What Wisdom Can You Learn from a Geeky Mom?

Interview with Author Jenny Bristol

Jenny Bristol is one of four founding editors of GeekMom, one of the Geek Family Network blogs. The network focuses on content of interest to geeks, parents, and geeky parents, including products, places, interviews, experiences, and think pieces.

When asked, Jenny says she “sort of fell into writing as a career.” She wrote for fun when she was a teenager but didn’t do anything with it. It wasn’t until her mid 30s when she started writing her own blog posts, which turned into writing for blogs, which led to writing books and other writing-based jobs.

Jenny, give us an overview of yourself as a book author.

I would really enjoy being able to write books full time, but so far that hasn’t happened; it’s hard to find an agent when you don’t stick to one genre! The books I’ve written and want to write are all over the place in terms of subject matter, from advice to fiction to poetry to nerdery to history to sewing and crafts. The two books that I’ve written so far on my own only cover two corners of my brain: the helpful corner and the weird books corner. I wrote them as labors of love and wanted to publish them regardless of audience. The Isle of Kern I wrote for myself for fun, and Wisdom from Mom I wrote for my kids.

I’ve done NaNoWriMo several times and ended up with one very rough draft of a time travel book, a rough draft of a fantasy book, and a book that went nowhere and ended up being a series of short stories. I write best when I can do it for an hour or two first thing in the morning, before looking at the internet, and ideally before anyone else is awake. Which doesn’t happen very often.

Tell us about your book, Wisdom from Mom.

Wisdom from Mom: Advice for Living is a nonfiction advice book focusing on only the best, most important advice I feel that people should receive, from kids and the teen years to retirement age, including general advice for adults and plenty of extra advice for parents. Each nugget of wisdom can be read on its own, or the book can be read cover to cover. I include many personal examples where applicable.

What inspired you to write it?

It was entirely inspired by my own mother. She has given be plenty of wisdom over the years, especially as I was growing up. A few of the bits of advice were easily encapsulated, so I started writing them down for my own kids. The list grew, and I started adding my own advice (especially advice I figured out on my own as I raised my own kids) and the advice given to me from friends. I tried to gather all the best advice I heard or came up with in one place, so I could just hand the book to my kids, or to someone else, and they’d have my best advice to use whenever they needed it. Since publishing that book, however, I’ve remembered a few more bits of advice, so I’ve been taking notes for a second volume.

Who is the ideal reader and how do you see your books being used?

Wisdom from Mom will be useful to anyone from the teen years onward to those in retirement. Since it includes wisdom for all parts of life, it can be a valuable tool for just about anyone at any time. While it is useful to read the entire book, cover to cover, so that you have all the advice already in mind as you go through life, it’s also useful as a reference book, turning to specific portions when you’re in need of advice for specific situations.

Can you share 3 of your favorite “wisdoms” from the book?

Three of my favorite pieces of wisdom from the book are below. I chose them because they encapsulate several important life philosophies in just a few words. The first two are intrinsic to who I am, and the third I came to more recently, helping me change my outlook on what to do with all of my “stuff” (of which I have too much).

1 – Personal responsibility is the key to success

There are many sides to this one. It’s a very rich philosophy that I try to hold and have also instilled in my kids. Things that fall under this bit of advice include everything from picking up after yourself to keeping your word to owning up to your mistakes to realizing that your choices are YOUR choices and you have to live with the consequences, rather than blaming someone else.

This piece of advice stands out to me so much that I put it in its own mini chapter in Wisdom from Mom. It relates to just about everything. In all things—relationships, parenting, work, and everything else—taking personal responsibility for your words and actions earns people’s respect, and it actually empowers you to be in control of your own destiny. Knowing that you are responsible for what you do can sometimes be overwhelming, but it also gives you a feeling of control, of empowerment, of self-determination. And instead of wasting energy on blaming others for your choices, you can use that energy to learn how to make better choices in the future. This piece of advice has been a philosophy of mine for a long time, though I didn’t always have the words for it. Now these words guide most everything I do.

2 – Focus on your child’s inner struggles more than their behavior

This one I experienced firsthand, both as the child and as the parent. When I’d go through difficult and anxiety-inducing experiences as a child, my behavior would sometimes suffer. Eventually, my mom learned to see a pattern and did her best to give me a supportive environment to allow me to express myself, even when I didn’t have the words myself to connect my experience with my feelings and behavior. When my own kids were little, they would sometimes act out in unusual ways, but, since I too had had some of the same behaviors as a kid, I was able to see that my kids were acting out for a reason. Address the reason behind the behavior and the behavior takes care of itself. If you only address the behavior, that only shows your kids that a behavior is inappropriate. But by tending to the reason for the behavior, the inner struggle, the cause and effect, you show your child that you care about their natural inclinations, that you’ll be there to help them get through it, and along the way you help them develop their own toolbox of skills to deal with it again in the future.

