Clearing the air between “frenemies”: The truth behind the Eckler/McLaren “rivalry”
Me (left), Leah (right)
“Some act like they are happy for me. So I act like I believe them.”
— Rebecca/re:books
“Bringing down another woman is something girls practice. Re:al women want to see other women win.”
— Unknown
When men argue, no one cares. When women do, everyone loses their fucking minds.
Frenemies is (mostly) a female phenomenon, wouldn't you agree? A phenomenon filled with sugar-coated insults, insecurities and entitlement, accompanied by a dusting of bitchiness. (Served best with organic jealousy).
Apparently, journalist and author Leah McLaren and I were formidable frenemies. Optically.
It was only last week when I interviewed my so-called frenemy Leah that she shared how her editor told her that her "job as a columnist was to be ‘Rebecca Eckler’s’ nemesis.’” (I know. So sweet! To whom should I be sending a thank-you note to? And really, what fucking adult uses the word “nemesis" unless they’re a comic book or superhero aficionado?)
But fuck me. I wish I had known this years ago! I mean, being a “nemesis" just sounds so much fancier than frenemy, and also suggests I have secret powers — after all, a nemesis is someone who is difficult for others to defeat. But being “frenemies” is how Leah and I were often always described by others. So, today, you’ll learn The Truth Behind the Eckler/McLaren Frenemy Days.
A “frenemy” — an enemy disguised as a friend — is a portmanteau of the words “friend” and “enemy,” in the same vain tabloids give titles to celebrity couples who hook up — Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez became known by the portmanteau “Bennifer” (and now “Bennifer 2.0”). Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie became “Brangelina.” (Thank goodness these names aren’t carved in stone.)
Leah and I have never been in a romantic relationship, but that did not stop this publication from writing, “Torontoist is also tired of referring to both of them separately and proposes that their names be merged. (Leah McEckler? Rebecca Ecklaren?)”
(Um, what can I say but vote here?)
But more importantly, Leah McLaren’s memoir Where You End and I Begin, one of the best memoirs I’ve read in years, is being released this week. It definitely may be one of this summer’s most talked-about books.
“A riveting and devastating portrait of mother and daughter — a memoir that explores how trauma is shared between women and how acts of harm can be confused with acts of love” is how Where You End and I Begin.
Her mother's trauma becomes Leah’s, leading to their unhealthy “codependent” mother/daughter rivalry relationship.
As Leah recently wrote, “… instead of following my own feelings I was carrying my mother’s emotions; her thoughts and desires became my own. By the time I reached adulthood, this enmeshment was so ingrained it informed everything…”
Leah's insights will resonate with anyone who has had a complicated, strained or unconventional relationship with their mother (which, correct me if I’m wrong, therapists, is pretty much everyone?).
“The mother/daughter relationship is almost impossible to be honest about. Especially if the connection is as complicated as this one: a tangle of love, jealousy, selfishness, narcissism, yearning, and resistance,” author Johanna Schneller writes in her review. “But Leah McLaren goes there, and the results are never less than riveting. You may wince; you may blush. But you will see your own parent/child relationships anew.”
Leah’s memoir kept me up all night. My book hangover the next day went beyond emotional and mental exhaustion. I would add physically exhaustion as well, but alas, I could still move my pinky finger.
After reading Leah's memoir, it lead me to a very long discussion with my own daughter (age 18) about our very some people will say too close bond, saving her hopefully from a lifetime of therapy. That is how impactful and powerful this memoir is.
As advertised, the memoir is both riveting and devastating. Leah raised by a mother who was less mother and more friend frenemy. (Leah doesn’t buy into the word “frenemy", as you’ll soon read.)
Leah’s mother, Cecily Ross — also an author and respected writer, which definitely is one of many issues affecting their competitive relationship — sent the following email to Leah, shared in her memoir:
“I feel betrayed. I feel violated. I feel exploited. And I feel very angry. This project of yours will cause untold damage to me, to our relationships and by extension I would think, to you. It is also creating divisions in our family that may never heal.”
After not speaking for months in 2020, when Leah was probably editing this memoir, her mother sends Leah a link to an article she had written for a literary magazine titled “This Story Is Mine.” (I'll drop the link to the entire article below in our Q&A so you can understand her mother’s POV.)
Here’s a teaser and some background:
After “much negotiation,” Cecily asked Leah to drop the idea, and assumed she had. “But over martinis at the hotel bar,” Cecily writes, “she [Leah] told me she had signed a major book deal. It took me the rest of our few days together to process the news that my daughter would be publishing a tell‑all about my experience and the impact it has had on hers.”
