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Episode 648 – Sacha Mardou
Virtual Memories Show 648:
Sacha Mardou
“Going inside is how we get better, and how we get better at being human.”
With PAST TENSE: Facing Family Secrets and Finding Myself In Therapy (Avery), cartoonist Sacha Mardou brings us a phenomenal graphic memoir about the midlife process of overcoming lifelong traumas and anxiety. We talk about her decision to to make her therapy process (& sessions) public, first as online comics and then as a Past Tense, the benefits of the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model, what it took to violate the English stiff upper lip and admit that she had problems and needed therapy, and her mother’s Jehovah Witness conversion and how she’s still sifting through the damage of that. We get into how therapy changed her relationship to her daughter, why corniness is no reason to avoid addressing/admitting one’s inner child (and the work I needed to do to truly appreciate Past Tense), the strong, supportive and sympathetic public response to her online therapy comics and how she wound up going back to her therapist to deal with the shame-cycle of that, and how her families (and therapists) feel about seeing themselves in the book. We also discuss Sacha’s indy comics upbringing, her marriage to fellow cartoonist Ted May and whether that means her daughter has any hope for a non-cartooning career, how she feels like her art is always catching up to her writing, how we feel about Gen X getting overlooked, her Doris Lessing binge during perimenopause, why we need to turn up the bonobo turn down the chimp, and a lot more. Give it a listen! And go read PAST TENSE!
“Deciding to make this book was part of what ended up in the story: how — or WHY — do you turn your very personal therapeutic healing into something public?”
“My family story is like a soap opera, so to connect all those threads I felt like it was important for the artwork to be simple and tell the story as cleanly as possible.”
“The hope is there’s something universal; mine isn’t the only family that lived through war, or had incest and sexual assault happen. I’ve tried to show these things in terms of healing and how it took time for the story to unfold and for me to reclaim those pieces and heal.”
“I keep wondering when I’m going to run out of emotional things to talk about, but it hasn’t happened yet.”
Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes!
Lots of ways to follow The Virtual Memories Show! iTunes, Spotify, BlueSky, Instagram, YouTube, Tumblr, and good ol’ RSS!
About our Guest
Sacha Mardou studied English Literature at the University of Wales and started making comics in the late 1990s. Her previous work includes the serially-released graphic novel Sky in Stereo, which was Ignatz-nominated (Best Series 2014), named an Outstanding Comic of 2015 (The Village Voice) and shortlisted for the Slate Studio Award (2016). Her online therapy comics have been featured in The Huffington Post and Bored Panda. Since 2005, she has been a resident of St Louis, Missouri, where she lives with her cartoonist husband, Ted May, their daughter, and two disruptive cats.
Follow Sacha on Instagram, Facebook and Bluesky, and check out her Patreon and Etsy.
Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded remotely via Zencastr. I used a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4. All processing and editing done in Adobe Audition CC. Photo of Sacha by someone else. It’s on my instagram.
View all episodes
Virtual Memories Show 648:
Sacha Mardou
“Going inside is how we get better, and how we get better at being human.”
With PAST TENSE: Facing Family Secrets and Finding Myself In Therapy (Avery), cartoonist Sacha Mardou brings us a phenomenal graphic memoir about the midlife process of overcoming lifelong traumas and anxiety. We talk about her decision to to make her therapy process (& sessions) public, first as online comics and then as a Past Tense, the benefits of the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model, what it took to violate the English stiff upper lip and admit that she had problems and needed therapy, and her mother’s Jehovah Witness conversion and how she’s still sifting through the damage of that. We get into how therapy changed her relationship to her daughter, why corniness is no reason to avoid addressing/admitting one’s inner child (and the work I needed to do to truly appreciate Past Tense), the strong, supportive and sympathetic public response to her online therapy comics and how she wound up going back to her therapist to deal with the shame-cycle of that, and how her families (and therapists) feel about seeing themselves in the book. We also discuss Sacha’s indy comics upbringing, her marriage to fellow cartoonist Ted May and whether that means her daughter has any hope for a non-cartooning career, how she feels like her art is always catching up to her writing, how we feel about Gen X getting overlooked, her Doris Lessing binge during perimenopause, why we need to turn up the bonobo turn down the chimp, and a lot more. Give it a listen! And go read PAST TENSE!
“Deciding to make this book was part of what ended up in the story: how — or WHY — do you turn your very personal therapeutic healing into something public?”
“My family story is like a soap opera, so to connect all those threads I felt like it was important for the artwork to be simple and tell the story as cleanly as possible.”
“The hope is there’s something universal; mine isn’t the only family that lived through war, or had incest and sexual assault happen. I’ve tried to show these things in terms of healing and how it took time for the story to unfold and for me to reclaim those pieces and heal.”
“I keep wondering when I’m going to run out of emotional things to talk about, but it hasn’t happened yet.”
Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes!
Lots of ways to follow The Virtual Memories Show! iTunes, Spotify, BlueSky, Instagram, YouTube, Tumblr, and good ol’ RSS!
About our Guest
Sacha Mardou studied English Literature at the University of Wales and started making comics in the late 1990s. Her previous work includes the serially-released graphic novel Sky in Stereo, which was Ignatz-nominated (Best Series 2014), named an Outstanding Comic of 2015 (The Village Voice) and shortlisted for the Slate Studio Award (2016). Her online therapy comics have been featured in The Huffington Post and Bored Panda. Since 2005, she has been a resident of St Louis, Missouri, where she lives with her cartoonist husband, Ted May, their daughter, and two disruptive cats.
Follow Sacha on Instagram, Facebook and Bluesky, and check out her Patreon and Etsy.
Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded remotely via Zencastr. I used a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4. All processing and editing done in Adobe Audition CC. Photo of Sacha by someone else. It’s on my instagram.