What in the World?!: A Southern Woman's Guide to Laughing at Life's Unexpected Curveballs and Beautiful Blessings

In this chapter, Morgan turns her attention to an often-overlooked stressful experience, breaking up with a best friend.

When Morgan moved back to Knoxville, she became friends with Debbie, whose husband also worked at Chuck’s company. Before long, they became very close. In the years following the disaster with her show, life was looking up again. Morgan’s kids were thriving, Chuck had become the vice president of his company, and Morgan was booking local comedy events. 

Then the recession hit, and Chuck’s father passed away. With the housing market crashing, things were stressful for Chuck at work. Morgan confided her troubles to Debbie, but her friend quickly changed the subject to her own excitement about an upcoming vacation. Suddenly, Debbie acted differently when Morgan saw her at school or work functions and intentionally excluded her from social outings. Eventually, Debbie stopped speaking to Morgan altogether. Morgan was shocked, hurt, and lonely.

Instead of working to get over the breakup and move on, Morgan “stewed.” She gained 25 pounds and talked about the breakup constantly with her mother and sister. She stalked Debbie and the rest of her former friends group on social media, still liking their posts to act as if it didn’t matter. This went on for years. The breakup, combined with the death of Chuck’s father, the recession, and Morgan’s entrance into perimenopause, pushed her family under “a big black cloud” (159). Chuck coped by attending a men’s Bible study, while Morgan continued to wallow.

One day, Chuck came home and insisted that Morgan empty her dresser so they could give the piece of furniture to someone in need. Morgan resisted, but eventually, Chuck’s acts of service inspired her to give back, too. She discovered she had a gift for working with women who were unhoused, and through the work she did with charities, she realized that “[y]ou never really know what someone else is going through” (161), which helped her to find compassion and forgiveness for Debbie. She now understands that the friendship’s end was a form of God’s protection, and it opened the door to new and fulfilling friendships.

Once Morgan turned 50, she made a list of “Never Agains.” At the top of the list was attending rock concerts. She and Chuck went to see Journey and Def Leppard, where they had to take dancing breaks to nurse sore knees and were relieved when the show was finally over. Morgan was also finished shopping at Victoria’s Secret, opting instead for comfortable underwear, doing CrossFit, and paleo diets. When CrossFit was trending, Morgan signed up, hoping the young instructors would get her in shape. Instead, she developed high cortisol levels and low thyroid. 

After winning a CrossFit competition. Morgan looked thin and cute. However, she felt terrible, exhausted, constipated, and her hair was falling out. She asked her doctor about thyroid issues, but he insisted that she was just melancholy. Morgan felt like the doctor wasn’t hearing her concerns, but she had been taught to trust medical professionals, so she let it go. A few weeks later, she had to cling to the orthodontist’s desk for support at her kids’ appointment, and someone recommended a nurse practitioner called Karen Nickell.

Karen immediately confirmed that Morgan’s thyroid “was out of whack” (173). She also announced that Morgan was in perimenopause. She was having terrible hot flashes and mood swings. Morgan’s sister Beth saw a male doctor about her symptoms, who essentially told her “to just suffer through it” (174). Morgan, however, saw Karen Nickell, who gave her herbal supplements and hormone-balance cream and worked with her over the years to get the dosages correct.

As Morgan has aged, she’s also given up worrying about her figure and accepted that she can no longer read without glasses. She’s also learned not to take her health for granted. Something relatively innocuous, like a spicy burrito, can send her to the doctor, so she has learned to take care of what she eats, drink plenty of water, and take care of her microbiome. Being healthy and fit is no longer about looking cute in a bikini but staying active to play with her grandchildren and have the energy for her comedy shows. She believes that self-worth comes not from “looking young” but “from being a child of God” (181).

After Morgan’s children left home, she felt stuck and wondered if she was ever going to experience anything new again.

One day, Morgan’s manager called to tell her about a new online platform, Dry Bar, that wanted her to do a comedy special. It wasn’t likely to be seen live, but he thought it “could lead to other things” (185). Having a special on a major network was starting to seem out of reach, so she decided to fly to Salt Lake City to film the special. Morgan didn’t like her performance, but the platform posted a number of clips that got millions of views. This seemed great to Morgan until she began reading some of the comments.

Some people complained that her accent was fake, and others accused her of mocking her daughter for having misophonia with a joke about teenage Maggie being offended by the sound of her mother chewing. Morgan began responding to the commenters and was soon spending hours online trying to placate her trolls. Maggie helped her to change the dynamic by recording a funny video reading the mean comments. This helped, but Morgan was so nervous about offending people that she became scared to say anything at all, and her career stalled. She prayed to God for a sign that it was time to let go of her comedy dreams, but there was always some new comedy opportunity, and she believed God was telling her to stay with it.

In a last-ditch effort, Morgan decided to invest in her publicity for the first time and hired a social media marketing firm. The firm gathered all the clips Morgan had of her performances and “revamped” them to post to her social media. The day the relaunch started, Morgan and Chuck were moving Tess into a new apartment in Brooklyn. Every time Morgan logged into her Facebook, the new videos had more and more views, and she got more and more excited. 

Her followers grew from 30,000 to 125,000 in just one day and were up to 500,000 by the end of the week. Her shows started selling out immediately, and she was offered a 50-city tour. The tour sold so well that it expanded to 100 shows. Morgan was “thrilled” but also anxious and plagued by doubt and imposter syndrome. The timing was right, God had waited until her children were grown and independent, and Morgan had taken the all-important step of “investing in [her]self” (194).