One of the most famous quotes in cinema history is Sally Field's sage line in Forrest Gump. "Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get."

This philosophy confronted Sheree Joseph as she was living through the moments that would later inspire her memoir, Juicy. It does not matter how well-laid your plans might be, life does not always follow the route you had intended to go down.

Her 30s came with a number of unexpected turns: the breakup of a long-term relationship, fertility questions and chronic illness. Joseph very quickly found herself standing in the wreckage of the well-planned life she thought she was supposed to have. It's not an unfamiliar story for many Gen X, Millennial and even Gen Z women. But when she slowly digested the notion that marriage and motherhood might not be part of her story, Joseph decided to write a new one.

"We don't usually think of a woman who's struggling with infertility as having this like abundance and overflowing, lush life," she said in an exclusive interview with RUSSH.

This is exactly why she titled her first book Juicy.

"I think it was inverting the idea that this word could be used in this way to describe a life that's filled with so many other things that can make it juicy."

When you don't do life in the expected way, you can feel like an outcast. Like your life is less worthy – less worthy of attention, celebration and community. But instead, Joseph argues that life is just as 'juicy' when you take a different route and you live wholly on your own terms.

The zeitgeist is awash with stories of women coming into their power and finding alternatives when life doesn't go to plan. Joseph goes one step further. This new life is not an alternative. It is not a stand in, or second choice. Rather, a juicy life is one that is fully lived.

In celebration of the launch of her first book, we delved into an earnest conversation with former RUSSH Literary Showcase Winner Sheree Joseph. Together, we explored nitty-gritty of her memoir, the unsanitised hard parts and the stories that encouraged her to reach for more.

For people who haven't picked up Juicy yet, how would you describe it?

It's a memoir about finding a way through the world when life just doesn't seem to go to plan and how you expected it to. We have all inherited narratives about how life is supposed to go. It can be a really devastating when that narrative doesn't happen. Juicy is about the journey you go on to find meaning and find a good life, a life that suits you and that you might not have found otherwise.

It speaks to a philosophy around the juicy life, which came out of struggle. A juicy life is a life that's fully lived, fully felt, fully realised. Are you really living your life to the fullest? Are you really doing what you want to do? Are you really enjoying life? It asks those questions.

For me, that struggle was not ending up with my partner, with marriage and children and stability in the house. It's a very classic narrative for a lot of millennials. It's just become harder and harder for us to have the life that we were raised to believe would have. Instead, this looks at alternative ways of life and what you can now have if you don't have those things. I think it's a hopeful, optimistic story, but also has some challenging, devastating parts too.

Was there a moment or catalysing event that made you realise you wanted to write this story?

I think it was 2021 I was in the the worst of it. A friend who's an editor, she was an editor at the ABC at the time. Saw that I was trying to freeze my eggs during lockdown, and she said, "you know, this looks like a really interesting story. Would you want to write about it?" I was still too deep in the heart of the the bad parts of it, what was happening so I couldn't quite conceptualise how I would write about it, or even begin to write about it.

I remember eventually just sitting down and I'd exhausted like every other distraction. I got to this point where I was staring ahead at the wall. There's nothing left to do but write this story and write the true version of it.

The title is quite deliberately evocative. So, what does 'juicy' mean?

When it first came to me, I was thinking it was that fictional idea, like a lush journey through Tomato Europe. I had like a lot of tomato imagery, and that seemed to be the motif. And then when I was sitting down thinking about the memoir, in my head it was supposed to be more serious a name, and I didn't really know what to call it.

But then this word 'juicy' was all I had in my head. I remember just putting it there as a placeholder, and then I just couldn't get rid of it. But after a while, it started to make a lot of sense.

"Sometimes it feels like if you don't do life a certain way, you're a bit of an outcast. Juicy really for me embodies leaning towards other things that bring joy."

We don't usually think of a woman who's struggling with infertility as having this like abundance and overflowing, lush life. Juicy is usually a word associated with fertility, you know, she's pregnant, she's glowing, she's all these things, she's filled with life. We don't usually think of infertility that way. But I think it was inverting the idea that this word could be used in this way to describe a life that's filled with so many other things that can make it juicy.

Sometimes it feels like if you don't do life a certain way, you're a bit of an outcast. Juicy really for me embodies leaning towards  other things that bring joy. In this process, I wanted think about what does a juicy life look like?

What was your biggest challenge in writing this memoir?

The biggest challenge was that by the time I decided I was doing it, I picked the worst possible time. I'd come back from a trip and I ended up spending a lot more than I expected on that trip. I came back and I was sort of thrown into depression, and I was managing some chronic illness issue. I wasn't working, and it was kind of the worst possible time to decide to write a book.