“I saw it as the appropriation of my story, a story that, if it is to be told at all, should be told by me,” Cecily writes.
Except…well..but..I just…
Leah was constantly told by her mother that “writers write.” Cecily also seems to agree that even for the abused, while life goes on, “all their future relationships will be haunted by their trauma,” so could that not include the relationship she had with her daughter, and not just romantic ones? Cecily even concedes that “Leah has every right to tell her story.”
But, boy, she isn’t happy about it and makes that abundantly clear.
Cecily begins with a quote by Kate Elizabeth Russell. “This, I think, is the cost of telling, even in the guise of fiction. Once you do, it’s the only thing about you anyone will ever care about. It defines you whether you want it to or not.”
One could take these words as a warning, or maybe even a veiled threat. Cecily is smart, probably writing this article to, as we say in the media, “to get ahead of the narrative." Something a frenemy, by definition, would do.
Leah describes the article as her mother’s “latest — and possibly final — literary ambush.”
I promise we will get to The Truth Behind the Eckler/McLaren Frenemy Days in a sec. But first, order Leah’s memoir now (or come back after reading our Q&A below). It is THAT good.
And this is coming from me! Leah’s “nemesis.” Or “frenemy." (You choose. They’re both incorrect stupid anyway.)
Have you heard these sayings?
Everybody loves you until you become competition.
Some people only hate you because of the way other people love you.
A jealous close friend is worse than a friendly (hidden) enemy.
The Oxford English Dictionary included the term “frenemy" to describe a superficially amicable relationship but one underscored by dislike or rivalry in 2008 — some 10 years after Leah and I both lived through this description, writing lifestyle columns for competing national newspapers in our twenties.
Leah and I were (perceived) as frenemies because (some) people wanted us to be, and then expected us to be. The term frenemy became inextricably associated with female friendships. Hey, cat fights are sexy right? (Why else do millions of people watch grown-ass women fight over the same thing, week after week, for 12 episodes in all of The Real Housewives franchises?.)
“An intimate friend and a hated enemy have always been indispensable to my emotional life,” Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis said, frequently admitting that “friend and enemy have coincided in the same person.”
So, some basic word math? Intimacy + animosity = a frenemy.
Based on the above formula, it could be argued that Leah’s memoir is about how her mother saw Leah less as a daughter and more as a frenemy. And I’m not the only one to have hypothecated this.
At one point in Where You End and I Begin, Leah’s then boyfriend’s, bestselling thriller/mystery author Andrew Pyper, roommate asks Leah, “Do you think it’s possible that your mother is just a teeny-weeny bit jealous of you?’” (I would love to know your thoughts, if you have any, about envious mothers here!)
Oh, along with the launch of her memoir, Leah has recently started a memoir club on Substack, which you can subscribe to here!
You can buy Where You End and I Begin on Amazon or Indigo!
So, what was the nature of our relationship? Find out by reading the Q&A below! (Or, rather, more like a chat between frenemies friends. 😉)
An honest Q&A between alleged “frenemies”
“If a story is one person’s to tell, it isn’t a story — it’s a secret.”
— Leah McLaren
Leah McLaren
RE:BOOKS: Do you remember the first time we met? Share! First impression?
LEAH McLAREN: Not precisely, but I’m pretty sure it was at a party and you were there with Dick Snyder, your boyfriend at the time, a lovely guy from the Maritimes whom everybody wrongly assumed was gay because he was the Style editor at the Globe… ah, the enlightened 90s!
I was aware of you before I met you because we were both writing these girl-about-town columns for our respective papers and the Post kept playing yours off the front [page], which obviously made me deeply envious.
I also remember my editor telling me that my job as a columnist was to be “Rebecca Eckler’s nemesis,” which I found slightly terrifying because I was very conflict adverse.
What I DO remember clearly was amid all the mounting, trumped up McLaren vs. Eckler crap in Frank magazine, you phoned me up one day at the newsroom and said, “I think we should be friends — I’m taking you to dinner.”
And then you took me out to Susur for this like bajillion dollar tasting menu, which you barely ate a bite of, and we both got very drunk and laughed and laughed and laughed…. I thought you were so cool and confident. And also hilarious.