This makes total sense when you think about it. Consider babies. When they’re hungry, tired, or need to be changed, they’ll cry to signal that something is wrong, since they don’t yet have the words. So, do we just stop their crying/the behavior? No, we tend to their needs. We feed them, help them to bed, or change their diaper. The same goes with older kids (and adults, frankly). How they react to something, their behavior, can be rooted in an inner struggle or feeling. Tend to that struggle, and you can minimize or eliminate the misbehavior. (Lest there be any confusion here, “misbehavior” is not to be confused with unusual behaviors which are fine but may not be the norm, such as stimming or other self-care.)

Tending to my children’s inner struggles has helped me build a solid parent/child relationship with each of them. They know I care about their feelings and words, and I do my best to comfort them when they’re “acting out” (though, now that they’re teenagers, that can look different!). So, this piece of wisdom stands out to me because it is a parenting and interpersonal relationship philosophy that I wish more people had. It can help people to understand each other and to see someone’s behavior in the context of their life experience. It helps us all take care of each other.

3 – Use your things while you still love them

I have a lot of things. I wouldn’t say I’m a hoarder; I don’t compulsively hold on to things. But I have held on to things that are meant to be used (or used up) for longer than is necessary. It has always been my way of trying to create permanence in this world of impermanence. As I get older, though, I’m learning that it’s a futile exercise. Things are meant to be used. You can’t keep things forever. So, if you have some fancy paper that’s heavenly to touch and write on, don’t hide it away for “some day,” waiting for the perfect time to use it. There will never be a perfect time. Use it now. Enjoy it now. While you still like it that much. If someone gives you nice smelling soaps, don’t keep them around waiting for a special occasion to use them. They are meant to be used (and used up). These are just two examples from my own life, but countless other examples exist: nice dishes, nice clothes, a favorite journal (it doesn’t do you any good sitting there blank, in a drawer), etc.

This one stands out to me as a helpful change of outlook for my own life, and may speak to others as well. Reaching middle age has reminded me that we’re not alive forever, so what’s the point of having these interesting things if all I do is pack them away for “someday”? Put them out, enjoy them. Use them. If they break, well, then there is room to put something else out.

Fortunately, I’ve been aware that this is a problem for me for some time, and have encouraged my kids to not inherit it. With that small dose of suggestion and a much larger dose of their own attitudes, they’ve succeeded.

What’s the message you want your readers to take away after reading the book?

Wisdom from Mom is full of messages to take away. My hope is that readers would find a few bits of advice that really stick with them and are helpful. But here are a few of the most important ones, in my opinion:

One, there is always help, always people to turn to when you feel at a loss or stuck.
Two, hold yourself to a high standard and take personal responsibility for all that you say and do.
And three, consider Future You in all the decisions you make and actions you take; Future You will thank you.

Do you have a proud moment you’d like to share?

Since my most important audience for Wisdom from Mom was my kids, I made sure to get each of them their own copy. My daughter has her copy near her bed, and regularly reads sections of it. She occasionally references it, and values what it contains. Considering she’s 18, this is a pretty proud moment for me.

You found out that you are on the autism spectrum about a year ago…how has that changed your perspective and your writing?

I’m still unpacking my life and what it means to be autistic. Slowly, certain things are making a lot more sense to me. So, if you were to ask me this question in a few years, I might have a better answer. But I’ll take a stab at it.

Though I don’t have a single interest that I’ve put all of my energy to over the years, several of them have stuck around for my entire lifetime, such as travel, books, maps, technology, lists and organization, crafts and putting things together, logic puzzles and the like, and the kinds of things that are hard to categorize (those are fun for me because they challenge my sense of order). I’ve been able to write about any or all of these kinds of things at GeekDad and GeekMom, as well as add my point of view as a parent.

My varied interests and skills have also all come in handy in my job as a freelance writer. I’m good at a lot of different things, but I’m not an expert in many of them. But this versatility makes it easy to do some work in creative fields and other work in technical fields. That crossover effect landed me perfectly at the GeekFamily network and means that my freelance career is fairly wide open.

For writing my books, I follow my passions. I follow where my interests take me. I’ve always done that with my leisure time, exploring in depth the world of computers when I was a teenager, making things and even designing my own dolls and other sewn items, and planning (and occasionally taking) elaborate trips around the world.

I’ve defined for myself what my books should be, and that has been incredibly freeing. That has always been one of my biggest priorities in life, to be able to define for myself what my life should look like, and not just follow society’s or someone else’s notion of what I should do and how I should do it.

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