Transcript for Writing Your Resilience Podcast Episode 45
Bright Spots, Neurodiversity, and More Chicken in Your Memoir with Kristin Jarvis Adams

If you’re writing about a medical drama or other high-intensity journey involving another person, how do you write about these events without swallowing your story of transformation? What would you do if your agent’s feedback to you was “more chicken?” That’s exactly what parent advocate Kristin Jarvis Adams’s agent said after reading a draft of her memoir, The Chicken Who Saved Us. Join us as we explore the challenges of turning an animal into a primary character in your memoir, learning to appreciate the diverse ways we communicate, how to get past your vendetta mindset, and the power of finding the pinpoints of light in dark times in this week’s episode of the Writing Your Resilience podcast. Let’s dive in! 

Lisa Ellison [0:00]:
 Well, hello, Kristin. I am so glad to have you on the Writing Your Resilience podcast. Welcome.

Kristin [0:05]:
 Thank you for having me.

Lisa Ellison [0:07]:
 When I read the title of your book, I knew I had to read it, and there was so much I wanted to know. I’m holding it up now for everyone watching on YouTube: The Chicken Who Saved Us: The Remarkable Story of Andrew and Frightful. We’re going to dive deeply into this book, but before we get started, I always like to ask the author: What would you like us to know about the story?

Kristin [0:31]:
 Yes, I would say that even the act of writing the story was born out of this deep need to make sense of my life. So many things were coming at me from all directions, and I just needed to quiet my mind and find that inner peace. I had to get it out. Writing it was very therapeutic. It helped me to think about it and view it from a different angle than the terrified mom who was experiencing trauma after trauma.

Lisa Ellison [1:10]:
 Yeah, and as I was reading your book and spending time with my own reactions, I could feel that sense of exhaustion. There’s a relentlessness to the journey—I was just reading and going, “Oh my goodness, again? Again?” I’m not going to get into too many details because I want people to read your book, but I definitely felt this heaviness. And yet, you wrote this book in a way that isn’t heavy. There’s a heaviness to the story, but there’s also a lightness. So, I want to start with the chickens, because people are probably like, “What? Chickens?” I never thought I’d care so much about a chicken in a book, but I do.

What’s interesting is that when I read a book, I always go through forewords, introductions, and acknowledgments. And in your acknowledgments, you wrote that your agent said, “More chicken.” I 100% agree with him. I think that was the best choice you could have made. But for anyone listening who’s thinking, “What’s up with the chicken?”—first, can you explain who Frightful is? And then, can you talk about how you went about writing a chicken in a way that made me care so much?

Kristin [2:34]:
 That’s a great question. When I was initially envisioning the hook for this book, I thought it would be about a mom’s journey with her family, including a brother and sister, as we navigated everything we went through. But I realized it was more about me trying to understand my son’s language. My son has autism, and, as you’ll find out in the book, there are other complex factors involved in what happened over the years. But there was this sweetness and incredible relationship between this boy and this bird.

When I pitched the book, I told agents and editors that my son’s best friend was a chicken named Frightful. It was such an unusual detail that it caught people’s attention, and they asked me about it. As I talked to others, I realized the heart of my book was this relationship between an autistic boy, who at the time didn’t speak at all, and this bird. They developed a language of their own.

So, as I revised the book, I explored how I could step into and understand this language between these two creatures. After selling the book and sending in my manuscript, my editor reviewed it and gave me a few pages of feedback. “Move this around,” she suggested. “Try that.” But at the very bottom, she wrote, “More chicken.” It just opened up a whole new level of understanding for me. This phrase has even become a household saying—“More chicken” has come to mean getting to the heart of the story, finding that universal feeling everyone can relate to. It doesn’t have to be a chicken; it could be a dog or another person. So, in revising my draft, I brought Frightful to life in a unique way.

Lisa Ellison [4:57]:
Yeah, and what I love about it is that it’s not kitschy.

Kristin [5:00]:
That was something I had to work on—getting more chicken in there without it becoming too cutesy or just a “cluck, cluck” for the chicken’s sake. One night, I was writing with some friends, and one of them suggested, “What if you made the chicken talk?” My first thought was, “What memoir has a talking animal?” I immediately thought of children’s books. But she said, “Just consider it.”

