Poetry Month and April Fools: Author and Poet Sandra Beasley's Take on Food Allergies and Humor

This season’s book club episode kicks off National Poetry Month with memoirist and poet Sandra Beasley. She expertly weaves her wit and wisdom on her own experiences into her writing and discussion about life with food allergies. In this episode, we talk about:
 ✨ Allergies as a punchline or lazy plot device & the impact of these portrayals on real people
 ✨ Topics we need to discuss more including alcohol and allergies and availability of stock epinephrine on airplanes and in other public places
✨Shifting from being cared for to becoming a caregiver as her spouse navigates health concerns

And the best part? She reads her poem Death by Chocolate for us—turning what’s often misunderstood into something deeply felt and fiercely funny.

3 Action Steps:
1. Follow Sandra @sandrabeasley
2. Read her work: Buy Sandra’s books: Bookshop.org US
Recent essay: https://theamericanscholar.org/to-catch-a-sunset-2/
3. Try narrative therapy! Write a letter to your younger self about your experiences, or write a letter to yourself now imagining what your older self would say in the future. 

Sandra Beasley photo credit: Andrew Lightman

Special thanks to Kyle Dine for permission to use his song The Doghouse for the podcast theme
www.kyledine.com

You can find Dr. Whitehouse at thefoodallergypsychologist.com and on Instagram (@thefoodallergypsychologist) and Facebook (Dr. Amanda Whitehouse, Food Allergy Anxiety Psychologist)
Email: welcome@dramandawhitehouse.com

Transcript

Sandra Beasley: 0:00

I just want to say over and over again to people who are either in my situation or parents to people in my situation who feel. Fearful for your child. I, I don't regret anything about how I navigate the world. these things, although they are hardships, they are hardships that make us more. Complicated and rigorous and interesting people. I do think you just have to embrace, this is the life, you know, you occupy the life as fully as you can.

Dr. Amanda Whitehouse: 0:29

Welcome to the Don't Feed the Fear podcast, where we dive into the complex world of food allergy anxiety. I'm your host, Dr. Amanda Whitehouse, food allergy anxiety psychologist and food allergy mom. Whether you're dealing with allergies yourself or supporting someone who is, join us for an empathetic and informative journey toward food allergy calm and confidence.. I am so excited to get to meet and have on the show my guest today, Sandra Beasley, she's the author of Don't Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales From An Allergic Life, a disability memoir about her own food allergies. Her nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post Wall Street Journal, psychology Today, the American Scholar, Virginia Quarterly Review, lit Hub, and a harp and the stars and anthology of lyric essays. She has also published four poetry collections, including Made to Explode, and she edited vinegar and char verse from the Southern Foodways Alliance. Sandra's honors include an NEA Fellowship. The Munster Literature Centers John Montague Fellowship and six DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities Fellowships. She lives in Washington, DC. Sandra, thank you for joining me today to talk about your writing and your work and about your life managing allergies. I'm really happy to have you here.

Sandra Beasley: 1:45

I'm thrilled to be here.

Dr. Amanda Whitehouse: 1:47

Your book Don't Kill The Birthday Girl, was published in 2011 and my son was diagnosed in 2012. So it was perfect timing for me in terms of finding your book when I needed it the most. And that's what this season or the podcast is all about. Where, where do we find support? It's not always people that we know in real life. you mentioned in your book Taking Refuge in books, and I do too. And so I'm excited to have the chance to thank you personally for sharing what you did it really ties in your personal experiences with. The topics that are, important to know about and understand, you merged life, experience with history and, political issues and all those things really well in the book.

Sandra Beasley: 2:26

I really appreciate that. And one thing that I would mention is that I, I very consciously wrote the book into a gap that I saw, because years ago I. had the opportunity to speak with a, a literary agent, and I went in there thinking I would like to try my hand at writing nonfiction. I'd only really published poetry, up till that point, and I was talking about various topics for a book. And frankly, he wasn't, that interested in X, Y, or Z. But when I mentioned the food allergies, he, he paused and he said, you know, that's, there might be something there. And when I went home from that meeting, I realized there really. Was a gap where there was a ton of very high science, fairly dense writing about food allergy. Uh, and then very, very practical. You know, here's the, here's the recipes, here's the tips, self-help. But there wasn't anything that felt like a compelling organic narrative of what the actual experience was like. And I thought, well, you know, I, I would wanna read that and, and. So I guess I have to write it. that really opened something up for me. And I will just say that the conversations I've had as a result of this book have been incredible because all it takes is you offering up your own experience to just let people feel like they can finally offer up there, as in return.

Dr. Amanda Whitehouse: 3:46

Absolutely. I agree with you. I think we still see that gap and maybe, more people will continue to fill that in. I think I'm trying to do that with the podcast here and hoping to do that with you today. Diving in a little bit deeper in conversation beyond kind of the surface level of experiences. I was hoping we could start just with. The title, I won't say I love your title. but it's really powerful in depicting, one of the themes that I think is of your book, how you're shaped by this experience. So would you mind telling us about how you came up with that?

