Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Amy Mackin. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Amy, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s jump right into how you came up with the idea?

Over 7 million students ages 3–21 across the United States receive special education services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. My son, Henry, was one of them. But I was not prepared for the extraordinary obstacles I would find within the public education and medical systems as I tried to ensure my son got the education and services he needed to thrive. I was also not prepared for our family’s and friends’ reactions, which weren’t always supportive or helpful.

In late 2012, I was taking a continuing education class that required me to write an article about a personal challenge. I had recently taken Henry out of traditional school and that decision dominated my thinking at the time, so that’s what I wrote about. A version of that original essay was published by <i>The Atlantic</i> in early 2013. The feedback on that piece inspired me to continue documenting Henry’s and my experiences as we designed an individualized, creative education system that would work for him. In 2016—over three years into our alternative schooling journey—I started pulling the pieces together into a manuscript. I believed that what we’d discovered was worth sharing.

The book ultimately took eight years to write and evolved over that time from a traditional memoir to a collection of essays to the reported/hybrid memoir that it is now. As I continued to witness Henry’s growth, new ideas and events were added that encouraged experimentation in form and style.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I was born and raised in New England. Growing up, the town I lived in was in transition—evolving from a somewhat rural, working-class town to an exurb of Boston. I never knew where I fit, culturally or personally. I was a bit of an outcast, and I spent a lot of time alone reading and writing. Storytelling, even just for myself, was a way to process my experiences and attempt to understand the world around me.

I went to work after high school, and the task of supporting myself left little time for creative endeavors. But once I became a mother, an inner muse was reawakened. Daycare costs were more than my paycheck, so I stayed home with the kids during the week and worked part-time nights and weekends. In some ways, I felt like an outcast again—a working-class woman trying to fit into a suburban parenting culture that I didn’t understand. The geographical shift of my childhood was sort of replicated in this new role. I began writing again to process it. And when I witnessed my son struggle in similar ways that I had in school, I intervened in the way I wished someone had for me when I was a child. The results were remarkable, and my memoir encapsulates all of that.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

My mission is to tell the truth and provide a space for authentic connection and conversation. Corporate work culture compartmentalizes people and, for many, moving up the ladder means staying quiet about individual challenges and larger institutional oppression. I think this is especially true for mothers. It’s well documented that mothers in heterosexual partnerships experience economic disadvantages as a result of having children that fathers generally do not. These not only include lower pay and fewer fringe benefits for women, but also lower perceived competence by employers and managers. These “penalties” extend to people with disabilities and other marginalized groups as well and are therefore amplified when there exists an intersectionality of multiple identities.

Many people don’t speak up about their challenges for fear of losing their jobs or being treated differently by their colleagues and supervisors, or even by their family and friends. For those struggling with invisible disabilities and/or mental health issues, cultural shame across education, medical, and workplace environments poses a serious obstacle to honest communication. I sought out advanced education in mid-life to better understand these realities and how they affect human outcomes, and this scholarship fuels and informs my creative work. By making myself uncomfortably vulnerable in the pages of my memoir and in my various essays, I hope to validate the experiences and feelings of others who may find themselves in similar situations.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

There are several craft books that have informed my writing—texts by Anne Lamott, Mary Karr, Stephen King, Sue William Silverman, and Steve Almond, to name just a few. But once I signed the contract to publish my memoir, <i>Before and After the Book Deal</i> by Courtney Maum was absolutely invaluable! This book describes all the different steps in the publishing and promotional process, along with the many possible stumbling blocks and tips on how to navigate them. Maum’s humorous tone throughout the book makes the whole endeavor seem much less daunting. I cannot recommend <i>Before and After the Book Deal </i>enough to those who are publishing a full-length work for the first time.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.amymackin.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AmyMackinWriter/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amymackin/
• Twitter: https://x.com/MackinWriting

Image Credits
Sarah Montani Photography