Transcript: Beth Kaplan

An interview with the Canadian memoirist

In recent years, I’ve read a lot of memoirs from women of my generation who feel stuck in specific ways: single, childless, consumed by work, and disillusioned with hook-up culture. My guest on this week’s program is the author of the first memoir I have read about breaking free from that pattern — and the story of how it happened is as moving as it is surprising.

Beth Kaplan is a Canadian writer, and the author of Loose Woman: My Odyssey From Lost to Found.

This is an edited transcript for paid subscribers. You can listen to the interview here.

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TH: I recently came across your 2020 memoir, Loose Woman, and I loved it. So, I wanted to have you on the show to talk about it today. In life, sometimes you get exactly the book that you need, at exactly the moment you need it. It's a very human story. But also, a story that I think will resonate with this next generation of women, many of whom I hear are struggling with the things that you yourself were coping with when this story begins. Take us back to Vancouver — my hometown — in the late 1970s, where you were an actress. Paint a picture for us about what that time in your life was like.

BK: It's funny, I have a young tech assistant who is 22. She was helping me today, and I told her about the book, and she said, “I need to read this.” I gave her a copy. So, yes, I was in my twenties. I was born in 1950. I was in my twenties, and I had always wanted to be an actress, and a writer, and I had started very early. I started writing when I was six and acting when I was nine, in Halifax. I was on stage and eventually on radio and television, and so it seemed that I was predestined for these things. But acting came first. When I was in university, I was chosen to do a professional production. I thought, “Oh, this is such an easy profession. They give you jobs, they pay you well.” I auditioned for a very prestigious London theatre school, and I got in — one of two Canadians that year. I thought, “Okay, I'm brilliant. Obviously, this is what I'm meant to do.” And then, I get back to the reality of the life of an actor. I started, in Toronto, trying to find an agent, trying to find work, and it’s pretty brutal. It's very, very difficult. Unless you're incredibly lucky or have amazing connections, it's a slog. There's so much humiliation, there's so little money. I was lucky enough to go to Vancouver, and Vancouver was much more accepting than Toronto. I was able to enter on the ground floor there, and started to work there right away. I had a lot of work and was doing very well. At that time in Vancouver, the downtown was filthy and dangerous almost. People don't believe it because Vancouver is a very different place now. But there was a really rough, seamy side to Vancouver. There was a lot of drugs and alcohol, but particularly a lot of cocaine and other drugs at that time.

In the 70s, I was also just coming into feminism: “I can be free. I should be free like men.” We sort of believed that we should be as free as men, to do whatever we wanted and to have sexual adventures like men did. And so, it was a pretty crazy time for me of a lot of men, drugs, a lot of drinking. Always, at the core, I had this feeling that something was wrong, that even though I was successful in my career, something was wrong. It wasn't fulfilling what I felt I was put on earth to do. But I was making a living. I couldn't quit; I had no other way to make money. So, that's where the book begins — with feeling like I was making a lot of bad choices in my romantic life and in my professional life.

TH: As a side note, I recently went back to Vancouver, and I saw that same seedy side coming out again. There was a lot more drugs. It was very disheartening to see. But anyway, you're talking the feminism, the Sexual Revolution, the choices. There is, in the book, this sense of feeling out of control, with affairs, with alcohol, at one point with drugs. You touched on the feminist Erica Jong's famous concept — excuse my language, listeners — of the “zipless fuck.” You mentioned feeling a duty as a feminist to have a lot of sexual partners, or one-night stands. You write, “All I wanted was love. Great love, true happily-ever-after love. And in my 28 years, I'd never come remotely close.” Louise Perry was on this podcast a few years back talking about her book, The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, which argues that this particular brand of sexual liberation has not made women any happier. What was your response to it in the 70s, as you were digesting it?

BK: Well, of course, it's only in retrospect that you understand what you went through. And I felt that one of the tragedies of feminism was that … I mean, it came along and we all felt that “click” in the early 70s. For me, in about 1973. The click that Ms. magazine talked about where you went, “Wait a minute, this whole world is geared to men. They make more money. They are in control. Why is that? When we are doing so much of the work, and we are just as good as they are — and better, in many ways?” That was the undercurrent there. But one of the things that ended up happening, I think, was that the women's movement wanted to imitate men. They wanted women to be successful businesswomen, to have a corner office. You know, the image of a woman striding into the corner office, in her pinstriped suit, with briefcase, as the pinnacle of a success.

