Anna Marie Tendler Speaks Out About Her 'Mental Health Breakdown' Amid John Mulaney Divorce

etonline.com:

Anna Marie Tendler, the death of her beloved French bulldog, Petunia, hit harder than many might have imagined. The artist and author recently penned an emotional op-ed for magazine about her beloved pooch and the role she played in helping Tendler move on following her very public divorce from comedian John Mulaney.Tendler and Mulaney both announced the news of Petunia's death in April after a series of health complications made it necessary to put her to sleep.

In Tendler's new essay on Petunia's last days, it's clear just how difficult that decision really was.«Petunia and I moved to Connecticut in December 2020, in the wake of my severe mental health breakdown and what appeared to be the impending end of my marriage,» Tendler wrote. «We fused even more deeply together in an attuned and totally symbiotic relationship.»Tendler wrote about how, through most of Petunia's life, she did something called «resource guarding,» which meant she would growl and declare ownership over toys and basically anything that would land on the floor.

However, after Tendler's emotional turmoil, her guarding habits changed.«She never let me out of her sight. In fact, she watched me intently, as if I was the thing she now needed to guard, though, where guarding once incited her primal rage, she would now guard me with the deepest kind of love I had ever known,» Tendler recalled.The 37-year-old multimedia artist explained that, amid her marriage falling apart, her «mental health hinged wholly on my dog.»«When I was hospitalized for depression, self-harm, and severe suicidal ideation in the first two weeks of 2021, the doctors asked me to make a list of my reasons for living.