She thought her pregnancy symptoms were the flu

Lisa Trank: And then I finally, not delicately, basically said somebody better, you know what, say something or I’m gonna lose it. And the nurse was like, do you know you’re having twins? And like, I went insane.

Andrea Marie: We are Moms Unhinged, a nationally touring standup comedy show. Join us in our podcast as we explore everything from motherhood, midlife, crisis, marriage, divorce, online dating, menopause, and other things that irritate us.

Awesome. We’re so excited to have you on the show, Lisa.

Lisa Trank: I am thrilled to be here. Thank you so much. Thanks for making space for storytellers, yeah.

Andrea Marie: Yeah. And I really think, you know, a lot of times. Comedians, that’s what we’re doing too. We’re telling a story, we’re kind of sharing our experience of life and, we might inflate the truth a little bit, but you know.

Lisa Trank: True-ish is what we to call it.

Andrea Marie: it’s Based in reality.

Lisa Trank: Someone’s idea of reality or like, you know, someone my mother used to love to say to me. You know, I don’t remember it like that. I’m like, well that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Okay.

Andrea Marie: Yeah. Yeah.

Lisa Trank: So memory and all of that comes into play as well.

Andrea Marie: Exactly. It is funny sometimes when I compare notes with my sister on. I’m like, you what? No, I totally didn’t. That’s so funny. Our experiences are all in our mind. Right. So, I wanna just, you know, we were talking a little bit before the show and talking about your experience of motherhood.

And how you had children later in life, but three children at the, by the time you were 43. At 43. Yeah, that’s when it all happened.

Lisa Trank: Well, you know, the hilarious thing is that when I first met my husband, I said, I’m never getting married and I never want children. And then that changed at some point, right in my mid thirties. And then it took a while. And my first child was born about three weeks shy of being 41. And despite being on the mini pill and nursing her, hello, hello. We got pregnant with twins.

Andrea Marie: Twins. So you were not even then trying, like doing in vitro then.

“Do you know you’re having twins?”

Lisa Trank: No, no, no, no. I was absolutely not. Absolutely not. And like, you know, the process of finding out about having twins was amazing. Because I was over 40, obviously I was getting an amnio and went into the amnio, went into the doctor’s office and you know, they get you up on the screen.

’cause back in those days they would put, throw in a VHS. You’d get to take home the moment, you know, the blessed moment. So the tape is rolling, so they say, and my husband for support is holding my hands over my head. ‘Cause I’m a weenie. I don’t like needles. And all of a sudden we see this squiggle on the screen. And I’m like, why is there a squiggle on the screen?

I don’t remember a squiggle the last time I had this. And then, you know those magnetic things that you push your hands into and you see the imprint of your hand? It was like that. But with heads this way and this way. And my husband’s like, you know, nice loving handhold, was turning into like a death grip and the room went completely silent.

And then I finally, not delicately, basically said somebody better. You know what? Say something or I’m gonna lose it. And the nurse was like, do you know you’re having twins? And like, I went insane. you know, talk about swearing like a sailor. It was, I went crazy and my husband completely silent.

Andrea Marie: Oh my gosh.

Lisa Trank: And you know, they said, cut. Let’s take a break. And in that moment we found out not only were we having twins. I was three weeks more pregnant. And because twins, you know, only 37 weeks, so like in a split second, I lost like six weeks of the pregnancy.

Andrea Marie: Wow.

Lisa Trank: so it was, you know, didn’t know the twins run in the family. I called my mother and she was like, oh, no, no, no, they don’t run on the family.

Called my oldest brother, who, you know, after he stopped laughing because I was the last one to get married. The last one to have kids, right? He is like, ha ha. See? And he told me that in fact, twins did run in our family. So, you know what? Unexpected, but the greatest blessing in the world.

I mean, they’re amazing human beings. They’re 24 years old now. Identical. All girls, three girls.

Andrea Marie: Wow.

Lisa Trank: Or we like to say that they were triplets separated by two years because they were so close, you know?

Andrea Marie: Yeah, right. Two years apart. That is close. And wow, I can’t imagine that kind of shock. I my gosh. just can’t imagine it.

