Sarah Silbert

SPEAKERS

Sarah Silbert, Will Bachman

Will Bachman  00:02

Hello, and welcome to the 92 report conversations with members of the Harvard and Radcliffe class of 1992. I’m your host will Bachman. And I’m so pleased to be here today with Sarah Silbert. Sarah, welcome to the show.

Sarah Silbert  00:16

Thank you. Well, thank you for having me here.

Will Bachman  00:19

Sarah, tell me about your journey since Harvard.

Sarah Silbert  00:24

Ah, I’ve listened to you ask that question on your episodes, and everybody seems a bit odd by it. I think I’ll start at Harvard itself. Because that really was where the seeds were planted. I found myself are passionate about two areas, and one was the sort of social service community service area. And the other was creative writing. So in the first, Harvard actually ran its own homeless shelter, just a couple blocks from Adam’s House. And I spent a lot of time there. And then finding the food that supplied that place, I started working for the person who salvaged food we, we had a, we have a huge market and Chelsea outside of Boston, just, you know, 300 huge trucks at a time can pull into it, for produce for bread for this and that. And so I started to work there, salvaging food that was otherwise going to be thrown out, and then getting it to all kinds of shelters and any kind of social service agency and, and that actually led me to getting an echo, Echoing Green Fellowship, which was, that was a very avant garde at the time organization where this venture capitalist decided, Okay, I’m going to invest in humanity. And he gave out, I think it started as only 20 fellowships internationally, to people who are doing work to try and improve the human situation or, or the ecological situation for all species actually. And I was lucky enough to get one of those grants and then renewed, and I ended up not just working, salvaging food, but teaching youth about how to find their passion and how to find vocation in in helping or what was their gift to bring to the world. And from there, I became really attached to certain people in the runaway shelter homes and write a book called Teen voices, which was someone who sort of went out in the streets and collected stories of runaways and for for all kinds of reasons that sort of became what I wanted to involve my life around. And I started teaching worship workshops for sort of creative writing workshops. So that pulled in the creative writing, any place that would take me libraries, hospitals, treatment centers, a lot of sort of troubled youth, kind of service providers, and was happy doing that, except for one thing, and I really had always wanted to live in a sort of countryside setting. I had no experience with it. And I don’t you know, Soro is a favorite of mine. And I, I wanted to try it out. And I think reading all this writing from these tiene runaways, everything was about home. Everything was about belonging, and everything was where I would live, if I could, what my home would be like, and I started questioning Well, what about me, you know, at the time I was renting with four other women, not a sort of nonsustainable situation. And I got on this home kick, I became obsessed, and I started, I got a series of Creative Writing art fellowships that took me to Washington State and Wyoming. And New Hampshire, the MacDowell colony and in all these places, you get this little cabin with a little wood stove and a rocking chair and a desk and they just asked you to write and once you get in, it’s free. And it was my tent, ultimate luxury. made me so happy. When I went to McDowell. I was actually in the cabin that James Baldwin had And then and I, you know, I could have kissed those floorboards. And I came out of those years saying, I’m going to do this, I am going to find land, I’m going to build a cabin. And then I’m going to find a way to bring young people and because there are no artists colonies for young people, it’s always for more achieved young adults and, and mature adults. And so that was that was like my thing. And I, I took a house building course for six weeks in Maine that was brutal, like 10 hour days out in these fields, pouring cement, whatever, and, and then looked for land for land in Wyoming, Eastern Washington. And actually, really found what felt like home in Vermont, and didn’t expect to be in Vermont, I thought Vermont was kind of a snow bunny, ski condo area, and there’s a lot more to it than that. And, and this land was, oh, gosh, it was just such a ridiculously rock bottom price. And it was 100 acres, which felt to me like a national park. And it was that cheap, because there was no water, no power and no road. But what’s it’s just like luck fell into my lap, I, I did start building and while I was building, the electrical company approached me and said they wanted to move the power line. And could they give me this very large chunk of money in exchange for putting the power line across my property, which then meant I had power, you know, so, like, 13, things like that happened. Now, so a real tragedy at that time also happened, which was I begin, I was dating someone, and he loved my dream idea cabin and young people being artists, and within less than seven months of us dating, he was diagnosed with leukemia. And it I know, it was like a lightning strike. I mean, we were young, you know, we were 25 and 26. I mean, it just but I will tell you, Harvard, gave me a gift. I took a year off between 10th at sophomore and junior year to go to India, and work for Mother Teresa. And I will tell you without that year, I don’t know if I could have made it. I mean it. Jeff had acute myeloid leukemia. So he immediately needed a bone transplant, and that one didn’t work. And so they needed another one. And we were pretty much in a hospital for seven years. And it it was it was extremely horrible. It just was physically horrible. And I don’t, you know, I had some skills because of my, your way. And I was able to be his