Another of those successes is — I mean, this was dealt with in Sex and The City, the character who wants to have sex with anybody at any time. Just like men do. I have to say, I don't think I've ever met a woman who's really like that. There are very few women who simply want to have meaningless, mindless sex. For women, there's usually a need for some kind of relationship and comfort and tenderness behind it. Not all, of course. But I was believing that I should be as free as men were. Particularly I was, of course, working with a lot of gay men. They were in the bathhouses. They were having sex multiple times a night, completely meaningless.

At one point, somebody made a proposition to me, and I turned him down, and I sort of felt guilty. I felt like my friend Susan, who was so wild and free, she would have said yes. She would think that I'm so old fashioned. What's wrong with me? I didn't want to have sex with this guy, and I felt guilty! So, we sort of went down a wrong path, I think, at a certain point. It took me ages [to understand]. It wasn’t until I met a man that I really loved and trusted that I felt I was really having a sexual experience for the first time. It was a mutual thing. It was giving, it was trusting, it was open. It was warm. That felt real for the first time. All of those other experiences, I can't deny them. I kind of regret them, to tell you the truth. But there's no point. They all happened and they're all part of my life experience, and certainly part of the book. But I felt that we ended up in some ways denying what is so valuable about being a woman: the empathy that women have. Which, at a certain point, was thought to be kind of soft and leading us to be trampled on. I felt that the worst of the women's movement was denying the real magnificence of what women are, and what we give to the world. And that that's a truly marvelous thing.

And I love men. Men are also very valuable to our world. It's not that I'm a man-hater. But it’s just that we have denigrated having children, staying at home with children. I understand that there's something now [called “trad wives”]. There's this whole retro wives’ movement really horrifies me — which has become extremely right-wing — to validate staying at home with your children. You can do both. You can really be there for your children and also work and also find yourself. But it's hard. You can't win. You really can't win. I mean, one way or another, there is a price to be paid.

TH: Yeah, that “trad wife” phenomenon is interesting to me. In one way, I feel drawn towards it, for some of the reasons you have just mentioned. Then, I also feel horrified when I see the men associated with it saying that women shouldn't work. But I think, as you're saying, there's something about the way we handled all of this that left that whole field open.

BK: Yes, I think so too. We ended up denying what is of great value in women's lives. My new book, a book of essays called Midlife Solo, is about my thirties, forties, and fifties. I did become a stay-at-home mother. What I hope is clear in Loose Woman — maybe I'm hinting at it — was that I married a really lovely man who was a workaholic, and eventually we divorced. And so, I ended up as a single mother of two kids in downtown Toronto. I felt that where I was most needed was at home with them. And that was really despised in many circles. You know, “What's wrong with you?” I would meet friends and they would not want to ask me how I was or what I was doing, because it was just considered so retro and so boring. And of course, it was in many ways. Yet, I think I was doing one of the most important jobs in the world. Now, I also was getting my MFA in creative writing at the same time, and starting my career as a writer, very slowly, with essays getting published in newspapers. I was doing my best. I had a part-time job as a dramaturge at a theatre. I was cobbling together as much work as I could while still wanting to be here in the house when my kids got home from school. But that was also partially because after the divorce, their father was living in the States. So, I really was the only parent. Luckily, I had enough support from him to make that possible.

There's an essay in the book in which I say that women who stay at home feel resentment and exhaustion and guilt in some ways, but women who work who have full-time jobs and their kids are in daycare, they also have guilt and exhaustion. So, if you have an economic choice — which I understand many women do not — what's your choice going to be? Which suffering are you going to inflict upon yourself? In the end, kids grow up and they move out, and then you have many years. The great joy of being alive at this time, is that hopefully, if we're lucky … I mean, I'm 74 now, and really my writing career began in my sixties. My best friend in France got her PhD. She was 62, 63. After having five children, she has an academic career that she's involved in.