Sandra Beasley: 4:13

Sure. I mean, I had in poetry written a sequence called Allergy Girl, and I came to working on a proposal for, for a memoir, thinking that was going to be a variation of the title. And then as it got closer, I realized that wasn't quite. Doing enough to capture the, the values that I wanted. I wanted to show that this was going to, weirdly enough, be a book with a sense of humor. And so I tried to pull something from the memory bank of my childhood with food allergy that had a little bit of an element of the absurd, and I could just remember my mother's cheerful voice at, at birthday parties or at family celebrations where, you know, everyone would critique in a dessert and then she'd be like. Don't kill the birthday girl. You know, like, just kind of hands off from Sandra.'cause we had, had, we'd had the experience of like, really great evening and then at the end of the night, well-meaning, uh, relative just giving me a big fat kiss on the cheek where just I would immediately get a hive, you know? And so it was, um, it, it, it felt like it had that right, uh, storytelling element that I really wanted to share with folks.

Dr. Amanda Whitehouse: 5:26

And it seems like you must have had to do a fair amount of research too, because you really do tie in a lot of factual, information about allergies along with your experiences. What was that like living it and then having to dive into learning about a different. Inside of it.

Sandra Beasley: 5:39

Yeah. When I originally committed to writing the book, I really thought of it as a cultural history of food allergy with a little bit of memoir, and it became clear in the conversation with the publisher that what they wanted was a memoir with a. A bit of research and cultural history and, and in some ways, there were, there were. Kind of hardships of trying to do the research that I just didn't know enough to know that I was going to run into, like, the fact that literally the word allergy wasn't coined until the 20th century. So you can't just do a neat word search, and, and find, I mean, you, you can find the medical case histories that are relevant to food allergy once you know what to look for, but it's not as simple as a keyword search. and so I, I actually, um. Years ago, studied science, fairly seriously when I was a younger student and chose to go in the direction of creative writing and, and of English. And it was fun for me to go back into having that vocabulary, having to develop that ability to, to synthesize, fairly dense studies and, and get the, get the top line results, get a layman's understanding and really think a lot about creating metaphors. That, that could kind of transform and create understanding for anyone and not leave them feeling boxed out by the science or, or the degree of history, which in a way is what my allergist all those years ago, had to do for me when I was like, five, six years old trying to explain to a kid why their blood is quote unquote rejecting or attacking certain things as, as they eat them. So I was really felt a, a kinship with. All the pediatric allergists in the world who are also trying to get pretty complex scientific information and make it a palatable for, for the people who need it.

Dr. Amanda Whitehouse: 7:25

That makes me curious, how did you make that jump then with this interest in science that you had to becoming a writer?

Sandra Beasley: 7:33

When I moved forward in the world, I realized was that I could. writing and always invite in the texture of science and nature and things I could research. in order to be a writer, you have to really commit to, to nourishing that community element too. Going to readings constantly kind of networking and moving through the world as a writer, and I think it would've been hard for me to maintain the poetry side of myself if I had. Fully pursued a profession in the sciences honestly. So you, you kind of pick which one is going to be the, the, the primary and which one is going to be the, the secondary. And, and I just ultimately felt too called to, to books and literature.

Dr. Amanda Whitehouse: 8:19

I'm just kind of shifting my perspective because I obviously read, don't Kill the Birthday Girl first and then found your poetry. but it sounds like you're saying you are, you're a writer that's just such a big part of you that you needed to do that and did, did your life with allergies, shape that?

Sandra Beasley: 8:34

I do think that my food allergy is central to who I am. It's, I, I don't think of it as a compartmentalized thing or something that, I would take away if I could. At this point, it's completely, embedded in, in how I approach the world, which is it in a very observant way, a very. Discerning way, I hope a very empathetic way. And those are all qualities that I think are essentially enriched by my experience with food allergy. I did take a long time to bring food allergy onto the page. It, it took me a really long time to think that that was something that was worthy of appearing in a poem or appearing in an essay. there's a lot of different reasons for that. writing nonfiction is always hard, but, but I also think that there was a certain, um. know, if you think about food allergy through a disability lens, I think early on some of my workshop experiences, uh, kind of, there might've been some, what we would call ableist or some, some determination on focus on the upside, focus on the strengths about you. Why would you wanna talk about a weakness, you know? so it, it took me a while to claim it.

Dr. Amanda Whitehouse: 9:40

looking back on it now, it's been about 14 years since you've originally published the book, the allergy world information is changing so rapidly. What do you feel holds true and what do you feel looks different to you now looking back?

Sandra Beasley: 9:53

So, as I mentioned, the, the book came in part out of a conversation with a, a literary agent, which was through a contest that I had won for my poetry. So really kind of an odd, so I have to be honest, this was not a book I had spent. I. A number of years planning towards this was a book where all of a sudden, in a matter of, of less than six months, I had a book contract with a year's deadline. So I, I, you know, I had to kind of very quickly calibrate how I was going to approach writing the book that said. I was extraordinarily lucky in that, that period of 2008, 2009, I feel like we had a crest of understanding of, of the science, of food allergy. The LEAP study was, was already in play. we didn't have results from it, but there was a, I think a, a very sophisticated. way of talking about food allergy that was beginning to burgeon, uh, at that time. So I was fortunate in that when I went looking for studies, the studies were there. Now, of course, I wish I could have had access to the studies that came out in 2013 and, and, 2017 and leap and leap on and all the things that we know now that we didn't know back then. And, and that I think is the, the forever. Frustration of choosing to write about the sciences or the medicalized body. You have to accept the reality that, you, you do the best with what you can and the information you have at the time, it will continue to change out underneath you. And that's why where I had done a lifetime's worth of research was the personal stories, and that's, no one could take those away from me. and, and I always try to say to people, it is a. It's a memoir, it's not a manual. I know that there are times where as an individual in this book, I handle allergic reactions in ways that is probably a parent's worst nightmare to read. But that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. And, and that to me was the ultimate responsibility I had, was to be as honest as possible so that if that opened up a conversation between a parent. And not even a child, but a teenager or a young adult, maybe, maybe those were conversations that needed to be had, and if someone didn't create the umbrella of being open, how could you create a shelter for those, those conversations.