I just realised there was no other time and option, so I decided to do it. I was financially not in a good place, I kind of winged it most of the time, and then I thought, I'll get a grant or I'll apply for this, and it just did not work out. But also trying to do this really challenging, emotionally wrecked thing – that really made it harder. I think the fact that it's a memoir, the fact that I had to kind of go to these really difficult places was a big challenge.

But I proved to myself that I could do it. Yes, I chose the hardest route to do it. But I think it reflects in the work and I hope you can see that there's that dedication.

"The expected path is the way, and there's so much help and support and excitement when you take that route. And when you don't, it's like nobody knows what to do with you."

Do you think the expectations and pressures that we have as women are the same as previous generations? 

I think it's kind of interesting because they do kind of match older traditions. I think it's still slightly different because the world knows that things have changed dramatically since then. If there's an awareness that women – for example – don't have to get married today or they don't have to have children, and there are choices within the expectations. I think in my case they are stronger because I grew up in a Lebanese household, and it was definitely assumed everybody would do things the traditional way. There wasn't really a model for what to do if you don't do that. You'd see some women like that, and they would be outliers. Their's were considered almost sad stories. The expected path is the way, and there's so much help and support and excitement when you take that route. And when you don't, it's like nobody knows what to do with you.

Are the pressures maybe taking new forms? And why did you kind of want to examine those ideas?

I think people are slowly realising that we don't we don't live in the same world. Things are different, especially in the post-COVID world where it feels like people don't know how to relate to each other anymore, and how you meet people really drastically changed. I think a lot of people really don't understand how bad it's gotten and how much that's impacted women. There's this major trend that's been happening, I notice it on TikTok a lot. Social media is exploding with content around women who've had enough and are speaking out about all the bad experiences they have with dating. Some are just realising that they love being alone and that was kind of happening simultaneously to my experience.

I saw I think I saw a Morgan Stanley stat that 45 per cent of women will be single by 2030. There's some really interesting data and statistics that support where things are going. I think my story is kind of a very typical story of the genesis of this trend. A long-term relationship that's very comfortable, you think you're on the right path together, and then you just realise that's not what's happening, and you can just lose years of your life. It always impacts women so much more. We're sort of left with the wreckage of everything, and it's always harder to then bounce back.

But is it worth rushing and stressing and settling just to have this dream? That felt unjust to me. I could see all these women struggling and suffering to make that thing happen, and sometimes they don't even really want it. It's so ingrained that that's what has to happen, that they don't even really have time to think "What do I actually want?" Wouldn't it be better for me to just go and like live my life, find other things, and not force it?"

"I remember thinking that I would love to read a story right now that would help me through this time. So I wrote one."

I wanted to show my story to be able to say this is how it looked for me at this time in the world. I think it might be similar for a lot of people, and hopefully I can give them something to help. Because I remember thinking when I was going through the thick of it, there were no stories that were similar. I looked for them, and I remember thinking that I would love to read a story right now that would help me through this time. So I wrote one.

I personally know so many women who are in this situation. I feel like so I know so many incredible, smart, funny, vibrant women who are looking for that sort of more traditional path and are really struggling to find it in a dating culture that is toxic and hasn't evolved to meet them where they are. I think a lot of people will really relate to this story.

I see it too! Some of the best people I know, they're there blaming themselves for wanting the bare minimum. I just want to say to them, it's not you. It's so not you. It's the way the culture has gone, and how much easier it's been to just be passive and do nothing. But I think it's going to boomerang back to a different place. What goes up must come down. It can't be like this forever.

Social media has really changed how we think of image success and validation, and what life is supposed to look like. How much did that influence your book?

It definitely influenced me in the story because I think for a long time I was unknowingly comparing myself to stories that were definitely the most curated version of a person's life; definitely not reflective of the reality of what people were going through.

But as I'm writing this story and getting into the heart of this culture, I felt there was a shift. I'm noticing that social media is starting to change as well, and it's reflecting a different story. Maybe my algorithm was just more trained to show me this, but it was definitely showing more women speaking up and saying, 'I've had enough, and here's how I've broken free'.

I think there's still influential people where everything seems perfect, and they got everything they wanted, and that's still a narrative that makes a lot of people believe it's the common way. But you personally might have a different story.

There's such a fallacy there around social media. Even I was, at one point, showing such a good life of me and my ex. Meanwhile we were just in the throes of what's going to happen – are we going to stay together or not? It wasn't until I started speaking out about my earnest struggles that people would message me saying, 'actually, we've been struggling too.' Suddenly the stories would come out of all different places, and you realise nobody has it perfect.

I think it's really hard when you're in a challenging state to be able to look at it with a balanced perspective. But for me, I had to go through it, then write the book and then really like heal from it to get to a place where it wouldn't affect me to see like other people living that life. Try and just focus on what you have.

