Zibby interviews content creator, speaker, and bestselling author Jessica N. Turner about I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE BETTER THAN THIS, a manifesto of hope that will empower you to transform your circumstances and move forward with intention and purpose. Jessica shares the inspiration behind this book—navigating the unexpected end of her 16-year marriage after her husband came out as gay and learning to grieve, heal, and rediscover herself. She and Zibby reflect on friendship, resilience, body image, and the power of self-love, and Jessica offers practical, compassionate advice for anyone navigating an unexpected turn.

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome, Jess. I'm so excited to have you on Totally Booked with Zibby to talk about I Thought It Would Be Better Than This, rise from disappointment, regain control, and rebuild a life you love. Congratulations. 

Jessica: Aw. Thank you. I'm so glad to be here. I was thinking back and I was on your podcast for The Fringe Hours, which was my first book, which came out six weeks after I had my son, who's now 10.

Zibby: Oh my gosh. Gosh. 

Jessica: So we have known each other for a very long time, so it is just a joy to be back. 

Zibby: I actually, I remember learning about you through a Today Parenting Team Challenge stretched too thin,.. 

Jessica: Uhhuh. 

Zibby: Do you remember those? Those prompts? And I was like,.. 

Jessica: Yes. 

Zibby: Who is this? This is amazing. And then I read all about Stretch Too Thin, which I, of course was and am and whatever.

And so related to immediately, and then became a huge fan. And I'm so glad we've had all these opportunities to meet in person and on podcasts and all the rest. 

Jessica: It's the best. 

Zibby: Aw. 

Jessica: It's really fun when your friends can also be your colleagues in your work. It's really nice with the kind of work that we do, which is primarily by ourselves and can be kind of lonely.

So I'm thankful for you. 

Zibby: Well, I'm thankful for you, especially because of how open, vulnerable, real and just amazing you were on the pages of this book showing us everything you went through. You know, I follow you obviously on social media and so when things happened with your husband, which I'll let you talk about.

I remember reading it and being like, what? you know? and so I've been like, all of your followers just sort of watching to see what happens, how are you, what's going on? How does someone, you know? So the fact that after that, to end up here where the book is, I feel like I've watched like this whole thing, even though of course I'm not, I haven't been there.

But anyway, so I feel so like proud of you for where you've ended up here and how you're helping other people. It's amazing. Okay, now go. 

Jessica: Thank you. Thank you. Okay, I'll go. So digest version of my story. So I was married for 16 years and in 2019 my then husband and I, our marriage was really rocky. I thought it was mostly something to do with me or my body or I, I didn't know really what it was. And we started going to therapy and he came out to me. He told me at first he was bi in the spring of 2019 and then in the fall, which is how I thought it would be better than this opens up. He told me that he was gay and that, as you can imagine, rocked my world.

Three kids had no idea. This is my best friend. How could I possibly not know? And we grappled for a long time. Could we do a mixed orientation marriage? Like we still loved each other. We loved our kids, we loved our life together. Uh, but it, the genie was out of the bottle. And so we just kept circling the drain.

We decided to separate in March of 2020, which you might remember was the start of the pandemic, and he was about to sign the papers and the world shut down. And so then we, he didn't do that. He didn't move out, and I still was really hoping my marriage would stay intact even then, and it didn't, and the best imperfect choice for us was to divorce. And so in June we divorced, he moved out, and then in July we announced that publicly, and we both have really public platforms. You can find me on Jessica and Turner on Instagram. And it was, I think one of the hardest things that I've ever walked through. It is, I don't have to say, I think I know that it is, but having the world watching it was its own type of extra hard and so then I, I took a lot of time to heal, to do a lot of therapy, to find myself, you know, I met Matthew when I was 20 and was married at 22 and really didn't know adulthood apart from being a married woman. And so there was a lot of finding of myself in ways that I never could have expected because I'm very much, have always been a self-assured, confident person.

But there's something that happened in the breaking of my marriage and of the deep sorrow that I was in, that I was able to rise from. And so this book is what I hope will be a companion for other people who are experiencing great disappointment. You know, I had thankfully, and as a privilege, not had a big disappointment in my life up until that point.

But disappointment finds us all. Life brings disappointment. And so this book is not a divorce book. It's not a, my husband is gay book. Although those two things happened to me. This is a book that says. I know what disappointment is like, and you might be going through disappointment, and here are some things that you can grab onto to still create a beautiful life, even if your story looks different than you thought it would.