The silent drive home (no one speaking)

Lisa Trank: Oh, I think we’re still recovering, to tell you the truth. I mean, I know my husband is. I mean, we drove home from Denver. We did not say a word. It was just like the look on our face. We were like, because I thought I had the flu. I mean, I was nursing and I was on the mini pill. I didn’t even imagine that I could be pregnant.

And you know, as it turns out, well, yeah. So, you know, it was total chaos. I can’t even, you know, from the moment they came home and trying to, you know, nursing three children with two breats.

Andrea Marie: Y You were, oh my gosh. Wow.

Lisa Trank: And just going to the market with the three of them, everything was so much work. We just called it being in the trenches. It was like 18 years of being in the trenches, you know.

Andrea Marie: Yeah..

Lisa Trank: But beautiful trenches ’cause they’re incredible human beings. You know, but it was quite the ride.

Andrea Marie: Yeah, and they’re probably learning things like really not that far apart. You’re potty training almost, like, I mean, all of that, you know. ‘Cause that’s a whole process.

Lisa Trank: And then, you know, weaning three children, it was just like, you know, it wasn’t an easy process, but I was like, I’m done. I’m not going to another family event with my dress over my head for the entire thing. We’re done, we’re done.

Andrea Marie: Yeah.

Lisa Trank: Yeah, yeah.

Andrea Marie: My gosh, that is incredible.

Lisa Trank: Yeah.

Andrea Marie: Now what, what did you feel like, did you feel like you were, better prepared, having them later in life, having them? Did you feel like there was any? You know, resilience you had? Or what were some of the lessons you took away from that?

Lisa Trank: Well, I mean, I lived a whole life before I had our kid, before we had our kids. So I didn’t, you know, like, like I knew myself really well. I knew myself as a human being. I knew myself as a creative person. I was in the performing arts to begin with, and then I moved over to writing. I felt like I had a certain level of self knowledge that I think.

I hope, you know, who knows? ‘Cause I, I don’t know any different, I mean, I know there was a lot of anxiety, there was a lot of stress, there was a lot of exhaustion.

The reality of working from home with three young kids

Lisa Trank: You know, my husband and I are both kind of in the creative industries and so supporting a family of three, we had like 25 jobs between the two of us.

You know, like for the first, and you know, like just trying to put kids into, there was no way that we could have them in daycare because it would cost both of our salaries. It was ridiculous. So I worked from home and, they, like I have one great memory. So I was doing a lot of freelance publicity and marketing and I was having a conference call with a film studio.

‘Cause I worked on a number of independent films. And I said to the girls like, okay, look, mama’s gonna be on the phone. And I’m gonna put the timer on for these many minutes, like I’m gonna close the door and you need to be completely quiet and you need to, like, there are some snacks you can watch a show and completely quiet.

So I get on the call, it’s all professional, I’m feeling like I got this. And I turn around and I look under the door jam and there are three sets of toes under the door jam, literally wiggling with anticipation, waiting for me to be done.

Andrea Marie: Oh my gosh.

Lisa Trank: And I had to hold it together because it was so hilarious that it was just so real.

I’ll tell you something, you know, that’s the thing about being a parent. It ‘s real. You can’t hide from the realness of it, you know?

Andrea Marie: That’s right. I know. And you can’t anticipate, you can’t understand even the crazy things that can happen. You know, you’re like, what? How? What is what? And if someone would’ve said this might happen, you’d be like.

Lisa Trank: You know, just trying to get all three of them dressed in out the door and you know, we’d show up and people would be like, oh, it’s so great you let your kids dress themselves. And I’d be like, uh, no, actually.

Andrea Marie: That was me.

Lisa Trank: Right, right. Or keeping socks. Like the girl, the twins refused to wear socks no matter how cold it was. They would never, ever, ever wear socks when they were little, you know? And yeah, so all of those challenges, but you know, and that’s part of the journey for me as a creative person and as a writer and storyteller, is that after the twins were born, my mother-in-law.

Why you won’t remember any of this later

Lisa Trank: Amazing woman, amazing writer, you know, her blessed it be her memory, said to me, you have to write all this down because you think you’re gonna remember it, but you’re gonna be too exhausted and your brain changes. So when you know Jack’s at work, you have to, you got all this, you know, when you get him to bed, just sit down at the computer and start writing it all down.

