S2E1 - Divorce and Motherhood: Reacquainting Yourself with You

On A Desire For More: The Summertime Sadness of the Single Mom + The Fire in the Pants That is Kamala's Art of War.

In the season premiere, Chauncey Zalkin reflects on her solo summer trip to New Zealand while her kids were with their father. Navigating the emotions of sudden solitude, she finds herself reacquainting with her pre-motherhood identity amid stunning landscapes and cultural explorations—from the geothermal wonders of Waimangu Volcanic Valley and fjords of Milford Sound to a quiet week of self-discovery in Auckland. Chauncey discusses the unexpected mix of grief, longing, and desire for more—a push for change, new adventures, and deeper connection.

She also shares her take on last night’s debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, celebrating Harris’ undeniable skill and intelligence and reflecting on what it means for women and for our country. This episode combines introspection, adventure, and sharp political commentary, offering a fresh perspective on personal growth and the desire for more from life.

Listen and subscribe to Actual People on your favorite podcast platform and don’t miss next week's interview with Libby Rodney, Chief Strategy Officer of the Harris Poll.

Written, directed, and executive produced by Chauncey Zalkin. Intro/Outro sound engineered by Eric Aaron. Photography by Alonza Mitchell with Design Consulting by Paper + Screen.

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Transcript

 There are  a couple of weeks, every summer in August where my kids go away with their dad. It's one of the two or three times that he sees them a year because he lives nine hours away. I'm really a full-time single mom. I'm with my kids all the time. So it's the most bizarre sensation to find myself suddenly and abruptly alone. Just me, myself and I, and it doesn't matter how much I plan for these weeks, which this year I really did, I went all the way to New Zealand. It doesn't matter if I'll be with other people, and this year I was, I went to go visit a friend of mine who lives there. The experience always catches me by surprise; all of the emotions that I've shelved in neat emotional boxes during the year are taken down and I'm flooded with all of these sensations, not all of them pleasant. I feel a sudden loss of identity as a mom. And I also feel a very abrupt return to an identity that I am no longer that familiar with, which is myself. 

It's both a voyage back to a time before I had kids when I was a free spirit roaming in the world which is how I remember it, but of course it wasn't quite like that, and a time of re acquaintance with myself. Even though I'm fundamentally the same person I've always been, I mean, let's face it, you come out of those child-rearing years with a changed brain, a changed body, and we're all definitely living in a changed world. So I'm getting acquainted with myself all over again. This different version of myself in the continuum of me and I'm faced with the fact that I have a lot of catching up to do with myself. And I never quite get there. It's never quite long enough for me to get comfortable with just me alone in the universe.  When I start to get accustomed to my new / old self it's, usually around the time the trip is  ending. It takes that long.

Welcome to Actual People, Season 2, Episode 1. What you're listening to are the birds of New Zealand. Specifically, the Tui, native and unique to the country. It was my second to last day and I had gone on a walk up Mount Victoria,  and walked under this tree which was heavy with birdsong. They're all clustered in the tree and I stopped to try to find them in the branches. And they were singing back and  forth. 

It occurred to me that I wanted to record them. I'm not a bird person. Even though I  appreciate birds, I find them to be a little bit creepy and I don't often have, oh my God, as soon as I said that, I said I don't often have bird motifs in design around my house - but my desk is decoupaged with little, you know, postcards with prints of art from museums that I like and one of them is a parrot.  My eyes fell on it and it's right underneath my microphone. So interesting because I want to see if there's any more birds on this: I have a desk planner, a desk calendar. I don't see. Oh my God. Let me ...there's one more place. I can...those were the only birds. So those are the only birds. Maybe somebody should make a website “only birds”. I think it would be really successful. Maybe I should start it. Okay. Anyway, back to the podcast. . 

I stopped under this tree and I decided to take out my phone and record the birds. So many of the birds of New Zealand look supernatural, conjuring up their dinosaur origins. Soon after lifting my phone to the tree, other people started gathering around and took out their phones too, holding them up to the tree with me. It became less enjoyable, but I realized I'd been lucky up until this point. Sharing the tree with other tourists had not been a common experience on my two and a half week trip. Tourists might swarm travel destinations in summer, but the Northern Hemisphere's summer is New Zealand's winter so I was lucky to have many places  visited to myself or to ourselves because I was often with friends.   

When I'm about to leave a place, I get anxious to capture it and fold the experience into me . Even if I'm also anxious to get home or tired of traveling.  travel  can feel like pressure. You must enjoy it. It must transform you on the spot. It had been years since I traveled so far. Last summer, I went to London and Paris, but I lived in Paris. and spent a lot of time in London, so I had context galore. It was more a walk down memory lane which of course is its own emotional minefield. But it was still a homecoming  to go to Paris. And the fact that I had my kids with me for the whole time in Paris and part of the time in London created a certain tone to the trip where I was narrating my experience of the place and educating my kids. I didn't have as much time to just experience it.  I could reroute any of my emotions into the role of mother.