Zibby: Wow. Well, it absolutely does that, and you give the reader just so many tangible, tactical tips, right? Not in a super duper self-helpy way, but in a very gentle way as if you're saying to somebody you're close to like, okay, you know what? Here are five things that are helping me this week. They might help you, which is the best kind of advice when it's not sort of shoved down your throat type of thing.

Jessica: Yeah, for sure. I didn't. I think that a great self-help book is a book where you can even grab just one or two things that improves your life, like I don't think any self-help. Book is perfect where you are going, everything is gonna apply to your story, but if you can grab even a couple things, I think it's beneficial.

And this book, I think does a really beautiful job of straddling vulnerable stories and really practical self-help tactics that you can grab onto. I'm really proud Mel Robbins endorse the book and she said, this book will change your life. And I mean, if Mel says it, I feel like it has to be true. And I think it's just because there's so many takeaways that people can apply to their own stories, that it really can be transformative. 

Zibby: And at different times for different reasons, right? This is something you can come back to and whatever it is you're going through, it can, it can work. And that's right. Like this week for instance, reading, I was like, okay, well this makes me think more about how to optimize my female friendships, which I don't think I have taken care of enough. And you have a whole section on that. And I hadn't even been like thinking about it as much until I read it in yours and I was like, oh, I do need to make this part of my life better. So, and of course, other things, but anyway, I also say no matter what, somebody can find something in it.

You talk so much in the book about the grief that you felt at the loss of your marriage. Mm-hmm. And you had one quote. Grief is too heavy to carry alone, which I just thought was so beautiful. Talk a little bit about the grief that you felt. Some of the stories when you were talking about, you know, days when it was too hard to get up, get up, and it was just a friend who called that might have helped or telling someone like, I need to sit with you through this or looking back, you know, take us through that time and how you pulled yourself through. 

Jessica: Sure. Yeah. So in the beginning, in 2019 at, at the very start of it, you know, we didn't know what we were gonna do. And so it felt too heavy and too difficult to share what we were going through with a lot of people.

I talk about in the book how as you invite people into your story, you have to be sure that they can carry it and that you are not going to then have the added weight of carrying their sorrow, right? So for instance, in my story, we didn't initially tell our families. Because we knew our families would be reeling and we would be carrying all of their reaction to it too, which.

I know for myself, I can't speak for Matthew. I was too fragile. I couldn't do that, but there were some safe friends that I could invite into the story, who could carry it, who could walk alongside me in my deep grief. My friend Anne, I would call her almost every day. At that time, I was working in corporate America, and I would have a 25 minute drive to work, and I would cry almost the entire drive every single day.

Because I also felt like I had very limited time when I could be really sad. You know, I had three little kids. Again, they couldn't carry the weight of what we were going through. We didn't know what we were it was gonna look like. And so it's not like I was standing in the kitchen crying in front of them, right?

So I would cry on my way to work and I would talk to Anne. And one thing that she said that was really helpful to me that I'm really glad I put in the book is she said, you can't write all the lines of your story. Matthew is holding the pen for his story and what he's gonna choose to do and what he needs, and other people are going to have contributions to this, but what you can do is hold the pen and write the lines for your story.

And I thought so often I wanna look back on this season and be proud of myself. I want to be proud of the lines that I'm writing in this and Zibby, you can appreciate this as an author yourself and as someone who talks to a lot of authors, using the word control was really contentious with my publishing team and other people on my team.

Did we want to put the word control in the title? Um, 'cause it's rise from disappointment, regain control. And some people feel particularly in a disappointment that you don't have control, right? Like I didn't have control over Matthew coming out and being gay. People might not have control over a health diagnosis or someone dying, right?

Like we don't have control over that. But what we do have control of is the agency to write the lines of our story and how we respond to that disappointment. And that's what I'm hoping that people really take away is, okay, I'm walking through grief right now. I can choose to sit here and stay sad.

People have said to me, how didn't you just like stay mad? Like I would be so mad? Well, because that's not how I wanted my life to look. I wasn't going to stay there. And so I wrote lines that were different than that and I think that really pulled me through. But it was absolutely the women in my life who were my lifeline during those hard months and years as I was walking through this.

And I also, I'll say one more thing. I think it's important to not think that grief just goes away, that I've written this book and I'm fine a hundred percent of the time. I still have sad moments. There are things that I still mourn. There are things that will pop up on a, a random day that I'm like, huh, I, it looks like I haven't tended to that grief yet.

