Lindy goes West (part 1)

Y’all ready for this?

Buckle up and bring snacks, this is going to be an exciting road trip of an essay.

As you’ve seen if you are a regular here, I have been fascinated for some time by the following events detailed below, the discourse surrounding each of them, and how each thing and it’s discourse seem to speak to each other, about each other, and about all of this *gestures at everything in this society

*me - except they closed all the JoAnn’s so I can’t go get red yarn

Presented below in chronological order, the topics at hand:

Item 1 - Liz Gilbert’s newest memoir published in September 2025, All the Way to the River : love, loss, and liberation - which reveals and details Liz’s self proclaimed codependency and love addiction, her relationship with partner Rayya (who was an addict), and in which she admits to alarming behaviors including plotting to murder Rayya when her addiction was at extreme levels of toxicity, and enabling her throughout.

-Key pieces of detail surrounding this can be found here, here, and here.

Item 2 - Lindy West’s newest memoir published March 10th of this year, Adult Braces : driving myself sane - which details the author’s road trip across states during which she decides to accept the fact of her husband’s secret girlfriend as her girlfriend too and agrees to continuing the marriage and become polyamorous. A huge part of the surrounding conversation about this has happened from Lindy and her partners since publication, which fans and readers are again, reacting to. Their responses to the public’s response to the book have not helped readers and fans feel any better about that Lindy shared in the book. Specifically telling is their disapproval of a profile from Saachi Khoul for Slate, to which all three emailed responses.

-Key pieces of detail surrounding this one can be found here, here, and here.

*me again, pictured above, hi

Item 3 - The betrayal to rival all on Bravo’s hit show Summer House, involving four cast members (Amanda, West, Ciara, and Kyle), in which a marriage, a friendship, and an ex have all been destroyed. The long and short of this one is that the levels of betrayal are extensive, and ultimately involve a conversation about race and feminism and patriarchy (typical).

-Key pieces of detail about this one can be found here, here *I like this one for it’s brevity but feel like given what we know now, it is very safe to say that overlapping timelines in relationships and cheating is very much a part of the discussion for good reasons, and here.

Go read all those links, watch 10 seasons of Summer House, all of Winter House (3 seasons I think), read both those books, and meet me back here.

Thanks.

Ok, good job.

Now that you’ve done your homework, let me tell you my qualifications for even feeling like I have a place to speak on the three of these things:

1- First and foremost - I am a firm believe in being an educated hater. I read the books most prescient to this topic storm, and have been an original fan of Summer House, and Winter House, since their inception.

1a - Meaning - I read Lindy’s other books when they came out, I’ve watched Shrill, I’ve been paying attention to Liz Gilbert for a long while, found value in some of her content about creativity, read her other books as well.

2- When I say educated hater what I really mean is that my speaking in a critical way of these things comes from an informed place. I have done my homework for years. An engaged patron of all of it.

3- Lindy’s situation involves polyamory, learning to live in a body that you often don’t like and that society loudly hates, male centered behaviors from women, secret girlfriends, the devastation of choice after a betrayal in romance and perceived safety, and (among much more) the fact of bisexuality as part of the polyamorous arrangement. I can speak from a place of experience to those things.

3a-this may be a shock or surprise or just new information to some of you, but here it is - I am a bisexual woman that has had experiences, but not relationships, with women, and done a lot of thought and healing especially/specifically in this category.

I’ve been married to a man, I’ve gotten divorced from a man, I’ve deep dived into many things to figure out what I like and to what/whom I’m attracted.

I’ve hated my body and myself most of my life. It’s only the last 5 years-ish that I’ve come to a place of neutrality, bordering on positivity about it.

I have been the secret girlfriend (I didn’t know I was, to be clear), and I have observed the secret girlfriend of my supposedly monogamous boyfriend.

I knowingly have been one of two partners (until I found out there were more that were not aware of me, nor I of them, and upon finding out I immediately ended that entire thing because WTF dude), and the majority of my romantic relationships have ended from some level of betrayal and secrecy that I found out about and left because of. So, I feel like I have some perspective into some of the complicated and maybe rare-ish issues Lindy’s bringing to the table with this latest book.

I have done A LOT of work to de-center men from my life’s compass - as a former Mormon from birth with a dead dad, a step dad I don’t get along with, and being divorced, there was and is a lot to unpack…in addition to the shit slopped onto us from the patriarchal society we so deeply are entrenched in by design in this society.

4- Liz Gilbert’s memoir deals with the death of her partner Rayya, who Liz calls the greatest love of her life. Rayya is an addict who navigates intense substance abuse and addiction.

