Through the process of writing the book, you said that you learned to become more empathetic toward some of your ex-boyfriends. I was inspired by writers who had done that themselves. Memoirs by Roxane Gay, Samantha Irby, or even Myriam Gurba really are startling, and they lift the curtain on what it feels like to be in a body in the world. … Also, the writing art that I really love does what I did. The number-one way was by living in the thought It will never be a book, so who cares? It’s not like my mom’s ever going to read this! When it was just a file on my computer, I could literally develop it with all the vulnerability necessary. How did you find the guts to put those vulnerabilities on the page? You detail your lifelong eating disorder, anxiety and depression, and sex life.

I just loved it, and it fed me in a way that my legal practice didn’t. It’s a selfserving, wonderful revision of history. It’s so easy now to look back and say I wrote this to help people and spread the word about group therapy. That’s because I was trying to teach myself how to write a novel, but I didn’t know how, so I started with the boundaries of the truth of what happened in my life and then it started taking on a life of its own. A lot of people have said it reads like a novel. I was going to practice, build some chops, and learn about the craft. I was writing to teach myself how to write.

When I started writing Group I didn’t think it was going to be a book.

Why did you want to put your group therapy experiences into a book? Editor-in-Chief Kristi Turnbaugh talked to Tate about the writing process, how to push through pain, and getting over imposter syndrome. The book-raw and sometimes shocking-details Tate’s recovery from loneliness and isolation to find a true and deep connection with others-and herself. Rosen discarded confidentiality,a key pillar of traditional psychotherapy, for full disclosure anything in group members’ lives could be revealed, discussed, and dissected inside and outside the therapy setting in the quest for understanding and healing. In Group, Tate details her seven-year journey through group therapy under the unorthodox direction of a Chicago psychotherapist she calls “Dr. That turning point opens her first book, the memoir Group: How One Therapist and a Circle of Strangers Saved My Life, which reached #4 on The New York Times Best Seller List in fall 2020 and was Reese Witherspoon’s Book Club pick for November 2020. It was late June 2001, and that week she’d received the news that she was ranked first in her Loyola law school class-a fact that sent her spiraling into darkness and desperation.

Through writing her best-selling memoir, Group, Christie Tate (JD ’03) finds herself-and her calling.Ĭhristie Tate drove around Chicago, wishing for death.

The group by christie tate