And I listened to her ’cause I felt like she had such belief in me as a writer. And, you know, it’s lonely enough being a mother and then being a mother who happens to be a writer or a performer or whatever, an artist. It can be pretty isolating. And I listened to her and I just, more than anything, it was like, it was just a lifeline for me to just chronicle the insanity.

Andrea Marie: Yeah, yeah.

Lisa Trank: The true insanity of our days, you know?

Andrea Marie: And that is so true ’cause you think you will remember it. You think, oh gosh, for sure. But it disappears. So that’s such a great gift that you got, that you were able to do that ’cause that takes a lot of discipline to, you know, you’re tired, you’re exhausted. You’re like, I just want to go to bed. So that’s great.

Lisa Trank: Well, you know, part of it is that I didn’t feel comfortable going to sleep without my husband there. I don’t know why. I just would like, you know. And so I would have about two hours and I would just sit down and write things out. And I’m so grateful that I did because I basically chronicled, you know, our oldest is 26, so I’ve got like all of these different eras of, you know, what I loosely called, boobies and other bodily functions because the sheer physicality of motherhood, you know.

The part of motherhood no one tells you

Lisa Trank: Where you’re being peed on and pooped on and thrown up on and all in, like within a half an hour and you’re like, nobody ever told me that it was this it’s so messy.

Andrea Marie: It’s so many fluids. It’s just really

Lisa Trank: Oh, many fluids. Oh my gosh. Like I said to my mother, like, why didn’t you ever tell me? And she was like, eh, I figured you’d figure it out for yourself.

Andrea Marie: So funny. That’s so funny. So I wanna hear more about how you kind of became a storyteller, how that evolved and like what does that look like over your career? ‘Cause I’m sure you don’t, I don’t know, maybe you did you start out saying, I’m gonna be a storyteller.

Lisa Trank: No, I started off as an actor and I did that for a lot of years. Some, not really all that financially successful, but it was really my purpose. And then at one day I just started writing and what I loved was that I, in those days, typewriter, you know, and I could pull out a piece of paper and hold it.

That’s something that I had created as opposed to waiting around for somebody to cast me in something. And so I really didn’t like the performing arts business at all. I just, you know, it was just so cutthroat and I just decided I need to do something different. And I needed to find out something different about myself.

So when we moved to Colorado in like 1995, we were, we went to Naropa University, got an MFA, started off in another program, but ended up in the MFA writing a poetics program there. And I always was a little sad about, I love the community of theater, I love collaboration and creating things together.

 Telling the real stories about motherhood

Lisa Trank: And then one day in one of my classes, it struck me, oh. I know how to create characters. I know how to do that from all those years of creating characters, and so again, you know, with the support of my mother-in-law. Who at one point it was my mother-in-law and a dear friend who was, my mother-in-law was in her seventies.

Our friend was in her sixties and I was in my fifties, and we kind of did these loose little readings called The Nest. I just really started loving, kind of just telling stories about being a mother, because I felt like no one ever really talked about what it was like.

We grow with this romanticized version and you know, especially if you’re like a working mother, it’s really. I mean, every mother, every mother works.

But if you’re working in addition to raising your children, I just really loved, I loved the interplay between just telling my own stories.

The other part of it is like I got really active again once the kids were outta the house, with Longmont Out Loud (LOL) with Audrey Grace, and started doing some featured storytelling with that.

And it was a really healing experience for me because, you know, between theater school and then the theater world, it can be a really toxic environment and not necessarily always the safest environment being on stage. And that’s part of what I love about what you’re doing is that, you know, you’re bringing women together in this really safe, hilarious space where we can laugh together and be connected in that way.

And so getting back up stage at this, like, we like to say season of my life. You know, because I’m in my sixties now, and to be able to get up on stage and kind of defy what society expects me to be at 60, which is invisible, right? And either, you know, crocheting or I don’t know what they want me to do.

It’s just a great sense of being connected to something bigger than myself. I just love it.

Andrea Marie: Yeah. That’s so great. I love that you said that it just really was a healing experience for you because I definitely found that too. ‘Cause there was a lot of, sometimes there’s shame and there’s pain and there’s like just, you know, comparison and there’s all this stuff associated with motherhood and being a woman in general.

