Listen To My Gut
The Body, Brain, and Books: Eleven Questions with writer Julie Barton
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Julie Barton is the New York Times bestselling author of DOG MEDICINE, HOW MY DOG SAVED ME FROM MYSELF (Penguin, 2016). She has a B.A. from Kenyon College, an M.F.A. in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts, and an M.A. in Women’s Studies from Southern Connecticut State University. She lives, writes, and teaches in Northern California. You can most often find her at home with her husband Greg, their two daughters, three dogs, and sweet cat courtesy of the Cat Distribution System. And she has a wonderful new Substack called
where she writes one poem every day.
What are you reading now?
I just started The Rabbit Hutch which a dear friend recommended. Stunning writing so far. Otherwise I’m kind of ending my summer reading pile. I just finished Kristin Hannah’s The Women, which was lovely. I was visiting my parents in Ohio this summer and my mom was reading it and couldn’t put it down. She said that the novel really encapsulated her young life, and it helped me understand much more about her experience as a young woman in the Vietnam era. Favorite recent memoir read was Underwater Daughter by Tuni Deignan. What a book!
What are your most beloved books from your youth? Did you ever hide any from your parents?
In fourth grade, I went to my elementary school’s library and checked out The Wind In The Willows. To me, it was a big book. I’m sure I carried it in my hand all day and on the bus on the way home as a signal to everyone that I planned to casually read what felt to me like an enormous tome. In my little mind, smart kids read thick books like this one, and I desperately wanted to be a smart kid. When I curled up to read it at home, I couldn’t keep my focus on the page. My little brain tried so hard, but I couldn’t comprehend what I was reading. It took weeks, but I forced myself to “read" every word. When I returned the book to the library, I remember the librarian saying that she was impressed I’d read such a big book. I had read it, but I was terrified she’d ask me what it was about, because I couldn’t have relayed anything coherent about the story. It was probably a little too advanced or stylistically different for me at the time, but of course I internalized that something was wrong with me, and that I couldn’t read very well.
My favorite childhood book, I think, was probably The Little Engine That Could. I resisted positive thinking for so long because there was a little too much toxic positivity in my life, but I often thought of that line “I think I can. I think I can,” especially in grueling high school track practices. It helped.
I didn’t hide any books from my parents, but I know they hid some from me. I found their copy of The Joy of Sex and was horrified to think that my parents even knew about a book with drawings like that. The squirrelly-scribbled drawings of pubic hair still haunt me.
What’s your favorite book to reread? Any that helped you through a dark time?
I reread my favorite poetry collections all the time, like Kate Baer’s “What Kind of Woman” and Maggie Smith’s “Good Bones.” I really love Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer and Maya Stein’s poetry as well, and of course the Patron Saint of All Words and Beauty, Mary Oliver.
I’m not really a cover-to-cover re-reader of novels or memoir, but I dip back into a lot of nonfiction books like Women Who Run With The Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes and Women’s Ways of Knowing which was a book I read when I was working on my Masters in Gender Studies. It is probably a little dated now in its language, but the way it looks at how differently women learn and think blew my mind back in 2003.
Books that helped me through dark times? I really liked Pack of Two by Caroline Knapp, and also An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamison. Those helped me through some rough days. Right now, poems are what see me through. I read dozens and dozens of poems every day to prepare for the classes I teach. I also write one poem every day. It’s a really wonderful practice. I *just* started a Substack called “Out With Lanterns” where I am posting my daily poems. (I’m on a steep substack learning curve!)
What’s an article of clothing that makes you feel most like you?
Long black maxi skirts. I found my style in college. One spring day, I was wearing a long black maxi skirt with a white t-shirt, black steel-toed Doc Marten lace-up boots. I walked along middle path towards my friend Ryan said he smiled and shouted, “You look like Olive Oyl from Popeye!” For some reason I loved that image. To me, it was beauty mixed with badassery. Plus, it was incredibly comfortable! Comfort, to me, is paramount to style every single day. I still wear long black skirts several days a week, and I still have those Doc Martens, but they’re more of a museum piece these days.
What’s the best piece of wisdom you've encountered recently?
One of my all time favorite pieces of wisdom is Georgia O’Keeffe’s line, “I have already settled it for myself so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free.” I encountered this line shortly after publishing Dog Medicine. When my sad-girl and soul dog memoir hit the New York Times Bestseller list, O’Keefe’s words so beautifully encapsulated how I was feeling. Of course I was thrilled that the book was well received, but I also began to realize that praise like that wouldn’t do what I thought it would do: fix my life or make me a creative workhorse. For the first half of my life, I sought validation everywhere. I wanted people to tell me I was good and okay and doing well. But somehow I have almost completely flipped on that front since having the success of one tiny memoir. These days, I don’t need anyone to tell me what I’m making is good. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t! That’s not the point. If you knew me fifteen years ago, you would know that this statement is revolutionary. Somehow Dog Medicine’s mild success helped me begin to understand that the best part of writing is not the accolades, but it’s the every day creative practice. I teach a writing practice twice weekly that is a beautiful method to get into that flow state in community, and it’s my creative must-have. I write daily, and I am working on a second book, but for years I haven’t posted or published my work. When I write my daily poems, I write them just before I go to bed when I am half in a dream state. It seriously feels like Christmas every morning to wake up and see what I wrote the night before. Sometimes I love what I wrote, sometimes I’m like, huh? But that expressive thrill is my favorite part of being a writer—never what other people say about my work.