I have deeply loved people with intense addiction of several kinds, who were in various stages of recovery. I have strong feelings about how Liz speaks, acts, uses (yes, uses), and depicts those in addiction, their communities of support, and feel I have a bare minimum level of understanding paired some experience to stand in an informed place in this way as well.

5- The aforementioned creative and vast levels of betrayal from men also make me qualified in a way to discuss the Summer House debacle.

6- I am a white woman, and know by experience and witness, that nobody centers men and ruins their relationships (and lives) with other women for and because of men more than other white women (see also: my mother issues. lol).

As a group, it is a fair and rotten but accurate assumption that a white woman will protect nobody but herself, and if there is a man around with any semblance of power or control, it is highly likely that a white woman will screw you over in many different and creative and devious ways if that man asks her to or puts pressure to her to do so. We are not a safe demographic for anyone, unfortunately. And that’s a very important part of this conversation.

Yeesh, that was already a lot, I’m going to make this two parts.

Before I break for intermission here let me lay out my aims in writing this, which is several fold (and then I swear I will stop creating numbered lists in the meat of the thing) - goals being:

1- To highlight some of the conversation that is prevalent throughout these three pop culture-y issues - they are in conversation with each other.

2- To demonstrate how these things that seem frivolous are actually highly demonstrative of how we get to many of the dangerous problems impacting us today in politics and in culture and in societal understanding and how we relate to each other and individual people.

3- To examine some of the interpersonal relationships that appear progressive or avant-garde in healthy ways, and take a critical eye at those things because, are they actually as healthy and liberating as they proclaim to be?

4- To consider the why are people so upset about this shit and attempt my own answers for y’all.

5- To show how and why it in fact really is that serious.

Because it is.

We are a country engaging in multiple unjust wars, led by a monstrous former reality star president in a country that historically hates women, and makes the miserable parts of life, and even the normal sometimes ok parts, infinitely worse for Black women.

We are a culture that is self-centered, patriarchal, capitalistic to our demise, and are being overwhelmed with illiteracy of all types at every angle.

These three issues do in my opinion, give perspective to how and why our country, our nation, our “culture”, is so distorted, toxic, self-serving, and lacking of all substance.

In identifying why the Summer House betrayal is so devastating, it necessitates conversations of race, and how white women dispose so easily of friends, doubly fast if they’re Black friends, in pursuit of a man, and how dangerous those women are who go from one man’s shadow to the shadow of the next, uncaring of the carnage in the meanwhile.

In understanding why Lindy’s readership is concerned for her and examining the backlash Lindy and her partners have engaged in regarding an entirely voluntary memoir she published, we see how difficult it is to both support people who proclaim their happiness, and figure out how to warn them of the danger we validly see from their own detailed and specific chosen words about the state of things. We also see the way that women - even those who have led us in feminist endeavors - still to this day seek to be accommodating to men, in a way to be of value to those men, and thus, to a patriarchal system.

In examining the way Liz talks about and admits to monstrous things, uses her relationship with the love of her heart through the crusts of the earth (her words paraphrased by me) as the major, but not sole, plot point in her memoir of self-centered honesty, we get a front row master class of opportunity to examine how easily people mistake devastating honesty for accountability, and a desire to nullify consequences with “radical transparency” - it is not the same thing and does nothing to heal or repair.

The problem is that we are so quick paced and certain of our own point of view’s supremacy.

Determined that because we are each our own main character that means we are THE main character.

Forgetting that our behavior touches people.

Our choices impact people.

Forgetting that words have meaning and don’t just evaporate into fuzzy temporary pieces of nostalgic collages without weight to them. Same to our actions.

At the heart of our culture’s problems, and at the heart of these three pop culture episodes of craterous catastrophe is an abandonment of meaning*.

*in my opinion.

Love is detached from its meaning.

Or Lindy’s partners, and Liz, and Amanda would move differently in their respective situations.

In part 2, I will show you how and why I came to these conclusions.

We’ll go through all the red yarn string connections of each situation and why it matters.

Pop culture is important even if it’s not something you care about or engage in.

Smart people watch reality TV and bring a critical lens to memoir reading.

Also - I know the solve to all three of these things, and it is:

INTERSECTIONAL FEMINISM, MY BITCHES!!

Seriously.

That’s the solution.

If these women had engaged in the intersectional feminism of it all, there would’ve been some edits in behavior, and all of this would’ve turned out differently, and for the better.

Go read Hood Feminism: notes from the women that a movement forgot, by Mikki Kendall, and come meet me back here soon to discuss the next piece of this pie.

Love you, be good,

Marian