Amy Griffin stopped by the Today show to discuss her memoir, The Tell.
Griffin’s book, published earlier this month by Dial Press, is her account of dealing with repressed childhood trauma with the help of MDMA-assisted therapy. A critic for Kirkus called the book, the latest selection for Oprah Winfrey’s book club, “an important, wholly believable account of how long-buried but profoundly formative experiences finally emerge.”
Today show co-host Jenna Bush Hager asked Griffin about a comment her daughter made to her, which eventually led to Griffin writing the book.
“It was that moment when my 10-year-old said to me, ‘Mom, I need you to participate in our life in a way that you’re not right now,’ and in that moment, she was parenting me,” Griffin said. “It was a wake-up call for me.…I leaned in that moment to say, ‘What is it [in] my life that I can’t let go of?’”
Hager asked what Griffin learned about her support system while investigating her childhood trauma and writing the book.
“I realized that the thing about this book was that I wrote [it] in the beginning for me,” she said. “I wrote it on the bathroom floor without recognizing that anyone would ever read my words.…Everything in my life, I’ve realized, is really about the relationships in my life. That’s why the book is both. It’s both the telling to myself, the telling to my loved ones, and how I can live with so much freedom on the other side of the telling.”
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
