“I think that’s sort of how it works you know? We go through life slowly but surely collecting these little pieces of ourselves that we can’t really live without until we eventually have enough of them to feel whole.” Kevin Pearson, This Is Us
This Is Us premiered September 2016. I had a toddler at home and was four months pregnant with my second. My husband interviewed for a new job and accepted an offer, and our family unexpectedly moved within a month. Life was chaotic, sleepless, and full fledge bliss. In those messy days of motherhood, I relished the ability to retreat to the couch and lose myself in a show. But when I stumbled upon This Is Us it can be argued I wasn’t able to relinquish myself to television in a familiar fashion. Rather, I was fostering a sense of familiarity with characters who seemed to strike dramatic marks of impact and inspiration within me. And while I was undoubtedly impressed and swayed by the acting, early on it became clear that it was the words themselves that seized my attention and shook my spirit in more ways than one.
Enter Dan Fogelman. I have been obsessing over his writing for five years. He’s a native New Jerseyan, which naturally means I envisioned us having coffee in my New Jersey town discussing all the Jersey things. Or, in the extreme version of this dream, I visit him on set. I watch his words become something bigger through another lens. As writers, isn’t this the ultimate goal? We craft words to have them interpreted, applied, and shared via others.
Dear Dan Fogelman, I’ve been writing about you for years. Part of my forty file is to keep on persisting, hoping, dreaming, doing, and of course, writing. They don’t make internships for almost 40 year olds, but I say we make some lemonade and create a story on aging, ability, and opportunity.
P.S. Internet, do your magical thing where you share and like the hell out of this.
The Forty Files 