Chelsea Handler details brother’s death in book

Are you there, world? It’s her, Chelsea.

Comedian Chelsea Handler has written about intimate topics like one-night stands, but her first memoir, “Life Will Be the Death of Me: ... and you too!” (Spiegel & Grau, 256 pp.) is her most revelatory yet. In the book, out now, she opens the door to epiphanic therapy sessions, details the impact of her brother’s unexpected death and addresses her personal shortcomings.

“I didn’t want to write a book until I had something really to say, because I felt like I had been getting away with murder with my career for so long that it was time to pony up and actually do something of import,” Handler, 44, tells USA TODAY.

“This is the most real that I could get.”

Handler sought out psychiatrist Dr. Dan Siegel, featured on her Netflix series “Chelsea” (2016-2017), after becoming enraged following the 2016 presidential election. After a few sessions, Handler realized how helpful Siegel could be.

“I thought I could go through life without ever having gone to therapy,” she says. “Like, I’m tougher than that, I’m smarter than that. I don’t have to visit my childhood stuff.

“It turned out, the election represented to me the world being unhinged, which was exactly what happened to me when my brother died when I was 9 years old. He told me he’d come back, and he said he’d never leave me with these people, referring to my parents ... and he was just going hiking and that I would always have him, and he never came back.”

Handler’s brother Chet, the eldest of six kids, fell and died while on a hiking trip in 1984. Despite Handler’s belief that she had “everything I could possibly need,” including a successful career, she had yet to face her brother’s death.

“I started coming home and writing down the stuff that Dan, my doctor, was telling me about (how) I was emotionally attached to this 9-year-old girl and that was the reason I had become the way I’d become,” Handler says, “because I’m so resilient and I want to be so strong and I wrote it because I thought, ‘Wow if I’m going through this, then how many other haven’t dealt with their pain?’ ”

For Handler, her brother was “kind of my protector, kind of a father figure, a big brother, a crush, your first boyfriend.” After his death, her family felt incomplete.

“You just feel broken,” she says. But Handler wouldn’t allow herself to cry in front of others. She says her father was “a wreck” at the time, which bothered her.

“I didn’t like seeing my father weak. I’d already lost my brother; I couldn’t lose my dad too, and I did. My dad never recovered,” she says. “I dealt with it by just, if anybody talked about Chet or mentioned him, I’d just leave the room. I’d get on my bike, and I’d ride my bike for hours around the neighborhood. I could cry on my bike, but I wouldn’t let anyone see me cry in person.”

Chet’s death represented Handler’s first breakup, she says, which in turn affected her future romantic relationships, a topic addressed in the book.

“I don’t trust men because the most important person in my life lied to me,” she says, referring to her brother’s declaration that he would come back from his trip. “So for me to get to a place where I can admit I actually do want to be in a relationship – I’d love to be in love – is a huge thing.

“I always thought that was a sign of weakness, and it’s like no, it’s actually a sign of strength to say that. You don’t have to say it like I need it. It’s like I want it. I’m 44 years old now. I’ve done a lot of work on myself, and I will continue to, and I do want to share my life with somebody. Why do I need to be single and proud all the time? I deserve to be in love with somebody.”