Sarah Labrie, NO ONE GETS TO FALL APART: A Memoir
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[0:42]Sarah Libri is the author of No One Gets to Fall Apart, a memoir.
[0:46]Sarah is a writer from Houston, Texas.
[0:49]Her libretti have been performed at Walt Disney Concert Hall,
[0:52]and her fiction appears in Guernica, the literary review, and the Los Angeles Review of Books.
[0:57]She has held residencies at Yatto, U-Cross, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.
[1:02]She lives in Los Angeles, where she has written for television shows,
[1:05]including minks, on stars, blindsputting, on stars, made for love, max, and love Victor on Hulu.
[1:12]She holds an MFA from NYU, where she was a writer in the school's fellow.
[1:17]Welcome, Sarah.
[1:18]Thank you so much for coming on mom's don't have time to read books to discuss
[1:22]No One Gets to Fall Apart, a memoir.
[1:24]Congratulations.
[1:26]Thank you so much.
[1:27]It's great to be here.
[1:28]Oh my gosh.
[1:29]I loved this book.
[1:30]I loved everything about it.
[1:32]I loved how you wrestle with taking care of your mom, mental illness,
[1:37]like how you are pursuing your own dreams at the same time, trying to write, trying to cope.
[1:44]I mean, it's basically life, right?
[1:45]It's just life in a book of how do we braid together all of these parts of ourself
[1:50]and get through the day and take care of the people we love, right?
[1:54]I don't know.
[1:55]Yeah.
[1:56]Thank you so much for saying that.
[1:57]It's a great way to pitch the book.
[1:58]I mean, I maybe steal that going forward.
[2:01]I still don't feel like I've nailed it.
[2:05]I mean, what do you, when you sat down to write the book, like, did you say, like,
[2:10]this is about, like, what did you say to yourself, I'm going to write a book about blah,
[2:14]or what happened?
[2:15]Take us back.
[2:17]So I had been writing a novel for like five or six years about time travel and the multiverse
[2:24]and I was sort of expansive.
[2:26]And yeah, it started as my grad school thesis.
[2:29]And it just kind of, it took me really far in a certain point.
[2:33]It just kind of hit a wall.
[2:34]And by the way, you write all about that in the book, which is great.
[2:39]Which I love.
[2:40]I mean, I really love it.
[2:41]I'm so glad you put all that in.
[2:42]So anyway, keep going.
[2:44]Yeah, it started hit a wall.
[2:46]And I realized way too late that it was not really a viable project.
[2:51]And around that same time, my mom had a psychotic breakdown.
[2:57]My closest friend decided she didn't want to be friends with me anymore.
[3:00]And it was also terrible.
[3:02]Yeah, it was just true to this, like, black hole of pain.
[3:05]And I was like, hey, I got to just write me through this, you know?
[3:09]And I think because I had put so much into the novel,
[3:15]when I then switched to the memoir,
[3:18]it just kind of came out of me.
[3:20]It was just sort of the opposite experience of trying to write the novel.
[3:23]And it's not, you know, it's not first draft.
[3:25]I wrote really quickly.
[3:27]It wasn't a book at that time.
[3:30]But like, I understood that.
[3:32]Okay, this could mean maybe something.
[3:34]And I showed it to my agent.
[3:35]And I was trying to say it was also a novel.
[3:37]And she was like, it's not a novel.
[3:39]This is a memoir.
[3:41]And so I just sort of refashioned it with that in mind.
[3:44]And, you know, I reread it for what I want to say.
[3:47]What four years before it got sold?
[3:50]Yeah.
[3:51]I think two years before I ended up planning with a different agent
[3:55]and then four years later it sold.
[3:58]Yeah.
[3:59]Oh, my gosh.
[4:00]Your relationship with your mom is at the heart of the book,
[4:03]watching her mental illness.
[4:05]How do you handle it?
[4:07]How do you distance yourself and have your own life?
[4:10]And yet make sure she's okay.
[4:12]And yet, I mean, there were just so many threads and complications.
[4:16]And how do you see your relationship with her?
[4:18]Sort of as it unfolded.
[4:20]Like, what do you and how do you feel having it all out there?
