So often in life when highly anticipated moments finally come to pass, expectations that have built up over months or years don’t align with the true reality of the occasion. Perhaps a garden party that was carefully planned down to the calligraphy on the place cards went awry when a storm swept through. Or a sprained ankle necessitated a new, much-lower-key agenda for what was supposed to be an active couples’ retreat in the mountains. And yet, somehow the memory maintains its sparkle anyway—just in a different way. It’s a great story to tell.
Such was the case when Amy Oselkin spied her book of poetry out in public for the very first time. As she recalls it, she was hustling through a local Barnes and Noble with her two-year-old daughter in tow. “I was dressed in gym clothes, I had mascara running down my face,” she says. Her daughter, Danika, was in desperate need of a potty break. And it was then, on the way to the bathroom, that she saw The Story Behind the Poem: A Reflection on Mommyhood, Miscarriages and Marriage on the store shelf. She could only briefly bask in the moment (any parent who’s ever had to hustle a small child with a full bladder into a bathroom stall will understand why), but she has no regrets: “I never pictured it that way, but it was so perfect.”
It’s perfect because it’s real; even on the good days, life can be messy and imperfect, and Oselkin is candid about her struggles as a wife and mother. Many women may find a kindred spirit in her poems as she tackles tough topics like miscarriage, resentment toward a spouse whose career frequently keeps him away from home and trepidation about navigating the unknowns of new motherhood. But she also mines joy from the same subject matter: a positive pregnancy test after a loss, rekindling romance with that busy spouse, falling in love with a new baby; these are the rainbows that appear in Oselkin’s world after the storm clouds have cleared. Each poem is accompanied by a brief explainer that provides the context for its inspiration.
Oselkin says she’s always been a writer. “I remember in fourth grade submitting poems to a poetry contest. It was about trees and the seasons, and I remember it getting published so that was a big deal to me.” But a lot would transpire before she became a published writer of poetry for adults. Oselkin was born and raised in Los Angeles. “I’m a true valley girl,” she says. “I’m from the San Fernando Valley, like from Clueless. I know Reseda Boulevard like the back of my hand.” She was a journalism and theater major at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, where she met her now-husband, Martin.
Post graduation, Martin moved to New York City to attend medical school, and Amy went back to Los Angeles and worked for E! News, first as a production assistant and eventually as a field producer. She enjoyed the work (one of the highlights, she says, was covering the wedding of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes in Italy) but maintaining a bicoastal relationship with Martin for three years was difficult. She writes about those struggles in “Long Distance”:
I long for an encore, one last note, please abide / Without your song, I'm just empty inside
(Excerpted)
Oselkin was able to join Martin on the East Coast when she transferred to E!’s office in New York. 2008 brought a professional shift when she left E! to join In Touch Weekly as senior lifestyle editor. She wrote about fashion, trends, health and beauty. She also covered star-studded events like Fashion Week in New York City and was a frequent guest on morning and entertainment shows to discuss celebrity-related lifestyle news. In her book, Oselkin describes it as a great gig, and yet, she ultimately had something else in mind when it came to her career. “My goal was always to be on QVC,” she says.
Turns out, writing wasn’t the only hobby that was a constant during her childhood. The QVC channel launched in 1986, and a young Amy was a frequent viewer, much to her playmates’ chagrin. “Friends would be like, ‘let’s watch Nickelodeon,’ and I’d be like, ‘no, it’s Diamonique hour!’” she recalls now, laughing at the memory. As a child she also dreamed up and performed skits to pitch various products to her mother, just as a real host would under the bright lights of the QVC studios. It might seem that such a dedicated superfan with on-air experience and a resume like Oselkin’s would be a shoo-in for a job there, but she says that wasn’t the case. She applied to be a host for years, to no avail. “I was like, ‘come on, I just interviewed George Clooney, why aren’t you hiring me?’” she jokes.
That changed in 2012 when the shoe company Clarks brought her on the air as its pitchwoman at QVC. Oselkin finally had the job she wanted, and two years later she’d have the family she craved, too, when she and Martin (they married in 2010) welcomed their first child, Dylan. Prior to his arrival, she fretted about figuring out how to care for a newborn in her poem “Mothering on a Prayer”:
I'm scared and hope this little guy will be okay / Otherwise, what do I do, I guess I'll just pray.
(Excerpted)
She did get the hang of it, of course, and she and Martin were overjoyed in 2016 to learn they were expecting again. Unfortunately, they lost the baby (a girl) at 17 weeks along. “That really affected me, it traumatized me, so a lot of poems came pouring out of me,” Oselkin says. “It was how I coped during that time period.” Later that same year, another blow: another pregnancy, and another miscarriage.
Who am I, what have I become / I'm so lost, unraveled, undone / I can't stop obsessing, I'm running but I'm stuck
(Excerpted from "Totally Undone")
Oselkin says she was wracked with fear when she learned in March of 2017 that she was pregnant again. This time, there would be no heartbreak. Baby Owen was born in November of that year, exactly one year after the second miscarriage.
By that time, the family had relocated to South Whitehall Township after Martin took a job as a neurointerventional radiologist with St. Luke’s University Health Network. Oselkin admits, prior to the move, she’d never heard of the Lehigh Valley. “I didn’t even know the Billy Joel song [“Allentown”],” she says, “so I was like, ‘where are we moving?’” But fast-forward to today and Oselkin says she feels right at home in her new-ish surroundings. In June, she traveled to California to see family members and had a revelation: “Wow, I really don’t fit in here anymore.”
The Story Behind the Poem was officially released in April of this year. Oselkin decided to self-publish after she kept running into dead ends when trying to do it the old-fashioned way. She still tries to write when she has free time, but she’s busy juggling three kids (daughter Danika was born in 2020), a husband, a still-thriving (and totally worth the wait) career at QVC and a multitude of other hobbies and interests. She says she’d love to break into songwriting one day, although that aspiration may take a touch more tenacity (“I’m fully tone deaf,” she says). But even if she never writes another poem, and even if Taylor Swift and Kelly Clarkson never clamor for a collaboration, perhaps she’s already done enough. Oselkin says women who’ve read her poems have thanked her for giving a voice to the very same emotions they were feeling. That was always the goal.
“I wrote the book for women so we could all connect, we could all heal, we could all share, we could all joke about our experiences,” Oselkin says. “Maybe there’s someone who has a best friend or a sister or a daughter who’s going through a step like creating their family, or a tough part in their marriage or a joyful part in watching their kid take their first steps, or finally sleeping through the night, all the little things we celebrate.”
Published as “Insight” in the September 2023 edition of Lehigh Valley Style magazine.