And that's okay. Grief is something that heals. But it doesn't go away. There's scarring from it and scars can still ache. And I think that's true for most of us in our disappointments. 

Zibby: So true. There's no, there's no end goal. It's just how we carry it with us. 

Jessica: And that's right. 

Zibby: Some days it's heavier and some days it's not to your original quotes, but forever changed.

And you also talked about that in the book, how prior to this. You had been kind of lucky, like the biggest things in your life had not been these earth shattering, oh, now I get it moments, and that you actually found sort of a silver lining in that and that you could empathize so much more with what other people were going through, and it just opened up sort of a world of pain but in a bad way and in a good way.

Can you talk a little more about that? 

Jessica: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I, I feel so tender now as I walk around in the world because I know that probably every person that I'm interacting with has something, they have a this, and I think I just didn't have a tenderness and an awareness of it like I do now. And now I am one of those people who I just wanna dig in and let's talk about that thing.

And how are you doing and how are you feeling? Or I'm somebody who you know, will think of somebody who has gone through a loss like years later knowing that they're still grieving, that it doesn't go away on an anniversary or after you've done the first. Um, and so it's just given me a lot of tenderness and I think hopefully in talking to me and reading the book, that people experience some of that tenderness for their own stories and for other people and their stories, and that it can create a positive ripple effect of empathy.

Zibby: Oh, I just love that you also wrote about your body image and how one of your first instincts is I could so relate to, is like, oh, it must be because of how I look or this part of my body that I'm not happy with. Or did I turn him, was it my fault? Like, you know, take, trying to take responsibility for something that of course is not your responsibility.

Tell me how you wrestled with that and sort of where you. Come out with it now. 'cause I love the boudoir photo scene. Oh my gosh. That might've been my favorite in the whole book. 

Jessica: Thanks. Yeah, I definitely, I don't think I ever thought that my body turned Matthew gay, but in my marriage I thought that my body was why he didn't desire me.

And so that created a lot of baggage that I have had to unpack that actually, that was a story I was telling myself. He wasn't, he wasn't telling me that verbally and him not wanting me something very different, but I didn't know, right? You write, you, you sometimes write narratives in your head based on only your past experiences.

That is neuroscience. And so one of the things that I've had to go through in my story is. Learning to love my body again. And I write about in the book how I had seen friends do boudoir shoots over the years. I think, 'cause I'm an influencer and so I like follow a lot of photographers and I used to be a big scrapbooker and I don't know, I just like.

Saw different people do these over the years. And I remember at one point in my marriage asking Matthew, Hey, is this something you would love? Like if I did this and gave you these photos? And he was like, no, I think it's weird. Well now I know it's because he was gay. Right? But like then I was like, oh, see, like my body is just like not desirable in that way.

And so after my divorce, I did a boudoir shoot for myself, I was not dating anyone. I did it solely for myself to see myself as sexy, to see myself as beautiful, to do something very unlike anything I had ever done, and it was so empowering and beautiful and healing for me to do that. And I got those photos back.

I wish I could publish them like I can't because like. 

Zibby: Oh, but you probably debated it. 

Jessica: No, I have, I have a 16-year-old son and like, it, no one, no one needs their, their mom doing that. They're very tasteful, but they're beautiful. And I saw myself as beautiful and desirable in a way that I don't know that I had ever seen prior and it was radically transformative for me. It was a really powerful experience for me, and I don't think that if your disappointment is divorce that automatically you have body image issues to work through. I'm not saying that in the book, but I do think that a lot of us, particularly in like the late thirties to fifties demographic with the way we were raised in the media, we've consumed, we do carry some body image stuff and as I think about becoming whole and being able to move through spaces wholly myself embracing who I am physically needed to be part of the conversation and part of this book. 

Zibby: Wow. I just love that and I love this self-acceptance on every front. You tell a story later on when you started dating again and you were with this one guy and something happened and you said, I love myself more than you and you can't talk to me this way, and that he was like impressed by that and was like, I need to go do some work on myself. Which is like, wow, that's a dream scenario. Like what? Yeah, you can have a better response to that. But I was like, good for her. I mean, that is a lot to own and say, and something that everybody should be thinking like, that should be the baseline.

Like you should treat me as well as, you know, the ba, just the, the lowest baseline. 

Jessica: Right. It really, I will never forget that day and I will never forget how it felt when he was yelling at me in a manner he had never spoken to me in that way before, and I very calmly said, I love myself more than I love you, and I will not be talked to you that way.