[4:23]There's a moment in the book where I go to the therapist
[4:27]and she's trying to help me understand that my mom and I are not
[4:30]the same person.
[4:31]And she can take her hands in there together.
[4:33]And then she spreads them apart.
[4:35]And I can sort of feel it in my body.
[4:38]Because my mom raised me alone.
[4:40]She had me on she was 20.
[4:41]So my whole life, we've been so sort of in mesh for better or for worse.
[4:47]And that that even now feels like anything that happens to her happens to me.
[4:52]And so I felt like this story is happening to both of us.
[4:55]And we're getting through it together.
[4:57]And we're coming out.
[4:58]We're trying to come out on the other side hole together.
[5:01]And that's very much so how I feel.
[5:04]I think I'm more conscious of feeling that way and able to sort of question it.
[5:09]And even, yeah, I was kind of pushed back against that sometimes what I need to actually thank God.
[5:14]Because I don't think it's super psychologically healthy to feel that way about your mother.
[5:18]But I do still feel very, very close to her as I did even in those years when we weren't speaking.
[5:25]And in terms of having it out there, I feel, you know, my family has read the book.
[5:31]My grandmother, my aunt, my mom is aware of it.
[5:35]And they love me and they want, they want me to be happy.
[5:39]I feel like that's the question for them is always just like, you know, what can you do to feel like your life is worthwhile and valuable.
[5:48]And what can we do to support that?
[5:50]So that's otherwise I wouldn't have been able to write them.
[5:53]You know, if I didn't have theirs.
[5:55]Oh my gosh. Well, it's one thing to, you know, put it out in a book and in your head, think, okay, this isn't bookstores and people are going to read this and whatever.
[6:02]But it's another like, as you meet people, you know, we all make these decisions quickly.
[6:07]Like, what am I going to share?
[6:08]What am I not going to share?
[6:09]What do they think about me?
[6:10]Well, I better keep this aside for now and like, you know, like all that.
[6:13]But when you put it out publicly, there's, you don't get that luxury anymore of like, maybe I won't share this piece.
[6:20]Like, no, it's out there.
[6:23]I've been struggling with that question. I'm sort of.
[6:27]I felt so empowered in writing the book because I was like, this is my version of a story that happened to a lot of people.
[6:35]But this is my version.
[6:36]And I get to decide how this version exists in the world.
[6:40]And then my friend Alice Carrier, who wrote this.
[6:43]Yes.
[6:45]Yes.
[6:46]Yes.
[6:47]Oh my gosh.
[6:48]We have a mutual friend who actually had knocked at us because she kind of went through all of this with her memoir about dissociative disorder.
[6:55]What's everything?
[6:56]Nothing.
[6:57]Someone.
[6:58]I think it's full.
[6:59]Or everything.
[7:00]No one.
[7:01]It's everything.
[7:02]Nothing.
[7:03]Someone.
[7:04]Everything.
[7:05]No thing.
[7:06]Okay.
[7:07]There we go.
[7:08]I did tell everyone I know to read it.
[7:09]I think it's so good.
[7:10]for her family, her mom was this famous artist and her dad's famous French actor.
[7:15]And Alice growing up.
[7:16]She'd have had this incredible luxury in terms of privilege.
[7:19]But was extremely lonely and developed dissociative disorder.
[7:24]And she wrote about it.
[7:25]And she was like, you need to be ready for this to not be your story anymore.
[7:31]And even though you think that it is, once it goes out in the world,
[7:36]and that's that that is sort of what is slowly starting to happen, which honestly was scary to hear,
[7:46]but isn't actually that bad because I love it when people do me or whatever and say,
[7:54]this has happened to me.
[7:56]You know, this is my story.
[7:58]And they haven't talked about it because they don't know how I didn't have the language.
[8:01]Like that, that is why I wrote the book.
[8:04]I mean, I'll just say before this, you know, I have an MFA infection.
[8:09]I had studied under ZB Smith and Jonathan Saffin-Foeur and Laurie Moore.
[8:13]And all these incredible teachers who I'd grown up reading and just deeply, deeply admired.
[8:18]And I thought that was going to be my path.
