Making Life Suck Less
Words by Monica Corcoran Harel
Photos by Kelsey Wisdom
For the record, Stephanie Wittels Wachs did not settle in Northern California to live out some “Big Little Lies” fantasy. However, the cofounder of the podcast empire Lemonada Media admits the spicy HBO show was her “only frame of reference” for the area before moving here from her native Houston in 2022. “I’m a water sign and I always had this dream that I would live by the ocean,” she says on a recent afternoon from her home office in Pacific Grove, where she has a view of the coast—and where she just finished writing a draft of her second book, a follow-up to “Everything Is Horrible and Wonderful: A Tragicomic Memoir of Genius, Heroin, Love, and Loss.” But the real impetus to relocate here also inspired her to launch a whole new career in media at almost 40: Life can be brutally short.
Wittels Wachs, now 44, knows this well. In 2015, she lost her younger brother Harris—an L.A. TV writer with a cult following—to an overdose. He was just 30. Sudden loss makes you seize the day. In his honor, she launched a podcast about the opioid crisis called "Last Day." She also made the big move from TX to CA. “I was like, ‘Let's move to this gorgeous place. We have one shot—and we might die.’ That’s how we live now.” “We” includes her husband Mike Wachs, who serves on the Pacific Grove School Board, their daughter Iris, 11, and their seven-year-old son named for her brother. Her parents followed her to Pacific Grove. Wittels Wachs is an Olympic-worthy conversationalist. She’s honest, joyous, thoughtful and unwittingly hilarious. Over an hour, we chatted about everything from grief to getting older to where to find the best sea glass.
It's so easy to get entangled in grief—and have a hard time moving forward. But the loss of your brother Harris actually shoved you out of your comfort zone.
We would not have uprooted our entire family and made the trek to California if my brother was still alive. I would not have this company if he was still alive. There are so many things that would not be so because I used to worry about losing everything. But when things are terrible and you lose everything and you survive it, the anxiety goes away. You’re like, “I can do anything.”
And you did! You started Lemonada in 2019—during a pandemic, no less—and built an empire. What's your superpower?
It’s not really a superpower. It's a mission that came from an incredibly organic place. Our brand statement is “Make life suck less.” My partner [Jessica Cordova Kramer] lost her brother too and she literally stalked me and forced me to create this company with her. We didn't set out to become moguls. We wanted to save people's lives. I literally said to her, “My brother died. Your brother died. How do we make other brothers not die?” That was the original goal and now, it’s more like how can we create this content and community that makes all those hard things in life easier?
You brought in Julia Louis-Dreyfus to host “Wiser Than Me,” a podcast that features older iconic women like Jane Fonda and Isabel Allende. What do you love about aging?
Every year that goes by, I feel more in my body and in my skin. I am more confident with just who I am. When I was younger, I had so much anxiety. And the older I've gotten, the more I realize I'm a bad bitch. I’m strong, I can make change, and I can do whatever I want.
Lemonada Media also produced David Duchovny’s podcast, “Fail Better.” How do you deal with failure?
Technically, my entire career is a failure. I went to Tisch Drama at New York University for acting and directing. But the city was too hard. It was too difficult for me to audition. Then 9/11 happened and I moved back home. I couldn’t hack it. So I taught high school for eight years, and that whole time I felt like a failure. There’s that dumb saying, “Those that can’t do, teach.” But the more time that I am alive on this planet, the more I believe that failure is not real. It’s just an opportunity to recalibrate and do something different. I always feel a mix of success and failure in any given moment.
