Hi, friends! How are you?
First, I have something to tell you…
I have been jealous of Bess for YEARS
THERE, I DID IT! I SAID THE THING WOMEN ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO SAY! Here’s why I was jealous: Bess and I went to the same college but went two different paths. I was too scared to become a comedy writer (don’t they pay you in soup cans?) and instead built a career at Comedy Central.
Meanwhile, Bess skyrocketed within the comedy world. She did it all: Jimmy Kimmel Live, best-selling books, even testifying in front of Congress about book banning…I mean, get yourself a writer who can do it all. From my perspective, she was living a lot of the dreams I’d been too afraid to chase myself.
And that’s exactly why I wanted her on my show, A Little Thing That Helps, where I interview people who MADE IT about a struggle they went through and the tools that helped them get through it. Hearing these stories really helps me feel less alone and less of a f*ck up in addition to learning amazing tools.
I asked Bess to tell me a story of when everything looked good on the outside, but she was struggling on the inside, and I had no idea her story would be so moving…
Being on stage, literally accepting an award, while your body rebels against you
Bess, it turns out, while she was crushing it in her career, was also living with an autoimmune disease that flares under stress and that seriously affected her life. This illness required injections and caused so much discomfort on top of “prednisone moon face,” a condition where your face becomes swollen due to steroids. SO OF COURSE, this was the moment, mid-flare, that she won a Writers Guild Award in 2017, and had to get on stage. “That was me having an autoimmune response on the inside,” she said, “while literally holding a trophy on the outside.”
A brilliant line - and I think one that will resonate no matter what career you’re in.
If you enjoy learning how Bess Kalb, Jeff Tweedy, and other folks who “made it” get through the hard stuff, subscribe to The Good Life. I’ll never spam ya and I’ll always love ya.
Comedy as a metabolic function
When I asked Bess what tools she uses to cope with that kind of pressure - dealing with a literal chronic illness flare while accepting an award is not for the faint of heart - she told me a story about her parents, both doctors working on the edges of life and death. I’m talking SUPER high-stakes jobs.
She told me comedy was never just a career for her, it was how her whole family survived and processed after her parents’ long days. “It became a liver,” she told me. “It became a metabolic function to be able to take sorrow and take reality and put it into this filtration system that had a sort of happy byproduct.”
This makes my little comedy-loving heart so happy.
A little thing I’m taking with me…
Laughter gives us so much, even during the hardest and darkest of times. Comedy has been my toolbox for coping,” Bess told me, and it was the reminder I needed. If you can find a way to laugh, even when life is almost too terrible to bear, you’re doing okay.
The whole (short) conversation is up now, and if you are interested in how the comedy industry works, how Bess has overcome her struggles, and why she stans for Raisinets, you must watch it.
Bess called comedy a liver: a filtration system that takes sorrow and reality and turns it into a happy byproduct. That’s the best description I’ve ever heard of what I try to do every Friday, when I write an essay about my messiest true stories (the epically bad breakup, the rejected chapter, the year everything looked fine and wasn’t) and filter them into something you can laugh at and actually use. If your liver could use backup, come join us.
