Author Sarah LaBrie joins Zibby to discuss her spellbinding, harrowing new memoir, NO ONE GETS TO FALL APART. Sarah shares how a period of profound pain and self-discovery led her to come to terms with her mother’s schizophrenia, find therapeutic resources, and start crafting this book. She reflects on her childhood, which was marked by an all-consuming closeness to her mom, and then touches on her complicated feelings about her white partner. She and Zibby discuss the importance of openness and authenticity in memoirs— and their role in offering solidarity and connecting with readers who may feel isolated by similar experiences.

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome, Sarah. Thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss No One Gets to Fall Apart, a memoir.

Congratulations. 

Sarah: Thank you so much. It's great to be here. 

Zibby: Oh my gosh. I loved this book. I loved everything about it. I loved how you wrestle with taking care of your mom, mental illness, like how you are pursuing your own dreams at the same time, trying to write, trying to cope. I mean, it's basically life, right?

It's just life In a book of how do we break together all of these parts of ourself and get through the day and take care of the people we love, right? I don't know. 

Sarah: Yeah. Thank you so much for saying that. That's a great way to pitch the book. I, I'm going to maybe steal that going forward because I, I still don't feel like I've nailed it.

Zibby: I mean, what do you, when you sat down to write the book, like, did you say like, this is about, like, what did you say to yourself? I'm going to write a book about blah or what happened? take us back. 

Sarah: So I had been writing a novel for like five or six years about time travel and The multiverse and I was, it was sort of expansive and yeah, I, it started as my grad school thesis and it just kind of, it took me really far and then at a certain point it just kind of hit a wall and,.. 

Zibby: And by the way, you write all about that in the book, which is great, which I love.

I mean, I really love it. I'm so glad you put all that in. So anyway, keep going. 

Sarah: Yeah, I, I, it sort of hit a wall and I realized way too late that it, it was not really a viable product, project. And around that same time, my mom had a psychotic breakdown, my closest friend decided she didn't want to be friends with me anymore.

Zibby: That was also terrible. 

Sarah: Yeah, it was just sort of this like black hole of pain and I was like, okay, I gotta just right my way through this, you know? And I think because I had put so much into the novel, when I then switched to the memoir, It just kind of came out of me. It was just sort of the opposite experience of trying to write the novel.

I just, and it's not, you know, so that first draft I wrote really quickly, it wasn't a book at that time, but like, I understood that, okay, this could maybe be something and I showed it to my agent and I was trying to say it was also a novel and she was like, it's not a novel. This is a memoir. And so I just sort of refashioned it with that in mind.

And, you know, I rewrote it for, what do I want to say? Why? Four years before it got sold. Yeah, two years before I ended up signing with a different agent and then four years later it 

Zibby: Oh my gosh Your relationship with your mom is at the heart of the book watching her mental illness. How do you handle it?

How do you distance yourself and have your own life and yet? Make sure she's okay. And yet I mean there were just so many threads and complications, and how do you see your relationship with her, sort of, as it unfolded? Like, what do you, and how do you feel having it all out there? 

Sarah: There's a moment in the book where I go to this therapist and she's trying to help me understand that my mom and I are not the same person and she kind of takes her hands in there together and then she spreads them apart and I can sort of feel it in my body because my mom raised me alone, she had me when she was 20, so the whole, my whole life we've been so sort of enmeshed for better or for worse and, and that, that even now it feels like anything that happens to her happens to me and so I felt like This story is happening to both of us and we're getting through it together and we're coming out, we're trying to come out on the other side whole together and that's very much still how I feel.

I think I'm more conscious of feeling that way and able to sort of question it. Even, yeah, I kind of push back against that sometimes when I need to, which like, thank God, because I don't think it's super psychologically healthy to feel that way about your mother, but I do still feel very, very close to her, as I did even in those years when we weren't speaking.

And in terms of having it out there, I feel, you know, my family has read the book, my grandmother, my aunt, my mom is aware of it, and they love me, and they want, they want me to be happy. I feel like that's The question for them is always just like, you know, what, what can you do to feel like your life is worthwhile and valuable and what can we do to support that?

So that's, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to write the book, you know, if I didn't have their support. 

