Tiffany Philippou (author of the newsletter The Tiff Weekly) joins the podcast all the way from the United Kingdom. Tiffany’s first book, the memoir Totally Fine (and Other Lies I’ve Told Myself), chronicles the tumultuous decade she experienced after her university boyfriend died by suicide when Tiffany was 20 years old. She and host Jillian Anthony (author of the Cruel Summer Book Club newsletter and former Editor of Time Out New York) discuss stuffing grief down, the long process of healing through writing (and therapy), and how much cultural discussions around mental health care have changed since we were in school. Tiffany also shares how she didn’t start writing for work or pleasure until she was almost 30—one writing class gave her the idea for her book, and she was a published author just a few years later.
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Follow guest Tiffany Philippou:
Instagram: @tiffphilippou
Twitter: @tiffphilippou
Buy Totally Fine (and Other Lies I’ve Told myself)
Subscribe to The Tiff Weekly
Follow host Jillian Anthony:
Instagram: @jillathrilla
Twitter: @jillathrilla
Subscribe to the Cruel Summer Book Club newsletter
Time stamps
:37 – Reading The Lost Daughter by Elena Ferrante
3:17 – Obsessing over my local Buy Nothing group
5:24 – Introducing guest Tiffany Philippou
8:02 – Tiffany’s obsession: reading books on writing by writers
12:04 – How Tiffany became a writer at 30
18:18 – How a writing workshop sparked her first book
21:11 – Tiffany’s boyfriend’s death by suicide, and coping with grief
25:09 – How trauma affected Tiffany’s memories
27:53 – Writing through shame and forgiving her younger self
31:35 – How cultural attitudes about mental health have changed in the past 10+ years
35:00 – Tiffany’s shifting relationship with alcohol, and the cultural place of booze in the UK
39:13 – Jillian’s shifting relationship to alcohol and being sober curious
40:47 – Tiffany’s romantic relationships
43:36 – Loving people through fear
48:40 – Tiffany’s love of the TV show Friends
50:44 – Tiffany’s joy bomb of hot yoga
54:06 – Where to follow Tiffany