Dr. Amanda Whitehouse: 12:10

Yeah, I agree. And I think in rereading it now, obviously it struck me so differently than it did then because at the time I had a, a baby, with allergies and I could control absolutely everything and, and. Thought that, oh, well my child would never, you know, I would make sure my child knows not to do some of these things that now I'm reading them and I have a 13-year-old, or are you're right, anxiety provoking to read. But that's what I think we are both mentioning as far as diving deeper beyond the surface level discussions because, um, it does happen. Kids do feel these things as much as we try to educate them or what they have access to. and so I think it's really powerful for you to have shared that. Despite, like you said it some of it is, it's tough to read the way that you handled certain things that you probably would not hope do today in your adult life. I mean, I, I was trying to remember, you know, I was thinking about the stories of my life that have happened after the book of written was came out, or even the stories that. I, for whatever reason, I didn't include in the book, and I was thinking about one thing that, which is years, I mean, years ago, like when I was a kid, I remember, being, playing with my cat and like flicking kibble across the floors, if a cat would, would chase it and without a second thought, I popped a piece of a kibble into my mouth in the way that like a six or 7-year-old might do. Sure.

Sandra Beasley: 13:32

A split second later thought, my God, this is a food, this is a, this is a food. And thankfully I didn't have a reaction in that moment, or at least not one that I can recall, but realizing later that yes, shrimp was one of the ingredients. Now, at that point, if you're talking about a single bit of kibble, it's such an infinite decimal, you know? But, but we know, we know that even the smallest amount can cause a reaction. Right? And so, you know, gosh. Are, are people thinking to talk to very young kids about making sure they know whether the pet food in the house has their food allergens in it? Kids are kids. You never know where they're gonna Right. Well, and how telling that you as a somewhere around 6-year-old would even stop to think that because obviously no other child who hasn't had this life experience would, that would never cross their mind. Like, is it okay for me to eat this? how many kids bite? Bite into a dog biscuit at some point, you know, practically rite of passage.

Dr. Amanda Whitehouse: 14:25

I most if, yeah, absolutely. Well, and I should have probably asked earlier on, but maybe this is a good point for me to pause and have you, tell people who are listening, what your allergies are.

Sandra Beasley: 14:35

Yeah. you. Yes. Um, dairy, which I am, I usually am saying cow's milk, but the reality is I've had reactions to goat's milk and sheep's milk as well. Um, and just recently the FDA has kind of played around with its definitions of. Of dairy to more caly include those, those considerations. Uh, chicken, egg, um, beef shrimp, macadamia pistachios, cashews, uh, pine nuts, which the first couple of times I ate them, I could eat them. And then I, I started having consistently and, and more and more severe reactions, mango, uh, cantaloupe and, That's always a pain because if you go to a hotel and there's a inexpensive free breakfast, the fruit salad always honeydew and cantaloupe in it, which I am allergic to both of those. cucumber. Mustard in the sense of Dijon mustard. I've never quite figured out if it's the issue as a egg and as an emulsifier, the thing is, is that when you have allergies like mine and when you have a history of as many severe reactions as I do, and yes, I've gotten a, a couple of levels of testing over the years, but you know, you hit a moment where. Am I allergic to lobster? I don't know. I know I'm allergic to shrimp. And the idea of me being motivated to do an oral food challenge with lobster, which is a very expensive in the first place, is very low. And so, you know, there, there, there's a category of foods that it's, it's very possible that I have allergies too. But honestly, um, at this point in my adult life, I might just never know. and information is powerful and I know the importance of, of having that information. And what I don't, necessarily want is the flip side of, uh, a child or a family. avoiding a food that if it, it turns out if an oral food challenge had been done, in fact, if a child could have eaten, you know, I think, um, this is just anecdotal, but I, I think my mom was telling me, reminding me the other day that I'm pretty sure that based on the initial, uh. What would've been like RAs testing or blood testing back then? You know, it was claiming I was allergic to pineapple and that that's not something that ever manifested in allergy. And in fact, it was wrong over and over again before. But if we had just. Gone forward with that one result, that could have been a whole lifetime of missing out my trips to Hawaii would've not been nearly as fun, you know? And so, so it is, I think, I think that even with all of the improvements in science, we're still between a rock and a hard place. Um, and, and all I can say is that I'm glad that there's, I think there's a lot of active attention to, to figuring out better options for, for diagnostics.

Dr. Amanda Whitehouse: 17:24

I agree. And in an informed way with the perspectives, like what you've shared in mind, not without any consideration. I.