primary caretaker. And that was my life until my mid 30s. And at this point, you know, whenever he was allowed to leave the hospital, we would come up here, I rented a room at a neighbor’s house, he was about a quarter of a mile away. So we could walk to this site. And then I started hiring people to help and so we got this little cabin. But you know, when he got to see it finished, and he got to hike all around here, and he loved to mountain bike and one sort of kind thing that happened just a few years ago is these, this mountain biking club has carved mountain biking trails through my property all for free and I get to use them and they get to use them and it seems like a great exchange. And I asked for one of the trails to be named the Hale trail, because my boyfriend was Jeff Hale. And, but so he he died in my young 30s. And, you know, at this point, I was ready. I had I had gotten a job teaching at a college here. We had to have health insurance. And I, I loved my job. I love I’m still there, it’s been over 25 years. And it wasn’t my runaway Teenage Dream, but there’s a there’s an earnest effort towards work at this community college that is so inspiring. And, you know, it’s a, it’s kind of a trade school, I mean, you go there to be a veterinarian, or a diesel mechanic, or a dairy farmer. And then you’re all put in my class, because you have to be literate. Nobody wants to be there, you know, they’re in a variety of clothes that are meant for the outdoors. And I do what I’ve done since I was 15. I, I just helped them understand that writing is absolutely one of the most magical illuminating experiences any of us can have. And it’s, it’s kept me going, you know, I, I would say, my classes, they’re like, connections with students, they’re fueled me through caring for Jeff. And so I thought I was just gonna live in this small cabin and kind of do the writing thing and do that. That was, you know, that was going to be my life. And then, you know, maybe I get another cabin built on here and have one young artist at a time i i didn’t know. And, and then I, I met a very passionate artist Vermonter who it was like a storybook. I mean, he was like, Sarah, you can be a writer, you can be a mother, you can have it all. He had house building skills, we made the cabin bigger. We had three children together. But it was hard. You know? One thing I don’t hear a lot in your episodes of is life. Life is hard. I mean, three babies and working and managing house and like, gosh, do you get to exercise every 70 days, like, the taught the time, like time is the limiting factor. And there’s not adequate daycare around here. We’re in a very rural, somewhat impoverished County. So, you know, I think that’s one of the reasons it was so hard for me. So I had this daycare scheduled and it involved my college students and involve my neighbors. A lot of times, I’d have a college student in my office, you know, when I would come back between classes to like, nurse, whatever baby was in there, and it was, it was very, very busy and 13 years into it. Eric, the daddy, he was just like, this is this is too much. And he moved out. And so there I was, as a, you know, not a not a high end college professor by any means. But with a workload. And three kids and a house we burn 10 cords of wood, a winter, that’s that’s like enough wood to fill a very big barn. And, you know, just the shoveling and the repairs and the power goes out all the time. And I was terrified. I mean, I I had a girlfriend. I called her everyday for I think 30 days in a row. I was just like, don’t say anything. I’m just gonna cry. Just listen to me. Cry or, you know, I had I think 50 Different expletives for this wood furnace that heats this place. That it’s it’s, it’s a beast of a machine and I had I had never worked at it was like Eric’s thing. And I did find my way and in the hole I started taking in tenants and my first set of tenants were were fairy godmothers two young sisters in their 20s who were very hardworking sort of true Vermont types and one helped me with the furnace one paid cash and the one who helped with the furnace also liked to cook and she loved kids. So she would do board games with the kids when I was grading papers. We we had a very, very set work schedule, but it worked and neighbors came in and my kids Have a godparent who actually works at the college and she was over for dinner every couple of times a week. And that was six years ago. And the kids at that time were two, and seven and 11. But you know, now we are, we are in a, we are, we are out of the hole, and we’re living, living for dreams, like my middle child actually decided that. I think you’ll enjoy this. She was like, you went to Harvard, you lived into Washington, DC, how the heck did we land here. And because, you know, I’d taken her to see Harvard and she ended up going to some camps there. And she said, I I’m not living this life. And she on her own research, boarding schools, and we applied last year, and she’s in her first year at Groton this year. It’s a, I think the workload is too intense, but she’s very happy. And my eldest is driving. And he, he takes care of my eight year old, I mean, he coaches some of the sports the year old is on. He is He is my go to, like, he just, you know, he does the wood. Now, how crazy is that? So, life, life evolved. And I would say, you know, I think if the pandemic hadn’t hit, this might have happened for me earlier. But single, working parents during the pandemic was very, very brutal. But now, you know, things have been normal for a while, and why won’t say normal, but you know, they’re not urgent and earth shattering. And I’m starting to lift my head at the exact time your card came in the mail. And I thought, you know, what, what more is possible? And what’s everyone else doing? And I wonder if these early 50s are when other people can lift their heads out of whatever? Intense? uphill? You know, achievements they’ve been making? And then I wrote to you,

