Laugh or cry, sometimes those feel like the only two options. It’s a comedian’s job to bridge the gap, to move us from tragedy to comedy intact. Household name Chelsea Handler is a master at seeing one in the other, and both at once. Lucky us, this comedian, activist, author, philanthropist, television personality and noted 50 Cent friend with benefits is headed this way on her “Sit-Down Comedy Tour” to tell all.

An unfiltered public personality who consistently grows and evolves, Handler is a groundbreaking one-of-a-kind — unapologetically female and a demolisher of old ideas of what femininity is, especially in comedy. She has pushed open the door for women in late night television with her critically acclaimed talk show, “Chelsea Lately,” and its eponymous Netflix sequel. Over seven seasons on E! and two on Netflix she paired shock with pensive, thought-provoking insight through a lens of uncensored hilarity. That approach holds whether she’s in front of a camera or in intimate discussion with thousands of concert fans.

Handler is also promoting her newest book, “Life Will Be the Death of Me … and you too!” It’s sort of a fuck-up’s self-help guide to becoming more human. It’s also fresh evidence of a growing seriousness of purpose from someone whose first books were titled “My Horizontal Life,” and “Are You There Vodka? It’s Me, Chelsea.” In 2014 she used her comedic and literary platform to call attention to war and poverty in Africa, but not without criticism for the flip title, “Uganda Be Kidding Me.”

Although you can Google Handler’s sexual exploits and find an array of self-published photos of her boobs, before this tell-all she had been comparatively reserved about her inner life. Here, she writes about deaths in her family and her failures to live the lessons of therapy. “It’s ridiculous to try and get better at life when you’re constantly fucking up,” she said on the Howard Stern radio show in April.

But on the same promotional swing a beaming Handler told the co-hosts of “The View,” in a way you could almost buy apart from the edge in her voice, “I’m feeling optimistic about life.”

Chelsea Handler performs 8pm May 17 at the Fillmore Miami Beach. ChelseaHandler.com ~ Freddie Zandt