Gina DeMillo Wagner is the author of “Forces of Nature.” Her writing has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Memoir Magazine, Modern Loss, and other publications. She has a master’s degree in journalism and is cofounder of Watershed creative writing and art workshops. She lives and works near Boulder, Colorado. You can visit her online at ginadwagner.com.
SunLit: Tell us this book’s backstory. What inspired you to write it? Where did the story/theme originate?
Wagner: When I published my New York Times essay “Mourning the Loss of a Sibling Rival,” it struck a nerve and tapped into a large audience that is underserved: siblings and families who are hungry for authentic, honest, nuanced depictions of living (and dying) with disabilities in their myriad forms, both visible and invisible. Very little has been written from the perspective of siblings to people with developmental disabilities or chronic medical conditions. And yet, about one in five families has at least one child with special needs, according to the National Institutes of Health.
At its core, “Forces of Nature” is a memoir about the challenge of loving people with intense needs without eclipsing your own. It’s a book about the stuff no one talks about, but all of us know deep down: that adversity isn’t delivered to us as a blessing or a curse; it can be both. Joy and pain are two sides of the same coin. You can’t experience one without fully accepting the other. I wrote this memoir as an offering to readers who need that validation – and as a gift to the younger version of myself who craved honest, nuanced stories about family, disability, and grief.
SunLit: Place this excerpt in context. How does it fit into the book as a whole? Why did you select it?
Wagner: Most people who have experienced a sudden, unexpected loss describe a before-and-after moment, like a bright white line you cross or a rip in the fabric of your personal universe. The moment for me was made more acute by the fact I was on an airplane. When the plane took off and I powered down my phone, everything was fine. When I landed and turned the phone back on, everything had changed.
UNDERWRITTEN BY
Each week, The Colorado Sun and Colorado Humanities & Center For The Book feature an excerpt from a Colorado book and an interview with the author. Explore the SunLit archives at coloradosun.com/sunlit.
A switch had flipped, literally and figuratively. This, combined with the nomadic feeling of being in an unfamiliar airport, a citizen of nowhere, seemed like an appropriate place to begin a story about navigating loss and finding your place in the world.
SunLit: Tell us about creating this book. What influences and/or experiences informed the project before you sat down to write?
Wagner: I’ve been a professional writer for 20 years, so I was used to investigating and dissecting a topic or phenomenon. I’ve always loved digging to find the questions beneath the questions. But this was the first time I’d really interrogated myself, my personal history, and my relationships on such a deep level.
I workshopped and took classes with a few authors I admire like Alexander Chee and Melissa Febos. I read voraciously. But ultimately, I had to trust myself, be my own influence, and find a unique structure that could hold this story.
SunLit: What were the biggest challenges you faced in writing this book?
Wagner: With memoir, I think the biggest challenge is determining the boundaries of your narrative and setting up guard rails to define where your story ends and a family member’s story begins. You make decisions as the author, the narrator, and the main character. You must have self-awareness to intuit where to push deeper and where to pull back.
It was also a challenge – mentally and emotionally – sifting through decades of research, interviews, public records, old diaries, and photographs. Lastly, I think there’s the challenge of universality in memoir. How do I tell my unique story in such a way that it resonates with a wide audience? In the end, the story belongs to whomever is reading it. It’s my story, and it’s everyone’s story.
SunLit: What’s the most important thing – a theme, lesson, emotion or realization — that readers should take from this book?
Wagner: There are many themes that I hope will resonate. But mostly, I want readers to feel permission to name their experiences around complex families and complicated grief. Generally speaking, our culture is not great at grieving or supporting grieving people. We don’t know what to say, or we say the wrong thing, or we use toxic positivity to try to force people out of their grief too quickly.
We push against pain and discomfort, when in reality, if you lean into the messiness and admit that grief is lifelong and nonlinear, I think you’ll find more peace and self-compassion. For me, it was also helpful to accept that if your relationship with the person is complicated while they’re alive, it will continue to feel complicated after they die. The unanswered questions and unfinished business of those relationships are part of our inheritance.
SunLit: Walk us through your writing process: Where and how do you write?