And that night he came over and apologized and I shortly after we broke up and that's when he said, you know, I need, I've, I've been thinking about that thing you said, and I need to work on myself. I should not be in a relationship. And so while at the time it didn't seem like a dream scenario, 'cause I really liked this man.

I love, I thought I loved him. I did love him as much as one can after a few months, but it was a catalyst for even more work on myself. But I remember saying that and being like. Heck yeah, Jess, look how far you've come, because I don't think Jessica and her marriage would've said that. I think I would've wanted to keep the peace.

I would've, you know, rather walked on eggshells than rocked the boat. But I was like, uh, this, I'm not doing this. This is, this is not the way things are gonna be, and I'm still proud of myself. I, it's really cool. In the book, actually, I talk about going to this place called Onsite, which is a therapeutic program. They have one outside of Nashville, one in California. And they say that six days at onsite is the equivalent of eight months of therapy. And for me that was really true and it was so transformative that I wanted to create something with onsite for readers of the book. And so everyone who reads the book gets a free five day course on disappointment that I filmed with the clinical director of Onsite.

So it's just an awesome additional gift for readers. But the clinical director said that when she read that part, she was on a plane and she was like, heck yeah. And so that made me feel like yes. See, like this was such a great demonstration of growth for me and, um, we all need to be our own advocates. So I was proud of myself in that moment.

Zibby: And that is so smart of you to partner with them because I was thinking, oh, what is this onsite? Like, this does sound interesting. I wish I had six days to, to work on myself and whatever. 

Jessica: So listen, I don't think any of us have six days, but it was so transformative. I'm so glad that I, I made that happen.

Zibby: Oh, that's just amazing. There's so many scenes that are relatable. One of which is that in the beginning you go around and you're talking to people and real about your situation, but also realizing that people are disappointed with so many things about their own lives. And it doesn't have to be a trauma.

It could just be, uh, I just, I wish my life had played out a little bit differently and I think. Now to your point of demographics, like you reach a certain age, and it's not to say we can't reinvent. I mean, you know, everything is, every day is new opportunity, but there are things you realize you're not gonna do.

Like maybe I'm not gonna go to India or whatever it is. That was on your bucket list. Yeah. And what, what do we do with that? Information and yet still wake up every day hopeful. Like what? How do you, and I know, yes, they can read your book and take those steps, and that's like the point of the book, but were you surprised by how many people felt disappointed in their lives or that they were willing to share that maybe deep down secret that they don't like to admit?

Jessica: So I've been writing this book for two years and then it's now been a year since I wrote it. So it's been three years of having conversations around the phrase, I thought it would be better than this. And I think the reason why the title resonates so much is because we all have a, this, every one of us.

We had imaginations for our lives that life would look a certain way, and that is just not the way life happens. And so I think what people should do if they're sitting with something is really start to unpack it. I talk about in the book about being a student of your situation, and so kind of turn it around almost like you have a ball and you're looking at it from all the different vantage points and unpack why am I disappointed? What is the thing? What brought me to this? You know, for me looking at my marriage, like why did I think that my marriage failed? Like why, why did I think that? I mean, I have three beautiful kids. We had a great relationship for a really long time. There's a a lot that was positive.

Well, I thought it failed because of the religious tradition that I was raised in, the way I saw family played out in my childhood and what I thought I was supposed to be like. There were some really deep rooted things and so I think if we first are curious about why we're here. That can help give us direction for where to go next.

It might not be that you go to India, but it might be that you decide to learn about India, that you find an Indian community in your city, and you do other things that tap that interest. If that, if that's the thing that, that you feel you're disappointed about, but I was really thoughtful in how can I make sure that this book is serving a, a broad range of people.

And so we did focus groups after the book was written where we had people read the first six or so chapters of the book to make sure that they found themselves in the pages of the book, that they could grab onto the exercises, that it made sense to them that it was interesting, that it was thought provoking, and universally the response was so positive that I really did feel like I was able to use my story to help other people no matter what their story was of their disappointment.

Zibby: Wait, go back to organizing focus groups around chapters of a book. 

Jessica: Yeah. 

Zibby: Uh, do you, did you do that for your past books and how do you even, how did you do that?

Jessica: I did not do it for my past books, but my first two books, the Fringe Hours and Stretch Too Thin. I did do surveys for research prior to writing the book where I got people's perspectives, so I was talking with another fellow author, her name's Lisa Hurst.