[8:20]You know, I was really trying very hard to be in the New Yorker.
[8:25]The Paris Review.
[8:26]Like I went to God.
[8:27]I was kind of, I was like a little bit snobby about it.
[8:30]And then all of this happened.
[8:33]And I was just really thrust into reality.
[8:35]I couldn't exist in that the fictional world of my novel anymore.
[8:39]And I couldn't exist in the world of fiction at all.
[8:42]And he was just, I was just here.
[8:44]And this was real.
[8:45]And what was happening to my mom was real.
[8:47]And that I think really, I think really informs the book and the way it was written.
[8:52]And also the point of the book's existence.
[8:54]I don't want to exist on sort of a separate plane from people I want.
[8:59]I want this to be a conversation.
[9:01]I want people to respond to it.
[9:02]And I want to be, I want to stay in the world.
[9:05]You know, and yeah, I love that.
[9:07]I love even hearing what you said about people DMing you.
[9:10]And I feel like that's the role of so much of why people write and why people share stories at all.
[9:19]It's to help the people who want to take the steps and don't know how.
[9:23]And that's so powerful.
[9:24]That's how we all lead each other through the world.
[9:26]I mean, it seems so obvious, but it's not.
[9:29]Especially now, I think we're in this moment where everybody does feel very separate.
[9:34]And it's so easy to like just feel like that more and more every day.
[9:38]And I don't know what I've been trying to do is really get out in the sort of physical world too.
[9:43]I, you know, my, like, go see my friends, go to their events and invite people over and talk.
[9:48]And that I have found it's incredibly healing.
[9:50]And I'm hoping that like this book can also form the basis for, you know,
[9:55]actual and real life conversations and figuring out ways.
[10:00]just talk about what's happening to you, to other people in your own life. Even if, even
[10:03]if people aren't talking to me, like I want people to feel like, oh, I can tell my story, like,
[10:07]something terrible happened to me, and it was traumatic, but I came out on the other side,
[10:13]and this is what I learned, and it was nuanced, complicated, and all of the good and all of the
[10:19]bad matters. But why, you know, I was particularly struck when you were writing and rewriting
[10:25]your book, The Anatomy Book? The Anatomy Book? Yeah. The Anatomy Book. Sorry. The Anatomy Book.
[10:30]Like, that you, for years, would not give up on the project, right? You were so committed,
[10:36]even after you would, like, your agent was like, yes, and then your agent was like, actually,
[10:39]wait, no, it's not ready. And I was like, oh, that hurts my heart to read the scene. Oh,
[10:43]that, I feel that pain of, you know, now what do you do with this manuscript. But anyway, like,
[10:49]why do you feel that you are someone who does not give up on these projects? Like, what is it
[10:56]about you specifically or the project specifically or, or what? Because others might set it aside
[11:03]or say, okay, I tried this for a year, and I'm not going to do it. Like, what do you think it is?
[11:07]I didn't have a plan B. So the answer is desperation. Yeah. Exactly.
[11:15]Like, fear. I had really taken to heart some advice I got at some point that was like, yeah,
[11:23]don't, I think I was from Jenny Awful. It was just like, don't have a backup plan because if you
[11:27]have a backup plan, you'll take it. And I, I guess I heard that young enough, not as kind of in my
[11:31]life, but I was like, I just won't have a backup plan. Which I don't really recommend. Like,
[11:36]have a backup plan. But it did, it did work out. And that I, I had kept my expenses really
[11:45]low. Like, I kept my social circle small. Like, I really was kind of living this very monastic
[11:51]kind of aesthetic life. That was entirely organized around this novel. That was like the star,
[11:58]like the sun in my universe. So I just, once I lost hold of it or losing hold of it,
[12:05]felt like losing any sense of gravity. Like, I didn't have anything else to organize my
[12:09]being around. Well, that was a beautiful way to say it. There you go. Using that MFA.
[12:17]Because I make it useful somehow.
[12:20]I like that not having a backup plan. Well, you also shared a lot in the book about your
[12:25]relationship. How does he feel about this? How did you decide what to include what not to include?
[12:32]And, you know, what did writing about your relationship? How did that help you sort of navigate it?