And I think it is very healing to get up and just kind of name some of this stuff and say, Hey, I’m not perfect and

Lisa Trank: Well,

Andrea Marie: I know I didn’t do it quite right.

Getting back on stage in your 60s

Lisa Trank: Absolutely. And you know what the thing is? I love what you, that you say that because it’s like. You know, the what’s required of us as parents is so all consuming. And then at like, okay, well, my kids are still, kids still need us. I mean, but it’s different. They’re young adults, they’re in their world and so I now all of a sudden can sit back and go, oh, okay.

I get to kind of focus back on myself and return to my sense of self. Take leaps of faith. I really believe in taking leap leaps of faith in myself and getting back up on stage at this stage of my life. I love it when they say season ’cause I feel like, you know, anything that seasons a brisket I’ll go into that season of life.

But it’s like, you know, basically being able to get up in front of people in that shared experience and just talk about what it’s like as a 60-year-old woman, 60 over 60-year-old woman, to have to go look for a job or what it’s like to go to the doctor. Like, oh my God, you know, going to the doctor in your sixties.

It’s a very. I don’t know, I feel like at least a few times a week someone’s throwing cold water in my face. Like, really? That’s what you’re expect me expecting from me. It’s great. So I like pushing the boundaries with that. And I feel like with the stories that I’m telling, I wanna bring humor.

I want them to be relatable. I wanna have something a little unexpected. I like to challenge people a little bit with it, and I love the shared laughter. It is just so joyful. Oh my gosh. It’s so joyful and we need that, you know.

Andrea Marie: Yeah, for sure. I think there, there are times when I think laughter is really. It is so healing. It is. It brings people together and allows us to.

Lisa Trank: And, for women, I think it’s really important humor. I think the history of women and humor has always been, like the arrangement was always self-deprecating, right? You had to make, you had to make fun of yourself to get up on stage. But now I’m seeing like a whole generation of women who are not, are just saying, no, I don’t need to do that.

Andrea Marie: Mm-hmm.

Lisa Trank: I’m funny and I can be funny without making fun of myself or making fun of other people, like not at the expense of other people. And so I just really love what I’m seeing out there, both locally and then when I’m seeing, one of my daughters and I went to go see Michelle Buto and oh my God, I mean, talk about fierce and powerful and hilarious.

I just love that.

Andrea Marie: Mm-hmm.

Lisa Trank: Whether it’s short form or long form.

Andrea Marie: Yeah, I mean, it is kind of interesting, like I haven’t seen, like I definitely have seen how the comedy scene has changed since I started even. ‘Cause I didn’t, I did improv comedy before this, but I didn’t really start as doing standup comedy, since about like, whatever, 17 years ago. And so I’ve seen that change so much.

Like it used to be there was only a couple women in the crowd and in the group of, you know, at the open mics. And now it really has gotten to be more and more women in the scene. And I don’t even feel like, I don’t know, storytelling has also evolved with the things that are available nowadays. I don’t know how you’ve seen that.

Why storytelling connects us all

Lisa Trank: Oh, oh, definitely. I mean, and some of the people that you know might have been comics like Mike Lia, like I think he’s evolved from being a standup to a comic storyteller like Yeah. his one person shows, or Hannah Gatsby. Their one person shows like those types of where you’re really merging, there is a lot of humor. But in their cases, there’s something about taking hard things in one’s life and being able to, you know, bring that perspective of some humor to it.

You know, the other part of it that drives me as a storyteller is I’m a first generation American. So my father escaped Eastern Europe before World War II started. We lost a lot of family, and I think a lot about. You know, one person, how many stories do we have? And that, right. I’ve got multitudes of stories.

You’ve got multitudes of stories and all the stories that didn’t get told. That never got told. And so there’s something in me, I think just by, the grace of who I was raised by. I just used to take in these stories and would beg for these stories from my father and my uncle and my aunt and whoever I could, you know, get to tell me stories of the people that I never got to know.

So that’s really important to me. And then in addition to like the live storytelling that I do, I also write mostly for children’s literature. I’m a pre-published author, as we like to say, but I also love to write for kids and tell stories that they can relate to, characters that, situations that they can relate to as well.

