I find the titles of books interesting. Having never published a book myself, I really don't know just how much thought/time/effort goes into crafting a title - especially for books that you know will immediately top the bestsellers lists. It must take a fair amount of thought. I also wonder what makes for a good title? I wonder what books were totally passed over because of their titles? I recently finished a book with a very contemptuous title, one that I can't bring myself to use. Actually, I can barely believe I even read it.
This is the book I just read, and the title I can't use. Immediately below this picture you will learn why, but if you'd like to just skip to the review click here.
Some backstory: My mom passed away 11 years ago, when I was 21 after a lifelong battle with chronic illness. I went from being the sole caregiver for my mother, to a regular 21 year old overnight and it completely changed my life. For the last 11 years, both consciously and subconsciously I have found ways to make up for 21 years of not having my needs met, for the childhood riddled with trauma, for the neglect and domestic violence I experienced, for failing at tasks I should never have been expected to do in the first place, and most importantly: for the 21 years of childhood and adolescence that I almost completely missed. I also spent those 11 years living with the symptoms of what I thought was anxiety and depression (and those definitely are things I had symptoms of), but was really complicated grief. Despite lifting the burden of the completely unreasonable experiences I had throughout my first 21 years of life, losing my mom was incredibly painful. Hence the complicated part.
Here's a bit of a timeline of my last 11 years:
2012 - My mom passes away, my life falls apart, but I somehow manage to tape it together. I go to counselling for 1 year, finish my first degree of university, work two jobs and live with my cousin (slash roommate). I learn what a house party is and how much fun they can be. I also learn that panic attacks and social anxiety can be crippling and end up getting in the way of the fun parts of life.
2013 - I meet the love of my life. I stop going to therapy. I start my degree in education. I struggle immensely with balancing life (school, multiple jobs, dating) and keeping tabs on my mental health.
2014 - I find what I think is the solution: I shove everything hard deep deep down inside. I turn the radio in my car off around mothers day so I can pretend it doesn't exist.
2015-2019 - I begin teaching, my anxious and depressive symptoms wax and wane, I continue to love being a young adult with minimal responsibilities. I buy a car and a house, start a fur family and continue working way too much and taking night classes. I can't watch movies or read books where a parent dies.
2020 - I become foster parent to a 17 year old who is dealing with very similar circumstances to what I experienced at 21. The pandemic hits and everything I love about my job is gone. I experience a huge spike in the symptoms of my complicated grief without realizing what that was.
2021 - I return to therapy with a focus on my anxiety, which leads to a very difficult exploration of how my childhood trauma and grief are impacting every aspect of my life. I have trouble opening that box deep inside where I shoved everything in 2014. I can watch movies where a parent dies, but I can't watch the old man's wife die in Up! The idea of people experiencing an immense loss is too painful to bear.
2023 - I manage to read this book and actually find it really cathartic.
There is A LOT I still need to work through, especially since most of it is still locked up deep inside, but I think this book is one of those things that will stand out to me as I look back on my timeline, as a clear sign of progress. I can't say the title because I can't say it about my life. I am not glad my mom died, but I get what McCurdy is trying to say, and in some ways, I was expecting McCurdy to actually be more glad hers did. Despite not being able to say the phrase she uses in her title, I get where she is coming from, and can relate to her feelings.
I did not watch Victorious, iCarly or Sam & Cat. They were shows that premiered shortly after my time watching Disney and Nickelodeon. But when I saw the title of this book, something told me I needed to read it. I went back and forth about whether or not I should buy this book. I thought: "I don't even know who Jennette McCurdy is". So I added my name to the hold list (that was over 300 people long) at my local library. I waited a very long time and then it came in. I knew that I only had three weeks, and even though they were some of the busiest weeks of the year for me, I read it, and I'm glad I did.
Jennette McCurdy's memoir tells about her complicated relationship with her mother and how that relationship impacted her entire life, including her experiences as a child/teen actor. McCurdy grew up living with her mother and father, grandparents and 3 older siblings. Her mother survived breast cancer, but fought multiple chronic illnesses for the remainder of her life. She also struggled with several mental illnesses which caused her to neglect and abuse her entire family, but most significantly, her daughter. Jennette grew up facing extreme pressures related to the entertainment industry, a career which she was not interested in having but was forced into by her mother, on top of physical, sexual and emotional abuse as well as neglect. Later in life, Jennette suffered from her own mental illnesses, multiple eating disorders and addiction. While she experienced immeasurable grief when her mother passed, over time, she came to see there were also a lot of positive changes as well.
I enjoyed and appreciated this book from cover to cover. McCurdy's writing style is so great; there was just enough humour and personality that you almost feel like you are having a conversation with her.
She also said what you may have been thinking in the most brazen and honest ways and gave readers a look at the raw, emotional moments and perspectives that - despite her very public life, only she could share. The chapters are short, making it feel like a fairly quick read and also removing a bit of the emotional heaviness because of the regular change of subject that new chapters brought. It was primarily in chronological order with some minor time hopping, which is fairly standard for many traumatic memoirs - occasionally it makes more sense to fill things in later, much like someone piecing together the puzzle that is therapeutic recovery. There are probably a ton of content warnings, but honestly, the title itself was a good enough content warning for me, and it served its purpose in that respect.
There are a few quotes I wanted to reflect on:
"She took care of me and my brothers, I'm sure that was really hard for her." "That was her job."
This is so important for people who struggle with childhood trauma from neglect and abuse to hear. Our view of what is ok and what is unacceptable is skewed. We need people who can see this in our past and point it out to us. It is not easy to hear, as McCurdy goes on to explain, but it is a huge realization, that our lives didn't have to be that way just because they were. I completely related to McCurdy as she described the moment above with her therapist. She wanted so badly to change the narrative. Sometimes it can be hard to hear what we need to hear and it might take multiple opportunities for it to sink in. Eventually McCurdy was ready to hear it, and I was too.
This one also reminded me my therapy. Often I struggle to figure out which emotion I am feeling, especially somewhere between sadness and anger, a place where guilt, frustration and shame all live. Shame is painful. It can also be really harmful.
... the funeral after-party (Is that what they call the part after the funeral where everyone eats finger sandwiches and tells you how they can relate to your loss because they lost a cat a few years back?)
Ugh. Funerals are hard for people. They don't know what to say and so they say everything you do not want to hear. When I was fostering the teenager I mentioned above and she was grieving, I was given the advice: 'don't relate to them, even if you think you had the exact same experience, you will never understand exactly what they are going through, so leave it open for them to share when they are ready and acknowledge rather than relate'.
And conversely, there will always be people who do not get what you're going through. They may try to figure it out, or they may also be ignorant to your challenges, but either way, they just aren't the people you need to surround yourself with in those tough moments. It is those moments that will actually tell you who you can lean on, and who does get it. So leave the other people behind, you don't need them.
So, would I recommend this book? Absolutely. I think there is value in her story for anyone who reads it. I wouldn't mind exploring a few things from this story later on, like the mother forcing McCurdy to stay young, or even just exploring my feelings around the title a bit more, but I think just writing this review is a huge accomplishment at this point. It was worth the wait from the library, that's for sure!