John Mulaney and Anna Marie Tendler. Lev Radin/M10s/MEGA; Evan Agostini/Invision/AP/Shutterstock
New Year’s Eve is often a time of reflection, and Anna Marie Tendler had a lot to unpack weeks after her estranged husband, John Mulaney, welcomed a baby with Olivia Munn.
“Change can be soft and small. Change can be large and loud. Change cannot be warded off,” the 36-year-old makeup artist began in a lengthy message on Friday, December 31, via Instagram. “Try as you might to shut the metaphorical door, to fasten the locks and batten down the hatches, you soon discover that change is an angry mob with pitchforks and torches – resist or acquiesce, it is here to burn your house down. The age-old adage stands: the only constant is change.”
Tendler noted that over the past two years, change has seemingly “been synonymous with loss and collectively this loss has been unfathomable.”
She explained: “It is tempting to construct a poetic list of all we’ve watched slip through our hands, but what’s the point? We already know it and we grieve it daily. Even if we speak of a future when ‘things will go back to normal,’ our cautiously hopeful tones belie reality. Inertia has propelled us forward, there is no going back, there is no ‘back’ to go back to. Normal means something different now.”
Tendler and Mulaney, who wed in 2014, announced their split in May 2021. Two months later, he filed for divorce. In September 2021, the comedian revealed he is dating Munn, 41, and they were expecting their first child.
“My own brain is well acquainted with the elusiveness of hope that materializes in sporadic and ephemeral waves. I suppose, in part, this is what it means to live with depression and anxiety,” Tendler continued on Friday. “That said, melancholia is oft amplified by circumstance and the circumstances of my year have been harsh and punishing. I find myself asking, ‘when will I feel normal?’ but in reality I recognize that the normal from before has expired; ‘normal’ is an impossibility, there is only ‘new.’”
The Daily Face author went on to explore how to “digest grief” and “metabolize trauma.”
“How, precisely, do we sit with, in order to move through? We call our friends; we allow ourselves to laugh. We cry in parked cars. We work; we rest. We throw plates just to watch them break; we make things with our hands. We write, we read, we watch movies. We listen to music. We run, or walk, or sprint, or dance,” she wrote. “We ask for help or learn to ask for help. We love or learn to love again.”
Tendler concluded: “Here’s to all the things we did this year to cope and here’s to all we will do next year to heal. An infinite history of pain and suffering occurred before this time, yet here we all are, surviving and creating and laughing at tik tok videos. So long 2021. For better or worse I will carry a piece of you with me forever.”
Us Weekly confirmed last month that Munn quietly gave birth to their baby boy in November 2021. When the news broke, Tendler seemingly threw shade in the form of the Lana Del Rey song “Norman F–king Rockwell.”
Munn and Mulaney announced his name, Malcolm, on Christmas. “Meet Malcolm Hiệp Mulaney. He has his whole life ahead of him. He hasn’t even tried seltzer yet,” he wrote via Instagram. “I’m very in love with him and his whole deal. Happy Holidays.”
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