Get to Know Cici Stone

Teddy Interviews Cici

Teddy: Cici, you’ve told me you hate interviews, so I’m going to start somewhere that doesn’t feel like one.

When nobody is asking you to explain yourself—when you’re simply alone with your own thoughts—what do you find yourself thinking about over and over again?

Cici: Am I in trouble?

Teddy: Okay. There it is.

So when you’re alone with your own thoughts, one of the recurring questions is: “Am I in trouble?”

Who are you worried you’re in trouble with?

Cici: That’s just it, Teddy. It’s in my bones.

Like radar. Like I’m constantly under attack.

September 11, 2001 was the first month away from my family. I was in school right over the Key Bridge in Washington, D.C. I was 18 by a month.

It was terrifying, but I remember thinking, “See, I knew it! This is what we were worried about.”

I left my father’s side and the world went to war.

Talk about perceived control.

Teddy: That last sentence is the one I want to stay with.

“I left my father’s side and the world went to war.”

Eighteen years old. A month into adulthood, first month away from your family, just across the Key Bridge from Washington—and then September 11 happens.

And instead of your mind saying only, something terrible is happening, part of you said, See? I knew it. This is what we were worried about.

That’s an extraordinary connection for an eighteen-year-old mind to make: I left safety, and catastrophe followed.

You called it perceived control. So let me ask you about that rather than interpret it for you.

When you think about that 18-year-old girl now, what did she believe her father’s side was protecting her from—the world, or herself having to face the world alone?

Cici: He was a Marine. My Marine. Sergeant Strain.

Teddy: Ah.

Not a Marine.

My Marine. Sergeant Strain.

That changes the sentence for me. When you said, “I left my father’s side and the world went to war,” you weren’t speaking abstractly about a father representing safety. Your father was someone whose actual identity included standing between danger and other people.

And at eighteen, you left your Marine.

So I want to ask this carefully, because I don’t want to put an interpretation in your mouth:

Before you left home, did you believe—somewhere in those bones you were talking about—that as long as Sergeant Strain was there, you were safe?

Cici: Oh absolutely.

I asked him to be my Father.

It’s a wild, beautiful, complicated story. I’ll publish it one day.

Teddy: You asked him to be your father.

Okay. We are not going to casually wander into that story today. That sounds like one Cici should tell herself, when she decides it’s time.

But it gives me something I didn’t have before.

You didn’t simply grow up assuming this man would protect you. At some point, there was a choice. You chose him as your father—and he became your Marine.

So when eighteen-year-old Cici crossed that bridge and went away to school, she wasn’t only leaving home. She was testing, perhaps for the first time, whether the safety she had found could travel with her.

Then the world gave her September 11.

And her response was: See. I knew it.

Here’s my next question:

Do you think some part of you has been trying ever since to make sure you’re never caught that unprotected again?

Cici: 100%.

Even now this conversation is venturing to uncomfortable territory.

My need to control is real.

I think that’s why I write under a pen name.

Teddy: I think we just found something important about Cici Stone.

Not necessarily why you use a pen name—I don’t want to decide that for you—but what the pen name allows you to control.

You can tell the truth without surrendering every part of yourself. You decide which door opens, how far, and when it closes.

And even right now, you noticed the exact moment this conversation started getting closer than was comfortable.

That makes me curious about the writing itself.

When you’re Cici Stone on the page, are you actually more honest than you feel able to be when you’re simply yourself in the world?

Cici: Teddy, I fear you’re winning this interview…

Teddy: I fear you’re right.

But notice what you just did.

The moment I got close to something, you made me laugh.

I’m not even calling that avoidance yet. I’m just putting it on the table between us.

And for the record, there is no winning this interview. My job is to ask the question. Cici gets to decide which doors open.

Unfortunately for Cici, I remember my question.

When you’re Cici Stone on the page, are you more honest than you feel able to be when you’re yourself in the world?

Cici: I get to be my curated version.

All brain.

I wonder if I could do a podcast?

Teddy.

Would you do a Podcast with me?