Fresh Take: Amanda Knox on Feeling Lost and Finding Hope

Fresh Take: Amanda Knox

What Fresh Hell: Laughing in the Face of Motherhood

[00:00:00] Margaret: Hello, and welcome to What Fresh Hell. This is Margaret, 

Amy: and this is Amy. And today we are talking to Amanda Knox. She's an exoneree, a journalist public speaker and author of the New York times bestselling memoir, waiting to be heard between 2007 and 2015. Amanda spent nearly four years in an Italian place.

An eight years on trial for murder. She did not commit. Amanda went on to host the Scarlet letter reports of vice Facebook series about the public vilification of women. And she's a feature contributor to crime story.com where she has written extensively about criminal justice reform. She's also the co-host with her partner, Christopher Robinson of the labyrinth podcast, which delves into stories of getting lost and found again.

Welcome a man. 

Amanda Knox: Thank you for having me. I'm thrilled to be here. 

Margaret: Welcome. Before we kind of get into our bigger discussion, tell us just for people who might not know you.  I realized this could be nine podcasts, your story, but the brief [00:01:00] version. 

Amanda Knox: Honestly, it's not even really my story.

It's my roommate story. I was studying abroad in Italy, living with a two Italian women and one British young woman. And one day local burglar broke into our home. She was. British roommate was alone and she was raped and murdered by this local burglar. And the only reason why my name entered into any of all of this is because the local authorities very early on, just decided upon a theory of the case that was very scandalous and very salacious and not based on any evidence, just that there was this crazy satanic sex game that I orchestrated in order to murder my roommate and.

It's a whole long saga, but the ultimate end of the story is the actual killer was convicted and I was acquitted, but it took a long time. And I spent a [00:02:00] long time in prison fighting for my innocence in the meantime. So 

Margaret: there's an excellent Netflix documentary called Amanda Knox. If you are listening and want to understand their story in more depth,  what we do want to talk to Amanda today, you host a podcast called labyrinths, as we mentioned, and it's on this theme of being lost journeying through the sensation of being lost. And hopefully at some point, finding yourself again, obviously a story that's really resonant for you.

And what led you to focus on that as the story that you wanted to tell in this podcast? 

Amanda Knox: What I've found since coming home is that being wrongfully convicted is a very lonely experience because it's not like you meet everyone every day. Who's been to prison for something that they didn't do. And very early on, when I came home, I was struggling with this sense of isolation and loneliness, but I had this really powerful moment when I met a girl in one of my poetry classes at school.

[00:03:00] Didn't know anything about me, but was just seemed to really like my poetry. And I really liked her poetry. We're in a poetry workshop together, and we actually liked each other so much that we were hanging out on the weekends, getting coffee and talking poetry. And one day she came to the coffee shop and was like, oh my God, you are Amanda Knox.

And I was like, oh no, no, you Googled me. And she was like, no, no, no, don't misunderstand. I was gang raped when I was 16 years old. And everything. You talk about the feelings that you experience of going through this traumatic experience and feeling like it's so overwhelming and it's just happening to you and you have no control.

That feels to me like what it felt like to be gang raped at 16. Every time. What I'm finding is that yes, the wrongful conviction experience is this very unique experience, but the feeling of it, the feeling of being lost in this like [00:04:00] overwhelming circumstance and having to find your way out again, not knowing how to make your way through it is an experience that a lots of people have in many different ways.

Margaret:  A person who feels like they are lost and they are out of control of their circumstances and that other people are in charge of how their story turns out is a story that is extremely resonant for moms.

Amanda Knox: Yes, absolutely. And I've discovered this because my husband and I are on our own fertility journeys and like many people, we just assumed that as soon as you'd get off birth control and you start trying to get pregnant well, lo and behold, you're going to get pregnant. And that was not our experience.

And. It was a deeply, I just dental crisis that we went through. Because once you decide that you're going to be a parent, like something shifts in your mind, right? Like you've decided that you're going to take on this incredible journey and burden and you shift all of your priorities and your life [00:05:00] before you even have a child in your life.

And then to have. Taken away from you for, it seems like no reason there it's just so unfair. And it was existential crisis really, really resonated with me in terms of my wrongful conviction experience. Cause it's like, the question is, why did I have a miscarriage? Like what happened? What did I do wrong?