I went out to our chicken coop in the backyard with my iPad, recorded the sounds of the hens, and sat out there for days, listening to them. Chickens actually have a wide variety of sounds, and their language is quite sophisticated. I revisited some videos we had of my son talking to the chickens on our front porch, and I noticed this sing-song rhythm between them. So, I went back into the manuscript and added a few details—my interpretations of what Frightful was saying to comfort my son. It was a daring move for a memoir, but I sent it to my editor, and within an hour, she called back and said, “Bingo, you hit it.”

Lisa Ellison [6:33]:
 Yeah, and I think one of the things I loved was how you interpreted her clucks and various sounds. You make it clear that you’re guessing what she might have been saying, but you do it in a way that feels real. I walk every morning and hear the birds outside—you can tell when they’re annoyed, having a little battle, or happy. One time, I even heard this heartbreaking sound from songbirds in a forested area as a crow flew out. You could tell a crow had gotten one of their babies because the mournful sound was so powerful. So, I think you’re tapping into these existing layers of communication. Not everyone speaks chicken, but if you listen closely, you start to pick up on the language in all these sounds.

That really enriched your story for me. It helped me understand Andrew, your son, in a new way and showed me how varied communication can be. I used to work with children with autism. The first person I worked with was when I was sixteen, so I’ve had experience with autistic individuals for a long time. They communicate differently, and one of the biggest misconceptions people have—and you probably know this better than I do since Andrew is autistic—is that they lack feelings or don’t understand what’s going on because they communicate differently. But the reality is, we just don’t know their language.

Kristin [8:43]:
 Exactly. That’s what I realized I had been doing my whole life with my son—trying to step into his world and understand his language. His language is beautiful and incredibly profound. He’ll be eating dinner, and out of nowhere, he’ll have this profound thought, just one sentence, but it’s clear he’s been thinking about it. He has this gut feeling about the world that’s very sophisticated—sometimes even more so than me.

You’re right; there’s inherent beauty in people who experience life differently, whether it’s autism or other unique ways of feeling or understanding the world. And having the patience to listen and the openness to step into that with them is something I’m incredibly grateful for. My son has taught me that gift.

Lisa Ellison [10:11]:
 I think we’re just starting to understand neurodiversity and its impact on how we experience and interpret the world. Your book helps readers examine those things within themselves: How does the world influence me? How do I communicate in ways that might be expected of me, and where do I deviate? How could I communicate differently? I love that about your book.

So, there’s so much in here about disability and understanding your son. I’m going to ask you about portraying someone with a disability when you’re not that person, and then I’d like to explore what it’s like to parent a child with a disability. I worked with children with disabilities, and my aunt’s daughter has multiple disabilities. Each experience is unique, but there are commonalities too. So first, let’s talk about Andrew. He’s autistic. How did you go about writing him in a way that respected his experience but didn’t share too much of his story—since this is your story?

Kristin [11:52]: 
That is an excellent question. I think it was a process when I very first started, and one of the first questions you asked me is, how did this book come about? Yeah, and I had a great piece of advice from a friend, and she said, be messy and write as if no other eyes will ever see it. I was very hung up in all these emotions that I had, in all these feelings and judgments. There was a lot of frustration. We spent well over a decade, mostly in the hospital, in and out of the hospital, doctor's appointments every other day of the week for years, trying to figure out what was going on. And it's very easy to become jaded or frustrated, to become angry, to feel like you're not being heard when you're telling doctors something is wrong.

When I was writing, at first, I had no intention that anybody else would see it or it would be published. It was just releasing all this stuff onto the page. And the thing that was so good about that for me is it allowed me to really get angry, to be upset, to feel betrayed. There were friends that we had had for a long time, and it was just too difficult for them at some point to walk along this journey. It was a lot to hold, and the sadness and the grief with that—you know, a friendship changing or pulling away—I gave myself permission to have all those ugly emotions on the page.

