The Story She Swore She'd Never Tell

About This Episode

Andrea Leeb spent decades building a life that looked perfect from the outside: nurse, attorney, MFA graduate, happily married. Behind that picture was a secret she carried since she was four years old. In this deeply honest conversation, Andrea tells Mike about her debut memoir Such a Pretty Picture, which chronicles her survival of childhood sexual abuse at the hands of her father, her complicated relationship with the mother who looked away, and the long road to finding her voice.

She also talks about surviving the 2004 tsunami in Thailand, how the Me Too movement gave her the courage to finally write the story she'd sworn she'd never tell, and why healing is never a straight line. Andrea is donating all of her book royalties to the UCLA Rape Treatment Center and RAINN.

Key Takeaways

1. She survived a tsunami, and it changed everything. In 2004, Andrea and her husband survived the Christmas Day tsunami in Thailand. That brush with death made her realize she needed to stop treating writing as a hobby and start treating it as a calling.
2. She swore she'd never write this story. For years, Andrea outlined the book and then told herself no. She wrote fiction, essays, anything else. It wasn't until her father passed away in 2017, the same year the Me Too movement began, that she finally felt free to tell the truth.
3. Her mother caught the abuse and went blind. When Andrea was four and a half, her mother walked in on the abuse, screamed, passed out, and developed hysterical blindness for a month. Andrea blamed herself. Her mother never left her father.
4. Forgiveness and letting go aren't the same thing. Andrea never forgave her father, but she did let go of the anger, a distinction she says was essential to writing the book without creating monsters. She ultimately forgave her mother.
5. The title came from her editor, not from her. Andrea struggled with the title through every draft. Her publisher found a line in the book where Andrea's mother looks at a childhood photo and says, "Such a pretty picture," a perfect encapsulation of the beautiful surface hiding the chaos underneath.
6. Pretending works until it doesn't. Andrea kept her secret for decades and appeared fine, until a stranger touched her on the subway and she unraveled. Her message to survivors: you can heal, but you have to get help. Pretending won't make it go away.
7. She's giving away every dollar. All royalties from Such a Pretty Picture go to the UCLA Rape Treatment Center and RAINN. What started as a mission to help one person has grown into full-time advocacy, including board work and policy efforts.