Will Bachman  17:41

and I’m glad you did. Me too. I, I want to ask about an area that tell me if you don’t want to talk about it, but I’m curious what it was like, living through caring for Jeff. And I was imagining myself in that story, if you know, if I had was 25 or 26, and had leukemia, like, what it would feel like to have someone you know, taking care of you and right, you’d obviously be like, so grateful. But then there’s, I would also like, have all this guilt, like, you know, like this person should be living their life and so forth. So what was what was that like, you know, where you could be going off and living your life and you know, getting married and kids and stuff and you’re taking care of someone? Well, tell me about that.

Sarah Silbert  18:31

Well, you actually, that was a theme. You know, at first, at first, I was like, this is just gonna be a year, right? We’re gonna get the bone marrow transplant and move on. And we had, we had some incompatible streaks before he got sick. He was originally from the West Coast and wanted to live there. I was all about family kids, and he definitely was not. So we didn’t have a sense of permanence, really. And then when he got sick, I’ll, I’ll be honest with you, there wasn’t really anyone to step in. His parents had their own issues. And so it was you know, I’m not religious, but I am spiritual. And I thought there must be a reason I’m in this position because it it was not easy. I probably lived one out of every 20 days of every month in the hospital and some you know, I slept in a cot by his bed and some of those sometimes use him for 50 days at a time and, you know, I had this for my dream and And now I was able to get the job appear. And then he had a male friend who stepped in to help on base, I couldn’t get down to the hospital, which was in Boston. So I had my career. But yeah, like, he was sick, or our relationship was me taking care of him. And so actually, towards the end, you know, I think cancer treatment has come a long way from when we were there, but he was like a 70 year old man, and he was in a lot of pain, and there was no more option for bone marrow transplant, both had work, so he was just on a lot of chemo to keep and, and he actually was like, I don’t want to do this anymore. I have friends who want to live with me in Boston, I just, I can’t commute between Boston and Vermont anymore. And, and, you know, it was taking a, I had an ulcer, you know, just lack of sleep and stress. And so he was kind of, we were pulling apart that last year, it was it was a, it was a wretched last year. I think this is dark, this isn’t what your episodes are for. But I, I felt like I had failed at sort of a device, you know, I couldn’t even help them get better, I couldn’t even help him find his way at the end. I went a bit into a hole. And after he died, I you know, I had my classes, they and I had this land. And and I had a whole lot of shame. And I think that’s what made it so easy for me to jump into this new idea of life and family. And because I did end up with Eric, Oh, just a couple of years after that. And it was like the light was shining again. So maybe my discretion is best. But that that was yeah, you asked us the question underneath all the stories for sure.

Will Bachman  22:42

Well, you gave an incredible gift. And that’s sort of generosity of spirit that I think few people would have to give that much of their life to someone. Right in that way. You know, not a spouse, right? Not apparent,

Sarah Silbert  23:00

right. You know,

Will Bachman  23:01

someone like that. I want to ask you, you were a Women’s Studies major. And yeah,

Sarah Silbert  23:06

the first year talk to me or the department.

Will Bachman  23:09

Yeah. First year, it talked to me about the word family and what it means, and how that meaning has evolved for you since since you were a Women’s Studies major, which you know, someone who thinks about these sorts of things, and with your experiences, how has that term evolved for you?

