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Relationship

Married

Hometown

New York City, NY

Places I've been

A LITTLE BACKGROUND: I grew up in new York City, the daughter of parents who gave advice: my mother, a psychology PhD, wrote an advice column that preceded Ann Landers and Dear Abby, and my father was both a teacher of rabbis and a psychiatrist! So I decided to be a book editor, and when I married and moved to New Haven, I began a long career that landed me eventually in New York City. I specialized in psychology and psychiatry (surprise!) and I published some landmark books in the field, including Alice Miller’s The Drama of the Gifted Child, Mary Pipher’s Reviving Ophelia, Antonio Damasio’s Descartes’ Error, and Rachel Simmons’ Odd Girl Out. I also participated in the rise of narrative nonfiction through my work on Praying For Sheetrock. Melissa Fay Greene’s landmark book, and Friday Night Lights, the football book that gave rise to a fine movie and an outstanding TV series. My life as an editor was wonderful, but eventually I tired of living in a corporate environment and struck out on my own, as a freelance editor and writer. My first book, Walking on Eggshells: Navigating the Delicate Relationship between Adult Children and Parents, was published in 2007. I traveled all over the country, to California, and Virginia, and Nebraska, interviewing parents and grown children, and I loved it. It seemed natural to follow up with another book that focused on some of the sorrows and conflicts we don’t tend to talk about. This time it’s siblings in adulthood, and again I went far and wide, listening to heartbreaking and heartwarming stories. My travels through our country have made me understand that beneath the differences in culture, religion, politics and region, beats one great heart: the family, in all its complexities and wonders.

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Big news: My new book, Mom Still Likes You Best: The Unfinished Business between Siblings about the demanding, complex, and ultimate rewarding relations between and among adult siblings is coming out in May, and I think it will make people more relaxed about what happens with them and their brothers and sisters. Traveling through the country and interviewing nearly 100 people, I discovered that most men and women love their brothers and sisters, but many have mixed feelings about at least some of them. That seems to be the norm. I now believe that it’s not unusual to find your brother annoying at times, or to feel bruised by your sister’s behavior. People are complicated, and sharing a past is a great thing, but memories of childhood cruelty and unfairness often color our relationships. Of course there are brothers and sisters who are “like that,” best friends who speak every day, who fight and make up in a nanosecond, and who couldn’t live without one another, but they are not as common as we might think. Even those very close brothers and sisters have gone through the steps that many people take, in order to be closer, to be less judged and less judgmental, and to gain a perspective and a sense of humor about the past.

I’m very excited about this new book, and since we’re in 2010, I am blogging from my new website, janeisay.com, and tweeting, and also blogging on Huffington Post. I realize that the previous sentence contains words that nobody knew about when my first book came out, but the world keeps changing, no matter what we do!

 

 

 

Activities

water aerobics, walking in Central Park, tutoring, liberal politics, conversation

Favorite Charities

StoryCorps, Mazon, God’s Love We Deliver

Favorite Music

Mozart, Bach, Beatles, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger

Favorite TV Shows

Brothers and Sisters, In Treatment, Boston Legal

Favorite Movies

Juno

Favorite Books

mysteries written by women, books about race in America

Favorite People

My family

Favorite Places

New York, City, Nebraska, the Serengeti

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