Zibby: Oh my gosh. Well, it's one thing to, you know, put it out in a book and in your head think, okay, this is in bookstores and people are going to read this and whatever. But it's another like, as you meet people, you know, we all make these decisions quickly.

Like, what am I going to share? What am I not going to share? What do they think about me? Well, I better keep this aside for now. And like, you know, like all of that, but when you put it out publicly, there's, you don't get that luxury anymore of like, Maybe I won't share this piece. Like, no, it's out there.

Sarah: I've been struggling with that. That question, I'm sort of, I felt so empowered in writing the book, because I was like, this is my version of a story that happened to a lot of people, but this is my version, and I get to decide how this version exists in the world. And then my friend, Alice Carrier, who wrote this amazing book.

Zibby: Love her book. Yes. Oh my gosh. 

Sarah: We have a mutual friend who actually had connected us because she kind of went through all of this with her memoir about dissociative disorder, it's Everything Nothing Someone, I think it's called. Or Everything No One Someone. 

Zibby: It's Everything Nothing Someone. A memoir.

Sarah: Everything Nothing Carrier. 

Zibby: Everything Nothing Someone. Okay. There we go. 

Sarah: I did tell everyone I know to read it. I think it's so good. But it's this incredible memoir about her, like, her family, her mom was this famous artist, and her dad was this famous French actor, and Alice, growing up, sort of had this incredible luxury, in terms of privilege, but was extremely lonely, and developed dissociative disorder, and she wrote about it in this, like, incredibly beautiful, personal way, and she was like, you need to be ready for this to not be your story anymore, and even though you, you think that it is, once it goes out in the world, it's blocked, and that's, That, that is sort of what is slowly starting to happen, which honestly was scary to hear but isn't actually that bad because I love it when people DM me or whatever and say this has happened to me, I'm, you know, this is my story and it's I haven't talked about it because I don't know how or I didn't have the language like that.

That is why I wrote the book. I mean, I'll just say before this, you know, I have an MFA in fiction. I had studied under Zadie Smith and Jonathan Safran Foer and Laurie Moore and all these like incredible teachers who I'd grown up reading and just deeply, deeply admired. And I thought that was going to be my path.

You know, I was really trying very hard to be In the New Yorker, the Paris Review, like I went to Yaddo, like I was kind of, I was like a little bit snobby about it, I'll say, and um, then all of this happened, and I was just so like thrust into reality, I couldn't exist in that, the fictional world of my novel anymore, and I couldn't exist in the world of fiction at all anymore, it's just, I was just here, and this was real, and what was happening to my mom was real, and that, I think really, I think really informs the book, and the way it was written, and, also the point of the book's existence.

I don't want to exist on sort of a separate plane from people. I want, I want this to be a conversation. I want people to respond to it. I want to be, I want to stay in the world, you know? And yeah. 

Zibby: I love that. I love even hearing what you said about people DMing you. And I feel like that's the role of, of so much of why people write and why people share stories at all.

It's to help the people who want to take the steps and don't know how. And that's so powerful. That's how we all lead each other through the world. I mean, it seems so obvious, but,..

Sarah: But it's not, you know, especially now I think we're in this moment where everybody does feel very separate and it's so easy to like, just feel like that more and more every day.

And I don't know what I've been trying to do is really get out in the sort of physical world too. I'm, you know, my like, go see my friends, go to their events and invite people over and, and talk. And that I have found is incredibly healing. And I'm hoping that like, This book can also form the, form the basis for, you know, actual and real life conversations and figuring out ways to sort of talk about what's happening to you, to other people in your own life.

Even if, even if people aren't talking to me, like I want people to feel like, oh, I can tell my story, like something terrible happened to me and it was traumatic, but I came out on the other side and this is what I learned. And it worked. And it was nuanced, complicated, and all of the good and all of the bad matters, too.

Zibby: But why, you know, I was particularly struck when you were writing and rewriting and rewriting and rewriting. Your book, The Anatomy Book, is that what it's called? The Anatomy Book, sorry. The Anatomy Book. Like, that you, for years, would not give up on the project, right? You were so committed, even after you would, like, your agent was like, yes, and then your agent was like, actually, wait, no, it's not ready.