RE:BOOKS: Everyone back then circa 1998 through the 2000s — in the land of journalism — called us frenemies because we wrote at competing national newspapers. (It seems the word was invented just for us! 😂) In a way, I do think this was the case, but the word bugs me! We were two young women who clearly were seen as frenemies. I felt you were a friend, and I never felt we were competing against each other. But people seemed to love to refer to us as frenemies. Did you feel the same (especially when people would mix up who wrote what)?
LEAH McLAREN: See above! But yes, I know exactly what you mean. I don’t think the term was invented for us — wasn’t it for Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie? I think there were a couple of things going on, for one thing the newspaper war — duopolies make money — so columnists and beat reporters were being encouraged to try to best their Post/Globe equivalent. While that meant scoops for the newsies, for us it was mostly figuring out ways to be weird and funny. I dislike the frenemy thing because for a long time we were actually really close friends and it felt like everyone wanted us to be enemies because it was a better story, and of course there was a lot of sexism underlying it — girlfight! Etc.
RE:BOOKS: I remember very clearly you reaching out after a story I wrote where I was getting bashed. You reached out to me to see how I was doing. I thought that was so sweet! And there was that time when a fake press release was going around and I “fell for it” and wrote about it, but I remember calling you to tell you after that it was “FAKE. Don’t write about it!“ Then we sent that person flowers. So, we did support each other behind the scenes. Do you have any clue why/or what led people — whether readers or those in the media — to view us as frenemies? Did you feel we were? I feel it’s the wrong word! Maybe people still like the idea of mean girls/cat fights. But we never fought.
LEAH McLAREN: Yes, I DO remember you warning me about the fake press release from… none other than Jesse Brown. (The little brother of one of my high school classmates. I’d actually helped him get his first byline in the Globe.) Such a mean-spirited stunt. His, not ours obviously. The fake flowers were funny!
RE:BOOKS: Do you think during those years writing for competing papers, our editors liked or wanted us to compete, or even encouraged us to? I don’t have any actual proof that this is the case, but I do think some higher ups enjoyed us, or even wanted us, to be frenemies. Like, “Which one of these two can get people talking more about their columns?” Do you feel, looking back, we were pitted against each other or that there was this expectation put on us, even though we did write about different things and definitely in a different tone?
LEAH McLAREN: Yes, definitely. It was a duopoly thing — a business strategy. Like Coke and Pepsi. And it’s hard to conceive of now, but back in the late 90s/early 2000s the whole point of being a journalist in the soft sections was to be controversial and get people talking, or better yet shouting. Because hey, angry people still buy papers, right? I do have mixed feelings about it all, mainly because people still come up to me in Toronto and ask if I’m the girl who wrote about her bikini wax…. I didn’t mind being that girl at the time, but when I grew up and decided I wanted to write about other things I was shocked by how hard it was to shake off the image of being a lightweight. I wish I’d been a little less naive about the repetitional damage of allowing myself to be slotted that way. I also wish I’d taken myself and my writing more seriously a lot earlier than I did. But over all it was a brilliant job. We got to have so much fun and most of it on the company dime, that’s not true for most young columnists today.
RE:BOOKS: What is your definition of friendship? I ask because of course I would have been there for you in a second if you needed something, and likewise. We also partied a lot together during those years (plus went on a couple double dates?), but I do think it’s important to note that it’s not like we were best friends. We travelled in different circles. So, what’s your definition of friend vs. frenemy?
LEAH McLAREN: I don’t really buy the frenemy thing, I think it’s mostly a capitalist construct so it doesn’t factor into my definition of friendship which is…I’m not sure exactly? I do know that I’ve never been much of a pack animal when it comes to friends — I never really bought into the idea of a “group” (or maybe a group just never wanted me as a member?). I have a number of very close friends, mostly women, some of whom I’ve known for decades. I have a few women friends from those early motherhood years who I know I’ll be close with forever. And emigrating to England a couple of decades ago has given me a huge appreciation for really old friends. It’s such a relief to go back to Toronto and see people I have real history with, who were there for all the teen stuff or the university stuff or the Toronto media world stuff…like yourself. As an immigrant, you lose all that friendship history.