So, it's hard. For men, it's so much clearer. You get the job, you hope there's a nice woman taking care of the home front, and off you go. You climb, and you support everybody. And that's a wonderful thing. For women, how to juggle it all has always been difficult — and still is.

TH: Yeah, and I think even for men right now, the educational achievement has gone down and employment has gone down. And so, I think men are also struggling with some of these questions. One of the things I wanted to get at today is that I have read a lot of memoirs from women my age. I'm Gen X; I was born in 1975. I have read a lot of memoirs from women my age who are childless and single and grappling with a lot of the questions that you grapple with in your memoir. But your memoir is the first one that I've read that has some solutions, that has that narrative arc of transformation and change. I want to talk a little bit about how that came about, and what that shift was about. In 1979, you made a decision to go to Greece. When your travelling companion pulled out, you went anyway, and then you visited this childhood friend you’ve just mentioned, in France. Tell us about that friend and what her life was like during that time.

BK: We met outside the classroom door of a modern French literature class in September of 1967. I had just turned 17 and she was 18. I've never let her forget that she's 13 months older than I am. We liked each other immediately, and we've been best friends ever since. We became actresses together. But then she had heard Jean Vanier speak. He was the son of the Governor General, Georges Vanier. He had founded this organization called L’Arche, in the north of France. At that point, it was one little house, where he lived. He was an intensely spiritual man, or at least that is what we believed at that time. He had invited two men from a local, big, handicapped institution to come and live with him in his home. That was the beginning of L'Arche.

Lynn’s mother was Quebecois and Catholic, so she had been raised Catholic. She went to hear Vanier speak, and she was so moved that she went to volunteer for a year at L’Arche, which by then had a bigger building with a few more people there. She was there the same year I went to theatre school in London. So, already our paths, which were on the same trajectory, were going in very different directions. While she was there, she met a man called Denis, who was a conscientious objector. He was doing his French military service at L’Arche. They fell in love, and they got married. There's a description in the book of the wedding, which was phenomenal. There were all these hippies, like me. There were his bourgeois, incredibly wealthy family, her family from a suburb of Montreal, and then all of these handicapped people with Jean Vanier. It was an incredible scene.

Lynn has remained in France ever since, from the age of 21. She had eventually five children. They moved to the south of France and founded a new community there, in a village called Gordes, which has been voted one of the most beautiful villages in all of France. They were very lucky. I've said to her, “If you'd ended up in Sudbury, I would have visited you, but not with quite this much pleasure.”

In 1979, I was just coming back from this crazy trip, and I decided to spend a week in the south of France with Lynn and Denis. They then had three children. To me, this was something of a nightmare. Her kids were something like four, three and one. I had no interest in children. Messy, stinky, smelly, demanding, drooling. Diapers, crying. And marriage! I had never remotely met somebody I wanted to marry, to live with. Seeing their marriage … Denis was very French, very rigid in how he saw things. My friend Lynn is loose, joyful, laughing. In many ways, they were good for each other. But there was a lot of strain there.

So, I'm having a wonderful time eating. Lynn was a great cook at this point. I'm eating cheese and trying to survive being with her kids. But there was one night. She was not a tender mother, but that night she was tucking them in. They were asleep. This is a key part of the story; they were not rampaging around, screaming and yelling. They were asleep in their room, and they were so angelic in their little beds. She's tucking them in, and there's this wonderful smell of pee and baby powder. And something hit me in the solar plexus, in the chest. So hard, I nearly fell backwards. It was a voice saying, “You want a baby.” I said, “What? Are you out of your mind? I don't want a baby. I've never wanted a baby. I hate babies. I've never even met a man [to marry].” But something had hit me. And of course, I was about to turn 29. Really, what I know now is that mother nature grabbed me and she said, “Sweetheart, you have a job to do. Get on with it.” I just tucked this thought away. I had no idea what that meant or how I would ever make it work.

Then, Denis said to me that they needed somebody to work in the community for the summer, that one of the assistants who worked there had had to leave. They were desperate. They needed somebody to live and work there, and drive everybody to their place that they were going to in the summer. And would I be interested? I thought, again, “Are you out of your mind? I know nothing about people with disabilities. I have to go home, get a job, grow up. I need to make some money.” And I turned to Denis and I said yes. It was one of the most important moments of my life.