Sandra Beasley: 17:30

Yeah, it's, it's, you know, I think that we have to be honest about the emotional and logistical time commitments and, and, you know, money commitments that involve families caring for a child's food allergy with, whether it's the diagnostic visits or, treatments twice a month or it's just, it's a tremendous. It, I don't wanna say burden because I think you just, you, you, you just embrace that it's part of living the life you have, but, but the, the costs are real and they're there. And, even, even just the, the happenstance stuff adds up.

Dr. Amanda Whitehouse: 18:08

Yeah, the little things add up, um, which. Makes me wanna ask you what, what's the biggest single thing, looking back on your life, what was the biggest moment that really, was traumatizing or stuck with you?

Sandra Beasley: 18:21

There was no one. reaction that comes to mind. even though I've, I've over the years had reactions that were painful or embarrassing or mysterious in ways that were frustrating or expensive. but I never really of those as traumatizing. I do sometimes think with regret of. The handful of things that I said no to, where I think really deep down it was anxiety related to food allergy. I was just thinking the other day about I got a sudden invite to go to an international poetry conference. I had just done a poetry reading in, Cyprus and, and I. I soon after got an invitation to go to and do a poetry festival in Turkey. And in hindsight, it was an amazing opportunity, but I wouldn't have had the same infrastructure of protections around me, just because of the way it was organized. I just would've had less guarantees of a host or English speaker, and I just fundamentally. I just couldn't handle the stress of it honestly. Uh, and, and those are the things that, not trauma, but it, it is a degree of regret, and that's where I have to remind myself that there really are some life experiences that I've kind of missed out on or had in a more compromised manner because of my food allergy.

Dr. Amanda Whitehouse: 19:44

Is loss maybe a better word for it?

Sandra Beasley: 19:47

Yeah, and I think, I, I ended up choosing not to have children, which is a, a question that's left open at the end of Don't kill the Birthday girl. And I still to this day, am often in conversations where we'll be talking about, food allergy best practices or options. And when you bring up the, the potential reality of being the parent with severe food allergy. To a child who you're trying to help not have that food allergy, and you try to talk about early introduction, for example, to something that you yourself, may, may be allergic to. A lot of times the answers are really not good. The, I mean, not I, I mean not good, as in they're not, they're not established. There's not really the language around it that you might wish that there was. And I think that's something that we as a, a culture can work on. But also, um, I, again, I consider my food allergy. to who I am, but I don't think I'll ever quite know what it would've been like to weigh the decision of, of whether or not to have kids if I hadn't had the, these allergies.

Dr. Amanda Whitehouse: 20:52

Right. You can't remove that from. The whole of who you are.

Sandra Beasley: 20:55

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Amanda Whitehouse: 20:56

Well, and you, you mentioned just now and touched earlier too on how the process of writing the, the memoir and putting, the allergies on the page for the first time with the poetry. in, in my field and mental health, we talk a lot about how narrative therapy can be helpful and about how, putting your experiences together into a coherent story helps shape your sense of who you are and process and integrate them. did there come a time when you realized that's what you were about to do, or is it, was it in retrospect can you talk about the experience of doing that through your writing?

Sandra Beasley: 21:24

I my graduate studies in creative writing at American University, and there's a, a teacher and writer. He is passed away now. Out, but his name was Richard McCann and Richard was the recipient of a liver transplant and had written about that and I kind of had this notion. Towards the very, very, very end, my thesis semester in the graduate program, like maybe I should try writing about my allergies. And he was my advisor on my thesis, and I'm so grateful in hindsight because he was a great sounding board for what I was struggling with, which was trying to figure out how to use a. Slightly technical vocabulary of, something like immunoglobulin or something like that. But, I, I liked the stickiness of words like that, but I also recognized that it was a fragile balance to use a word like that in a poem and how to, how to do that mix of movements. And it was something that he had had to think about in his essays about the transplant experience and, and in general his health. so that kind of lured me in. I and, and that is something I think about a lot. As a teacher, I'm not, currently I'm not doing teaching as my primary income, but there have been years in my life where it has been. And I often think about just holding open the door for someone else who wants to write about the medicalized body, but just needs to be in dialogue with someone who knows, who knows what it's like. that's, it makes a huge difference. the only thing I'll say in terms of writing about it in poetry versus. Prose is that poetry is often a space where you, you do open up to melancholy. You know, when, back when I was in my dating days, if someone said, well, why don't I ever show up in your poems? I'm like, if you are showing up in our poems, this is probably not a good sign for our relationship. This really, and similarly. I think what's interesting is in the couple of small cameos that that parents, I'm not gonna say my parents,'cause poems don't necessarily have that stipulative truth, value, but parents in the food allergy poems, it's, it's often in a place of kind of, fraught melancholy or, or stress. and yet in Don't kill the Birthday Girl. And I'm glad I got to do this. I got to show my parents,'cause that's a memoir, in, in a really appreciative light because the reality is whatever stresses my family was encountering over the years, it almost always brought out the best in them when I was, when I was dealing with my allergies. I really, and I really appreciate that. I know that's not necessarily the case for every family, but in many cases it was.