[12:40]It's so interesting. I feel like, so if you read the book, you know, my husband, Ethan,
[12:47]I let him choose his own student is kind of all over it on every page. And I do think maybe
[12:53]a lot of people's partners would be a little bit hesitant because we kind of get into it. Like,
[12:58]the stuff that's not great. Like, about our relationship. But he read every single draft. And then
[13:04]like, a week before it was due, I had the manuscript printed out on our coffee table. And I like,
[13:11]went out to walk the dog. And I came back and he was like, copy editing it. Like, he picked it up.
[13:15]And I was like, doing blind edits because he was so in the habit of reading and rereading and
[13:20]rereading the book. And everything I wrote. And then ended up making it so much better.
[13:24]He just kind of kept, he was, he really, it was really, really important to him that this
[13:30]was the book that I wanted it to be. And I think, I, you know, if he had changes that he wanted
[13:35]to make, like, of course, we're going to respect that. Like, I did with pretty much everyone in the
[13:39]book who asked, I offered to almost everybody who has sort of a, I mean, art in the book. And we
[13:45]had those conversations. But for him, it was really just like, how can we make this the absolute
[13:50]best manuscript? That's so nice. And how great. Can I go? Yeah, I know. I could tell. I mean,
[13:58]it's very clear that he's very nice for us, which is wonderful. It's like a gift to be able to
[14:04]almost to pause time, right? And sort through feelings and put them out there in the middle of life.
[14:13]Right? It's like, you know, there was an episode of some show I watched, like, as a kid, like,
[14:18]happy days or I don't know something. Like, this is really dating myself. But they were able to freeze
[14:23]like, they stopped it. And they were all in the beach. So maybe it wasn't happy. I don't know. It's
[14:27]just a matter. And so everything was frozen except the one person who could like walk around. And I
[14:32]kind of feel like that's this memoir, right? Like, you can freeze time and just you get to wander around
[14:38]and analyze and put it all back together. And then you get to go back in your life. Zoom, like,
[14:42]the action goes on. And yet we have this to remember that moment. Thank you so much for saying that.
[14:49]It does, it does feel like a gift. I'm really, really grateful that all, that this came out of
[14:55]all of that. I said the fact that first of all that I was able to write it. And then I was edited
[15:01]so carefully and thoughtfully out of her. And, you know, just the fact that the response has been
[15:07]so incredibly welcoming and kind for readers and the support that I've gotten from my publisher.
[15:13]Like, it feels, yeah, this book was written with a lot of pain, but also a lot of love
[15:19]and I do feel like that hopefully will come through and be something that the reader is
[15:24]able to hold on to as well. I love it. There are other people, as you said, who have been
[15:30]deming you and out in the world and listening, who have someone that they love with mental illness
[15:36]of some kind, not that you are supposed to be any sort of expert on this just because this is
[15:42]your lived experience, but are there things that you wish you had known? Yeah, absolutely. And I
[15:47]get, yeah, I'm definitely not an expert. I'm just reading about myself, but I didn't know about
[15:52]the national alliance on illness at first. That is a resource that's free that offers support groups
[15:59]and classes for how to live with and care for a mentally beloved one. That that was probably the
[16:06]biggest thing. And also just that it exists. You know, when my mom started calling me and saying
[16:12]she thought airplanes were watching her from the sky. My immediate thought was, is she joking?
[16:18]Like, or, you know, I heard this isn't. This isn't really happening. I didn't know what the
[16:22]symptoms of psychosis are. There's so much sort of, there's like a black box around it. I think
[16:29]because people are afraid of it because it feels so undefeatable, I guess. I think once you lose hold
[16:35]of reality, it just feels like, well, how do you, how do you get back to it? People just don't
[16:38]talk about it. So it's really just, yeah, I wish I had known this was the thing. I wish I had
[16:43]known about the resources available. There's like so many incredible books out there about not
[16:50]only about mental illness, but also about like trauma related to mental illness, the trauma that
[16:54]causes mental illness. And I was really lucky actually because once I did find my way to like being
[17:01]able to talk about it, my father-in-law is an expert developmental developmental psychologist. So he
[17:07]kind of is in this world and he invited me to a trauma conference in San Diego and I met
[17:13]Dr. Pam Cantor, who's a psychiatrist who brought me into this world of Dan Siegel and Bruce Perry
[17:20]and these are incredible as a psychiatrist who write all about this. And thank God for that. If I hadn't
[17:26]found those books, I don't know. This book, no one gets to follow up. Definitely wouldn't exist. And
[17:31]I have no idea where I would be. That's amazing. Do you still want to write like the Great American
[17:36]novel? And now I think like I'm kind of going back and forth. I don't think I will go back to fiction
[17:45]right now. It just right now does not feel like the time for it for me, even though I still
[17:51]love reading it. But I've got two kind of ideas leveling off of trying to decide what you want to
[17:59]pursue. And how much brain space do you spend or allocate to worrying like will this happen to me?