You sound a lot more evolved than me. I just became really comfortable with using the mute button. 

Haha. You've got to do what you've got to do.

The book asks readers to sit with some like uncomfortable questions rather than just kind of offering very easy answers. Was that intentional? Was that something important for you to do?

I had to go through it in living it, then writing it, and now reflecting on it. So yes, it was intentional. There's definitely an easy way or a neat way of not focusing on the bad. When you tell people about your story, especially when it has to do with fertility, people always want to have a solution. They want to say "oh, don't worry. There's still a chance. You never know." Everybody wants it to be okay for you.That actually makes it challenging, because you actually don't know that, you cannot say that. Also it's not actually helpful. It's helpful for them, but not for you.

This is very much a look at what one person has gone through, and then how she's trying to find joy. It's funny what people take away from it because some people would be very focused on all the bad things. But other people have said "I was really jealous of how many friends she had and the life she was living". What you take away from it, what you focus on, what you think is lacking is up to you.

The idea was not to give a sanitised version. It was to really put you in that experience and then show hope, still not necessarily like a traditional happy ending. It is asking you to live in the muck a little and to know that it's joyful and hopeful. Things are still hard. Things still happen. It's like how you deal with it all that has to be the thing that changes.

What sort of what conversations are you hoping Juicy starts among your readers?

That's a great question. I hope there is a lot of conversation. I hope that does sort of spark people. I would love to encourage people to start sharing their own stories that are similar, stories of women empowering themselves and living lives on their own terms.

"When you tell people about your story, especially when it has to do with fertility, people always want to have a solution."

But maybe going even further. What else is there? Because this is really just one story of how you can live. But I'm also curious, what else has helped people, maybe even further along in the journey? Like, what what still keeps you going? I don't know what it's like to be in your 50s and maybe still be grappling with the grief of not having kids or being single, and dealing with that plus society's views of aging. There's definitely more to sort of springboard from. I hope that that gives people something to start talking about.

You know, there's an Abbie Chatfield show right now that's discussing some of the issues around men and how they're struggling. I can see people are really resonating with that. I feel like everyone is hungry for these conversations. What about how society is structured and patriarchy. Do we need to move more towards matriarchy? Do we need to just like dismantle systems in order to make life better? To have more of the village environment? You know, we need our aunties and our uncles, and we need everybody in the village to like be part of how we move forward in society. We need to kind of reconfigure how we live a little, and I hope that this is something that people take, especially in Australia, where life's very particular. We probably could do with a bit of a shakeup with how we do things.

If Juicy had the perfect soundtrack, what are some songs that would be on the playlist?

There actually is a soundtrack. There's a playlist that I was listening to. That's a mix of songs that I heard at various points in the story that unfolds.

There's a really weird eclectic mix of like all kinds of songs that have some meaning; it's a real mix of like Italo disco kind of hits from when I'm like in Italy, and that was all the rage was the Italo disco because I think you know Master of None season two had just aired. There's a Brazilian song about like nostalgia and mourning for that actually reminds me of when we were skinny dipping at a beach in Greece. It's a random mix, some more emotional and heartbreak-coded, but some are more about women breaking free

It's a really interesting, like short time capsule of those things that were happening to kind of jog my memory and get me in the mood.

After readers finish juicy, what should they be reading next? Do you think?

I think it's very tied up right now with books like Famesick by Lena Dunham. I read that just recently because I wasn't really reading when I was writing. I was trying to be in the zone. This was the only book I could actually just sit down and read in like a few sittings, I loved it. There's a lot of overlap with chronic illness and then some of the fertility journey. If you haven't read it, it's a good one.

This one is a bit older, but it was a big influence on me. Wild. It's a memoir by Cheryl Strayed. She was my writing teacher for a few years back in like 2015 and that book is so pivotal in showing like how to tell your life story in this way that's really epic but also really beautiful. It's beautifully written. I can always reread it so many times. And I feel like that has a lot of synergy with Juicy as well. And what else was on our list of books?

I'm mostly here to enjoy myself . The author, she'd actually written another memoir first called No one tells you this. It's a woman sort of realising she doesn't want kids, maybe even marriage, it's a memoir about that journey. It's really I found that really good.

And the other one is Everything I know about love by Dolly Alderton. Probably more for your 20s, but similar in the way of like wanting and striving for this thing and finding unexpected friendship as your thing and other stories that sustain you.

Juicy is now in bookstores or in the Kindle store.

Want more Culture? You might also like:

• The end of the antihero? This year’s Booker Long List is preoccupied with broken men
• Escape reality with these books on mythology
• Cool coffee-table books no one else will have
• Lauren McDonough on nostalgic literature and the book that genuinely changed her life
• Rebecca Yarros’ next romance novel is being adapted before it’s even released