And it's like, Maybe you didn't do anything wrong. And I didn't know how common this experience was. So what I did was I reached out on social media to say like, Hey, does anyone have infertility experience? And, oh my goodness, I was flooded with responses and I so much love and support. And also just these insane traumatic journeys that people had gone on.

And I thought. Wow. I have not heard a labyrinthine IG story. Like I've heard these women telling me, you know, again and again, and again, I [00:06:00] have to tell these women's stories. So that's what our latest episodes of labyrinths are all centered on. Is these incredibly labyrinthine journeys of women and couples who are trying to.

Have a baby and be parents and all of the obstacles that they encounter along the way that are unexpected and unpredictable and how they're grappling with them. And, you know, some people succeed, some people have to reach an end of the road where they have to decide, oh, you know, maybe the next thing is I get another dog and.

Well, how do you wrap your mind around what that means to you and who that makes, how that defines you even, right. Like being a parent is such a definitive part of you and to have to recalibrate your own idea of yourself when you can't be a parent like that is a whole other. Incredible [00:07:00] mind blowing experience.

So these are all the kinds of stories that we're talking about in these first episodes of the second season of labyrinths that are coming out right now. I, uh, had my own infertility 

Amy: struggles before my first child was born he's 18 now. So it was a long time ago, but I do remember. As you know, is one of the most difficult periods of my life, for sure.

And it's the isolation to me that when you're in a labyrinth, right, you can't have the high head is all around you and you can't see that there's somebody next to you on that journey. And you are as the, the woman in the equation, your part. Can be as supportive. They can be the most supportive partner in the world, but it's still your body that is not doing what it's supposed to be doing.

And you still feel the shame of that and that the shame and isolation makes it worse and is not how you're gonna get out of the labyrinth. Right. But it is something that you're struggling with and that form of imprisonment. 

Amanda Knox: Yeah. And the [00:08:00] isolation, it comes from like that feeling of isolation comes from a lot of different directions I've found because there's the more obvious one, which is that we don't really talk about these issues in the open air at all.

Really like there's this feeling that infertility is this incredibly private, personal thing. Deal with on your own. And many of the people I spoke to didn't even tell their parents that they were going through this experience. They just felt like they had to, for some reason, struggled through it alone.

But then there's this other level of isolation, which is that you're in this constant limbo as the carrier of the potential baby. Wondering is it just me or is it me and someone else that is in my body right now? And I like one of the more impactful things that someone told me and when they were describing their journeys was here, I was, you know, I had the pregnancy app and I was thinking, okay, today it's as big as a blueberry today.

It's as big as a raspberry. And then she goes in [00:09:00] for an ultrasound and discovered. There was no embryo and it was never there. And she said like, that was the most lonely that I've ever felt. That I was just me in my body this whole time. And like, it was a new definition of loneliness. And how do you grapple with that?

Like where did all that love go? Because you're not just aware of a thing. That's a part of you. Like, you love it and it is your future. It is the most important thing to you. And if it's a ghost, what do you do with that? And that's the question. What do you do with that? 

Margaret:  I would sense that having been through this extraordinary experience that you had as being wrongfully convicted and serving time in prison, that do you feel like you have insights into loneliness that are informative for people you're talking to about infertility and then taking it past?

There's a tremendous amount of loneliness in being a parent, honestly, you know, the struggles that [00:10:00] are going in your house, these themes. Unfortunately continue after you have a child that you have things that happen in your house that you might feel shameful about, or you might feel that your kid is not doing what other people's kids are doing.

Do you feel that that experience of loneliness that you experienced in this very profound way help you through this part of your 

Amanda Knox: life? So I have found that. When I was going through my wrongful imprisonment, you know, I was facing a 26 year sentence at 20 years old, you know, so I was thinking, wow, like, first of all, there's the existential crisis of being convicted in the first place.

Right? Like I thought up to the moment of my conviction, that there's no way that I could be convicted, like the truth matters. So. Ultimately, yes, I'm on trial, but I'm going to be acquitted. And when I was convicted, suddenly all of my, like everything that I sort of grounded, all of my hope in, which is the truth is gone.