I just think like storytelling and whether it’s a joke that’s a story or it’s a longer form that’s a story, connects us in really important ways.

Lisa’s unhinged parenting moments

Andrea Marie: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. That awesome. One thing I like to always ask, our guests here on the Moms Unhinged podcast, getting back to parenthood and how crazy that can be. I can’t even imagine how many unhinged moments you have. But what, is there one that stands out to you? That you can share with us?

Lisa Trank: Of course I have a million of them, but I think there, there are two that come to mind. One that really could have been an unhinged moment, but as I mentioned, like the twins refused to wear socks. I didn’t really care, you know. And going to the market with them or even going to Target was such an ordeal.

Like it was half the time I used to abandon the cart, call my husband, say we’re outta here, they’re misbehaving. I can’t do this. It’s too stressful. It’s in aisle 17 or whatever. You know, at King Soopers, they knew us so well that they would be like. We got the card, Lisa, you go call Jeff. Right?

You know, so it was a beautiful day. It was in February. It was one of these beautiful, early, early, late winter, early spring days, and we’d gone to Target successfully made it through the trip. I was getting the kids back into the minivan. You know, everybody was happy and I opened the windows a little bit to let some fresh air in.

And all of a sudden this woman pops up. Very like, nicely quaffed, you know, woman. And she looks at me and she says, I just wanna tell you what a wonderful job you’re doing with your children. And it was one of those moments I was like, oh my God. I feel seen. Oh my God.

Andrea Marie: I know.

Lisa Trank: I feel seen.

Andrea Marie: Just a little.

Lisa Trank: Like that moments.

Oh yeah. You know, and then like she then in a split second, it was like Linda Blair in The Exorcist, you know. Her head spun around, she like spewed out green, horrible things and she stuck her head in the car and went, but I really wish you would put socks on those children. And I sat there going like, is there like some strange sock cult that I don’t know about?

And I’m like, well just look at the floor because I’ve got like 20 pairs of socks that they’ve ripped off. And I lived in New York before, you know, for like a decade.

Andrea Marie: Yeah.

Lisa Trank: So like my first inclination was just to hit the button on the window and like I could just easily decapitate this woman.

But I’m thinking I can’t really do that in front of my children. And I look in the rear view mirror and our oldest is looking at me with her big blue eyes and I’m like, yeah, I can’t really detect you. That would not be kind of traumatizing for them. But I did like touch the window a little bit, so it went up and I was like, well, thank you very much for your input.

And I continued on leaving her enough room to pull her head. So that was a potentially unhinged moment. Totally. But you know, I think probably the most stressful thing for us were birthday parties, you know? Like, and there was one weekend, we had three birthday parties in one day, one where they were going together, then the oldest was going to one, and I was going to the other with the twins.

So my husband and I were in the two cars, and I remember at one point we kind of went by each other on a road and I’m about to make a right turn and one of the twins just tosses her cookies all over and I am celebrating. I’m like, oh my God, yes. We don’t have to go to the birthday party. I call him up. I said, great news. Maddie threw up.

Andrea Marie: Oh.

Lisa Trank: To me is like an example of like. Because yes, we could have just said we’re not going to all three of the parties, but I just didn’t wanna listen to the screaming and the yelling and the crying. And so yes, I was, I don’t regret that I celebrated my daughter throwing up all over the van ’cause I’d like, I’d rather clean the van from vomit, then go to this birthday party life.

Andrea Marie: I know. The universe works in mysterious ways, right.

Lisa Trank: And my husband was like, yes. We were both like, yes.

Andrea Marie: That’s hilarious. Oh my gosh.

Lisa Trank: So that’s an example. There are so many, as you know, right? I mean, we stockpile ’em and, you know, it’s just great.

Andrea Marie: I can’t even imagine the kind of scheduling and driving and the shuttling kids around when they’re all like.

Lisa Trank: It was so insane. You know, when I did, so one of the first shows that I did with Longmont Out Loud was their escape from the holidays, which was really fun. And one of the pieces is about weaning. The art of weaning, right. And one of the performances, it was amazing because

the twins were there. My mother, who was 91 at the time, was there, you know, and my sister-in-law was there. And so we had all this whole like multi-generation of all of these women. And I told this story and about what it was to be weaning three kids, especially the twins. And after the performance, two things that happened were hilarious, but they came up to me and they were like, is that really what happened?