Dr. Amanda Whitehouse: 23:54

Yeah. Which is, it's such a complex thing to explore. you shared an essay with me and if it's okay, I'll. Link it and the essay, I'll let you summarize it because it's too complex for me to even, to even do, but it, it. Going from the summary that you just said about, always being able to see that their best light, their best self shined through when you needed them, but yet to explore the complexities the way you did in the essay that you shared with me. Parents, I. Who are listening to process and really be mindful and conscious about how they're filling their role as an allergy parent, not just managing the day to day. that at least that's what it brought up themes of for me. And I will warn people if you wanna read, read when you have time to really process, because it's not a fluff piece. it's complicated and I applaud you for tackling it. Can you talk about that for us?

Sandra Beasley: 24:40

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so, so what I just said is true, which is that I think my mother, in her capacity to learn to self-educate about food allergy, I mean, again, this was the eighties. There was so much less information than there is now. So to self-educate, to be on the lookout for me to, to get at the technical levels of. Food and treatment and reactions to be brave when I was reacting and needed someone to, to feel like they were in charge and that I was protected. All of that is, is great, but that anxiety and stress doesn't, you know, that doesn't disappear. It, it gets, you know, it gets. Ends up being saved up and, and perhaps expressing itself in other times, in other settings where in that moment, you're, you're not necessarily in the superhero, adrenaline mode of protecting your child, but you're just, just a flawed human making your way through the world. And, you know, and bless my mother for. reading that essay and, and letting me publish it.'cause it does capture, um, some of the inevitable pressure valves that have to be released when you're a food allergy parent. I think. Um, yeah. So that's, you know, it, it's about, it's about mothers and daughters. It's about food allergy anxiety. It goes back to generation and talks about my, my grandmother and her mother as figures as well. Although their, their food, their story doesn't have food allergy in it and it's just, it's just really thinking about caregiving and the thing that I'll, disclose just'cause it's in the work that I'm doing now. Is it literally the day after I finished writing that essay, I wrote that essay in Alaska and the day after I finished it, I got the call that my husband was back at home in DC in the hospital. and he was in fact. within 24 hours on, on ecmo. So he was extremely ill, and ended up being in the ICU for, for three weeks. And my point is, is that I ended up having to go through this searing, discussion of caregiving on the page, and then I went home and all of a sudden was. The caregiver. And in fact, actually my mother slept on my couch for a week to help me just get my life together because he, my husband, experienced multiple organ failure. And, and part of what I'm writing about now is trying to reconcile the reality that came to him, which was living with a renal diet and a cardiac diet, and. I thought I was gonna spend my life with me as the one with the, the dietary challenges. And of course mine haven't gone away, but now we're a household of, of two sets of dietary restrictions and a need to create mutual caregiving. And so thinking a lot about that

Dr. Amanda Whitehouse: 27:20

Yeah.

Sandra Beasley: 27:20

the anxiety, don't forget the anxiety.

Dr. Amanda Whitehouse: 27:22

Well, yes. So much anxiety to go around. It's such a powerful picture for me as a mom. Thinking of, you writing that piece about your mom and how that anxiety manifested for her, and then to come home to her sleeping on your couch. I. To support you through now you having a mirrored experience as you said, being the caregiver. For me that was one of the strongest connecting factors for me with my own mom. Um, different thing, but my sister had juvenile diabetes, so, in a way that many people couldn't understand. She was able to relate to this idea of caregiving in a way that, other people might not be able to keep your child safe. And, and that, I've processed that a lot and your essay helped me with that as well in terms of the impact it has on our relationships.

Sandra Beasley: 28:02

Yeah. and I'm glad, it's interesting that you mentioned, um, juvenile diabetes. One of the things that if I. Could go back in time and you know, not rewrite the book, but if I could, if I could just counsel myself as I was writing the book. felt at the time a great deal of pressure to differentiate and make food allergies stand out. And, and I think that was something my publisher wanted me to do. And the only thing that, um, especially as I eventually came to think about food allergy more through the disability lens, I, I wish that, you know, there were times in the book where I was trying to really differentiate, for example, wheat allergy from celiac, from, you know, gluten intolerance or, or, um, thinking about. Uh, I wish I had been able to spend a little bit more time celebrating the similar struggles and the, the potential for, for combined empowerment versus some of the places where I feel like I ended up, you know, just pointing out, here's how we're special, here's how we're different, you know, and, and again, that's just, uh, maybe a maturity thing, but it was, it was really brought home by the fact that after the book came out, I had so many powerful conversations with people. One of whom, who comes to mind, who's. Coming from the diabetes world. and I just thought, oh man, like I, I. I would hate for them to read this book and feel excluded from it. I even felt that way a little bit with folks with peanut allergy.'cause I, I, I talk a lot about the ways in which by the larger public peanut allergy got lifted up and made the figurehead allergy. I mean, to this day, the myth that peanut allergies are more serious than any other allergy persists, but that is not the fault of people with peanut allergy. Right. I would hate for someone with peanut allergy to enter my book and to any way feel left out because it's not something that I personally had experienced and couldn't speak to with the same passion. But I get, I get the concern and I get the anxiety of irony was when they designed the paperback for my book, they put a picture of a peanut on the back. Maybe someone who hadn't actually read the book, but.

