kind of really felt like the person's disappearing into the ether.

Patrick: 42:40

Like by there was no like private phone in your dorm room, it was one in the hallway. That was real. That was real. That was not like just a television trope. That was real. Um, I want to talk about Robert because I first met Robert, I think in the teens in Jamaica.

Tembi: 43:00

20, maybe 17 or something.

Patrick: 43:02

It was earlier because I left by 17.

Tembi: 43:04

Then it has to be 16.

Patrick: 43:06

16. It was 16. It was really early on. And I want to talk about him because I feel like so again, stories. I remember when you wrote from scratch and you were beginning the book tour, and we were at um in LA. And there was a there's a picture of Robert and me. Someone took a picture of Robert and me. I think we were looking at a like we were holding something up, or we were looking at the book or something, and um you said to me, you can't post it. I was like, oh, okay. Like I was just like, because I I know you're a very private person, but I wasn't putting things together. And you said, I don't know if you remember, you said this, you said you can't post that because we don't want to confuse. We we've made the decision that we Oh, as a as a as a as a business model for this, but also as people.

Tembi: 44:06

And if first I remember for Robert in particular, he was very much like, this is your moment to write about your relationship with Sato, your husband and father of your child. I don't want to be a part of that equation right now. Yeah, and you're right, for the very longest time, even through the series adaptation, through the series coming out on Netflix, Robert was always like, You that is that is a story that predates me. And so it was a very a big deal. I had to get his buy-in, quite frankly, to even to sort of warm him up to the possibility that I could write in my second memoir all these years later, a story that includes him. Yeah. This is just, it's more than just this is what happened next. It is this is its own story and it merits its own space. It's just a very unique position to be in. And I think he was really trying to go, you know, sort of like give extra space and grace for the for what I may be feeling consciously and unconsciously, also for our daughter, for Zoella, what may be coming up for her. So he was really like, I'm over here, I'll carry your bags in the background.

Patrick: 45:21

But what's amazing about this, Tembi, is it takes a very special kind of man to allow that space. You have a man like Robert who stands there in his full manhood and says, I don't need to be the star of this show. I need to let you shine.

Tembi: 45:41

I hope that, I hope any time, listen, you know, in both these my books from scratch and in someday now, that readers, listeners, when they close the book, when they finish listening, they're able to reflect on the primary relationships in their own lives, on the their own heart, the way they have loved or lost, forgiven, expanded. And that they see not only themselves in the story, in our story, because I think we all share each other's stories, but they also see what's possible. And I really specifically and from scratch for grieving uh people wanted to show what was possible inside of profound, profound loss. And it's not that this was like a fix or it's up, but it's just this is one story, and it it this is possible. And I think within someday, it was possible to forgive this family and to start again and to still feel love in your heart and feel your beloved close, even when they are not here in physical form. That is possible. And with someday now, the heart can hold so much, and the heart can hold past love, present love. A family can hold the timelines that pre-existed it. Our family of three holds the timeline that includes Sato before Robert came into the picture. And I think very specifically, I think if I may just take a little bit of what you said around the part of manhood or I hear from widowed women, because I do advocacy in that space, of like, I don't know if I could find someone who I don't know if it's okay to bring up with my new partner the fact that I still feel grief for my old partner. And I I have been right there with them. And I'm here to report that it is possible to partner with someone, and this is not gendered, because a widowed man can partner with another widowed man or a woman who that person that you are choosing to open your heart to can hold the tenderness of your grief. And that's really the story of Robert is being able to like hold the tenderness of the per the heart of the person you love. I hope it's an example for all of us.

Patrick: 48:23

And you said you have a good butt, which you kept coming back to in the book over and over again.

Tembi: 48:27

Well, yeah, there's that. I mean, if I had to just go on record, I was like, Because one day, God willing, one day, God willing, you know, we will be 80-year-old people walking around. And we may or may not look cute in genes. I don't yet know. Time will tell.

Patrick: 48:43

Okay.

Tembi: 48:44

But there will be a record that there was a moment when we really looked cute in genes.

Patrick: 48:49

My gosh. You I I I was rolling when I read that. The book is the book will have you laughing out loud too. It's not, it's not. Okay, I have two questions for I have a comment. I have two questions for you. People talk about the book a lot of in in in what I'm reading about the book, a lot about this idea of the empty nest part of it. Because I think it's very, it's a very dominant story in the book. But I will also tell you that I think the book is about how you blend a family together.

Tembi: 49:14

You know, when I first started to write about it, I thought it was, I was like, okay, this is a book about like my daughter leaving home. But as I kept writing, I was like, oh, what's underneath that is this story of being in a blended family and how big blended families experience the loss or the the inflection point of a child leaving home in a different way than a nuclear family does. Yeah. An intact nuclear family, of which there's not a lot in America because people, you know, we we all know what what m I think it's 60% of Americans are in some sort of uh blended family unit in some capacity or another.

Patrick: 49:52

Right.

Tembi: 49:53

So I was writing to them.

Patrick: 49:54

Yeah. And I I got it instantly. I got it instantly. And men, watch what Robert does in this book. I'm not gonna, I don't we haven't gone into it, we just scratched the surface, but watch what he does to help make this situation work.

Tembi: 50:10

And by the way, I come to all of this not in any way trying to say like we got it all. We figured out there was a lot of intention therapy, conversations, really asking, like, how do we, and and by the way, sometimes that falls a lot on the the mother. You know, I know I was yeah, you know, I was I was very much trying to hold the pieces together, but also realizing like at a certain point you have to let it be and let it settle, let the cake settle as it settles. Yeah. And you've, you know, and that this trip was a giant experiment in a blended family on a road trip in a very charged location in a high stakes moment in the family timeline. Yeah. And here we go.