Sarah Silbert  23:28

Well, you know, your card and listening to your episode says, reconnected me to those days at Harvard. And you know, it’s, we get great ideas in that school, we get deep with, you know, the wisdom of the best of the best. And oh, I really forgot it all. I mean, family for me, and I’m, I am almost 53 At this point, and I, I have traveled the world, I’ve seen every kind of family. But for me, I wanted mom, dad kids. And you know, then if I did this artists colony thing we would be bringing people into that foundation that energy. And I never wanted to be a single mom there. There are a lot of single parents around me. We’re in kind of a distressed County and I think economics can break apart of family as much as anything and there’s a lot of single parents and it’s it’s horrible, in my opinion, and I say this with due respect act, you know, I don’t want to condemn this is this is all my personal feeling. But it is so much more fun to be be with children with another adult than to be the only adult. It it’s the energy is completely different. So I, I had to I kind of felt, I mean, the image that comes to my mind is this like, crazed mother with three kids on a lifeboat in an ocean with sharks, wondering where is the land? Where is the land, and I, I, I have found a way to live and, and I think my children live well. And I actually think we are stronger, we definitely have a better sense of humor, you know, than we otherwise might have. We are more creative, more resilient. And, and we have a tribe, we we don’t have a static unit, which is what I saw as family. But we do have this dynamic tribe. And, you know, a specific example is when Grace was like, I’m applying to boarding school. Well, I knew nobody who had kids at boarding school, for whatever reason, I didn’t meet many people from boarding school at Harvard. I don’t know why. So that was that was just oh my gosh, what do I do? So I just started reaching out, I had a cousin who taught at Georgetown, she came on board, I had a friend who I roomed with who knew someone who helped people apply to boarding schools, she came on board, and my daughter’s name is Grace, Grace had this circle of high powered loving, sort of cheerleaders around her, you know, everyone read her essays, they read my essays, because we’re boarding schools, parents have to write essays. You know, she did okay, on the SATs, but then we took it again. And, you know, people were texting, how’s it going? And but, ah, is that family? You know, family to me. There’s less effort involved, like, there, there’s something about whoever is under your roof feels more like family, because if the roof is leaking, they have to help you fix it. Oh, like, they’re not someone you call to come out of their home that they’re taking care of, to come and help you and yours, it’s more like, you’re the unit supporting its environment. And I missed that, you know, I, I think I’m ever going to be able to lean against somebody else and watch them, like, figure out where the lifeboat is going. But, you know, to get back specifically to your question, I’d say that family home, you know, if my life were a novel, those would be the two themes of the novel, what, what are they? And I have so many questions. And so many stories, but I don’t have answers. Or like a quest, I guess.

Will Bachman  28:47

What’s something other than just your kids because that sort of like everybody has to say their kids is the first answer. But other than your kids, what’s something that if you’re really in sort of a environment where you can just brag and just not be embarrassed about it? What’s something that you’re particularly proud of in your life? Well,

Sarah Silbert  29:11

think about that. Um, well, if I’m just I, I think this is gonna sound very simple, but I’m grateful for and proud of. I’m really strong, like I’m just physically very strong, like, you know, it was 30 below last weekend and the amount of wood I had to move into this house to stay warm and I remember jogging out there and the wind was so strong, it was like, pulling the snow up off the ground and these like, sort of dramatic tornado shapes and I remember thinking like, this is so cool. I can do this at this age. And and It’s not even that hard. But that’s not, that’s not, you know, instead of mental strength, I’m actually in a program for leadership. And it’s primarily for CEOs and people in charge of big companies. But they let me in. And the motto is how to be an island of calm in a storm, or in a sea of chaos, like how can you manage your nervous system in a way to not just keep your own self under control and to think clearly, but to provide that for the people around you and to you know, one of the teachers in this program says, reactivity, limits, opportunity. And I love that phrase, like, if you can manage your breathing, manager, mind, manage panic, creative solutions that you never would imagine are possible. So they come to your mind, because you’re not filling it with noise. And I can’t boast about that yet. But I, I am practicing that with consciousness now. And you know, it is it is a power. So I think I could combine that with sort of the physical endurance. It does come back to the kids though, right? Because that’s what I need to steward them. And whether it’s the pandemic, whether it’s their dad, doing a kind of see, and then as a personality makeover, like how do we, how do we manage these unforeseen crazies? How do we see opportunity, as opposed to just kind of dissolve and, and panic and, and I would say, you know, Grace, applying to boarding school was it was opportunity. She was like, Well, my school still is shut down. What schools didn’t shut down boarding schools. She was off. So I don’t know if that answers your question.

Will Bachman  32:30

It does. And I celebrate that hey, okay. Talk to me about at Harvard, what courses or professors, or, or activities outside of class and you’ve alluded to some already continue to resonate with you?

Sarah Silbert  32:52

Well, the the teacher, instructor who, who, you know, will always be in my heart is Susan, to as a creative writing instructor. And, you know, she had me over for dinner at her house, she grappled with the meaning of life. And, and, you know, social service was a theme for her too. And the kinds of this emotional life purpose discussions we had were, I think, what everyone goes to college for. And then I, I have to say, the Echoing Green fellowship, and I think it was the first year Harvard did it and it could have been the first year the founder, Ed, oh, what was his last name. But the man who found Ed Cohen, I think it was his first year that I did it. That’s a powerful group right now. And I sort of been reconnecting and been to a reunion yet, but I’ve been reading newsletters and connecting with other fellows over the last five years, and that, you know, this idea that we’re all here to help in some way, and whether that’s opening a coffee shop, or writing a book, or, you know, coming up with a new new form of cancer treatment, we’re all serving out our purpose and that’s something I certainly carried with me and, and actually, other fellows are are still friends and I never have connected with that group without our school.

