n ;;;;, on Sally Field’s ;;th
birthday, her mother passed away. The death
loosed something in Field: a desire to under-
stand the pieces of herself. Her path to self-
discovery began with writing. Over the course
of seven years, she shaped those words into
the memoir In Pieces.
In the book she o;ers a look at her childhood—growing up with her mother, Margaret
“Baa” Mahoney, a studio contract actress; Jock
Mahoney, her stuntman stepfather; and an
older brother and younger half sister.
She also describes falling in love with acting
as a teenager (it was the one place where she
could hear her own voice); her early television
roles as Gidget, and as Sister Bertrille on The
Flying Nun; and her award-winning work in
Sybil, Norma Rae and Places in the Heart.
But In Pieces is no typical tell-all. At its heart,
it’s a mother-daughter story ;eshed out with
details of the era of Field’s youth, including the
work necessary to have the career she wanted,
;Me Too moments decades before the movement started and a desire to understand her
past, even if it meant sharing personal details.
When the Connection met with her in
her Paci;c Palisades, California, home, Field,
a Costco member, was all casual ease in jeans
and a white top, and just as engaging—and
engaged—as you would hope she’d be. As we
sat in her sunny living room, Field talked about
In Pieces, the new territory of being an author
and where writing and acting intersect.
SALLY’S STORY
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 40
I
Costco Connection: Can you talk me through
the process of why you wrote this book?
Sally Field: I’ve always been keeping journals.
I’ve taken adult creative writing classes at UCLA,
but I never really knew what I was doing. Then,
when my mother passed away, I felt this urgency
to understand something I couldn’t see, like
something in me was festering and I didn’t know
where it was. I thought I had done all the things
I was supposed to do. I’d had those conversations,
and yet, I couldn’t rest.
Serendipitously, a good friend of mine is the
co-founder of the Omega Institute, which is a
fabulous organization in upstate New York. [She]
called me and said, “Are you coming?” I said,
“Absolutely, I’m coming.”
She said, “Great, because I want you to give
the keynote address this year.” I said, “I can’t do
that. I have nothing to say.” She said, “Yes, you do.”
