My Therapist Says
My Therapist Says It’s Okay to Throw Yourself a Pity Party
You need to grieve before you can be productive again
There’s a square on my Google calendar that I spangled with capital letters and exclamation points years ago: March 24, 2020. It was the publication day for my second novel, The Herd, and as the day approached, all the stars seemed to be aligning: The thriller (a whodunit set in an exclusive all-female co-working space) made loads of most-anticipated lists, got stellar advance reviews, and seemed to be picking up momentum. I’d spent weeks coordinating a six-city book tour, reaching out to bookstores six months early to get on their packed events calendars. As a novelist, I get very few shots at “breaking out” — discovering if the culmination of years of work will rack up sales or fizzle out as the world moves on to even newer releases. So I had to be thoughtful and tactical about making a huge splash in late March.
And then, well. I don’t have to tell you the rest. When it became clear the coronavirus would make most of my book-promotion plans impossible, I rushed to pivot, throwing myself into simultaneously canceling my in-person events and replacing them with virtual ones. On March 23, one day before what was supposed to be my big moment, I was a mess. My overarching feeling…
