The truths that set us free

A guest essay from Tiffany Philippou.

Hi friends! Katie here. I am currently on vacation, visiting friends in Florida and re-introducing our daughter to the place where she was born. 

I’m thrilled to be taking a short break and even more thrilled to hand the newsletter reins over to Tiffany Philippou, a writer living in London. I recently finished Tiffany’s memoir, Totally Fine (and other lies I’ve told myself), and felt a strong connection to the way she described her experience of trying to outrun grief.

I’ve learned a lot from Tiffany’s wise writing—she also has a newsletter, The Tiff Weekly—and I’m excited for you to learn from her, too.

See you all back in your inboxes next Tuesday with a new essay!

xoxo
KHG

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Do you have a story that you’re scared to tell? I’m going to tell you mine.

One day at 10 am, my phone buzzed. I reached over my sleeping friend Anna C., who I’d come up to Durham University to visit for a night out. My boyfriend Richard had wanted to join me, but I was craving some independence. The university holidays had just begun, and a carefree summer stretched out before us. 

The text from Richard read: 

I love you

I often think of that moment and wonder what would have happened if I’d responded differently. I read the text, smiled, rolled over, and shut my eyes. I fell back into a deep and restful sleep, for what would be the last time for a long time. 

Later that day, I was on the train returning home and got a call from my friend telling me Richard was in hospital. He had tried to take his own life. I had four hours left on that train. 

“You alright, love?” the train conductor asked. I was bawling. 

“Yes, I’m fine,” I said. 

I was twenty years old when Richard died by suicide, and I spent the next ten years pretending I was fine.

“I’m fine” was one of the many lies I told myself throughout my twenties as I kept trying to run from my grief. Pretending that I was “totally fine” meant that I never spoke his name and edited him out of my life when telling stories and anecdotes from our past. It meant working myself to the bone, even though it was making me sick and I was using it as a distraction from my grief.

Being “fine” was the belief that it was ok to drink myself into oblivion, to numb the pain of my grief because everyone drank too much and I was still, technically and on a surface level, functioning. It was “fine” to obsess over diet and exercise because it was healthy, when, in reality, I was trying to shrink myself to be as perfect and clean as possible, in an attempt to silence the shame living inside of me. 

We lie to ourselves all the time. Our sweet dumb brains tell us little lies—what it thinks we want to hear rather than what we need to hear—to try and be our comfort blankets. They are meant to protect us from life’s difficulties, like grief, but this can end up harming us rather than protecting us longer term. By pretending we’re fine, our lies then grow in size, and we become trapped in them. 

My decade-long experience with grief taught me that under the big lie of “I’m fine,” a spiral of other harmful untruths stumbled out from it. 

My memoir, Totally Fine (and other lies I’ve told myself) tracks all those lies, and they weren’t always my brain being kind. Sometimes they were driven by my feelings of shame about Richard’s death by suicide. I’d blame myself for Richard’s death, so much so that sometimes I felt like a murderer. If I was in a bad relationship, my brain would say it’s all I deserved. 

Instead of facing and challenging these lies, I hid and coated them with the lie that I was fine that he had gone, and I was fine with continuing my life without him. This wasn’t true. 

Writing is what unlocked the truth for me. I wrote the first chapter of my book three years ago, and once I started to write the story of Richard’s death and the shame I felt, I couldn’t stop. I stopped running and faced up to my past and felt better for it. 

Yet I still catch myself in self-constructed lies. It wasn’t too long ago when I was in a relationship that wasn’t right, and my lying little voice told me to stay. It told me that I wasn’t good enough and that I wouldn’t find someone else. The lies crop up in small ways too—not wanting to admit that a stranger snapping at us was upsetting, or that someone criticising our work hurts our feelings. All these untruths, big and small, shape how we think of ourselves, our approach to life, and can impact our actions. 

When someone asks how we are, we so often just say that we’re fine. This is rarely a (fully) truthful answer, and this often empty platitude fails to cover the broad range of human emotions and experiences we feel at any given moment on any given day. We might be feeling great, hopeful and optimistic or sad, low or frustrated. But still, we just say: “Fine, thanks.” 

Speaking honestly to others and trying to find language beyond “I’m fine” can help us unlock the truth of our experiences. It can be the ointment we need to truly heal rather than the short-term, comforting swaddle the lies use to keep us safe. 

It’s hard to admit that we care what people think and to say that we’ll never be fine about the death of a loved one. It’s hard to tap into our internal honesty and expose it to ourselves. It often means we have work to do. 

My book opens like this: 

Do you have a story that you’re scared to tell? I’m going to tell you mine. 

In my experience, writing and sharing my story set me free from the lies that were holding me back from living a fulfilled life. I started writing and publishing my experiences with my newsletter, The Tiff Weekly, and I found the more honest I was, the more people were relating to my work. Publishing vulnerable work is terrifying, but it’s always worth it once I hear back from people; I feel better about myself for being so candid because it means others like me can see their own truths, too. 

I believe so strongly that speaking our fears out loud can help us feel less alone, which is why I’ve launched a podcast to follow my book called Totally Fine with Tiffany Philippou. Each week, I interview a guest about a time when they’ve pretended to be totally fine when they weren’t, and I’m continuing to learn how important it is to admit that you’re struggling. 

I admit that I’ll never be fine about my boyfriend Richard’s death. And that’s ok. I feel better for facing that truth. It has set me free.

With love,

Tiffany xx

p.s. Tiffany’s book, Totally Fine (and other lies I’ve told myself), hit bookshelves last week! 🎉 Support her work by buying your own copy, or by following her newsletter and brand-new podcast.

p.p.s. Katie will be back from vacation next Tuesday, 3/29, with a new essay. See you then!