RE:BOOKS: As I read your Toronto Star piece, I remember very clearly being at a party at your place,and we were talking in the kitchen. You were about to light a cigarette and your mom was in the kitchen with us. I just always thought “Wow! Her mom is so cool!” Plus, the fact you always seemed more like friends than mother/daughter. This book touches on this topic. I treated Rowan, my 18-year-old daughter, at times more like a friend than my child. This is good and bad. I learned to say to her, “Do you want me to answer you as your mother, or do you want me to talk to you as a friend?” I DO think I treated her way more as a friend, possibly because I was a single mother (like yours), or possibly that’s just the way I am, or possibly because I always wanted a sister! She always says she would take the way I parented her over having a “traditional” mother. I think about this a lot! Looking back, do you wish your mother treated you more as a mother than a friend/confidant? Do you think your life would have been different? And do you parent your children differently because of the way you were parented?
LEAH McLAREN: Look: Motherhood is hard, and single motherhood is even harder. You were (and are) a great mom to Rowan, I know because I was there (for the early years, which in my view are some of the hardest, especially if you don’t have a partner). My memoir is not about passing judgement on my mother — or any mother — although I know some people will undoubtedly read it (or more likely not read it) that way. It’s the story of a complicated relationship from one person’s point of view rather than an empirical “truth.” Like most people (especially reflective ones), I’m confused by some aspects of my childhood. There's some pain but there was also a great deal of love and laughter and joy. My mother made me who I am, and for the most part I like who I am and if I don’t, at this point, that’s my problem to solve, because self-evidently, I’m an adult.
What I would say is this: When (and if) Rowan ever wants to talk to you about her childhood, if she has questions or finds something troubling, have the conversation. Be open to it, not as her friend but as a mother. I think we need to try our best as parents not to be defensive and to not make our kids’ feelings or problems (regardless of how old they are) all about us. The hard thing with my own mum is that we’ve never really been able to have that conversation, not fully or in a way that felt satisfying let alone healing for both of us.
In a way, my book is my version of that conversation; it’s an attempt to unpick the complications of our enmeshment, by which I mean our deep, confusing closeness, so I can hopefully not repeat the pattern (or some version of the pattern) with my own kids. Instead, my goal is to fuck them up in completely new and inventive ways! But seriously, Phillip Larkin was right. We all fuck our kids up in some way, the trick is to be accountable when they want to talk about it.
RE:BOOKS: I find it interesting that you and your mom couldn’t agree whose story this was to tell. If she wasn’t in the same industry, and also a writer/author do you think this would have been a problem? To be candid, after reading your piece and hers, it does seem like you are competing with each other (and have). Your mother was well known, in her own right, and wrote some pretty controversial things about you — the piece on what would happen if she didn’t have children? And saying this memoir was not your story to tell. You do write your relationship is “strained.” Where does it stand now, since she made it pretty clear it was her story to tell, not yours. (Is “strained” being gentle?) Personally, I do think it’s your story, because it affected YOUR life and it is YOUR truth! So, how did you/do you reconcile writing this memoir, knowing what your mother thought about you writing it, and how did that affect YOU? (Is she going to retaliate?) And how do you see your relationship with your mother moving forward? (I wrote a piece about memoir writing and that you can’t write candidly without someone/relative getting upset.) And finally, did you let her read it before publishing? (I never do!)
LEAH McLAREN: There are a lot of questions in that question! But here goes: I did give my mother a first draft to read. I also shared the initial proposal with her confidentially, which she did not respect. She had one change to the draft (which, by the way, was very different from the initial proposal) and said she was fine with the rest. But then she reconsidered her position and sent me an angry email. Since then she’s refused to speak to me or my kids, which has been heartbreaking. Having said that, I get it. My mother has written about me a fair amount in the past — the Chatelaine piece as well as in her own memoir — and often in what felt to me to be unnecessarily snarky and passive aggressive ways that seemed designed to injure.
What bothered me most about it at the time was not that she had complicated not-always-positive feelings about our relationship but that she didn’t try to have the conversation first. It also bothered me that she didn’t offer to show me a draft or do anything to prepare me in advance — instead when she wrote about me, it always felt like a bit of an ambush. I do think there is an element of competitiveness in our relationship, and for a long time I was deeply in denial about it because the idea was so upsetting and confusing to me. I idolized my mother as a girl, and for most of my life I’ve used her as a sounding board and first reader. She’s a brilliant writer and frankly one of the smartest people I know, but I’ve never seen her as a rival.
It makes sense though because I’ve also been much luckier than her — and a lot of that luck stemmed from the fact that she was my mother in the first place. Not in the sense that she got me my job, but just having been around her and the world I grew up in which was the world of writing, media and books. She broke into journalism and worked her way from the ground up, she paid her dues in a way that I didn't. She also taught me everything she knew — talking about books and politics and movies was way more interesting and important to her than my grades or whether I went to university or not. While in some ways that was pretty neglectful and selfish, I also benefited from it hugely.