Patrick: 50:58

You're an incredibly private person, not secretive, but a very private person. Being in relationship with you is a very for each person, is a very personal, private relationship. And I think not everyone conducts their relationships like that, but that's as long as I've known you, a feature of a relationship with Tembi is I'm having a relationship with Tembi. I have a different relationship with Attica, I have a different relationship with your mom, with your like your brother. Like it's a very specific singular personal relationship. And I wonder how that person writes an autobiography memo slash memoir that's like, here are my guts.

Tembi: 51:43

I know, yeah. That's the stuff I take to my that's the stuff I take to my therapist couch. Or I'm like, wait, what am I doing? Why am I doing this? This feels antithetical to so many parts of who I am, and yet I'm called to do it at the same time. Huh, I contain multitudes. I guess we are contradictory people. Um, no, I think that there's a kind of, I think in my writing, and although I am revealing, by the way, when you write a memoir, you are not revealing everything. You are very carefully crafting and choosing which moments to share and in what order to convey a particular message of the entire book. But I'm not telling you like the whole everything about me, right? That's the sort of like, and we could have a whole other conversation about the craft of memoir. It is artful. And I, you know, I I have studied it. I was went, you know, went to UCLA to sort of understand how creative nonfiction works because I read it and when it's done well for me as a reader, I feel so completely transformed and transported. And yet I feel like I know of this person, but I don't know the entirety of this person. But the part that they chose to share with me in their sharing, it has illuminated something in my own life and makes me a better person for having read it. So that when I sat down with From Scratch and when I sat down with somebody now, I'm often asking myself, who is my reader, who is my listener, why am I writing this? Because I'm choosing, if there are 20 experiences you have, you cannot write all 20, and all 20 don't matter for the story you're trying to tell. And so it's like, what is the story? And then I have, you know, I have a very good shout out to Shauna, early reader, who really pushes me to go a little bit deeper and go a little bit deeper. And yet I always know I can write whatever I want, and then I can pull it back if I don't want to share it. But I think I do need a place and me as the creative person in me, which is different than the person who's in direct relation with another person. But the artist creator in me understands that the more specific something is in art, the more universal it is. And so therefore, I oh my, if I'm gonna do this thing, then I better get as specific as I can and to some degree as transparent as I can. So there's a why, because it's touching the universal. It's putting a spotlight on something that maybe we don't talk about. And I often come, I often write about things, grief, forgiveness, uh, interracial marriage, fracture, um, because I feel as though I long for, as a reader, to read more stories like that in the world, or I want to know more about that. And often it's something I don't even understand in my own life, that writing about it helps me to understand it. So that's also what drives me to write. But then I am careful as a memoirist about I am always committed to the truth of the story, even if I have to, as different from an autobiography, which actually has to be literally, she wore a blue shirt and she had three quarter inch heels and she made a left turn on, you know, Dover Boulevard. Well, in memoir, you can say she wore a comfortable heel in a colorful top and made her way to Dover Street. Right. You're not as adherent to the exact facts. And I think you that's the creativity part of it. Yeah. And so I share, but I think what I'm doing, what I'm seeking to do with my reader or my listener is create that one-to-one relationship in the art in the same way that I think or I hope I create the one-to-one relationship with my friends and my family in real life.

Patrick: 55:28

Yeah. Timby Locke.

Tembi: 55:31

Thank you, Patrick.

Patrick: 55:32

Thank you. I'm gonna remind you of something which you probably don't remember.

Tembi: 55:35

There are a lot of things I don't remember later.

Patrick: 55:38

But I did five minutes ago was totally gone. But uh welcome to getting older, everybody. Um I had come to LA and I was staying at your house, and we were talking about all of this before it even I think I remember this moment.

Tembi: 55:54

We were in the guest room.

Patrick: 55:55

We were in the guest room.

Tembi: 55:56

We were in the guest room upstairs. Uh huh. Go on.

Patrick: 55:58

And we talked about you as the three A's. Do you remember this? Being an artist, an activist, and an actress. And it's happened.

Tembi: 56:13

Yeah, I often thought about that moment actually. Uh, I was at a moment where I was really trying to understand all the threads. At that point, they weren't woven together. They were just like these threads kind of flying in the wind. And I was like, I know they're all part of my life, but I don't really know how it all goes together. And it takes someone who has been, you know, riding side saddle with you for a couple of decades in your life to go, this is what I see in you. And you named it. And in the naming, it gave grounding. And in the grounding, it gave clarity. And in the clarity, I could then vision. I thank you for that time that we had in that guest room because I think it really did psychically set me on a path of clarity. I think I just needed someone to see what I couldn't see because I was just in it. I was just in the soup of life.

Patrick: 57:04

You were in it.

Tembi: 57:05

I often say, be the friend who does that. Um, be the friend, especially in grief, because the grieving mind can be very um, it's doing a lot of neurological work to piece together how to just be in the world. And so when a good friend can say, I see this in you, I see how far you go, I see it's a very affirmative and it's very powerful.

Patrick: 57:31

So returning favors that you've done for me over the last four decades. Jeez. Timby, thank you.

Tembi: 57:40

Thank you, Patrick.

Patrick: 57:42

To those of you who are watching or listening, remember we all have a voice, we all believe a legacy. Live and choose wisely. Bye, everyone. Thank you, Timby.