Dr. Amanda Whitehouse: 30:05

I was gonna say, did they read the book? And the way you're describing this, uh, just from a personal experience, it didn't come across that way to me, at least as a parent with a child, with peanut tree nut. And then we added sesame later. But initially it, it seemed pretty simple. It was just nuts. Um, when you were talking about flying and your experience flying and should we eliminate, peanuts from planes, but. Should we eliminate all of everyone's allergens for planes? And it's just complicated. And I would say your book helped me to realize that when I was in this fear state of like, get the peanuts out of everywhere, not actually being realistic or necessarily fair.

Sandra Beasley: 30:40

Yeah. I think that that is a, a very. issue. I mean, I certainly have had the anxiety of sitting down on a plane and having someone unwrapping a spectacularly cheesy sandwich that they bought at the airport right next to me. And I just have to stay centered in that moment and know that I have things that I am empowered to do to keep myself feeling comfortable and safe. And, you know, and look, I. You can't rely on personal antidote, but I, I never have had a, a reaction from that type of adjacency. I'm not, not gonna say exposure, but adjacency and all I can say is I hope the same for, um, for any family with, with tree nut allergy or peanut allergy. But I also know it's harder with real little kids.'cause real little kids will. Reach out and grab something and be oblivious to, you know, to whether or not they're, what they're putting in their mouth so that when you are in a, a space like, uh, a plane, that can be very scary. And I definitely think we can do better in terms of epinephrine supply on planes, I absolutely think there needs to be allergy, dosed epinephrine on every single airplane. And you know, one of the things that I didn't even, when I did, don't kill the birthday girl, I didn't even fully appreciate was. The issues right now of even when they say there is epinephrine on a plane, a lot of times it's not dosed for allergy. It might be dosed for cardiac. You need to be a medical professional to handle, you know, a syringe and needle comfortably. There's all of these things that could be so much better than they are right now.

Dr. Amanda Whitehouse: 32:07

Yeah. Yeah. And I would add to that, not just the accessibility on planes, but everywhere. I think there's so much room to have stock epi in every school, on every ambulance, every first responder vehicle. Like there are so many places where, where it's just such an easy and inexpensive thing to have on hand. So I echo that for sure.

Sandra Beasley: 32:25

Yeah.

Dr. Amanda Whitehouse: 32:26

We moved away from the piece that you were talking about with adjusting to this new life with your husband and now his dietary needs and kind of that co caregiving role that's so different

Sandra Beasley: 32:36

you know, I'm still still working my way through the material. just to kind of give it a, a fleshed out exemplar, he is fortunately not on dialysis right now, but when he was on dialysis and he was really struggling with his energy levels, they were pretty blunt about the fact that, you know, eggs for, for breakfast on a day that he di had dialysis was gonna be an excellent resource. Now, when we got married, we, we created a household that. Didn't have eggs in it, didn't have milk in it, didn't have these things that, that I was allergic to, just to make it practical and easy. Right? So things had to come into my fridge that had not been in my fridge before. And, and we, and then in accordance, there were things that we had. Previously loved to share like, uh, citrus, you know, like just he's a Florida boy. Uh, and just little things like that that all of a sudden we couldn't, tomatoes, we couldn't, you know, we, so, so in the same way that I might have some areas of the world that I would hesitate to travel to the use of cheese is particularly, uh, permeating, he now might. Not choose to not be as excited to go somewhere where tomatoes are served left and right. So you just, you know, you just kind of have to, um, you have to grow with one another and you have to adapt. Same thing I can remember being. Horrified when some of my food allergic reactions had me in the bathroom for, you know, an hour or something like that, or just uncut you scared or uncomfortable. Now he's the one who might find himself, uh, you know, dealing with a kidney stone, for example. We, we've had to, to get to know each other's lives because of these medicalized bodies in a way that I think ultimately. Many marriages do require, but uh, maybe a little faster and under slightly more tense circumstances

Dr. Amanda Whitehouse: 34:28

Right, and, and, yeah. More dangerous, more, more serious in terms of the health implications.

Sandra Beasley: 34:33

And it's also, I mean, um, just one of the things that, when I started talking about food allergies, I thought it was so important to talk about was food allergies and alcohol. And that was because a lot of times the, the heaviness of advice and, and guidelines dropped away, right? As, uh, people with food allergies entered their young adults. Ears and could legally drink. You know, and I, and I don't think a lot of parents really had, were having frank conversations about how when you put alcohol in the mix, it would get more complicated. You can talk about that from the angle of the alcohol, literally exacerbating a reaction. You can talk about the danger of combining alcohol with antihistamines. You can talk about the fact that, um, bar and restaurant menus are inconsistent with labeling for food allergens in. You know, in, in the alcohols themselves or in the garnishes, the fact that the, the, the ways garnishes are handled at the bar doesn't necessarily guard against cross contact. I mean, it's just, you know, it's a huge topic. I thought it was, I thought that was a place where my voice could really make a difference. Uh, ironically, one of the things about, um, what my husband's dealing with now is that he, he can't drink anymore. And that's, that's kind of too bad because it was, there have been so many times where I've been in a space where, because of my allergies, I really couldn't freely enjoy what everyone else was eating. But I did have the opportunity to, to be able to drink what, uh, you know, alongside everyone else. And now I'm trying to. Figure out how to negotiate that, um, with someone for whom it's no longer medically an option.

