Woman Behind ‘Who TF Did I Marry’ Series Says She ‘Paid a Pretty Costly Price’ for Viral Fame in New Book: Excerpt (Exclusive)

Meredith WilshereSat, August 1, 2026 at 11:59 AM UTC

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Reesa TeesaCredit: Penguin Random house; YellowBelly -

PEOPLE has an exclusive first look at Tareasa “ReesaTeesa” Johnson’s upcoming novel What (TF) Do I Do Now?

The memoir details everything that led up to Johnson telling her story and what’s happened since

What (TF) Do I Do Now? will come out Aug. 18

What do you do after your life changes seemingly overnight after finally telling your story? It’s the question Tareasa “ReesaTeesa” Johnson asked herself after her “Who TF Did I Marry?” series went viral and amassed over 400 million views.

In the 52-part series, she said she felt the person she married had turned into someone she didn’t recognize and claimed that her ex-husband fabricated many aspects of his life, identity and family.

In the months following her viral fame, the content creator and storyteller knew that she wanted to take her story as far as she could, including off of social media and into a book, aptly titled What (TF) Do I Do Now?

“It takes a type of vulnerability that I did not know before, and yet I’m proud that I pushed through. That’s the thing, I’m proud that I pushed through instead of being like, ‘No, I’m not saying that,’ or, ‘No, I’m not putting that in there,’ ” Johnson, 41, tells PEOPLE.

What TF Do I Do Now? by Tareasa “Reesa Teesa” JohnsonCredit: Storehouse Voices

Below, read an exclusive excerpt about Johnson’s inspiration behind the book.

Choosing peace meant setting boundaries, not just with other people but with myself. I had to be intentional about not entertaining anyone or anything that disrupts my peace. That includes people who come around only to stir up gossip or so-called friends who didn’t support my healing. Even parts of me that still wanted to replay old conversations or wonder what if? Ugh, there are those two words again!

Clearly I wouldn’t even be writing this book if I hadn’t had such a hard time setting boundaries in my previous relationships, and I paid a pretty costly price for that. Boundaries were always something I said I had, but truthfully I didn’t live them out. At my big age, I’m just now learning how to really stand on the words No, I’m not doing that. And to be clear, that’s what boundaries are. They are the actions you are going to take (or not) in response to someone else’s. It’s important to make that distinction. Too many of us think telling someone what to do or how to act is setting a boundary. It isn’t. Telling someone what you’re going to do in response to an action is setting a boundary. I could tell a friend to stop calling me after eleven p.m., but it’s not until I stop picking up the phone after eleven p.m. that I’ve set a boundary. My first real foray into boundary setting came along when I released “Who TF Did I Marry?” on TikTok.

The silence I experienced after ending my relationship with Legion and moving out of our shared home might have been deafening, but it was also liberating. I could finally hear myself think. I could breathe again. Eventually, I had an idea:

What if I just told my story?

It was just a whisper at first, nothing I seriously considered or planned, because I wasn’t even using TikTok like that. But that whisper became a thought. That thought became a question.  And that question became a conviction. It was like the peace I’d finally found gave me clarity. It showed me that there was further healing available in giving my story some air. So I opened up TikTok and got to running my mouth.

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As I’ve said, I wasn’t trying to go viral or build a brand. I was just trying to reclaim something that had been taken from me: my voice.

The first video I made felt like a glimpse — a taste. And the internet did what the internet does: It ate it up. Then it asked for more.

I knew this story would take some time to tell, but I didn’t think it would take fifty parts to tell it. With every video, I felt myself getting stronger and becoming more whole. Not because some people believed me, although that was good. Certainly not because I gained followers, though that was surreal. It was because I was no longer shrinking so that someone else could feel big. I was no longer biting my tongue so that someone else wouldn’t be exposed. There was no more pretending.

But I also dealt with the evil side of things. Some people didn’t believe me. Others laughed at my pain. There were plenty of people who had the audacity to call me stupid and weak from behind their keyboards. So much of my story, when it comes to relationships, has been about what the other person wanted. Now it’s about what Tareasa wants. And that’s a huge deal. So every time I felt fear creeping up my spine, I asked myself again: What do you want to do? And the answer was always the same: Tell the truth.

Tell the truth so someone else won’t feel alone. Tell the truth so someone else can recognize the red flags. Tell the truth because secrets protect abusers, and silence is their weapon. I told it all, not because I wanted pity but because I wanted freedom.

Going viral on social media has a way of slapping you upside the head and showing you the ugly side of notoriety. People love to say they’d trade places with you in a heartbeat, until they realize that being “known” means being known by strangers who will gladly project their pain onto you. I’ve been very vocal about the toll it can take on your mental health, but I don’t really know that I’ve found a way to effectively handle the parasocial dynamic that comes along with it. I’ve had to learn to set boundaries as I go. Social media is truly out of hand nowadays, and whatever boundaries I set for myself, they have to exist under an umbrella of something larger that applies both offline and on.

Reesa TeesaCredit: Reesa Teesa/instagram

At first my boundaries were mostly about protecting my mental health. When the story went viral, there was a lot of backlash. People in the comments called me everything but a child of God. It is difficult when you see strangers posting think pieces about you as if they know you. It is even more heartbreaking to realize that you opened Pandora’s box just because you told your story. From that experience, the first boundary I set involved deciding not to read the comments. As hard as that is to do, I learned early on that if I  sat and read the comments for too long, scrolling through a never-ending rabbit hole of strangers dissecting my story as if I were a fictional character, I would end up in tears or incredibly pissed off. “She should’ve known better.” “Ain’t no way that happened.” “She’s lying for clout.” Those words sting, even when I know better than to take them to heart. But my boundary setting had to start right there.

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Used by permission of Storehouse Voices and Tareasa Johnson. All rights reserved.

What (TF) Do I Do Now? will come out Aug. 18 and is available now for preorder, wherever books are sold.

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”