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INTERESTING HUMANS: EPISODE 18
On the surface, today’s guest, blogger Sandy Riguzzi, seems like a perfectly ordinary mom and grand mother from suburban New York. Yet the depth of her experience, which she mines as the source of her writing on Sunday Morning with Sandy, is anything but ordinary.
Sandy is deeply reflective of the challenges she has faced growing up and raising five children. And from what I’ve seen she has faced plenty—abuse, disease, divorce, alcoholism and parenting a child with Down Syndrome. On her blog, she elevates the real day-to-day heartbreak and fears and the small victories of life to heart-felt, honest prose that feels like graceful literary commentary on life.
In some ways, Sandy is the perfect model for my efforts in this podcast to get us all to notice, to raise our awareness of the extraordinary presence of ordinary people all around us. As I look back, Sandy is the most extraordinary of the extraordinary Interesting Humans who’ve been guests on this podcast. Our conversation is a lot like the transparency of her blog and I found it deeply refreshing and instructive and we talk about the ways one’s life experiences can feed our writing. With a matter-of-factness that you will realize is very authentic, Sandy discusses her unique writing process that sometimes has her staying up all night on Saturday just to hit publish on Sunday morning.
She reveals how she approaches blogging about her own very personal struggles with abuse as a young girl and again at the hand of her second husband and how those struggles have deeply affected her relationships with men. And we cross over discussing blending experiences like her daughter’s COVID diagnosis, her eldest son’s substance abuse issues, embracing her ex-husband’s wife and daughter as her own family, and her joy in what she calls “the glue that holds this family together,” her son, Joe, who has Down Syndrome, into blog posts.
Her blog is her life. Though not much is out of bounds for her writing, Sandy says there are still some things she has chosen not to write about “until my kids are older, those will be in the book.”
Frank, warm and engaging, Sandy is a thoughtful and wise conversationalist. I came away from our conversation with a respect for how she walks that tightrope of respecting the family she writes about and writing authentically. So grab a cup of coffee and go sit on your favorite chair and listen to my conversation with Sandy Riguzzi. Hope you enjoy today’s episode of Interesting Humans.
Where to find Sandy:
Web: Sunday Morning with Sandy
Instagram: Sunday Morning With Sandy
Facebook: Sunday Morning with Sandy
Pinterest: Sunday Morning with Sandy
One of my favorite posts from her blog: https://sundaymorningwithsandy.com/2020/08/18/a-few-thoughts-and-having-faith/
Thank you so much for this honor, Christian. You have opened a whole new world called podcasting to me. I hope our conversations continue and maybe one day I can interview you. Thank you again for this amazing experience!
[…] sure what I could say or do differently, but then the universe spoke. After being interviewed for a podcast, the bell went off in my head (ding, ding, ding), and I knew what to do. So without further ado […]