And I was like, oh, that like, hurts my heart to read this scene. Oh, that, I feel that pain of, um, you know, now what do you do with this manuscript? But anyway, like, why? Do you feel that you are someone who does not give up on these projects? Like, what is it about you specifically or that project specifically or, or what?

Because others might set it aside or say, okay, I tried this for a year and I'm not going to do it. Like, what do you think it is? 

Sarah: I didn't have a plan B. I just sort of. 

Zibby: So the answer is desperation. 

Sarah: Yeah. Exactly. Like fear. I had really taken to heart some advice I got at some point that was like, yeah, don't.

I think it was from Jenny Awful. It was just like, don't have a backup plan because if you have a backup plan you'll take it. And I, I guess I heard that young enough and at a time in my life where I was like, okay I just won't have a backup plan. Which I don't really recommend, like have a backup plan.

But it did, it did work out in that I, I had kept my expenses really low, like I kept my social circles small, like I really was kind of living this very monastic kind of ascetic life to that that was entirely organized. around this novel that was like the star, like the sun in my universe. So I just, once I lost hold of it or losing hold of it, felt like losing any sense of gravity.

Like I didn't have anything else to organize my being around. 

Zibby: Well, that was a beautiful way to say it. There you go. Using that MFA.

I like that. Not having a backup plan. Well, you also shared a lot in the book about your relationship. How does he feel about this? How did you decide what to include, what not to include? And you know, what did writing about your relationship, how did that help you sort of navigate it? 

Sarah: It's so interesting.

I, I feel like, so if you, if you read the book, you know, my husband, Ethan, I let him choose his own pseudonym. is kind of all over it on every page and I do think maybe a lot of people's partners would be a little bit hesitant because we kind of get into it like that the stuff that's not great like about our relationship that but he read every single draft and then like a week before it was due I had the manuscript printed out on our coffee table.

And I, like, went out to walk the dog and I came back and he was, like, copy editing it. Like, he picked it up and was, like, doing line edits because he was so in the habit of reading and rereading and rereading this book and everything I wrote. And then he ended up making it so much better. He just, like, kind of kept, he was, he really, it was really, really important to him that this was the book that I wanted it to be.

And I think, I, you know, if he had changes that he wanted to make, like, of course I'm going to respect that, like I did with this book. Pretty much everyone in the book who, who asked, I offered to almost everybody who has sort of a main part in the book and, and we had those conversations, but for him, it was really just like, how can we make this the absolute best manuscript that can exist?

Zibby: That's so nice. How great. Could have gone another way. 

Sarah: He's a really nice person. 

Zibby: Yeah, I know. I could tell. I mean, it's very clear that he's a very nice person, um, which is wonderful. It's like a gift to be able to almost, to, to pause time, right, and, and sort through feelings and put them out there. in the middle of life, right?

It's like, you know, there was an episode of some show I watched like as a kid, like happy days or I don't know, something like this is really dating myself, but they were able to freeze frame. Like they stopped it and they were all on the beach. So maybe it wasn't happy. I don't know. It doesn't matter. And so everything was frozen except the one person who could like walk around.

And I kind of feel like that's. this memoir, right? Like, you can freeze time and just, you get to wander around and analyze and put it all back together and then you get to go back in your life. Zoom! Like, the action goes on and yet we have this to remember that moment. 

Sarah: Thank you so much for saying that.

It does, it, it does feel like a gift. I'm really, really grateful that all, that this came out of all of that. I, the fact that, first of all, that I was able to, to write it and then I was edited so carefully and thoughtfully at Harper, and You know, just the fact that the response has been so incredibly welcoming and kind from readers and the support that I've gotten from my publisher, like it, it feels, yeah, this book was written with a lot of, a lot of pain, but also a lot of love.

And I do feel like that, that hopefully will come through and be something that the reader is able to enjoy. Hold on to you. 

Zibby: I love that. I love it. There are other people, as you said, who have been DMing you and out in the world and listening who have someone that they love with mental illness of some kind.

Not that you are supposed to be any sort of expert on this, just because this is your lived experience, but are there things that you wish you had known? 

Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. And I get, yeah, I'm definitely not an expert. I'm just writing about myself, but I didn't know about the National Alliance on Mental Illness at first.

a resource that's free that offers support groups and classes for how to live with and care for a mentally ill loved one. That, that was probably the biggest thing. And also just that it exists. You know, when my mom started calling me and saying she thought airplanes were watching her from the sky, my immediate thought was, is she joking?

Like, or, you know, or this isn't, this isn't really happening. I didn't know what the symptoms of psychosis are. There's so much sort of. There's like a black box around it, I think, because people are afraid of it, because it feels so undefeatable, I guess. I think once you lose hold of reality, it just feels like, well, how do you, how do you get back to it?

So people just don't talk about it. So it's really just, yeah, I wish I had known this was a thing. I wish I had known about the resources available. There's like so many incredible books out there about, not only about mental illness, but also about like trauma related to mental illness, the trauma that causes mental illness, and I was really lucky actually because Once I did find my way to like being able to talk about it My father in law is an expert developmental developmental psychologist So he kind of is in this world and he invited invited me to a trauma conference in san diego and I met Dr.

Pam cantor who's a psychiatrist who brought me into this world of dan siegel and bruce perry and these sort of incredible Psychiatrists who who write all about this and so Thank God for that. If I hadn't found those books, I don't know. This book, No One Gets to Fall Apart, definitely wouldn't exist, and I have no idea where I would be.

Zibby: That's amazing. Do you still want to write, like, the Great American Novel? 

Sarah: No. I think, like, I'm kind of going back and forth. I don't think I will go back to fiction right now. It just, right now does not feel like the time for it for me, even though I still love reading it. But I've got Two kind of ideas bubbling up.

I'm trying to decide which one to pursue. 

Zibby: And how much brain space do you spend or allocate to worrying, like, will this happen to me?

Sarah: I have had to decide not to let that be the thing that drives me crazy, right? Like worrying about having a psychotic break being the thing that actually makes me crazy. I can't, I, you can't live like that. You gotta just. I, you just have to hope and live and understand that if it does happen, it's, it's, you know, my aunt says to me in the book, like, it's not a death sentence.

People live with, uh, schizophrenia all, all the time. People have careers and lives and children. It's just a matter of, of having a safety net and, and taking medication. You do have to take the medication, unfortunately. And my mom refused to do that for a long, and that was, was scary. 

Zibby: Wow. Okay. Any last advice to someone trying to write their own memoir?

Sarah: You have to want it so badly. Like, it has to be the thing that you want. You can't kind of casually want to be a writer. And I do kind of think, oh my god, I was talking about this with my friend who runs a trend forecasting newsletter yesterday, but we're in this moment where everything feels so scattered and fractured.

And I'm talking about like the media landscape, not just society, it just, you can't even. Subscribe to the right friggin, I don't know, like streaming service to watch whatever show you want to watch, like everything just feels so impossible and like there, there's not, we're kind of not in a moment where it feels like that stuff is going to get consolidated in a way that makes sense.

So we as writers, I think, have a moral obligation to kind of uphold the standards and quality and point of writing, which is like, not only to create well, I think, well crafted work with a lot of thought in it, but also like, to be writing for, for readers and to have those readers kind of form a community with you around your book.

I feel like those strongholds of community are gone. So I think just because those feel like they've kind of dissipated doesn't mean that we're abdicated of the responsibility to write the best possible books And, you know, which is just to say, like, you have to want it and you have to put in the work.

Zibby: Amazing. 

Sarah: Did that make sense? I don't know if that made sense. 

Zibby: It all gets in there. Into the mix of advice and inspiration and, and all of that. But I think what you said, I mean, you have to need to do that. Like you can't, it's not like something that is just fun. It's a calling. You have to tell the story before you can move on.

Sarah: Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. You have to be doing it. Yes. That's perfect. I couldn't, I could not say it better. Yes. 

Zibby: Okay. I'll just interview myself. It's fine. 

Sarah: You're so efficient. You're so efficient. 

Zibby: Sarah, congratulations. No one gets to fall apart. Well done. Thank you for sharing so intimately your story, your family, your relationship, yourself, and you know, this is, this is the greatest role model.

Just put it out there. Let's see what happens. 

Sarah: Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. And thank you for all your support. It really, it really means a lot. 

Zibby: No problem. Okay. All right. Thank you. Bye. Bye. 

Sarah: Bye.