Whose Pain Counts? (Susan Burton)

Pulling The Thread with Elise Loehnen

“I mean, I do think that I have an abiding interest in women's bodies. In how our bodies can be determinative, how they can suggest certain identities, how they can preclude certain identities, how our bodies can, you know, hold lots of possibilities. Like, I noticed I just said the negative parts first, I think because it took me until I was in my mid forties when I finished this book and published it, to understand the possibilities of a body, the transformative possibilities of living in and living from a body and taking pleasure in my body in a way that it's not that I had never taken pleasure in it. There were certainly things I did that gave me pleasure, but there was a lot of self loathing directed at my form. So, I think that we have a lot of stories about living in these bodies as women.”

So says Susan Burton, whose voice you might recognize from the incredible New York Times and Serial podcast, The Retrievals, which explores the experience of women who underwent egg retrieval at the Yale Fertility Center with saline in lieu of fentanyl—because a nurse named Donna was replacing the drugs in service of her addiction. The series is a beautiful exploration of whose pain matters, and the type of medical gaslighting that’s far too common in the lives of women. Susan is a veteran staff member at “This American Life,” and the author of the stunning memoir, Empty, which explores her own uneasy relationship with her body. Though she’s in recovery now—a description she holds lightly—Susan spent the first few decades of her life struggling with binge eating disorder. We explore all of this in our conversation, which I’ll take you to now.

MORE FROM SUSAN BURTON:

Empty: A Memoir

The Retrievals Podcast

Susan Burton’s Website

Follow Susan on Instagram

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