The last thing I’ll say on the subject of rivalry, a point which I can’t stress enough, is that the fact that we are both writers has everything to do with whatever competitive tensions that have, at times, strained our relationship. The secret that writers know (tell me if you disagree) is that when it comes to stories (as with reality) there is no singular empirical “truth;” there are just better and worse ways of writing or interpreting it. Real life is not a debate club or a courtroom. So when two writers are in disagreement and one writer “wins” the argument, it’s ultimately sort of meaningless because it wasn't a competition to begin with. Obviously it’s gratifying to me when someone says to me, “She's wrong, you’re in the right!” (as I’m sure it is for my mother), but ultimately I feel it's a misreading of my book. The entire point of the memoir, and in fact what most readers seem to connect with, is the fact that it's not a competition. It’s not a polemic. It's just a complicated story. If my book succeeds, or resounds or whatever, that’s great because it’s my job and I want to be good at my job, but it doesn’t give me any claim on righteousness.
RE:BOOKS: This isn’t the first time you’ve angered a relative/friend — when you wrote that fab piece in Toronto Life about divorce and if you were destined to be divorced, including mentioning having an abortion, that angered someone you once loved. What is your advice to memoirists or personal essay writers when it comes to writing a memoir knowing it may hurt someone? Do you just do it? Do you draw a line? Or what questions — your inner voice/dialogue — did you ask yourself (and what other memoirists/bloggers/essayists should ask themselves) before moving ahead and deciding to write it?
LEAH McLAREN: My motto, which I cribbed from the Goddess of Memoir Mary Karr, is that if you lived it you’re allowed to write it. And I also reject the notion (within certain clearly defined legal limits) that any single story is just one person’s “story to tell.” I know when people say that they’re trying to be respectful or sensitive, but in my view ultimately it’s bullshit. If a story is one person’s to tell, it isn’t a story — it’s a secret. When secrets become stories, it affects other people, stories have the power to change everything, so if another person’s story has affected you you have every right to tell it, especially within the context of your life and experience.
When I started telling people at dinner parties I was writing a memoir, so many people told me their crazy life/family story, then added that they were afraid to write it down, usually because they were worried about the reaction of their loved ones. After a while I started to wonder why people felt the need to tell me all these stories they believed they couldn’t possibly write: They wanted my permission. Why? Not because I’m a genius or some kind of charismatic, they just wanted someone to say: Write it. Go ahead.
When I was wobbling on my memoir, my father called me up and said, “Honey. Write your book.” It wasn’t because he liked the idea — it’s a pain in the arse to have a memoirist for a daughter. I’m sure secretly he’d much prefer if I was a real estate agent. But his permission was incredibly important to me and I think he instinctively knew that.
Before the memoir, with other personal writing I’d done, I never had to ask for permission because I had my mother. One of the great things about being raised without emotional boundaries is that it makes you pretty impervious to other people’s resentment or judgement. Those early years of my career as a columnist taught me how to block out the noise as much as possible, regardless of whether it’s bad or good. I’m not perfect at it, I’m only human and I don’t live in a bubble. I relish praise like everyone else, but I do think I care a lot less about criticism than the average person. And when someone tells me NOT to write something? Well…let’s just say it’s not a very effective strategy.
I’m my mother’s daughter and I learned at her knee. “Writers write,” she used to say to me. But I also learned the hard way that there will be fallout and if you’re not accountable to the feelings of others.
It’s hard for people to read one person’s version of what was in part their own lived truth so it’s important to be open to dialogue. If you care what people think and feel, you should hear them out and, if possible, prepare them in advance. It doesn’t mean you have to take orders from them (or anyone), but in my experience, it does a lot to mitigate the sting.
I’ve started a Memoir Club on Substack and the underlying thrust of it is, “So you want to write a memoir? Great. But first: Put on your Big Girl Pants.”
***
You can follow Leah on Twitter and Insta. And if you’re interested in her mother’s version of events, read it here.
You can buy Leah’s memoir, Where You End and I Begin, here. And don’t forget to join Leah's Memoir Club and newsletter!
Until next time, flip your hair and flip the page!
xo,
Rebecca
P.S. Interested in writing a memoir? Read my piece on the inevitability of hurting a re:lative’s feelings here.