Dr. Amanda Whitehouse: 36:08

Right. It's a good example of how over time, people always ask about coping skills, how do you cope with your allergies? But, you know, yours have probably shifted over the years and then in this instance, probably shifted again the most quickly and drastically. You know, we, I don't keep it in the house. It, it relieves my anxiety about exposure'cause it's not in the house. But now you need to have it. And here's how I cope with social situations. I have a drink if I can't eat and I don't feel left out. And now your spouse, has, has to come at it from the opposite direction. Yeah. I just think these lives are complicated and, and again, I just go back to. Yes, do I? Do I carry more levels of anxiety or unusual levels of anxiety or anxiety attached to things that other people take for granted? Yes, I do. But

Sandra Beasley: 36:53

I just want to say over and over again to people who are either in my situation or parents to people in my situation who feel. Fearful for your child. I, I don't regret anything about how I navigate the world.

Dr. Amanda Whitehouse: 37:07

Like I don't, it, it,

Sandra Beasley: 37:09

these things, although they are hardships, they are hardships that make us more. Complicated and rigorous and interesting people.

Dr. Amanda Whitehouse: 37:17

And you know, I'm not gonna go so far as just put a silver lining on what's happened for my husband. That's not, that's definitely not my place to do. But, but

Sandra Beasley: 37:25

I do think you just have to embrace, this is the life, you know, you occupy the life as fully as you can.

Dr. Amanda Whitehouse: 37:31

And you learn, and you learn. And for me, like the best guardian against anxiety is always knowledge. Absolutely. Knowledge gives us control, right? Knowledge gives us some, some aspect of an experience that we can control. I did get a couple of questions from readers. I've been trying to pepper them. I know I touched on some of them, one of them asked on that, the note that you just finished on, what is a surprising thing that you've learned about yourself through both allergies and through your writing?

Sandra Beasley: 38:00

Hmm. People like to often typify writers and particularly poets as introverts. the of being a writer in the world has absolutely, brought out my extrovert tendencies hugely. Like, and, and I say that on multiple levels. I say that based on the years that I was writing. About external subjects. And so I was interviewing, musicians for example, and really had to do things like go get, go, get sound bites and, stop people and ask them questions. the many places where I've appeared on a stage or in an audience and been sharing from my work and answering questions, I actually, I deeply love being around people. I'm charged up by people and that is not something I think I fully understood about myself, until I. Embrace the identity of being a writer. so it requires trust. I would just add, you know, like, and, and I, it's, it's ironic that I've chosen, something that requires as much. Travel and as much being hosted by other people given my food. Allergies, definitely have had the scenario of showing up to events where someone had very carefully catered something, which I could not eat a thing definitely. But I've also had the opposite. I've had, you know, very, very attentive and, and I don't take it personally either way. It's just funny. Um, but, so I think discovering my extrovert qualities, discovering, trying to be funny. Discovering that you have to always be open to the absurdity in painful moments as a coping mechanism, but a little better than that, a living mechanism, um, when you're dealing with, with medical crises. I mean, that's something that, that, you know, the fact that husband and I already had a baseline of being able to, to joke about fairly grim medical circumstances based on my food allergies came in really handy in the ICU some days. Yeah.

Dr. Amanda Whitehouse: 40:00

Yeah. Yeah. And, and you mentioning that about humor and, and being able to take that approach to it makes me think of. You using your poetry as, as, a method of doing that. Your poetry speaks for itself in terms of, of using humor in the, in the ways that you're describing. I was wondering if you would mind reading, one of your poems for us about allergies.

Sandra Beasley: 40:21

Yeah. So I mean, one thing that I was on the front end of is, um, I talk about don't kill the birthday girl. Watching a couple of different movies or TV shows where food allergy was used as a punchline. Right. And I would love to say that is no longer the case, but man, I keep getting new examples to add. I was, I was, binge watching smash, while my husband was on a trip recently and, towards the end of season one. And there's two seasons, this is not a spoiler Totally. But there's a character who's introduced and. First time her peanut allergy was mentioned in a restaurant. I was like, Ooh.'cause there actually ended up being a pretty intelligent, informed discussion about, well if, if you're in this part of India, the cuisine is more likely to have it, but in this part it's less. And I thought, well that's actually a very sensitive, like, gosh, does someone on the staff think about peanut allergy or, but then it was mentioned in another episode where she had to run out for like safe, and I was like, Ooh. And I, I couldn't stop myself. I had been enjoying the show in real time, but I immediately looked up the, the episode summaries. I was like, there's gonna be an allergic reaction and it's gonna be either a humor point or a suspense point. And sure enough, it became, becomes this whole circumstance under which, you know, she has to leave the show and it causes, and someone is intentionally, quote unquote, poisoned her shake with, with powder. And, and then she's like, but actually, I. Ate it intentionally.'cause I didn't wanna be in the it. The point was, the moment I start, I saw enough of the signals. I was like, well, now I know what's gonna happen. Right?

squadcaster-h2g4_1_03-11-2025_150534: 41:50

can see it.