This was a more humbling experience going somewhere different than I've ever been in a part of the world I've never gone and knew very little about all in the middle of my child rearing years   where my day-to-day life consists of things like going to the grocery store, and that meditative mecca of calm, that is a mother's trip to Target. Or going to the gym to try to stay in shape now that I don't live in a major metropolis. Suddenly here I am traveling 17 hours to New Zealand in the middle of my mom era as a single person and it's a strange experience. Not necessarily just exciting and fun, but also.  Humbling.  At this point, I'm far away from the sea legs of the many, many times I've moved or lived in a foreign city in the before-times of my life before motherhood. Before I turned 40 or 50.  I found myself struggling to orient myself,  to get acclimated to the part of me, which used to be a very big part of me and hopefully will be again,. But that part of me that makes snap decisions in a constantly changing environment of a new place. That has to think about where to go and how to get there and what to take and how to get online. And how to time everything.  

It was an exercise in a renewed consciousness of self and a renewed consciousness of my environment. Most of the time, I'm thinking about what my kids need, but I had to think about what I need and what I didn't need, and that was tough. 

It was tough going to shed extraneous things and just accept the moment. I had to reacquaint myself with myself as an individual.

I find that doing dishes , meeting deadlines, signing kids up for camps and sports,  making my home nice  as hard as that is, doing things for myself is harder.  I wish I could say it was all one long Instagram moment, but even if visually that was  the case, I found myself Experiencing a deep sadness during this trip. I don't normally feel deep sadness at this time of my life, to be honest. I'm not usually swept up in strong, distracting emotions.  I don't really have the time, and I don't really have the drama. But ever since we lost Elijah, the dog we found and I dedicated episode 12 to in season 1,  who we lost exactly three months to the day of when we found him,  A floodgate of emotion had opened inside me,  or more realistically,  a steady open tap of grief,  it really hadn't stopped by the time I arrived,  I still felt that undercurrent. 

So I'm feeling these kinds of low emotions. t the same time, I'm seeing outrageously beautiful things.  After the first day, we get in the car to head down to Rotorua to this place that has Māori performances and you learn about learn about Māori history but we missed the performance so we decided to pivot and drive 20 minutes to a place that my friends didn't really know much about  and we end up in what is this lush geothermal paradise. It's called the Waimangu volcanic valley. It used to be known for these beautiful pink steps that were  formed  by geothermal springs but in 1866, a volcano erupted which completely wiped out the entire valley  in one fell swoop, everything was dead and gone. And over time, a whole new ecosystem. arose.  Because It wasn't where we were planning to go and it wasn't that expensive to get in. And we didn't really see a lot of people.  I didn't really expect much. Every corner of the globe has been exposed and exploited so it's very hard to experience anything with a sense of discovery. Especially if everybody knows about it. 

The first thing we see is this little map, and on the map, it says how the world began and it shows a few different pictures of what we're about to see, and then you take a few more steps and immediately on your right,  there's this strange crater lake that looks like something out. of Star Trek. A burnt Sienna powder sits on top of half of the lake and the water is very, very, still. But what I don't know is that it goes 50 meters down into something called the Emerald pool. And , this is some that literally took my breath away. This is when I think I realized physically that I was in another part of the world. That I was in a different hemisphere and  had entered a different reality.  My mind and my body was starting to catch up to what was around me. 

And it was, uh, it was profound.  We walked on and we saw the largest geyser-like feature in the world,   this steaming turquoise pool. And the largest hot spring frying pan lake.  All these amazing colors. There were black swans,  then the next day we got in the car and we went to Huka falls where 220,000 liters  of waterfall every second, it's just a massive amount of bright blue water. The way we got there, as we took this hour-long walk through Redwood forest.  A couple days later we went down to Queenstown and we took a. Five-hour bus. And then a boat ride through the fjords of Milford sound. And I saw the cutest little penguin tumble on the rocks and get himself back up.  we saw seals and just jaw dropping waterfalls.  The most stunning landscape.  We  e-bike through the woods near Queenstown  over swinging bridges, And we stopped along at a vineyard and had delicious wine. We stopped at the first commercial bungee jumping spot ever in the world. And  watched people jump from the bridge.

And then back in Auckland, my friend discovered that she had COVID and I found myself alone for the final full week of my trip.  My friend lived in an area called the bays.  And in the morning. I take a yoga class and then walk down to the beach. On one of those mornings, the tide was out.  A short cliff, like a soggy biscuit, sat at the end of the beach.  Nothing seemed to move. The sea was as flat as glass.  There's something about looking out onto a sea with no reference point in my education or history, that conjures the smallness of existence. The vastness of what is out there. and the blip that is our lifetime.  The sun was bright and flat, but then suddenly  a very strong cold wind picked up and it shook me from the doldrums that I was feeling. It made me think of a Cockle shell necklace placed over your head. The rain moved fast as if poured through a salad strainer in a crane, above a stage in a kid's play. And the wind blew and great gusts it was, uh, it was a really strong rain that came down at an angle, pock marking the sand and then it all just stopped. And the sun shone again.