I moved into the community, and I ended up spending four months there. I stayed much longer than I'd intended to, because it changed my life. It was that working with people with disabilities … First of all, one of the things that I say in the book is that what you realize is that we all have disabilities. Some of them are visible. These were men whose disabilities were very visible. These were very disabled men. Then, working with the other assistants, this one was incredibly lazy and would never do what he was asked. And this one was stubborn and had a nasty streak. And I was neurotic and needy. You just realize that we're all handicapped. We're all disabled. It's just with some people it's visible, and with some people it's not.

With the men, I learned that what was needed was patience and listening and doing my best. Being as open as I could, being as patient and kind as I could. That's all. That’s all that was needed. I didn't have to entertain. I didn't have to be a famous actress. I didn't have to tell jokes, which was my persona as an actress. I needed to do my best to make sure that these people were comfortable and happy — all of them, including the other people who worked there. And that was really hard. I'd never looked after other people before. I could barely keep myself alive, let alone a house full of handicapped men.

But that's what I took away when I went home. It was a kind of spiritual richness, a new understanding of myself. That I had loved to give, and I could honour and help other people. I went back to become an actress again, which was already not easy. But the first man I met … We'd already been interested in each other, but he was married, so that was not happening. But over the summer, he'd separated from his wife. We started to date. It took a few months because I was very leery. Eventually, we fell madly in love with each other, and we ended up very quickly moving in together. And then I got pregnant. Within a year. Then I left the stage to go back to UBC, to take a master’s in creative writing. So, the experience of saying yes, first of all to the solo trip and then yes to Denis — within two years I was married, I had a child, and I was on my way to becoming a writer. So, it was very fast, the change.

TH: It's interesting. There's something there about saying yes to life, but also something about this move from individualism to communalism, from self-actualization to self-sacrifice. I want to read a few things, just so that the listener gets a sense of what we're talking about here. You write that, “At first, the relentless accountability of it all chaffed. But then it was like a muscle I had to learn to use, thinking first of those in my care rather than myself.” And you chronicle the practical skills that you gained, but also the shift in attitude in performing them — and how that gave direction and meaning and purpose. You write, “I didn't have to figure out what concrete deeds to perform to prove my living love for humanity. They were always, always, right in front of me.” I think so many of us are looking for that. What does that mean to you to now have that, and to carry that through your life?

BK: I have to be careful, because I cry easily. I notice people now. I notice the homeless people on the street. I guess I have an understanding of people who have so much less than I do. There are so many of them. I came away and I live every day of my life with incredible gratitude of what I've been given in life. So many people are given so much less. That was what I learned from the men. There they were, they were mentally disabled, physically disabled. And yet, they were as alive as I was. They were as important as I was. They had every right to have what I had, which was comfort and love and food and shelter. And yet, we as a society don't honour that at all.

We live walking over the bodies of people in the street. That's the only way to survive in this city. So, I'm just more conscious of how lucky I am. There is such misfortune in the world and whatever I can do in any small way … I'll give you an example. Doug Ford sent out what I called a $200 bribe to all of us before the election. We all got this check in the mail and I didn't know what to do with it. It's not that I can't use $200, I can. But I thought this was something I wasn't expecting and that I really don't honour. So, I changed it into $5 bills, and I always have a $5 bill in my pocket for people on the street. It's only $5. It's not a lot. But it's better than a quarter or a loonie. So, that's one of the things.

The need out there is endless, you can't possibly fulfill it. What can you do? It's about paying attention to your neighbours, helping your neighbours when you can. Not letting yourself be taken advantage of, and it's important to always be aware of that. You do need to take care of yourself. But that we can make a difference with kindness, with generosity, to the extent of our abilities. So, just thinking about the fact that we are connected to every living thing on this planet, and that's the garden and the trees and the animals as well as the people. And so, to just move through life with care, honouring the life around you.

TH: L’Arche was — and is — a Catholic community. There are moments in the book where you are very moved by that, where you reevaluate your views on religion. You find that there is a comfort “of having something vast and timeless to hang on to,” a set of rules to guide you. A moral compass. You write, “Without a specific faith, how to find a support system to give advice and solace? An outsider like me had to create her own.” This mirrors so much of what I hear from Gen X women — this idea of just having to make everything up from scratch all the time. Where did you land on the religion question?

