Jamie-Lynn Sigler says her memoir, And So It Is: A Memoir of Hope and Acceptance, was written to tell the truth without trying to take down her ex-husband AJ Discala. Speaking on the Thursday, June 4 episode of the “Viall Files” podcast, the 45-year-old Sopran
Jamie-Lynn Sigler didn’t mince words about the marriage she wrote about. But on Thursday, June 4, she made one thing equally clear: the book was never meant as a hit job.
On the “Viall Files” podcast. the 45-year-old actress talked through why she decided to revisit her allegedly “volatile” and “really toxic” first marriage to now-ex AJ Discala. “There was a lot of healing, particularly around my first marriage. It was something I had wanted to forget and never talk about. It was really volatile, it was really toxic,” Sigler said. Then she added, firmly, “I really intended, when writing the book, that this isn’t a takedown of anyone.”.
Her memoir—And So It Is: A Memoir of Hope and Acceptance—was published last month. In it, Sigler described her first marriage as “a mistake.” She and Discala, 55, were married from 2003 to 2005.
“I needed to be honest and I needed to be truthful of what happened,” Sigler explained on the podcast. “But because of that intention. I was really able to see his side and also really remember how much we loved each other even though it ended badly.” She said both she and Discala had loved each other. “He did love me, and I did love him.”.
Writing, she said, became a path toward forgiveness. Sigler said she was able to “offer forgiveness” to both Discala and herself through her memoir. acknowledging. “[I can see] I was doing the best I could. we all were.” She said she didn’t expect the book to bring healing. “I didn’t expect to have that healing.”.
Her account of the relationship also sits alongside a diagnosis that arrived early. Shortly after Sigler and her then-manager married, the Sopranos alum was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. She told Us Weekly in a May cover story. “I got diagnosed with MS right in the beginning of it.” Sigler added that it felt like the relationship—and the years that followed—were part of making sense of the struggle: “It was almost like all of these things I had to make worth [it] … like. this relationship had to work.”.
At one point. Sigler also claimed that she fantasized about her death as a way to cope with her health and marital struggles. During her conversation while promoting her partnership with Novartis, she described that moment as something she needed someone to recognize. “I didn’t think I’d relived that moment until I wrote it. ” she said. describing how the memory returned as she approached that portion of her story. “It was like as I was getting towards it. it’s almost like the memory resurfaced fully. and it wasn’t even really about suicide. It was like a cry for help.”.
“I needed someone to know how much pain I was in. I needed somebody to know how terrified I was, how overwhelmed I was,” Sigler continued. She said she felt isolated even as the person she was with “was going through his own thing. and he couldn’t see it.” “I couldn’t share it with anybody else. It was just a desperate cry for help, and I was terrified.”.
Sigler explained the fear underneath her decision-making at the time. saying. “I knew that I didn’t want to be with him. but I was terrified to be without him.” She described feeling responsible for her own survival but lacking the knowledge to do it. “Who would protect me?. I had no idea about my finances. I had no idea about anything.” She said she believed some of what she endured may have been reinforced by what he said. but she also linked her dependence to a deeper sense of helplessness. “Could there have been things that he said back then to make me feel that I would never survive without him. sure. but I also think that I felt that whether he had said that or not. because I was so dependent on him for my survival and to protect me.”.
Despite how dark that period sounded, Sigler says her life moved forward. She eventually found love again with now-husband Cutter Dykstra, whom she married in 2016. The pair share two sons.
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Jamie-Lynn Sigler AJ Discala And So It Is memoir Viall Files Sopranos multiple sclerosis MS Cutter Dykstra Novartis