Christie Tate is a Chicago-based writer and essayist. She has been published in The New York Times (Modern Love), The Rumpus, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Eastern Iowa Review, and elsewhere. Kiese Laymon selected her essay, Promised Lands, as the winner of the New Ohio Review’s nonfiction contest, which was published Fall 2019.
10/23/20 Christie Tate author of “Group”
FROM OUR INTERVIEW
Lisa Niver:
Good morning. This is Lisa Niver from We Said Go Travel and I’m so honored and excited to be speaking today with New York Times Best Selling Author and Reese’s Book Club author, Christie Tate. Hello.
Christie Tate:
Hi. I’m so happy to be here. Thank you for having me.
Lisa Niver:
Oh, my goodness, it is such an honor. I have loved both your books so, so much and I would love if you could talk a little bit to my audience about Group because I just loved how you shared what an incredible process it is to be in group therapy and how challenging it is, and just all the questions that came up for you. So, tell people about how did that happen that you wrote a whole book about how strangers saved your life in therapy.
Christie Tate:
I wrote Group over the period of five years and I knew I was going to write about it when I had originally gone to therapy because I was very, very lonely and I was very, very concerned that I was going to die alone, The way that I talk about it — I want a boyfriend, but what I was trying to say is I want a life, I want a family, I want people to be close to me but I was scared and I didn’t know how, and I didn’t have a lot of money. And I was a law student and I ended up in group therapy for two main reasons.
One was a good friend of mine had changed and I saw a light go on in her eyes and I thought– what is it? And she said, it’s my therapist, I do group. And I was like, ewe, group. And then she told me the price and group is–because you share the circle with other people and divide up the time– it was a lot cheaper and that appealed to my budget. And when I got there the therapist told me, if you want to work on relationships, if you want to build up intimacy, if you want to change your life, group is the way to do it, and he was so sure and so confident, and I was the opposite of that. I was buying single funeral plots and I was 27 years old.
I decided to hear the call and I did originally think– I’ll do this for a year and then when I become a lawyer and make the big bucks then I’ll go get a real therapist and do real therapy, but it turned out I understood how potent it was within the first three months and I stuck around, and my life changed dramatically and I could see the arc of what it had done to me.
It reminded me, this is a very audacious claim, but Cheryl Strayed’s Wild, her life changed as she walked the Pacific Crest Trail. It changed, she mourned, she grieved, she learned, she met herself out there, and that’s what happened to me in therapy except I just went back and forth to this little office in downtown Chicago, back and forth to therapy, and I thought, maybe someone else would like to know that this is possible, and that’s why I wrote the book.
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So here we are, stuck with just a few bad options to consider. And that’s just the political superposition of undetermined future – alongside it there’s also the possible – probable? – war with Iran.
At a time when Jewish education is competing for attention in a world dominated by screens, sports, short-form videos and endless streams of content, these easily collectable cards offer a different kind of engagement.
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In the diaspora and in Israel, we cannot turn back the clock and undo the harm that was done to us. But we can shape our own future. Israel is strong and resolute. So must we be.
Democrats who were long considered “moderates” or even pro-Israel have been signaling over the course of the last year that they can no longer be relied upon to back a Jewish state under assault by Iran and its terrorist proxies.
The Torah offers a comforting view of a life beyond this life. We aren’t told what it will be exactly — yes, it’s abstract and vague — but we are told it’s waiting for us as it was for Abraham.
More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.
Christie Tate on how to be your own B.F.F!
Lisa Ellen Niver
Thank you Christie Tate for joining me on my podcast!
https://youtu.be/mj17eYWiNT8
Learn how to be your own B.F.F. -A Memoir of Friendship Lost and Found from Christie Tate! I also loved her first book, GROUP, you can read about it here.
Christie Tate is a Chicago-based writer and essayist. She has been published in The New York Times (Modern Love), The Rumpus, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Eastern Iowa Review, and elsewhere. Kiese Laymon selected her essay, Promised Lands, as the winner of the New Ohio Review’s nonfiction contest, which was published Fall 2019.
FROM OUR INTERVIEW
Lisa Niver:
Good morning. This is Lisa Niver from We Said Go Travel and I’m so honored and excited to be speaking today with New York Times Best Selling Author and Reese’s Book Club author, Christie Tate. Hello.
Christie Tate:
Hi. I’m so happy to be here. Thank you for having me.
Lisa Niver:
Oh, my goodness, it is such an honor. I have loved both your books so, so much and I would love if you could talk a little bit to my audience about Group because I just loved how you shared what an incredible process it is to be in group therapy and how challenging it is, and just all the questions that came up for you. So, tell people about how did that happen that you wrote a whole book about how strangers saved your life in therapy.
Christie Tate:
I wrote Group over the period of five years and I knew I was going to write about it when I had originally gone to therapy because I was very, very lonely and I was very, very concerned that I was going to die alone, The way that I talk about it — I want a boyfriend, but what I was trying to say is I want a life, I want a family, I want people to be close to me but I was scared and I didn’t know how, and I didn’t have a lot of money. And I was a law student and I ended up in group therapy for two main reasons.
One was a good friend of mine had changed and I saw a light go on in her eyes and I thought– what is it? And she said, it’s my therapist, I do group. And I was like, ewe, group. And then she told me the price and group is–because you share the circle with other people and divide up the time– it was a lot cheaper and that appealed to my budget. And when I got there the therapist told me, if you want to work on relationships, if you want to build up intimacy, if you want to change your life, group is the way to do it, and he was so sure and so confident, and I was the opposite of that. I was buying single funeral plots and I was 27 years old.
I decided to hear the call and I did originally think– I’ll do this for a year and then when I become a lawyer and make the big bucks then I’ll go get a real therapist and do real therapy, but it turned out I understood how potent it was within the first three months and I stuck around, and my life changed dramatically and I could see the arc of what it had done to me.
It reminded me, this is a very audacious claim, but Cheryl Strayed’s Wild, her life changed as she walked the Pacific Crest Trail. It changed, she mourned, she grieved, she learned, she met herself out there, and that’s what happened to me in therapy except I just went back and forth to this little office in downtown Chicago, back and forth to therapy, and I thought, maybe someone else would like to know that this is possible, and that’s why I wrote the book.
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