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, and a lot more. Follow Sacha on Instagram, Facebook and Bluesky, and check out her Patreon and Etsy • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe, Patreon, or Paypal, and subscribe to our e-newsletter