If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission. “I wish I could tell you it was gonna get better in 10 years,” Anna Marie Tendler tells me over Zoom. It’s a week before her debut memoir “Men Have Called Her Crazy” releases, and after I congratulate her, saying that her stories on career indecision, dating troubles and mental health struggles resonated with me as a woman in her mid-20s, she was quick to refute contemporary assurances that “your 30s are the best years of your life.
” “I just generally, as a person, find the day-to-day challenging — emotionally and mentally,” she says. “I’m a person who has a lot of emotion, and I think that when you untap some of that emotion, when you learn how to sit with grief, when you learn how to not run away from things, when you learn how to really wrestle with your emotions and your feelings and the things that are happening to you or the things that are happening in the world, it’s not easy.” This introspection and vulnerability is present throughout our entire conversation, making it hard for her to explain her feelings and perspectives without delving into her upbringing and past relationships, much like a therapy session.
It’s no surprise given the nature of her book, which starts off in 2021 when Tendler checked herself into a psychiatric hospital following a year of anxiety, depression, and self-harm. That year wa.