My therapist has aggressive breast cancer. I want to start this story a different way, but it’s all I’m thinking about. My therapist - the woman who pulled me back from the brink of a brutal, consumptive anger that was like being stung by a thousand bees every minute of every day - is fighting for her life. At the risk of sounding like a total fucking asshole (too late), it’s really inconvenient timing.

I’ve spoken, here and in other places, and at length, about my feelings on memoir and therapy. I feel—quite strongly—that writing, while therapeutic, is not fucking therapy. Especially memoir. You can’t solve a problem with the same consciousness that created it. I feel like I’m repeating myself, but I really believe this to be true. In order to write a viable, valuable memoir, you (I) have to get past the shitstack that was your (my) past in order to tell a personal story that transcends the specific drama of your (my) life and illuminates the larger human condition. In case you weren’t clear, that’s a tall fucking order. For you, and for (me).

Last weekend, when I met with the Writer Whisperer, I burst into the kind of hiccup-y, uncontrollable tears that are really only appropriate when you’re curled up in the fetal position on your bed or sitting in your therapist’s office. My meetings with the Writer Whisperer take place at the PEN office in L.A., some 120 miles from my bed, and, as I mentioned, my therapist is dealing with some huge motherfucking problems of her own, so there’s no therapist’s couch. You can see the dilemma, can’t you?

There’s an irony here, which is that the Writer Whisperer is endlessly, constantly beseeching me to find the dilemma in my story and be curious about the outcome.

“But why?” he asks, again and again. “Why is she (you) in this situation?" This is a profoundly therapeutic question.

Everything I thought I knew, all of my hard-won self-awareness is under the fucking microscope. It’s a good thing. And also a profoundly painful thing.

That thing that I said about writing not being therapy? I stick by the general premise, but I have to say, the lines are feeling really blurry this week. I’m guessing this is not exclusive to the genre of memoir. God knows, in my decades as a celebrity personal assistant, I’ve worked for a few Method actors who have fallen down the rabbit hole of a traumatic childhood while trying to access emotion for a performance.

I’m not even sure what I’m trying to tell you. Maybe it’s just that I’m struggling and I need to say it out loud so I can move forward. I saw a new therapist today. First therapy sessions are like blind dates. I texted a writer friend and said that. She asked if I kissed on the first date. If kissing = crying on a therapy first date, the answer is yes.