I said, yeah, that’s pretty much verba verbatim. And I could feel how grateful they were to be able to have that reflected back to them, like, you know, like that. And then I went into the bathroom and some woman like, you know, whipped out her phone and showed me, you know, just basically both her boobs with a kid on it.

And I was like, hi, how are you? I’m like, oh my God.

Andrea Marie: a little

Lisa Trank: But I recognized, she was like, oh my God, you spoke to this experience. And I’m like, can you put your phone away.

Andrea Marie: Didn’t expect to see boobs when I came in.

Lisa Trank: It was so. But you know, it did make me think like these stories really do resonate.

Unsolicited parenting advice

Andrea Marie: Right, right. For sure. That is so crazy and I also can’t believe, just thinking about the other story about the woman, it’s weird to me how much advice people think. They should be giving moms, you know, who are just out and about in the wild trying to survive and she’s concerned about your kids’ socks.

it’s what? Like I just like looked up on the internet. Is there a sock cult in Longmont that I don’t know about? You know, like it was such a bizarre thing and such an invasion of personal space. But, you know, definitely the advice. I mean, when I was pregnant with the twins, I was, Mila was only 18 months old, you know. And I mean, we lived in Boulder, so of course, you know, breastfeeding, breastfeeding was everything.

Lisa Trank: And like everybody was saying, you have to stop. You have to stop. And like we weren’t ready to stop. And I was just like, that’s not your, first of all, shut up. But second of all, it’s not for you to tell me what to

Andrea Marie: Right.

Lisa Trank: do.

And we needed it, like it would kept us connected. And then when I decided that I had had enough, I realized like I needed to find a different way of comforting my children than with my breasts.

You know, like I just like had to move on from that stage of all of our lives, you know?

Andrea Marie: Right. Yeah. It is wild. Motherhood is so crazy. This is why we have to laugh about it because.

Lisa Trank: We have to.

Andrea Marie: Yeah. It’s just wild.

Lisa Trank: I think it’s also just trusting our own voice, knowing like, what’s your motherhood style? And it’s also different if you have more than one kid, you’re gonna be a different mother for every single one of those kids. You know? It’s just, but I think like, just finding those places of community, and whether it’s community, whatever it might be. That’s just like, I just can’t get enough of it.

Andrea Marie: Yeah. Yeah, so true. And I think also just really forgiving ourselves for anything. Like I love that you said you’ll we’re gonna be a different mother for each child. I definitely found that to be true as well. And I mean even I just had two so that.

Lisa Trank: Well just.

Andrea Marie: Yeah. But I think forgiving ourselves for anything that we feel like we should have done differently or, you know, any of this outside noise and just allowing ourselves to be the mother and trust our voices.

Lisa Trank: Exactly, and I don’t know about you, but like my mother was definitely a mother of a certain generation where, you know, they never like acknowledged that they made any mistakes. And so it was a really big thing for me to like be able just to say to the girls like, oh, you know, mama messed up. You know, I’m sorry I didn’t do that.

Right. Or whatever it might be. I wouldn’t beat myself up, but I would take responsibility for it so we could just move on. Like I just didn’t want to have that whole, I didn’t want that hanging over any of us.

Andrea Marie: Yeah, So true, so true. Well, Lisa, this has just been so much fun. It always, the half hour so fast. I know.

Lisa Trank: Oh my gosh.

Andrea Marie: Thank you so much for your insight and all of that, and, let us know where people can find you.

Lisa Trank: Oh, I definitely, yeah, I have a website. It’s lisatrank.com and I post, you know, when I’m performing, I’m working on some things and we’ll see what, what’s going on. But yeah, always up for adventures and, I so appreciate the connection. And I, again, thank you for everything you’re doing and bringing all of these wonderful, I call them mom-ics, right?

They’re mom-ics.

Andrea Marie: Yeah. Right, right. That’s so great. So yeah, awesome. We’ll have all those links in the show notes and thanks again and bye. Yeah, keep laughing.

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