Chelsea Handler is not, strictly speaking, playing Phoenix on a book tour.

But the show she's doing will be based primarily on the subjects she addresses in her latest book, a memoir titled "Life Will Be the Death of Me: . . . and You Too!"

It's a book she started writing after undergoing therapy to deal with President Donald Trump's election and finally coming to terms with the grief she was too young to process when her oldest brother, Chet, died on a trip to the Grand Tetons after promising the little sister who adored him he'd be home soon.

She was 9 at the time and felt betrayed when he never returned.

"It’s a comedy show about the contents of the book," she says. "About going to therapy and the things I discovered about all the times you think you’re making progress and you screw up. It’s a lot about the grief I had not visited about my childhood, that I thought I could get through my life without having to deal with. And it’s about that kind of thing sneaking up on me after the election and finally feeling like, for the first time, I had to sit down and talk to somebody."

Some might find it challenging to turn that type of subject matter into comedy.

Not Handler.

"I mean, it’s all true," she says. "So it’s easy to talk about, whether it’s funny or not. I mean, everything’s a little bit funny. Even death. So it’s about making those moments relatable to everybody and not feeling guilty for laughing during those times or thinking about other things during those times or being relieved when someone dies. It’s about all of that."

The writing of her memoir was cathartic for Handler.

"It felt great and it felt like it just kind of vomited out of me," she says. "I was learning things in therapy that were opening doorways and hallways and everything was connected. You make all these leaps about why you behave a certain way or why you get so angry at certain circumstances. And I just knew I had to share it."

She's made a career of sharing – or as Handler calls it, oversharing. This is just the latest chapter.

"It feels fine," she says. "It feels natural. I mean, I’ve always done that. I’ve always just talked about what was going on with me. So that part isn’t difficult at all."

And the reaction to the book, she says, has been "incredible" so far, which came as something of a shock.

"I’m used to getting pilloried in the press no matter what I do," she says. "So I’m enjoying it in a whole different way than I’ve ever enjoyed anything, really, in my career."

Asked if she has any theories on why she's been pilloried, Handler says, "Just, you know, being loud and brash. People don’t like that. If you’re a loud woman, you get a lot of crap. That’s just the way it is, pretty much. But, I mean, you get used to that. You’re just like, ‘Oh, that comes with the territory.’ It’s not like 'Oh, I wish it weren’t this way.' It’s like 'I’m glad I have thick enough armor to deal with that stuff.'"

It took the Trump election to get her to deal with the pain she had been carrying inside that armor all those years.

"I had a lot of rage from my childhood that I had never talked to a professional about," she says. "My brother died when I was nine and I never recovered from that because I never addressed it. I just went on and was angry my entire life at the fact that he lied to me, that my brother went off and died and told me he was coming right back. That’s the story that was in my head. Even though I knew on an intellectual level that was not the case. It’s how I felt because I was nine years old and I didn’t have the vocabulary to say ‘Oh I feel rejected’ or ‘I feel abandoned.’"

So she carried that hostility and anger deep inside.

"And then Trump was elected," she says. "And it was finally something to be angry at. I could finally identify my anger and be like, ‘It’s him. It’s this guy. It’s what this guy represents.’ It triggered everything that happened and all of those emotions I never was able to say to anyone, to say how hurt I was. You just cover up that wound and you keep covering it up and covering it up and hoping it’ll go away. And it doesn’t."

But coming to terms with those feelings in therapy and then writing a book about it helped a lot.

"I’m a completely different animal now," she says. "Like, I totally get me. I had to have someone spell it out to me. And he did a great job. I’m like 'Oh OK, this is why I do this. This is why I have to be so fiercely independent because I can’t rely on men because they lie to me. And my blueprint for a breakup was my blueprint from when my brother died, which was 'Here today, gone tomorrow.' So when I want to break up with a friend or a boyfriend, that’s how I treat it. 'Sorry, you’re out. That’s it.' Because that’s the only way I knew. And I didn’t know those two things were connected. I didn’t know a lot of things about myself that seem obvious to an onlooker."

It also helped her process her more recent anger over Trump's election.

"I’m not in a fit of rage anymore," she says. "I don’t let the news determine my mood anymore. So yeah, I’m a lot healthier in that aspect. I sleep better. I don’t have to take something to go to sleep. My whole life is different now. I don’t want them to steal another year of my life. They already got one."

Chelsea Handler

When: 8 p.m. Friday, May 31.

Where: Comerica Theatre, 400 W. Washington St., Phoenix.

Admission: $35 and up.

Details: 800-745-3000, livenation.com.

Reach the reporter at ed.masley@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4495. Follow him on Twitter @EdMasley.

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