From the Desk of Dr Toni Lodge #026

Happy Blog Day!

With the excitement of my BOOK!!! COMING OUT!!! NEXT WEEK!!!! I wanted to give my fave little friends on Patreon a little sneaky peaky of the introduction chapter a week early. So many people have messaged and sent their well wishes about the book, and I’m very grateful! I’m also so excited to know that very soon so many people will be reading my book. A book full of my words and thoughts and most vulnerable memories. Enjoy this tiny taste.

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I don’t want to lie to you

Hi! I’m Toni. I know I have ‘one of those faces’ so you might be wondering where you know me from. You might also be wondering why someone asked me to write a book.

I have a podcast called Toni and Ryan, I make funny videos on Instagram and TikTok, I’m a Sagittarius and my favourite food is sandwiches. Saying sandwiches is my favourite food is kind of a cop-out, because you can fill them with other favourite foods. Like, say you love mac and cheese or salad or lasagne? Pop it in a sandwich! I promise there’s nothing great that can’t be made better by putting it between bread.

I lie to myself constantly about a multitude of little things, like ‘that pot needs to soak overnight’ or ‘my friend will realise they’re doing this thing wrong, I don’t need to confront them’ or ‘I will make a healthy Snickers bar with those Medjool dates in the fridge this week!’ when the Medjool dates have been in the back of the fridge for three months. Which reminds me, I need to check the best-before date. Maybe I’ll make that Snickers bar this weekend . . .

I also lie to other people. Just about little things, like ‘no, I don’t mind when you make bitchy comments!’ or ‘dinner out sounds great! Pop me down as a hard maybe’ when we all know I’m gonna be knee-deep in salt and vinegar chips and Pepsi Max made in my SodaStream. We all tell ourselves lies like that, but it wasn’t until I sat down to write this book that I realised it wasn’t just the little things I was lying to myself about, but the big stuff too. Things like, ‘I’m really happy for that friend’ when they excelled at something I wanted to excel at, or ‘I’m too fat to do that’ when whatever the thing was didn’t have a weight limit, or ‘I can get through this’ when I found out my mum had cancer.

Sometimes, it feels like life is full of only right and wrong, only black and white—but this isn’t that. This is the grey area. Of course, there are also parts of this book that are blue and green and sparkly, but I wanted to include the grey parts too. They are the bits of a story that don’t make the cut when you retell it at a cocktail party or when you meet your partner’s parents for the first time. I don’t like confrontation, so this is my version of it: exposing myself to you in this book, in a way where you see those grey parts and how shit they’ve been, but also how they’ve made the colourful parts even shinier. In each chapter, I’ll show you a different part of my life, and every part will bring a new lie. You’ll read the big lies and the little lies, and we’ll delve into the reasons the world is definitely against me. I will also dispense some unsolicited advice which I am authorised to share because I am writing a book and no one can stop me.

But hey, full disclosure—this isn’t self-helpy, it doesn’t end in some ‘EUREKA!’ moment where I tell you how to have the perfect life or how to style a capsule wardrobe (what the fuck is that?) or whatever.

This is just me—no punchline.

Without further ado—here are the truths I’ve learned about myself through the lies I’ve told.

Love ya,

Toni

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Can’t wait for you to read the whole thing. Love ya to death.

Dr Toni Lodge xoxo