Member-only story
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 was that I just wanted my publication week to be over — after all, my events (the most fun part of releasing a book!) had been canceled, bookstores had just learned they had to close their doors and refund preorders, I was going on Week Two of being holed up alone in my studio apartment (remember, this was back before we’d fully realized how long we’d need to hunker down for, and two weeks felt like an eternity), and I had no choice but to soldier on.
The afternoon before my book “hit shelves”—metaphorically, if not tangibly—I had a Zoom session with my therapist on my calendar. I usually love talking to her, but that day, I was annoyed that I had to put aside my massive to-do list (emails to answer! Q&A’s to write! Podcasts to record!) to talk to her for an hour. I didn’t feel like exploring the inner workings of my brain right now; I felt my best option was to grasp at straws, throw spaghetti at the wall of this strange new book-promotion world to see what…
