Acknowledgments
After we lost our money, my teacher, Jeanne Hay, and my friends Taj Inayat and Catherine Ingram pointed me back home. For each of themand the way they grace my lifeI am endlessly grateful.
Anne Lamott helped place the Salon piece, which was the seed for this book (thank you, Sarah Hepola, my editor at Salon, for shaping the piece with such skill). When Annie told me that we could live with her and she would raise us as her own (if I limited my sweater buying to ten dollars apiece), I knew for certain that as long as there was laughter, all was not lost.
My agent, Ned Leavitt, has been my friend, supporter, creative partner, and all-around fabulous person with whom to be riding the waves. What a guy. SallyAnne McCartin was my erstwhile publicist when she sent me an e-mail that said, Please write a book about this. I listened to her thenand still do. It is my good fortune to be the recipient of her wicked humor and unerring guidance. My office and retreat managers, Maureen Nemeth and Judy Ross, are daily supports without whom my life would be chaos. Jay Aaron has been both inspiring and touching to work with. Thank you.
Financial experts David Krueger, Catherine Austin Fitts, Spencer Sherman, Lynne Twist, Mark Silver, and Christine Moriarty were willing to spend hours with me as I asked a thousand questions, then asked again. Thank you for your patience and your efforts at explaining what, at first, seemed like Serbo-Croatian.
I also conducted dozens of interviews with Madoff investors, friends, unsuspecting people in grocery store lines, and practically everyone else who blinked at me. Many have asked that I do not name them, but I am grateful to them nonetheless, particularly my retreat students, who are always so generous about exploring their inner lives with me. It is a privilege to be on this journey with you. Menno de Lange, Victoria Young, Blanchefleur Macher, Sarah Fisk, Luke Barber, Howard Roth, and my mother, Ruth Wiggs, were unabashedly honest with me about their relationships with money when I first started writing.
And thank God for the cheering section I call my friends: Roseanne Annoni and Mayuri Onerheim gave me brilliant and considered feedback on the first draft; Kim Rosen, as always, is a fabulous reader and a treasured friend; Lauren Matthews and Jane Neale, two of my assistant retreat teachers, read many drafts and helped me with the development of the work itself. Allison Post is the schmug of all time. Karen Johnson and the girls meet me exactly where I need to be met. Cheryl Richardson walked into my life and work at just the right time. And Jace Schinderman, my lifelong friend, has read every word in every manuscript Ive ever written. It was a lucky day on planet earth when I met each of you.
Last, the people at Viking have been a writers dream: Carole DeSanti, my editor, immediately recognized the purpose and passion of this subject for me. Clare Ferraro, Chris Russell, Carolyn Coleburn, Shannon Twomey, and the rest of the Viking staff have been unstintingly enthusiastic and supportive during the many steps of turning what begins as a wisp of an idea into a book.
I am awash in gratitude for you and it all.
ALSO BY GENEEN ROTH
Women Food and God
The Craggy Hole in My Heart and the Cat Who Fixed It
Breaking Free from Emotional Eating
When You Eat at the Refrigerator, Pull Up a Chair
Appetites
Feeding the Hungry Heart
When Food Is Love
Why Weight?
ALSO BY GENEEN ROTH
Women Food and God
The Craggy Hole in My Heart and the Cat Who Fixed It
Breaking Free from Emotional Eating
When You Eat at the Refrigerator, Pull Up a Chair
Appetites
Feeding the Hungry Heart
When Food Is Love
Why Weight?
Only Kindness
Twenty minutes after Taj called to tell me that Madoff was a fraud and that our money was gone, I was still sitting on the couch when a stray thought flew by: Matt. I needed to tell my husband. Matt was sailing on a Russian icebreaker in Antarctica; hed left a week before to romp with emperor penguins and old college friends and would be gone for two more weeks. I had a piece of paper with instructions about how to get in touch with him, but each of the three oceans he was sailing on had its own area code, and I had no idea where he was at the moment.
In the weeks leading to his departure, I had already been counting the days until he returned. Id kept telling myself that it was good for us to be apart, that we missed each other when one of us was gone. Also that the chances of a big, terrible thing happening when he was away were minimal: It was only three weeks, and many three-week segments had passed over the years without a disaster happening. Id flipped through the usual catastrophes: his mother, my mother, car accidents, broken bones, sudden illnesses, nuclear bombs, asteroids colliding with the earth, a deadly strain of bird flu. None of them had included losing thirty years of life savings.
After finding the list of numbers, I took a chance on any old ocean, dialed, and asked to talk to Matt.
Static. Steps. Matt.
Hello? He sounded breathless, excited.
Hi, honey, I said.
Is something wrong? he asked.
No one died, I answered. And then, between the waves of silence and static, I said, Weve lost all our money. Madoff is in handcuffs. All these years, its been a fraud, a huge Ponzi scheme.
Static. Silence. Static. Then: Oh my God.
I could hear his friend Robert, whod also invested with Madoff, in the background. What? Robert said. What is it? What happened?
Its Madoff, Matt said. The money is gone. All of it.
In the space of the oceans between us, Matt managed to say, Well be okay, sweetheart. We will. I am not sure how, but we will be fine.
Then Matt said, Geneen?
Yes?
We have to get off the phone. We are no longer the kind of people who can afford to talk on ten-dollar-a-minute satellite phones.
We laughed big, hiccuppy, staticky laughs. Then we cried. After that, we hung up. That phone call cost us a hundred dollars of money we no longer had.
Then I called my spiritual teacher Jeanne, with whom I had been working for fourteen years. Madoff was arrested, I blurted. Weve lost our life savings.
Jeanne was silent. Finally she said, Are you sure?
Yes.
Geneen? she said.
I didnt answer.
I know this is shocking. And you will probably need to spend some time crying and feeling angry and grieving. But I promise you that nothing of any value is lost.
How can you say that? I asked with mounting panic. I was thinking to myself that now was definitely not the time to be spiritual. Thirty years of life savings are gone. Well never get those years back. Well have to sell our house, move in with friends. We might be homeless, sickand all without money.
Im saying it because its true, she said simply. As if reading my mind, she added, If there ever is a time to remember what you value most, now is that time.
Jeanne had never lied to me in fourteen years. I trusted her more than I trusted anyone on the earth, even Matt. I believe you, I said, and then added, sort of. She told me shed call me later, and we hung up.
I stood in the kitchen for what seemed like five years, a whole century. Not knowing what else to do, I called my friend Catherine and told her what happened. She gasped, This is terrible. Hes a horrible excuse for a human being.
Yes, I said. Horrible.