[18:10]I have had to decide not to let that be the thing that drives me crazy, right? Like worrying about
[18:19]having a psychotic break being the thing that actually makes me crazy. I can't you can't live like that.
[18:24]You've got to just I you just have to hope and live and understand that if it does happen,
[18:31]it's you know, my aunt says to me in the book, like it's not a death sentence. People live
[18:36]with schizophrenia all the time. People have careers in life and children. It's just a matter of
[18:44]having a safety net and taking medication. You do have to take the medication
[18:49]unfortunately and my mom refused to do that for a long time. And that was what was scary.
[18:54]Well, okay. Any last advice to someone trying to write their own memoir?
[18:59]You have to want it so badly. Like it has to be the thing that you want. You cannot kind of
[19:06]casually want to be a writer. And I do kind of think, oh yeah, I was talking about this with my
[19:12]friend who runs a trend forecasting newsletter yesterday. But it were in this moment where everything
[19:18]feels just scattered and fractured. And I'm talking about like the media landscape. Not just
[19:22]society, but it just you can't even subscribe to their right friggin. I don't know like streaming
[19:28]series to watch whatever show you want to watch like everything just feels so impossible. And like
[19:33]there's not we're kind of not in a moment where it feels like that stuff is going to get
[19:37]consolidated in a way that makes sense. So like we as writers, I think have a moral obligation
[19:45]to kind of uphold the standards and quality and point of writing, which is like not only to create
[19:51]well, I think well crafted work with lunch. A lot of thought in it, but also like to be writing for
[19:57]readers and to have those readers kind of.
[20:00]for my community with you around your book.
[20:02]I feel like those strong holds of community are gone.
[20:04]So I think just because those feel like they've
[20:08]kind of dissipated doesn't mean that we're
[20:10]abdicated of the responsibility to write
[20:13]the best possible books that we can.
[20:16]Which is just to say you have to want it
[20:18]and you have to spend the work.
[20:19]Amazing.
[20:20]Did that make sense?
[20:21]I don't know if that makes sense.
[20:22]But I'll get to the mix of advice and inspiration
[20:28]and all of that.
[20:29]But I think what you said, I mean, you have to need to do that.
[20:33]Like, you can't, it's not like something that is just fun.
[20:36]It's a calling.
[20:36]You have to tell the story before you can move on.
[20:39]I feel like you have to be doing it.
[20:43]Yes.
[20:43]That's perfect.
[20:44]I couldn't.
[20:45]I could not see it better.
[20:46]Yes.
[20:46]I'll just interview myself.
[20:47]It's fun.
[20:48]I'm just so efficient.
[20:51]You're awesome, so efficient.
[20:52]How do you feel?
[20:53]For her.
[20:55]Sarah, congratulations.
[20:56]No one gets to fall apart.
[20:58]Well done.
[20:59]Thank you for sharing so intimately your story, your family,
[21:02]your relationship, yourself.
[21:03]And this is the greatest role model.
[21:06]Just put it out there and see what happens.
[21:08]Thank you so much.
[21:09]I really appreciate it.
[21:10]And thank you for all your support.
[21:11]It really means a lot.
[21:12]All right, one.
[21:13]OK.
[21:14]All right.
[21:15]Thank you.
[21:15]Bye-bye.
[21:16]Bye.
[21:17]You're welcome.
[21:20]Thanks for listening to Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books.
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