Tiger Moms Have Nothing On Lemur Moms: Megan Dolan
Are you ready for a laugh or two?
Jason and I love our funny guests, and today's show features conversation with the hilarious caregiver, comedian and writer, Megan Dolan. Megan has written and performed stories for the Moth, Expressing Motherhood, Listen to Your Mother, Diversity: Tale from the Urban Jungle, The Scripted Comedy Festival, Cake Batter's Funny Women Festival, the High Brow Comedy Fundraiser, and the Alta Dena Creativity Festival. Her TEDx talk titled "Messy Mommy: Slob in the Shadows" can be seen on Youtube, and she is a founding member of the Elephant Theatre Company in Hollywood. She's been an actor for over 25 years and and has been writing for 10, frequently for L.A. Parent Magazine. She lives with her husband Eric, and their children, Tyler and Hadley. Now ten years old, Tyler has autism and Asperger's and was diagnosed with selective mutism when he was five years old. Hadley is eight years old and describes herself as "a tender heart." The family lives in Long Beach.
Megan's recent solo show, Lemur Mom (Because we can't all be Tiger Moms had sold-out performances all over Los Angeles County and is playing in Santa Monica on Sunday, November 17th. Tickets are available at lemurmom.com. Both Jason and I will be there and would love to meet you!
In today's show we covered a broad range of topics, including the push and pull of creativity in a caregiver's life. Megan shared with us how she gave up her creative life, thinking it was "over" when she had to move away from Los Angeles and closer to her family to get help with "the crushing demands of motherhood." She eventually began writing again, though, and performing, realizing that she had so much material to draw from. She began writing pieces in the spare ten and twenty minutes she had early in the morning before her children woke and then throughout the day. "I'm a really big proponent of working 10 minutes a day, 20 minutes a day, which I never knew was possible before," she says. With the support of her community and her family, Megan said that she "came alive," using the all the things that were challenging and difficult in her life to become creative again.
Megan also shared with us her late-in-life diagnosis of Attention Deficit Disorder and how it shed light on things she'd struggled with since childhood. The three of us then ranged over the costs of creativity and following one's passions while balancing caregiving and family life. We talked (and laughed) about the origins of Megan's show "Lemur Mom" and how her own children respond to her making their family's struggles and joys public.
Here's a clip of the show:
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