Sandra Beasley: 41:51

anyone with food allergy, I think can recognize that kind of, Ugh. So this there, the poem that I wanna read is one. That's in dialogue with that.'cause there have been times over the years where someone has come up to me and said, I think you're gonna love, and it's a book, or a movie or a TV show, and invariably it's like someone being victimized through their food allergy. It's like, what made you think that? I would be so excited to see that example. So, so yeah, this poem is called by Chocolate. Uh, there's a tradition in the literary world where we, we write little. endorsements for each other's books. They're called blurbs. This may or may not be based on an actual request for a blurb that I received, Death by Chocolate. A man wants my take on his novel where a wife dies with a peanut in her mouth after we've met her husband in the act with his secretary in the passenger seat of a late life convertible. A man wants my take on his novel where the husband's marital issues are solved by her anaphylactic collapse after he serves her takeout, spiked with a cashew, and for another 300 pages, he wonders. Was it an accident or did I know? Somewhere out there, a man is writing a novel about a chef with a taste for adding shrimp paste to curry and his unsuspecting shellfish allergic wife, and I'll be asked for my take on it. I have been offered dozens of takes on my own death. Suggestions Abound. Death by ice cream, death by cake, death by cucumber, though that would take a while per se. Perhaps gazpacho as a shortcut. Death by mango. Death by Spanish omelet, death by dairy, an abstraction sexy to someone who has never side eyed cream, brought out sloping toward the coffee, who has never felt histamine's palm at her throat, who says cheese makes life worth living. These wives, I get you women who did not grow up aspiring to be a plot device. We almost die a lot or we die a lot almost. We're over it. Our mouths have more to say.

Dr. Amanda Whitehouse: 44:33

thank you so much for sharing that. Showing us how much more you've become than a plot device, right? Or, or just, just just this girl confined to a memoir about her food allergies. And for those who are listening, we mentioned your, uh, memoir, but not your poetry books, which are made to explode. Theories of falling. I was the jukebox and count the waves. Those are probably out of chronological order of publication, but I have'em in a pot here on my desk.

Sandra Beasley: 45:00

Yeah, it's actually great the way you mentioned them because theories of falling, my first book, uh, really has the food allergy poems that relate to a, a kind of childhood and young adult persona. So a more, a more straight hand, uh, recollecting from memory. The, the food allergy poems it made to explode, I think are really taking a step, um, towards looking at it through. The lens of, of disability, of disability rights, you know, and thinking about, uh, the ways in which the problem is not always necessarily the food allergy, but the societal attitudes around the food allergy.

Dr. Amanda Whitehouse: 45:33

Well, thank you so much for bringing so much light to that and explaining it with so much more depth than we usually get to hear. I, you've been, you couldn't have been kinder in this whole process, and I love hearing your take and, and your perspective on things and how vulnerable you share your, your experiences with the world through your writing. I.

Sandra Beasley: 45:50

Well, thank you for this podcast. I just think that this, these are conversations that people want to be having, need to be having, and they're, they're, it's not the same conversation over and over. There's so many nuances and layers to. what people need to share. So I really appreciate what you're doing.

Dr. Amanda Whitehouse: 46:06

Well, thank you. I would love to have you back when your next book is ready for people to read. Will you keep me posted and I'll Will, I'll follow you along. Tell us where we can find you, on social media. Where's the best place to buy your book?

Sandra Beasley: 46:16

Yeah, we'll always support your local bookstore. So like in the DC area that includes a few different, we've we're great for bookstores, but politics and prose, I love. Um, yeah, my books are, are fairly widely available and uh, I am. All over the social media platforms, although like many, uh, I'm, I don't always post as regularly as I have in the past, but just look for me at Sandra Beasley or at Sandra Beasley. Author, author Sandra Beasley. And, uh, I'm always, always happy to engage with people one-on-one on social media or really even just by email. I'm, I'm findable.

Dr. Amanda Whitehouse: 46:53

Very easy for me to find and very responsive. So thank you so much for, for being so receptive.

Sandra Beasley: 46:58

Thank you.

Dr. Amanda Whitehouse: 47:01

Here are your three action steps to follow up on today's conversation. Number one, check out Sandra Beasley on social media at Sandra Beasley. She's very easy to find and very responsive, as she said in the episode. Number two, read her memoir or her poetry. They're easy to find online. I prefer to use bookshop.org to support independent bookstores, and you'll find a link to that in the notes as well as a link to the essay we discussed from Sandra's upcoming book. The essay is also very easy to find if you search for, To Catch a Sunset on the American Scholar Number three, follow Sandra's beautiful lead and do some narrative therapy. Writing can be so healing and powerful for processing difficult experiences and integrating them into our sense of self. In psychology, we call this narrative therapy, and it is an evidence-based approach to healing trauma. A simple practice is to write a letter to your younger self. Reflecting on a past experience, your thoughts and feelings at the time, and how it looks and feels to you from your current vantage point. If you're a young person listening or want to encourage a young person in your life to try this, an alternative is to flip this and to imagine your older self looking back on the experience now, once you are an older, wiser, more mature and experienced person, and what you imagine you'd say about it years down the road. Once you're done, you can save it in a journal. You can burn it, you can rip it up there are no rules, but I hope you'll give it a try. the content of this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only, and is not a substitute for professional medical or mental health advice, diagnosis, or treatment. If you have any questions about your own medical experience or mental health needs, please consult a professional. I'm Dr. Amanda White house. Thanks for joining me. And until we chat again, remember don't feed the fear.