I had, I couldn't place my faith in [00:11:00] that any more. And so I thought, oh my gosh, I'm going to be spending 26 years in prison. And one of the things that I always thought that I was going to be a mom. Is not going to be available to me anymore. And that mental process of like sitting there going, okay. I thought my life was going to be one way and it's clearly not.

How do I make my life that I have in front of me? Worse. Hmm, how do I, recontextualize what I actually have in front of me as something that could be a value to me. And it's not what I imagined, and it's not what I hoped for, but surely there must be something valued. To it. And you just like, it's a day by day process of thinking, getting up in the morning and going, what can I do today to make life worth living and to think of my self as someone who [00:12:00] has a life worth living.

So having goals that are not the same goals that I had before, but which are going to be fulfilling to me. And that's like to deconstruct. Everything that you've always just sort of assumed you could hope for and to like reevaluate and try to find new things to have hope for. It takes time. Like it's hard to let go of your dreams.

Margaret: It's hard. It's really hard. It's hard in the context of this unbelievable thing that happened to you. And it's hard in the context of a person who's looking at a child who is different than the child they imagined. And let's break that down and talk more about that after this break. 

Amy: Amanda, you were talking before about, you know, having hope.

, I'm trying to apply,  the particulars of your incredible story to this more general idea of being in a labyrinth and feeling lost. And it's easy to look at it now and be like, well, you had hope, and then you were exonerated and you got out  and that person should also have hope for whom things might have gone. [00:13:00]

Way  how do you have that hope when you're in the labyrinth and you can't see out, you really don't know if you're going to get out. We know the end of your story.  I know the end of my story, that my infertility journey ended with,  a kid who's taller than me now, but when you can't see the ending and you really don't have 

Amanda Knox: reason to have faith that it'll all work out.

Can't and yet you have to have the hope. How do you find that? Yeah, I think the tricky part with all of these journeys, whether you are succeed and getting pregnant and having a kid or you don't is that there are no guarantees. And the fact that there are no guarantees ever is an important. Lesson, it's an important life lesson that we should always remember, because again, like we have this idea of like five years down the line, 10 years down the line, but ultimately we can only see this far ahead.

And sometimes this far ahead is like today and then something could happen and change at any moment. I have found that the best [00:14:00] coping strategy for me has been to be very mindful of the present moment, because I think that we can always get really sort of trapped in this idea of like, what is the past that led us up to this moment?

Or what is this future that we envisioned for ourselves? And we sort of forget that, like the only thing that really we ultimately have is right here right now, and that may be. My relationship with my husband, as we're struggling through this journey and we're trying, and we're trying, and we need to be mindful of how that is changing us and how that is impacting us, or it could be like, I have my 18 year old son now, and here he is, and this is the person that he is.

And how do I be the best version of myself for this person right now, regardless of what happened in the past. And regardless of what's going to happen tomorrow, it's really. Like taking, being mindful that like there's only so much that you can control. And once you realize that suddenly it feels like there's actually a thing in [00:15:00] poetry where they say like, oh, limitations are actually like the source of a lot of creativity because when you have unlimited ideas of what can happen or what you can do, suddenly you get writer's block.

They 

Margaret: also say that on top chef. That's why they do these wild. Contests, because they're like, if you can only cook with like wooden spoons or 

Amanda Knox: whatever, and like squids 

Margaret: they're people who've been overthinking it  make this amazing meal because the constraints actually help them. It's the same thing as a thunder shirt for a dog, or like a weighted blanket.

It's like, you kinda need something holding you down. Yeah. Sometimes. 

Amanda Knox: Yeah. These experiences that feel very, very limiting. Can feel like they're are taking away. Your hope are actually opportunities to focus on the hope that is available to you. And so redefining your sense. What you want, which is to be the [00:16:00] best mom.

You can be to the person that you love. Right. And not having these visions of what could have been or what should be, but just what is, and what can I do right now that matters. I think that is the thing that I've carried with me as I go through this. And as when people reach out to me wanting to find solidarity and hope, that's what I tell them.

It's just like right now you feel powerless, but you're not. Even when I was like alone in a jail cell with no freedom to hope for, like, there were still things that I could get. And do every day that made me feel like this life is worth living and it might've been just writing a letter to my mom. And that was like the one thing I did that day, that mattered.

But you know what it mattered. 