Then I printed everything out, went to Kinko's, bound it, and chucked it in my closet, and it sat there for about six months. I let it stew. I let it do its thing. And it really was like one morning I woke up, and I thought, okay, I'm ready to look at that. And as I read it, I could see it was the Kristin from six months ago experiencing that. I could see the growth, and I'd also done my own work in being able to forgive, let go, and not pass judgment. And so, when I addressed it a second time, I was able to take this story as I had written it, and then try to sit, close my eyes, and be in that friend's seat, sitting inside of them, or in my family members, or in my husband or my daughter who was acting out because she was upset and traumatized. What did it feel like to be her? And when I could have a deep compassion or understanding of them, I was able to go back and write and rewrite and refine and write about the things that happened from my perspective, but also showing an understanding of how others were trying to deal with the situation as well, and really with compassion and respect.

A reader definitely gets, oh, she's really frustrated with this doctor, but I really worked hard not to pass judgment and say, oh, he was a jerk. He didn't listen to me. So, I really just tried to show, this is what happened in the scene from my perspective, and then let a reader decide, oh, I think Kristin was feeling this way, or This doctor was trying his best, but he had no idea. Yeah.

Lisa Ellison [15:37]: 
Well, your son had some really complicated medical issues that were difficult to diagnose. But what I like about your approach is that you were able to see your own experience and feel all the feelings that you were perhaps stuffing down or could not feel because you were trying to survive. And anytime we're trying to survive an experience, we cannot survive and feel at the same time, for the most part, especially when you're dealing with life or death and the stakes are really high. The way we survive is we shut those things down so that we can keep other parts of our brain online.

So, you did that work. Then it sounds like you worked with a therapist so that you could process and make some sense around what it was that happened to you. And after you've done that, and you had shown tremendous compassion to yourself, then and only then were you able to do that perspective-taking, where you were able to look at, okay, what were they thinking? What's the other angle to the same story? And when we do that, we create rich and rounded characters that we can believe in, because we know this isn't a vendetta, yes. And as a person who's been on some medical journeys, I can understand a vendetta mindset.

Kristin [17:03]:
 Oh yes, it still creeps in every once in a while, but I'm able to recognize it and understand when I'm passing judgment on something that I haven't stepped in and looked at from the other way.

Lisa Ellison [17:15]:
Yeah. And I think the fine line of that—and I'll be curious to hear what you say—is a fine line between going like, Oh, wow. There's all my judgy stuff, and here's all my crap coming out, we all have it, and saying like, wow, I wonder what else is there? What do I need? What's missing for me? And then, why is it I can't look at this from someone else's perspective? versus going like, wow, I'm really angry, and anger isn't an emotion that I'm comfortable with. And, Oh, wow, that's not very nice. If you're listening, I have my air quotes out: "nice," and so I'm going to look at it from someone else's perspective and discount my own. 

Kristin [18:00]: 
Absolutely. That is a process I have had to work on personally to recognize that.

Lisa Ellison [18:08]: 
You and me both. When I worked with children and their parents, when I worked in elementary school in particular—so I worked in middle school and elementary school—and when you're working in special education, this is the time when children get diagnoses. Many children come into the special education system early on, maybe in kindergarten or first grade, and a problem is picked up. They're behind in some areas, and so they get some additional services with the hopes that they're going to catch up. Other children come into the system, and it's clear right away that either they've been diagnosed with a disability early on because they have a developmental disability, which is usually something they're born with, or there's strong concern that there's a disability.

But the process of getting an educational diagnosis and a medical diagnosis is often a process. When that diagnosis comes about, it's this fulcrum moment for so many people, because, on the one hand, this concern has been there the whole time. There's Worry, worry, worry, gosh, I just want to have an answer. And on the other hand, when the answer is, yes, your child has a disability, there is profound grief because the dream of the child you had before dies so that you can have the dreams of the child that you have. And it's not that one dream is better than the other. It is a different dream, though, and there is tremendous grief.

Kristin [19:37]:
There is a lot of grief in that, and I often work with families right at that pivotal time when they are getting the diagnosis and all these emotions erupt and come out. And what often happens is they want to go in and be really upset at the school or the teacher, or they're not doing it. And they sit in these IEP meetings, and they're quite traumatized. People are talking about all these things that your son or your daughter is going to need, and it's very frightening. And so, what happens a lot of times is parents will get in a head-to-head with the administration or the teachers or the special education teachers.

