By Nick A. Zaino III Globe Correspondent, Updated December 11, 2019
One of the toughest jobs a comedian has is to find out who he or she is onstage. For years, Bethany Van Delft was almost there. She’s been a local headliner and played festivals, but there’d been something missing. That has changed in the past year or so, as she has figured out how to address her own experiences with motherhood, interracial marriage, anxiety, feminism, and more with a new emotional honesty. And she’s done it just as she is releasing her debut album, “I’m Not A Llama,” out Friday.
“Those feelings were there, but . . . I didn’t know how to go from me to the stage,” she says. “I feel like this year, I do know how to do it. Every single thing I’ve ever done has come together.”
The shift to more personal material is reflected on the new album. Take, for example, this bit from “Financing a Family” about not feeling immediately connected to her first child. “I always heard new moms say, ‘Oh my God, when I laid eyes on my new baby it was love at first sight,’ ” she says. “But when I laid eyes on my baby, it was like a drunk hook-up.” The baby was a stranger to her, and she worried that was the wrong thing to feel.
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