Margaret: That phrase, the hope that is available to you, if you take anything away from the conversation, that's a beautiful phrase. We're talking about a place that you returned to in crisis to some degree, because the reality is, and I'm sure [00:17:00] you found this even in.

Prison every day is not the day that you're like today I will focus on the good of these children and husband's smile will get me through this some days. You're  just putting one foot in front of the other. Some days you're just living because even I'm sure you had Tuesdays in prison where you were like, all right, I'm just getting up, eating my dinner, reading this book, going to bed.

Like it's just another day. Yeah. But I think that what we're talking about for people who may be in any stage of this labyrinth, for any reason during their journey is  what do you go back to? What are your foundations  the way that you described that, like hope that's available to you. That's those moments when you're in the corner of the labyrinth, you're stuck. 

Amanda Knox: Yeah, definitely.  Even if today isn't the thing that like, if you're in the labyrinth and the wrong turn is just like right up ahead of you, it could be a minute from now.

 If you need to come back to like, literally right now, this second. What can I do? Is it simply just closing my eyes for a second and taking a deep breath? Like, is that the hope available to me, [00:18:00] Amy? 

Margaret: You were just saying that right about labyrinths like the thing you like about the labyrinth does it means there's something else to 

Amanda Knox: come.

Amy: I guess I was thinking about like the metaphor of a labyrinth to me is that there are, hallways that lead nowhere, there are dead ends, like having to turn around. Trying something for 10 minutes and then having to work back to this place doesn't mean you've failed. Although I would 

Amanda Knox: certainly interpret it as a failure if 

Margaret: I wasn't this labyrinth right now, 

Amy: but it's part of the labyrinth.

Labyrinth is constructed that way for you to make some wrong turns before you make the right ones that's kind of supposed to happen. Do you have to sort of build that into your present moment, mindedness that it's okay. That you just spent six months on a approach to this problem that proved to be. 

Amanda Knox: Not fruitful.

I mean, yeah. 

Amy: What do you do in that moment?  

Amanda Knox: So I've definitely experienced a lot of wrong turns and dead ends or seemingly dead ends along my journey and my wrongful conviction. Right? Like I was convicted. I was sentenced to 26 years in prison and.

That [00:19:00] was after spending a year on trial fighting for my innocence. So I know what it feels like to have gone down this road and had expectations about how it would end. Like surely I'm doing everything that needs to happen. Like the truth matters. This is going to end up the way that I thought it was.

And then. To have that collapse and have to recalibrate, like that's having gone down a long path in the labyrinth and then arrived at a 

Margaret: dead end. And then you hit that brick wall and you're like, oh no, it was all for not 

Amanda Knox: oh no, it was all for not, well, first of all, Nothing is all for not, I think that there, it is always possible to find meaning and value in even those most devastating experiences.

It's just a matter of managing what your expectations are, which isn't to say that I never should have hoped and believed. For the [00:20:00] opportunity to be found innocent that indeed that's something that never went away for me over the course of my wrongful conviction. But what I had to realize was that there was no guarantee that that was actually the outcome of my life.

And that actually what matters is not necessarily the outcome, whether I go home or not, whether or not I'm found innocent. How I am experiencing my life in the moment. And this is where it relates to everyone's experience. And particularly the experience of trying to get pregnant or being a parent is we have ideas about where we want to be.

And where we want to go and what each step, what putting one foot ahead of the other is taking us to. And then when we are surprised to find ourselves in a totally different part of the labyrinth that we did not want to be at, we have to think, well, You can [00:21:00] think it was all for not, or you can think I have arrived some place and I have learned something along the way.

And who am I now? Now what? And is there something valuable that I can take from this experience that is going to lead me down a better path or is, you know, like, I can't say that as I was sitting in my prison cell, thinking about never being able to be a mom. Losing, you know, the best years of my life to prison.

I can't say that I was just sitting there the entire time thinking I'm just going to be the best person I can be. And it's going to be great. 

Margaret: I'm really learning from this experience. How 

Amanda Knox: lucky? Yeah, he, I, you know, I didn't feel lucky. I'm going to be honest. I felt sad. It was the saddest I've ever felt, but I never thought.

This is not worth living. I never thought this is not something that I can take and make a part [00:22:00] of me in a way that is valuable to myself. I think the biggest sort of obstacle that I faced actually was with my mom because my mom, speaking of moms, you know, my mom had a vision for my life and she very, very much could not and would not accept.