I try to coax them, even though their emotions are right underneath the surface, to come in with a conciliatory approach, saying, okay, it looks like this is what we're dealing with. We're trying to process it. What can we do to help support you as educators to make this the best opportunity for our son or daughter? Even just coming in with that little bit of a shift instead of, I want to make sure I get all these things that I deserve. You know, I'm supposed to get this much speech, or OT, or this or that. Parents are just desperately wanting to connect their kids with every possible service they can. Coming in with that little bit of a pivot makes a tremendous difference and sets the tone for them being able to advocate for their child throughout the school system.

It's a very difficult time. Nobody wants a label put on their kid. Of course, I avoided it. I was terrified of it, and I avoided it until Andrew was in kindergarten. They said, we can't help him unless we have a code to write down. We need a label. In the back of my head, I knew that label, but I just didn't—I wasn't ready to accept it. At the time when Andrew was diagnosed, which was the early '90s, autism was not a household word. It was associated with the movie Rain Man. That was the only type of understanding a lot of the educators had. His first-grade teacher, who I loved, who was wonderful, when she greeted him, she said, Hi, Andrew. Oh, I know you. You're like Rain Man, and it was crushing for the mama—No, my son is not Rain Man. My son is Andrew. At the time, she had no other frame of reference, and they didn't even have the support systems or the training that they have today for parents stepping into that paradigm.

So, yes, I mean, I understand exactly what you were sharing about your experience in the teaching area, because it's a very hard time for parents.

Lisa Ellison [22:53]:
 And what I would say is that it doesn't, at least on the outside, you know, in the conversations I've had with different people—the grief piece isn't something that happens just once. It's always great when everybody can come to the table with a sense of curiosity and ask, “How can we make this work?” Because that lessens the fear and desire to control. But at the same time, there are always going to be developmental milestones or intersection points where things change, and that grief resurfaces. In this story, we see some of that grief, but this is a layered story because Andrew isn’t just autistic; he’s a medically fragile child with a very serious health condition that swallows up everything.

It could have been easy to just write the story of how we were consumed. When parents have children with disabilities, that can become their identity: “I'm the mom of Andrew, the mom of an autistic child,” and that's all they are. But you rounded out this story by really wrestling with what was going on underneath the surface. For you, how did you balance the enormity of this medical journey—which had me thinking, OMG, what's going to happen? I wanted to get to that last page to figure out if he survives—with the internal transformation that needed to happen in memoir.

Kristin [24:25]:
 Another great piece of advice I received when I was finding this new tribe of people was when things started to get really hard and confusing. There was a shift in our life—people, community, and tribe—and after they left, it left room for something new. I had this wonderful group of women who were completely open to hear my ranting, fears, trauma—everything. They would just sit there. But one of the gals said to me, "Where was that tiny glimmer of light?"

I’d told this dark story, like I was in a cave and couldn’t get out. But she said, "Look around, find the little glimmer of light." So, I've used that throughout the book. Here is what happened, here is the scariness of what happened, and how I felt. But where was the little piece of light that came in? In one part of the book, I talk about Andrew being in the hospital for months and months. Christmas was coming, and that made everything topsy-turvy. We weren't participating in anything because we were living at the hospital with him. My husband came in, and my mother-in-law brought strings of Christmas lights. We taped them up all over the room. We wrapped the doors like big Christmas presents and everything.

My husband and I were lying on this tiny hospital cot on Christmas Eve night, and out in the hallway, you could hear "Jingle Bells" and "Ho, ho, ho." There was a Santa and elves pulling one of those big hospital roller bins, but it was stacked with presents. They knocked on the door, came in, and my son—who was in so much pain and on so much medication—didn't even wake up. But my husband and I had that wonderful childlike feeling of Santa coming and bringing gifts. They left gifts with us, visited, and went down the hall to the next kids. That little, tiny glimmer of light in months of darkness just filled us up.