BK: Well, there's a lot of that in the book because Lynn and Denis are what I call my intelligent Catholic friends. I have several of them, these people that I admire very much. I find it hard to understand being part of this behemoth religion. Of course, these are very smart people who pick and choose what of the Catholic religion they honour and what they do not. I'm sure that there's an awful lot of birth control going on, even with fervent Catholics, for example. But I was really asking myself: What is it that they have as Catholics that I don't?

I should explain that I'm half Jewish and half Protestant. My mother was Protestant, my father was Jewish, but I was raised, really, with no religion. My mother tried to take me to church at one point, but that didn't work. Because I asked my Sunday school teacher, “If God is so loving, why did he allow the murder of 6 million Jews?” She had no answer, so I didn't go back. I grew up as an atheist, and I'm still an atheist. But my friend Denis says that I'm a spiritual person, so that's enough for me. I guess that's what I was talking about — about feeling connected to the earth that I live on, to the people around me, to doing my best to be as kind and generous as I can. But people with a religion have a set of rules and they have a built-in community: “These are the people who believe what I do. This is what we do on Saturday or on Sunday or on Friday. We have a ritual that sustains us.” If you don't have an organized religion, you have to find that yourself. Maybe there are community groups you're part of. People find this group that is cleaning the neighbourhoods, or planting trees, or wherever it is that you find a community.

I go to the Y, and to me that is a kind of spiritual place. I would never go to one of those GoodLife gyms or something. Because, to me, the Y is a place of community. People who join the Y, it's not just that you want to get fit, it's that it's a place where you know that this organization is helping street people. It's educating kids with special needs. It's doing all kinds of good things. I have a friend who actually told me, “My family went to church on Sundays. With my kids, we go to the Y on Sundays.” I don't have that rigid a schedule, but you find somewhere with like-minded people who support you and whom you support in doing what you can to make whatever minuscule difference you can to this world. Because right now, never more has kindness and generosity been needed. This is really a dire time on our planet.

So: Looking out for each other, checking in on your neighbours, doing what you can, and finding community where you can find it.

TH: I wonder, too, getting back to women's stories and how we tell women's stories, and the narrative arc, that question of my generation and not being able to see their way through this particular set of issues — in the way that you have in this memoir. It strikes me, you got married, you had children. There must be other ways to do this, as well. For me, it was partly marriage, and it was recommitting to my family. And really trying to put those things first. And community. But I wonder, is there other ways to do this? I look at the memoirs I read from women, and they don't have a sense of resolution or transformation on this particular question. You must have thought about this. How else can women do this shift out of the stuck place, and the lonely and isolated place, that you were in?

BK: It was volunteering at L’Arche that did it. I think that volunteer work — I mean, they have proven this — that getting involved as a volunteer, if you can afford it, even if you do it just briefly … The fact that you are there to help other people, that this is not something, at least you don't start out doing it for yourself. Whether you work in a food bank, whether you work in a community garden, whatever it is you do. I was one of the founders of a Christmas pageant at the local Riverdale farm near where I live. A neighbour and I started a Christmas pageant every year. It was this exhausting job of finding volunteers and getting costumes and doing this show on Christmas Eve every year. But that gave me a sense that I was giving something back to the community. I had a whole group of people who were involved in it. It was exhausting and it was joyful.

We are in a world where everything is about money and achievement. And for women and men equally, you need to be making money and you need to have the resume. You're building your resume. And all of that, of course is important. We need to make money to survive and to support ourselves and our kids. But I think finding a volunteer [job], even if it's something small, where you are focusing on the needs of another community besides yourself. And that, as you know from the book, fed me in ways I would never have calculated. It enriched my own life. I had absolutely no idea that that's what was going to happen. To me, this was going to be self-sacrificing. I was going to go and “look after poor handicapped people and do a good deed.” Instead what it gave me was absolutely invaluable. It did cost a lot, too. It was exhausting and excruciating and very difficult. But it changed my life. So, I think one of the things for women to think of is volunteering.

