If It’s a Memoir, There’s No Point in Sugarcoating Anything
Comedy Central executive and memoirist Tara Schuster discusses hitting rock bottom and self-care during the Covid-19 pandemic
On Tara Schuster’s 25th birthday, she drunk-dialed her therapist who, in return, left her a series of concerned voicemails. She would later acknowledge that as her rock-bottom moment — but also when she decided to make a change.
Schuster began to repair herself, creating a spreadsheet of questions she felt could help her build a happier life. She started journaling, addressing and processing her negative thoughts, and, most importantly, she began to heal.
Schuster synthesized what she had learned into a memoir in order to help those who might be faced with similar struggles. Thus, the aptly named: Buy Yourself the F*cking Lilies: And Other Rituals to Fix Your Life, from Someone Who’s Been There.
Schuster joined Zibby Owens on her podcast Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books at the start of the pandemic to discuss the messiness of self-care, how much we need it during the lockdowns, and what makes her book Buy Yourself the F*cking Lilies so approachable.
Read an excerpt below and follow the link to listen to the entire interview.
ZO: There’s one passage from your book I’d like to read if you don’t mind. “I feel ashamed that sparks in my belly creep up my chest and set my heart on fire with hate. I hate myself. I hate the things I do. I hate my body. I hate this double life of being good at work and bad at life.” I sound like a therapist when I say this but take me back to that place. What did it feel like?
TS: I’m so happy you chose that because I haven’t talked to anyone about that particular passage. It is so raw. I felt a lifetime of shame because growing up I was told pretty explicitly, “You’re wrong. You are bad. Your body is bad.” I get into the specific times that that happened in the book.
It felt to me like every cell in my body hated me and was putting a knife in my heart, in my lungs, like a stabbing kind of pain that turned into a fire. It was painful. Even thinking about it now, I’m welling up a little bit because I have a lot of distance from that moment, but I have a lot of compassion for that version of myself, for the version of myself that just absolutely was miserable and then was adding blame to the misery.
I think that’s where a lot of people get stuck. They think, “I feel bad about this one part of my life. I shouldn’t feel bad.” If you’re sticking yourself with a knife of self-hatred, then you really twist the knife when you say, I shouldn’t hate myself. You do further damage. I think I had to get that low to be able to climb back out again. I genuinely am grateful for hitting that rock bottom and for feeling those feelings because it allowed me to see where my floor was.
That was the worst I’ve ever felt. I really wanted to describe it to readers because I wanted them to come with me for a second, to go down to the basement and see what scary things were there because we can all face the scary things. We can all feel our feelings.
My message is that you can get through these things.
ZO: Do you find that when you write, you don’t even know you’re thinking these things until they come out?
TS: Yes. The book is based on my findings from my six-hundred-page Google doc, but the book is definitely a more thought-out version. The Google doc was just me experiencing my feelings for the first time ever, really, not being ashamed of my feelings, not repressing them, but actually feeling them.
I realized that journaling is the thing that can most quickly build self-awareness in anyone because it really forces you to be present. The act of writing is an act of being present. Even if you’re writing about the future or worried about the past, in your writing you are experiencing those things in the present. I thought it was going to be difficult to understand where all of my issues were and why was I such a mess. But it was pretty fucking easy [laughs].
A lot of people ask me about journaling. They’re like, “Ugh, do I really have to journal? Is that really a good solution?” The answer is yes. I’ve been doing it for eight years. I’m not really that disciplined of a person. I just know it works.
ZO: What are your thoughts on self-care now during the pandemic? My feed is all writers being like, “I can’t get any work done. I can’t focus,” and then moms wanting to tear their hair out and things like that.
TS: We probably need to exchange some people to follow because I need a little bit more of that reality. Most of the people I follow talk about how to be your most productive self in a pandemic.
That seems so off base. Yes, I’ve come up with some goals for myself. One thing I do think about is who do I want to be on the other side of this? How do I want to come out of this? How do I want to remember my time in this? Do I want to have just been worried and pressed pause on my life for however many months? Do I want to be somebody who was a resource to other people, who found some joy, and some things to be excited and happy about?
I think we don’t need to put any pressure on ourselves to weather a pandemic perfectly. You don’t need to pick up a new habit and lose weight. People have been talking about, “I’m going to be so jacked by the end of this.” I just want to gently remind people we didn’t ask to be in this situation. This isn’t a productivity vacation. There’s a very real threat. I think we need to feel those feelings and feel that people are not safe and people are unwell, and recognize that this is not normal. There can be some learning from it.
That’s even the message of the book. I had a really traumatic start in life. That’s always going to be true. I never get to go back and rewrite history. At the same time, it’s true that I have found ways to be grateful for that upbringing. It made me into the person I am today. It gave me a story that I can use to relate to other people.
You really don’t have to have had a childhood like mine to read the book. It’s not just for people who dealt with significant trauma. It’s for people who earnestly want to make their life a little better and make sure that their routines are ones they actively chose and that serve them well. I hope people are also simply entertained because I think there’s some good storytelling in there. That’s my thought on it.
ZO: There’s great storytelling. It’s so conversational. I feel like I just went out to dinner with you or something and I was sitting there laughing.
TS: I definitely wrote it with the reader in mind. At the end of the book, I thank the reader for being with me the whole time. I felt the presence of a reader with me when I was writing.
When people comment, “This feels like I’m talking to my best friend,” or “This feels like I’m having a conversation,” it’s because they are. I tried to keep it conversational, and always tried to remain honest and somewhat vulnerable.
If I was going to write a memoir, what would be the point in trying to sugarcoat anything?
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