Wagner: I wrote the first draft of “Forces of Nature” over the course of a year while I was also working full-time in a corporate office. So, I was grabbing any little chunk of time I could find, writing on a legal pad during my lunch breaks. Taking walks and speaking into the Notes app on my phone. Writing for an hour before work. Writing on the sidelines of my kid’s soccer practice.
Eventually I used vacation days and checked into a rustic cabin without TV or wi-fi so that I could write uninterrupted. These days, I work from home and my schedule is more flexible. I like to write early in the day when my mind is fresh, but I don’t set goals around frequency or word counts. Once or twice a year, I still like to get away and write uninterrupted, either at a residency or in a cabin.
When I’m writing something personal or intense, I practice self-care. I usually take some time to decompress and move my body after writing tough scenes, either by swimming laps at the rec center, hiking trails around Boulder, or paddleboarding. Sometimes I play loud music and dance with my kids. Or I’ll drink some tea and take a quick nap… anything that calms my nervous system and moves the story out of my body and onto the page.
SunLit: What is the significance of the title, “Forces of Nature”?
Wagner: “Forces of Nature” speaks to many forces in the book. My brother Alan was a force of nature, both in personality and in physical stature. His condition had a genetic, unstoppable momentum. There’s the friction between family of origin and family of choice. The magnetism of caregiving. The weight and pull that different geographies or landscapes have as backdrops to our lives. And, finally, nature itself was a force for healing in my life.
“Forces of Nature: A Memoir of Family, Loss and Finding Home”
Where to find it:
- Prospector: Search the combined catalogs of 23 Colorado libraries
- Libby: E-books and audio books
- NewPages Guide: List of Colorado independent bookstores
- Bookshop.org: Searchable database of bookstores nationwide
SunLit present new excerpts from some of the best Colorado authors that not only spin engaging narratives but also illuminate who we are as a community. Read more.
SunLit: Tell us about your next project.
Wagner: I’m working on a series of nature essays that I hope to publish as a collection. Each one explores a surprising way nature reflects aspects of the human condition or helps us meet deeper parts of ourselves. One of the essays (about sea turtles and motherhood and longing) won the CRAFT Creative Nonfiction award. Readers can check it out here.
A few more quick questions
SunLit: Which do you enjoy more as you work on a book – writing or editing?
Wagner: Writing, when anything is possible, and nothing has to be cut or contained.
SunLit: What’s the first piece of writing – at any age – that you remember being proud of?
Wagner: In fifth grade, I won a countywide contest for an essay I wrote about model rockets. The piece was published in a book that was distributed to schools all over Georgia.
SunLit: What three writers, from any era, would you invite over for a great discussion about literature and writing?
Wagner: This answer probably changes from day to day, but at this moment I’ll say Charles Dickens, Toni Morrison, and Ocean Vuong.
SunLit: Do you have a favorite quote about writing?
Wagner: I hate choosing favorites, but one quote that I was drawn to recently is from Miranda July’s latest novel. It’s not about writing, but it resonates with my writing process: “There did not have to be an answer to the question why; everything important started out mysterious, and this mystery was like a great sea you had to be brave enough to cross.”
SunLit: What does the current collection of books on your home shelves tell visitors about you?
Wagner: The fact that I have bookshelves in every room of my house should tell people I don’t want to ever be separated from my books. As far as genres go, my taste leans toward literary fiction, memoir, and cultural criticism.
SunLit: Soundtrack or silence? What’s the audio background that helps you write?
Wagner: I like the bustle of a coffee shop, the chirp of birds, city sounds, or a steady rainfall… anything that reminds me that time has not stood still for me, that the world continues to turn as I write.
SunLit: What music do you listen to for sheer enjoyment?
Wagner: My teenage daughter tells me my musical taste is kind of intense, and she’s not wrong. Lately I’ve been listening to a lot of The National, boygenius, Gregory Alan Isakov, and Natalie Merchant’s new album.
SunLit: What event, and at what age, convinced you that you wanted to be a writer?
Wagner: I’m not sure it was ever a choice.
SunLit: Greatest writing fear?
Wagner: I have a folder full of outlines and ideas for new pieces of writing. My biggest fear is dying before I’ve written them all.
SunLit: Greatest writing satisfaction?Wagner: Hearing from readers about how my writing impacted them.