Will Bachman  34:48

Talk to me about taking a year off at Harvard to go work with Mother Teresa what generated that idea oh, I could take a year off and and what did you do there? But

Sarah Silbert  34:59

yeah, well Look, you know, we’re taught to dream and live for ideals at Harvard. Right. And I, I read Mother Teresa’s book. And I thought, this person really is walking the talk, like there’s sort of walking. This woman is everything. You know, she had had a line, she, she could not feel nourished until everybody was fed, she could not rest until everybody had a resting place. And it was so pure, that, you know, I just I wanted to meet and work for someone who had no compromise. Now, of course, I’ve learned later. That’s not necessarily her biography. But that’s what I thought it was at the time. And I had a very good friend Caroline’s did Loski, who was Catholic and was on board 100%. You know what, we both did something called up freshmen, Upward Bound program or so you did community service for a week before freshman year started. And then we were leaders. So that was like, part of who we were. And, and there was a university, we found out through the Women’s Studies program called Mother Teresa University. So we wrote the university, the University said, Oh, my gosh, Harvard. Yes, come on over. We wrote to Mother Teresa and sisters of charities who are going to and they said, Oh, absolutely come and work for us. And so we started to get out maps, you know, and so, and then her dad had some business friends in Bombay through like, six degrees of separation kind of thing. So we, I can’t believe we did it. But you know, like, I would never want any of my kids to do what we did. I mean, we flew into Bombay, which is now Mumbai. We found our way to this person’s home. I don’t know rickshaws taxis or whatever. And then after a week, there we were, we took a train to Mother Teresa University, which was absolutely nothing like we thought they were a data driven, sort of collective and they wanted us to go out and get data and I was a people pleaser, you know, whatever they need. Yes, yes. And Caroline was like, That is not why we came to India. And she came up with a plan with how we were going to interview their social service leaders. So we did that and met incredible people, submitted our papers, then took a train to Calcutta, I believe it was 36 hours. And worked there for months, maybe three months. And again, nothing like we thought, you know, the first question is, why aren’t you in your own country helping your own people like dots? They really, you know, why are you here to look at us, you have work to do yourselves. And that’s the party line. Mother Teresa had heart troubles at the time. So she was in a hospital out of the country, actually. So we were we were separated. She has like seven homes around Calcutta. And I was in an old age home. And I think Caroline was usually the home of the dying is full of volunteers, because that’s what everyone has heard. I think Caroline was a younger person. But even with all that, you know, the work is very regimented. I think you’re there at the crack of dawn. You bathe the patients, you feed the patients, and then they’re all so extremely, at least for where I was so extremely arthritic, there’s a lot of massaging and hand holding, I didn’t do any medicine because I didn’t have nursing background. And then you do that and then you take an hour break and then you do it all over again, for the afternoon shift, seven days a week. Just busy. But a fair amount of people spoke English and time, time passed, and then we wanted to get to New Delhi and Rajastan just for the beauty of it and had had planned that as the end of our trip. And the war broke out the first day right? I wore, and we were told to leave. So we ended up taking an airplane to Nepal. And we hiked to Mount Everest base camp, which talks about seeing opportunity. You know, I still can’t even remember how that happened. I think we were talking with someone in a cafe and found out you could rent hiking boots and sleeping bags. And off we were in, you know, well, if my daughter sent me a postcard, I am hiking to Mount Everest. I would be better backing her out there. But and so it went, and then we came home. And you know, I’m still learning from that trip, because, you know, the 20s. What, what even? Are we in our 20s? I think there’s a fair bit of solipsism. So, I look back on that and see more. As a 50-year-old from the same scene. I was in as a 20 year old and I understand more of the periphery kind of thing. But it was what it was, you know, I think I could have perceived war while I was there, but it wasn’t adventure.

Will Bachman  41:17

That is taking advantage of opportunity. Sarah, this has been such an amazing discussion for classmates that wanted to follow up with you and continue the conversation. Where would you point them online? Where should people find it? You

Sarah Silbert  41:31

know, email is the best. I am on LinkedIn. And that is it for now. Oh, in Facebook, I’m on Facebook, too.

Will Bachman  41:42

Okay. So, Sarah, thank you so much. What incredible strong, strong woman physically strong.

Sarah Silbert  41:49

Thank you very much. All right.

Will Bachman  41:53

Thank you very much for joining today.

Sarah Silbert  41:55

Thank you. Have a great day.