That I could be an innocent person spending. The vast majority of my life in prison for a crime, I didn't commit. She is, could not accept it and fought every step of the way, did everything she possibly could. And thank goodness, because it's thanks to my family in large part that I'm free today, but there was a conflict between her and I were at a certain point in my letters to her.

I was describing, you know, my ideas for how I could make my life worth living, even in the environment that I was in. And she was really resistant. Yeah, 

Margaret: she didn't want to give up. 

Amanda Knox: Yeah. She didn't want me, she thought that that was me being depressed that [00:23:00] I was giving in that I was giving up. And that wasn't true.

It didn't mean that I wasn't still on my path to fight for my innocence, but what it did mean was. I had my eyes wide open. Right. And I was very, very present in my circumstances, trying to not just think about the life that I should have been living, but the life that I was living right now, and that was.

Incredibly valuable and something that I take with me today, someone who is on her own journey to become a parent. Yeah. 

Margaret: I have such a strong reaction now thinking about your mom. I want to talk about that after this break. It's interesting to me as I have become a mom. And I've been in this mom game for 12 years now.

Not quite as long as Amy, it amazes me how,  I was just watching some TV show the other day. And I was like, I think the mom who doesn't want them to go to the party has a point. And the whole point of the movie was  the kids are fun. And the mom is laying a 

[00:24:00] and I noticed when I think about your story, when I first heard your story, To me, it was thinking about me being you and in your position, and as I've become older, and I was revisiting your story, getting ready for the party. Gotcha. I was like, Hmm, poor moms.

And I only think about your mom in this story, and I think it ties into what we really are talking about, which is this idea. The outcome of elaborates, how does it turn out and how do we control it? It's one thing as we're talking about to do that for yourself and to say, okay, I am not being able to have a baby.

I have a kid with special needs. That's not what I was expecting. This labyrinth isn't going where I thought, I think it's really different. This idea of our kids journey.

Is it turning out the way we thought  it's they're elaborate. And it's really hard. 

Amy: Your poor mom was outside your labyrinth,  watching you suffer and not being able to, I mean, she was doing what she could to provide guidance, but she was 

Amanda Knox: outside of your experience. Yeah, it was.

So I feel so bad for my mom, especially now that I'm [00:25:00] like on my journey to become a parent, I can suddenly understand a little bit more. And again, like I'm not even close to being there yet, but like the one thing I knew. The entire time that I was going through my experience was that if my mom could have traded places with me, she would have without question.

Margaret: Every mom listening to this, just burst into tears. I'm just saying that you would. It's so true. 

Amanda Knox: I would have taken it from me if she could have, and the fact that she had the courage to come and visit me every time and go through the process of getting padded down and  giving up her phone and everything just so she could spend an hour with me in a visitation room and then having to leave me there just every time leaving me there was.

The hardest moment of her life, because she, there was no choice.  She was watching as this experience was changing. [00:26:00] And it was changing me in ways that she was afraid of and that she didn't fully understand because she had, you know, wasn't there to hold my hand inside the prison environment and experience what I was experiencing inside of there.

And all she could do was be there and observe and be a witness and make it so that I didn't feel like I was out of touch with the life that I had before. And this is actually, I think the moms will really appreciate this. So in the wrongful conviction community, there's a whole community of people.

There's the innocence project, and that's been exonerating people here in the United States for decades now. one of the founders of the first innocence project, Peter Neufeld, a good friend of mine. He was telling me this really beautiful, but also kind of sad fact. There is one determining factor of whether or not a wrongfully [00:27:00] convicted person is going to succeed at reintegrating back into society.

After they have been through the wrongful imprisonment experience and exonerated, no matter how long it took. And sometimes people are inside for. for years like me or 40 years. And it takes that long for someone to finally be freed and exonerated. And he was telling me, you know, I don't have any studies on this.

There's no, you know, data per se, but as someone who has been fighting for people's innocence for so long, I can tell you that the one determining factor of whether or not someone is going to be okay afterwards is if their mom was there for them. And if their mom is still alive when they get out and that's, it, that's the one thing.

