Episode Summary
Join host Aransas Savas as she kicks off the highly requested Late Bloomers series with memoirist and publisher Sari Botton. In this deeply resonant conversation, Sari shares her journey of publishing her memoir "And You May Find Yourself: Confessions of a Late Blooming Gen X Weirdo" after 15 years of wrestling with fear and self-doubt.
Why Gen X Is the Late Bloomer Generation Sari explains how Gen Xers experienced unique childhood disruption during the sexual revolution of the 1970s, watching their parents transform from formal, structured adults into "disco ducks" - creating confusion about how to be a grown-up.
Key Insights
The Universal Fear of Being "Too Late"
- Every generation worries about being behind schedule
- Our youth-obsessed culture promotes "30 under 30" lists that make us feel done if we haven't achieved certain milestones by arbitrary ages
- The fear started for Sari at age 10 when her uncle said "you'll never be one digit again"
Finding Peace With Your Timeline People who seem most at peace with their age (usually 50+) share common traits:
- They've stopped pretending to be who others want them to be
- They've achieved enough to feel secure but had enough failures to stay humble
- They've learned what's right for them and stopped caring about what isn't
The Permission to Tell Your Story
- The best memoirs illuminate the mundane, not exceptional experiences
- First-person writing should always feel scary - if it doesn't, you're not doing it right
- Memoir's job is to share uncomfortable feelings that everyone has but no one talks about
Practical Writing Wisdom
- Give yourself permission to quit every night, then choose to continue each morning
- Write the version nobody will see first to get it out of your system
- Don't rush to publish - sometimes we need years to become the right version of ourselves to tell our stories
- The right timing often reveals itself through gut instinct
Memorable Quotes
"You don't need to come up with new tricks, you just need to show them to people who haven't seen them before."
"The job of the memoirist is to illuminate the mundane."
"If first-person writing isn't scary, something's wrong - you're not doing it right."
"I've achieved enough to feel okay where I am, and I've had enough failures to be humble."
About Sari Botton
- Author of "And You May Find Yourself: Confessions of a Late Blooming Gen X Weirdo"
- Publisher of Oldster Magazine and Memoir Land
- Editor of two bestselling anthologies about loving and leaving New York
- Has been featured in Marie Claire, The New York Times Modern Love, and more
How to Support Sari's Work
- Buy her memoir in print or audiobook (narrated by Sari herself)
- Subscribe to her newsletters: Oldster Magazine and Memoir Land
- Follow her upcoming live Oldster events
This episode was sponsored by
Get full access to The Uplifters at www.theuplifterspodcast.com/subscribe