Tell me about any special relationship you’ve had with an animal, domestic or wild?
How much time do you have? Luckily I already wrote a book about my transcendent relationship with Bunker, my soul dog, so I don’t have to go too in-depth here. But it’s no understatement to say that my kinship with him changed my entire life. It’s been seventeen years since he died, and I understand now that writing the book was my way of grieving him and honoring his remarkable life. Right now I am cultivating a relationship with some wild crows—three of them that live in my neighborhood. I can tell it’s them because one of them has a scar on his neck and no feathers there. They come to the telephone wire outside of my house most mornings and caw. I go out to my deck and put a few raw almonds on the landing, then whistle back to them. I believe that crows can recognize faces and sometimes when I’m out walking the dogs, I’ll see them and say a casual, “Hi guys!”
What's one thing you are happy worked out differently than you expected?
Honestly, my marriage. If someone asked me a year after we got married if I thought our marriage would last, I probably would’ve said no. We had a lot of major changes for his work as an academic in the first several years of our marriage. We weren’t good at communicating yet, he was incredibly stressed with work, and I was still struggling mightily with C-PTSD and a gnarly mix of anxiety and depression. Somehow, we made it through. We found an amazing couples therapist when our younger daughter was about 9 months old and that therapist changed everything for us. We saw her for about six years. She really helped my husband understand emotional awareness, and she helped me be gentler in relation to him (and myself). Now, almost 25 years into our marriage, I can truly say that my husband is my absolute favorite person on this planet. What’s amazing to me now is to remember that there always was a small voice in my head back then (even at the altar), like a sub-conscious knowing, that even though it was scary and he wasn’t perfect, he was the right person for me. So many times I wanted to blow it up and run. Thank goodness I didn’t. I’m so grateful for him and his patience and goodness. He’s just a really, really good human, and I am eternally happy I didn’t give up on us.
Singing in the shower or dancing in the kitchen? Or another favorite way your body expresses itself?
Dancing in the kitchen for sure. (I don’t sing in the shower—I am quiet and have weirdly deep thoughts and ideas in there.) When my daughters were little, we had kitchen dance parties for a while. I doubt they even remember them, but we used to put on what they called “loud songs” and jump around the kitchen after school. They’re a junior in college and a senior in high school now, but those dancing afternoons still reverberate in my mind as incredibly joyful.
What are your hopes for yourself?
I hope that I am continuously creative. I thrive when I’m making something. Clarissa Pinkola Estes says that creativity is a shapechanger. I love that idea. I wrote a memoir, but that doesn’t mean I am strictly a memoirist. Sometimes what comes to me is in a different form and I have learned to honor whatever comes. Sometimes I feel like watercoloring. Sometimes I feel like gardening. I am lucky that I get to create because I love it, because I feel deeply called to it, not because there’s a marketplace I am trying to please. I feel so fortunate to be able to live that way artistically, to align my creative goals with what is coming over my horizon and with what I deeply believe. So many people don’t have the flexibility to create this way full time, and I recognize my enormous privilege. But with that privilege comes some responsibility: I must make what’s truest, and let the rest work itself out.
What’s a kindness that changed your life?
It’s in my memoir Dog Medicine, but to this day, my mother rescuing me from a really bad situation when I was twenty-two and suicidal remains up there on my gratitude list. She could have tried to “tough love” me. She could have just hoped it would work out, but she truly listened to the tenor of my shaky voice when I called to tell her I was not okay. She jumped in her car and drove nine hours to take me home and take care of me. I desperately needed to be taken care of again, even as an adult, and not only did she not shame me, she commended me for asking her for help. This was in 1996, before mental health was even something people understood. For my mother to have that level of empathy, awareness, and kindness was truly a gift. She saw me when I so deeply needed to be seen. My father did as well, and they both saved me.
What’s a guiding force in your life?
I think I answered this thirty-five ways before I settled on a final answer. (Reject answers include: nature, birds, my daughters, my friends, my family, beauty hunting, my dogs…) I finally landed on my intuition. The older I get, the more I listen to my gut. It’s paying off in that I’m more settled, happier, more grounded in my own energy. Turns out that’s a pretty nice place to be.
If you enjoyed Julie’s questionnaire, you may also enjoy this one with Courtney Maum:
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I’d like to get the name of Julie’s couples’ therapist….
Wow! She could be describing exactly my marriage journey!!! Lovely interview. Can't wait to
1. Read Julie's book
2. Try to pick up some crows with my dazzling almonds!