She's prolific writer. I think every one of her books has been on the New York Times, and something that she does for every one of her books is conduct focus groups to make sure that the content resonates with people. And she was talking to me about how it always gave her really great insight. She would change things from her book.

She would add things. She would take things out. And so I talked with a member of her team on how they did it, and I hired somebody to help me conduct the focus groups and just put it out on my social media and invited people to participate. And we sent them the chapters and they had just like a week to read them.

And then it was an hour long session and we did two of them and it was a Zoom call so we could see people's faces and we had questions specifically that we wanted to ask about certain parts of the book and people gave general feedback. It was absolutely amazing. I would recommend it to anyone writing a book to do focus groups if it makes sense for the content that you're writing.

It made a huge difference in the book and the edits and. What we added to it, things we moved around. It was fantastic. 

Zibby: That is so smart. 

You are so smart. 

I love it. Your, your marketing brain is just, you're, it's really, it's fun to watch. 

Jessica: Oh, thank you for saying that. 

Zibby: Can you go back to this whole living out loud thing?

Like, I, I was thinking, reading your book, like, gosh, I was not on social media when I got divorced, and I don't know how I would've ever handled that when so much was changing all the time and yet. Now I feel like part of connecting with your audience is sort of keeping everybody up to date on your emotional state in some way, shape, or form in your life.

How did you decide what to post, what not to post, when to tell everybody how much to let your following sort of into all of it. Like tell me more about that. It's interesting. 

Jessica: Social media makes us feel like we really know a person. We really know everything that's going on in their life, but it is like less than 1% I think for, for all of us, probably for me, regarding the divorce specifically, like I said, Matthew and I started this process in spring of 2019 and it was summer of 2020, so we had processed a lot before we invited people into our story. So it was very measured. There was a period of time where Matthew did not want to come out, that he just wanted to announce that we were getting divorced and didn't want to share that piece. And it was very, very important to me that he come out at the same time. I felt like to not do that was not being fair to either one of us. It was the reason why we were getting divorced. There's so much freedom that happens with truth telling that it was just something that I was pretty staunch on. And so he did agree and, and now would say that he is glad that he did, but that was something that was a point of contention for a little bit.

I also really try to not write things in real time. Meaning, most of the time you are not going to see something that's happening as it's happening in terms of any like emotional content that I put out. So obviously if Target goes 90% off, or Walmart's having a killer sale, you're gonna see that in real time, but you are not gonna see in real time if I am processing something really deep. If I'm gonna write a vulnerable post, it usually takes me days or weeks to write that, and that's because I want to make sure that I'm comfortable with what I'm about to share. Sometimes I even will have. A friend read the post and say, Hey, how does this land? So I'm very thoughtful and pragmatic about it, um, because I want to be able to help people.

I think it is the greatest privilege that my stories and experiences can be helpful and transformative for other people, but I don't want to do that at the risk of hurting myself or those that I love. So there is a lot of care in the manner that. I do it, and so far that has been good and wise and has served me really well.

But it is hard. It's hard to know that your. Most vulnerable content is the content that's gonna perform the best, and there's gonna be numbers associated with that. And it's weird for that to be even a thing, right? And, and how do you save, say it in a way that's gonna make people continue to read it or swipe on the carousel and, and all of those types of things and have it be like your actual life and your actual feelings.

And so I think adding space to it is one way that I do it to help care for myself and my needs in it. One other thing I'll say is that it's been interesting, you know, talking about this book because this happened to me five, six years ago, right? But I'm like reliving a lot of painful parts of my story, but I'm in a really different place.

And so I've even taken care in recording podcasts to have space after doing the podcast in case anything comes up in the interview that I'm feeling feelings about, you know? So I have gotten really good at listening to my body and what it needs. As well. 

Zibby: Wow. Well this is very inspiring, as is the book.

I'm,.. 

Jessica: Thank you. 

Zibby: Really, it's so great and it's gonna help so many people. I mean, how wonderful a gift is that? So, congratulations. 

Jessica: Thank you. 

Zibby: And I did not think the podcast would be better than this. I knew it would be great. So there you go. 

Jessica: Oh, you're so sweet. Well, I really hope it's a book that not only helps the readers, but that they are like, oh my gosh, this is something that I can give to my friend going through a hard time That that's, it's a book that is bought more than once, that people can trust what's in it and know that it's gonna be a safe place for people no matter what they're going through.

So I'm really excited about that. 

Zibby: Congratulations. Thanks, Zibby. Okay, thanks. 

Jessica: Bye. 

Zibby: Bye.