 Was the mom there? And is she still there? That's what he has seen being the one determining factor of whether or not someone can get through. The psychological upset of being imprisoned and finally [00:28:00] getting out and having to restart their life all over again.

Margaret: I don't want to be facile about it at all and make these metaphors to your situation that are too much of a stretch, but what Amy said. You're looking into your child's labyrinth. That is kind of what we're all doing. We don't really have a lot of control about our kid's outcome, except for the thing that you're talking about, which is to be there.

And that our kids know that we are there with this tremendous amount of love, but that they have to navigate it on their own.  They'll find us every step along the way, but that we're not really running their elaborate for them. 

 Amanda Knox: Absolutely. And that's just the truth, because as much as we want to run it for them, 

Margaret: we sure do.

I'm like, I can move that wall look terrible. 

Amanda Knox: He can't do it. And that is its own labyrinth.  How do you be the person watching from above going turn left? How did it work 

Amy: out within your mom in the end with her saying no, no, you have to keep the faith in you saying, well, this is how I'm surviving day to day.

I'm thinking [00:29:00] about what's 

Amanda Knox: possible right now, the hope that's available.  I mean, I think that we learned from each other, ultimately, just because you're a mom doesn't mean that you have all the answers necessarily. Her role in maintaining optimism and faith that it would all work out and that I would get back.

The life that I should have had was very important for me to like, have that sort of always in the back of my mind, someone is holding onto that. But at the same time, I also had to reveal to my mom. I'm not going to be coming out of this experience, the same person that I was going in. I remember at one point, my mom wrote to me,  I want you to just go back to being the happy person that you've always been.

And I had to tell my mom. I love you mom. And I know you love me and try as I might, I'm not just going to be the same person after all of this, and we're going to have to rediscover each [00:30:00] other on the other side of this. And that's okay. Because I think that. The thing that matters is that we are seeing each other clearly.

And we are still trying to be our best selves in the moment, given what we have and leading up, you know, I didn't have a ton of life before all of this happened to me. I was 20 years old when I was arrested. So young, I really grew up in this environment. And I think there are some things that have changed about me, that my mom wishes.

The case, like I have a lot more anxiety now than I used to, but in other ways, I think that the fact that she was always there and was a foundation for me, made it possible for me to come back into the world with far less anxiety than I could have had. She was always an emotional safety net that I could rely on, even when I felt my most alone.

that made [00:31:00] all the difference. So in a way we're both right, right. 

Margaret: Go moms. Moms are the best. We 

Amanda Knox: love moms. Go, moms  amanda, tell us a little bit about the labyrinth podcast. So the labyrinth podcast, it's a totally independent podcast listener supported that. Produce right. Host co-host with my husband, Christopher, and we look at stories of people who are feeling the most lost in their lives.

And we've touched upon anything from, true crime ethics and, media and stories of a friend of mine was. His wife or his partner became pregnant during the midst of COVID. And she was like deported to another country. And so he's trying to be there to support her and he's not able to, because of COVID restrictions.

And so any time someone has felt lost they don't know how to get through their experience because it's so much bigger than them. I'm [00:32:00] trying to build a bridge. Towards that experience and make that experience understandable to many different people from all walks of life and also making sure that people feel like they own their own narrative.

I think one of the sort of really difficult experiences. Um, that was part of my own labyrinth was feeling like here I am going through this incredible journey and the story isn't even my own. It belongs to all these other people who are writing, like who are offering my experience and how do I take back my own narrative so that I feel like I'm in control, not just of my journey, but my story.

And that's what LaFrance is all about is trying to give. Back that sense of ownership, not just to your journey, but to your story, the story you tell yourself about 

Margaret: your journey, 

where can people hear labyrinth? Is it everywhere you listen to podcasts? As we like to say, 

Amanda Knox: absolutely. Or you listened to podcasts and you can follow me on social media, Twitter at Amanda Knox, [00:33:00] Instagram at, uh, mama Knox. And yeah, I'm so happy to discuss this with you because it really is an experience.

Has resonance in way more fields than people give it credit bores. So, 

Margaret: absolutely. I agree. I agree. We wish you all great luck on your parenting journey and hope to have you back on in a couple of years to talk about what a nightmare it is having. 

Amanda Knox: I hope so. Fingers crossed that's our wish for you. Thank you so much.

Thank you a minute. This was an incredible time. .