Also, for example, my daughter, who is 43, has a best friend. She doesn't want children herself, but she works in the school with special needs kids, and she has become an aunt to a whole bunch of her friend's kids. She's the most invaluable person. When she's needed, she will appear. And of course, she loves kids and she's really good with kids. If there's a crisis, you call Holly and she comes over and she takes over. She will take the kids out. At one point there was an incredible crisis going on in Anna's life, and I called Holly and she arrived and she took her kids away for two days while we sorted it all out. She doesn't have much money, but her gift is being there for kids in other women's lives. And I know that those children are going to adore her forever. And when Holly is in need, I'm assuming that those kids, as grownups, will be there for her. I certainly hope so, because she deserves it. That is one way, finding a way that is not directly feeding your own needs to help other people.

TH: I love hearing about that. I want to talk, to close, about you returning to France recently. But before we get to that, I would be remiss if I didn't point out, as you do in the book, that L’Arche founder Jean Vanier was accused of sexual misconduct. In 2020, after his death, an internal L’Arche report concluded he'd sexually abused women between 1970 and 2005. A later investigation expanded that window from 1952 to 2019. You write in the book that we can celebrate “the spectacular humanitarian gift that a complex, deeply flawed man gave to the world.” How did you process those developments?

BK: It was so heartbreaking, devastating, for countless people. There are many people in the world who have given their lives to L’Arche. L’Arche is now all over the world and has made a huge difference in so many lives. And at one point, Jean Vanier was being considered for sainthood. He was going to be canonized. Then these rumors began to emerge. And finally L’Arche did this investigation. They first of all uncovered a few women, and then many women, something like 25 women. Not the handicapped women, but women who worked there, including at least one nun. So, this shocking, shocking reality. I remember his face, the warmth of his face, the warmth of his voice. The books, many books, that he's published about disability, and love, and giving. And then this man was luring women into sexual activity. And he was not a priest. He could have married. He could have had a sex life. I do blame the Catholic Church here. That there are incidences, even in the book Loose Woman, about the fact that L’Arche gave us, at that point, no guidance about sexuality at all. Here I was, a young woman working with men, and there was no talk about how to handle sexual feelings and sexual advances. There have since been various revelations about children of assistants, having been sexually assaulted, and things like that. That's all changed now. But it really was absolutely devastating for many people to find out the truth about Jean Vanier. And also about his mentor Père Thomas, a priest, who was even worse. He started even earlier. To find out that Vanier knew about Père Thomas. There were accusations much earlier, and Vanier denied any knowledge of it.

So, how do we reconcile? But then, this is something that we've dealt with for many peopl — the two sides of someone who creates something which truly is a fantastically important institution in our world, and yet had this reprehensible side. I just feel that we should not in any way condemn L’Arche because of who Jean Vanier turned out to be. That in no way affects the good that L’Arche does, and is doing to this day.

TH: You did visit a couple of months ago, and you did get to see some of the men that you lived with 45 years ago. What was that experience like for you?

BK: It was absolutely extraordinary. I was visiting Lynn and Denis again, as I do regularly. They said they were going to an Easter mass at L’Arche, which has moved from where it was, which was just across the street from their house, to a town called Isle sur la Sorgue. We drove there, I said I wanted to come with them. It was just in a room where there was a makeshift altar. There was an electric piano as the organ, and all of these handicapped people coming in. And there beside the priest was a small man in mirrored sunglasses and a newsboy cap and a priest’s cassok that had been made specially for him. It was Jean-Claude. (I changed his name in Loose Woman). Jean-Claude was the one that I had the closest relationship with.

He's still there. I just burst into tears. I mean, I was just sobbing to see him and two of the other men who were there. Afterwards, Denis presented me. He said, “This is Elizabeth. Do you remember her?” And Jean-Claude threw his arms around me, saying, “Ma copine!” Of course I look completely different than I did when I was 28. But whether he really recognized me or not, I felt a tremendous bond with these men. And again, I'm in a room full of people with physical and mental disabilities. There's strange noises, and people getting up and down, and people with terrible physical issues going on. And yet, I felt right at home there. It felt like a beautiful place to be.