I think it was a step forward because I spent the rest of the day wandering. And just talking to people out on the streets of the city.   It is kind of a wonder how I ever could have left New York, because this is one of my favorite past times. Talking to strangers in stores.   In fact, every few years, I go back to this idea of opening  a store or a gallery myself, but in the end, I don't think I can stand in one place all day. I felt trapped as a kid in my mother's home. I feel trapped when I have jobs that make me stay in an office all day. And it's just too confining and  experience  but one of my greatest pleasures is definitely going into independent retail shops and talking to the people. who work there and looking at the beautiful things. I really am a sucker for great retail and beautiful spaces. In that last week, each of those last days, I got to know the bus system a little bit better. I've found it easier to find new things to do. I was gaining momentum in a side of myself that had been buried.  On the very last day I rented an E bike and I rode the curve of the beach of Waiheke island   still feeling a bit trepidatious, but definitely feeling more of a sense of belonging in the universe that I had been missing in the first few days. of my trip. I had  gotten my sea legs of solo travel back but at the same time I missed my kids intensely. It was actually painful.   I was more than happy to board that plane but I did come home with this nagging feeling that I want more, that I'm ready for change. I'm not sure what it is. We're in this extremely high stakes election. All of us sick of the inflation, of our rickety economy…We're sick of our teetering democracy tired of having to see the big red faced bully persist , no matter how much proof we have of his demented nature.  Just wanting more joy and adventure from life  again. 

I was going to try to pull a lesson from one of the two books I bought my kids on Māori myths and legends, but they are so detailed that I wouldn't be able to do them justice, and I don't want to minimize them, but I did find a Māori proverb that goes seek to bring distant horizons closer while maintaining the ones you've arrived at. There's another one that says aim for the highest cloud so that if you miss it, you'll hit a lofty mountain. According to a website on Māori Proverbs, the real message is to be persistent and don't let obstacles stop you from reaching your goal but I believe it to be more than that. We don't have control over exactly what happens to us, but if we put all of our intentions in the right place with sincerity, honesty and the right amount of awe and humility, we're bound to end up in a better place for ourselves than if we were to aim low. 

I was going to have my first episode be an interview with Libby Rodney ,the Chief Strategy Officer of the Harris Poll. We had what ended up being a two hour conversation about wealth inequity, the change that gen Z is bringing to the workplace in which she credits gen X for their support of gen Z, and how ultimately  parenting beyond all the data in the world   is at the end of the day, a blend of intuition  and information. That will be episode two and you should definitely take a listen, but because last night was the pivotal presidential debate between Harris and Trump, I thought I would comment on the fact that before last night's debate. 

I had noticed a muting of my passionate hatred for Donald Trump. Now hear me out. It's not sympathy and it's definitely not affection.  I absolutely, unequivocally, despise him. It's a numbing. A fatigue from four years of outrage , followed by a year of misplaced relief. And then a couple   more recent years of anxiety, fear, and just exhaustion. 

How many times can it be made plain that the boogeyman is coming to get us? It's not like we don't believe it. We're just numb.  Like anyone suffering from Stockholm syndrome,  I was at the point of trying to understand it because I knew I couldn't control it. Try to understand why some even generally nice people that I know think it's a sensible choice  to choose him in any situation?  How deeply can misinformation infect people? I became more interested in the phenomenon of such a division in ethics and reason than the rage and indignity I felt in the beginning. 

 I started to feel  fewer railings of reason to hold on to. In fact, I cling to the late night hosts and what they say as a sort of salve to  my wounded sense of right and wrong in the world.   I started to wonder, why am I taking this personally. is this part of getting older? where you start to fixate on political news and things outside of yourself because you can't control everything in your immediate surroundings.  And then I watched the debate last night and.  It was so refreshing.  To see somebody, so level-headed so sharp. And so on top of her game, In the way that she communicates,  able to be so confident and strategic as opposed to being nice and diplomatic, she was sharp.  Lethal. And still morally. Way above the fray  

As  a woman, I know very intimately that we are often punished for being clear headed, articulate and decisive.  We have been shot down or put in our place.   At work in relationships. Out in the world for being strong, confident, intelligent. And sure footed.  

It has often not served us where we end up in tears or talking to our friends and saying, well, what could I have done differently? 

What did I do wrong?  And then somebody wiser than us, we'll say you've done nothing wrong. And then we feel.  

Helpless. 

Like the horizon we're clinging to that we've reached is all we can have. 

And I think it's a really good lesson for us and for all of our children, that you can be tough, strong.  Unwavering. And still be a good person. You don't have to. 

Make yourself smaller. Or use a lot of emotional fawning language to get your point across. 

 I was very impressed and inspired and inspired in a different way than I was ever inspired by Barack Obama, who I just love so much and always will. it was  her ability to defeat her enemy using intelligence and.  High moral standards. So happy September 11th. And we will see you next week for our first interview of season two of actual people. 

  You've been listening to Actual People. This show is written, directed, and executive produced by me, your host, Chauncey Zalkin. Show sound designed by Eric Aaron. Click on the link below to subscribe so you don't miss a single episode. And don't forget to leave a review. I'll be sharing my favorites.  You can find our socials and all links to deeper dives into these topics at chaunceyzalkin.com and on my sub stack at chaunceyzalkin.substack.com.  Actual People is available wherever you get your podcasts.