I still practice that every day. Where did I find those pinpoints of light? It’s popular now, and I think it’s wonderful, to write gratitude journals and lists. But I like to say, “Where was that tiny point of light in this situation?” That created a mind shift for me in my writing, allowing humor to come in and helping me recognize it, even in dark times.

Lisa Ellison [27:40]:
 There are so many ways we have to train our brains to see our stories expansively. I love that question: “What is the pinpoint of light?” You have some absolutely hilarious moments in this book. And there’s also a stuffed Frightful that appears, which is lovely. I think one of the other things you do well to create light for the reader is through these thoughtful, poignant moments. There’s this moment in the book where someone asks you, "Do you know the difference between resigning and relinquishing?" As a reader, I had to pause and ask myself, “Do I know the difference?”

For those listening who don’t know how to create light in the darkness, moments like that—questions that challenge the reader as well as your character—can help bring a sense of lightness because they expand the story.

Kristin [28:40]:
Yes, how I understand the difference between resigning and relinquishing: resigning feels like giving up—like, “Okay, everything has turned to crap, I just give up,” throwing your hands up. But relinquishing is a choice—a handing over, a letting go. Many times throughout the book, I had to relinquish my control and fear of wanting to keep my son alive. I had to hand it over to what felt like a higher power.

There was a big internal wrestling throughout the book on whether there was anything more than this. If this feels so difficult, so upsetting, so full of misery, there has to be something bigger that I maybe can’t see. Relinquishing was when I was finally ready to say, "Okay, I hand this over. I accept things." I waited and listened for that inner voice in me that assured me, "All is well; it always will be, and it always has been." That was a mantra I carried through the whole process.

Lisa Ellison [30:19]:
 It's so beautiful. I love that you were able to do that work in the midst of this hard situation, which you’ve written about so beautifully. I hope everyone goes and gets your book—it’s truly amazing. I'm going to end with my three lightning-round questions because we could talk all day, but you have to move on. You've shared brilliant writing wisdom. Is there any last piece of writing advice you’d like to share?

Kristin [30:53]:
 My best writing advice would be to really write from that vulnerable, deep-gut place. Write your first draft from that place, with that deep emotion. Be honest, vulnerable, and a truth-teller on the page. Then, step away from it. When you come back, you can do the self-editing and shape it. If you're willing to put pen to paper, set a timer, and don’t lift the pen—even for five minutes—you’ll find little nuggets you can use elsewhere.

Lisa Ellison [31:44]:
 Absolutely. So, what I’m hearing is, don’t self-edit. Write it for yourself first. That is the most important thing. You went through a really big, challenging experience, and one of the things I love about your book is your Survival Guide tips. I imagine you used these while writing. So, if you have one Survival Guide tip, what would it be?

Kristin [32:11]:
 Lean into your tribe or community. It can be one person—the 3 a.m. person, the one person you know will answer when everything’s falling apart. They don’t have to fix it; they just hold the story. This has been essential, not only in my life but also in my writing life.

Lisa Ellison [32:47]:
 Yes, very important. So, build your community. My hope is that your appearance on this podcast helps to build your community as more people connect with you and your book. If people want to get a copy of The Chicken Who Saved Us, or connect with you, what are the best ways?

Kristin [33:09]:
 Through my website, kristinjarvisadams.com. You can email me there, and I’ll reply right away. I'm also on Instagram at @kristinjarvisadams. The book is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, indie bookstores—wherever books are sold.

Lisa Ellison [33:30]:
 And if you love the book, do review it—it helps every author. And if you missed anything Kristin said, all the ways to contact her will be in the show notes. Kristin, thank you so much for being on the podcast. I'm truly honored. It was a delight to read your book, and I've thought about you, Andrew, and Frightful many times since I finished it.

Kristin [33:59]:
 Thank you. It was a pleasure.

Writing Your Resilience Episode 45: Bright spots, Neurodiversity, and More Chicken in Your Memoir, on the left, host Lisa Cooper Ellison a middle-aged white woman with silver curly hair wearing a blue dress on the left, and on the right, guest Kristin Jarvis Adams, a middle-aged white woman with shoulder length blond hair, wearing glasses and a white jacket