I absolutely fell in love with Jenny Lawson’s first book, Let’s Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir. Detailing her unconventional childhood out in the West Texas boonies, Lawson seemed to be the obvious heir to David Sedaris. While her book tackled serious issues like her difficulty being “normal” and her miscarriage, it seemed like she was more interested in being funny than insightful. Hew newest book, Furiously Happy flips that ratio. It’s one part funny, three parts an uncomfortable discussion of mental issues. […]
It Might be Easier. But it Wouldn’t be Better.
I wish someone had told me this simple but confusing truth: Even when everything’s going your way you can still be sad. Or anxious. Or uncomfortably numb. Because you can’t always control you brain or your emotions even when things are perfect. When I was a junior in high school I started to struggle with depression. My family has a long running history with OCD and anxiety but depression was a little bit new. My mom took it as a personal affront to her parenting […]
Let Your Freak Flag Fly
I had high hopes to finish this review yesterday, but I had one of my “bad days”, which is fitting in a totally weird, Bloggess way. My bad days are the days where my depression and anxiety win and my emotions take a fun ride to Overwhelming Sadness Valley, Rage Inducing Irritability Town and Petrified by Intrusive Thoughts Commonwealth. I am cursed with dysthymia, which is a.) a genus of moth, b.) a form of chronic depression (but ONLY MILD depression, if you are judgy Google) and […]
“‘And then Adam was like, “Who’s Jesus?” and God said, “No one yet. It’s just an idea I’m throwing around.”‘
I admire Jenny Lawson so much, even more now that I’ve read this book. She’s frequently very open on her blog about her mental illness, but she’s never been this open before. It must have taken a great deal of courage to talk so freely about such personal things. Then again, maybe it didn’t. Jenny herself admits in the book there’s a kind of freedom that you can only achieve once you stop caring what other people think and truly accept yourself, flaws and all. […]
“I AM GOING TO BE FURIOUSLY HAPPY, OUT OF SHEER SPITE.”
Ah, Jenny Lawson. You magnificent unicorn. I loved Let’s Pretend This Never Happened when it came out (and I recently revisited it on audiobook, which made it even funnier) and while Furiously Happy touches more on Lawson’s depression and anxiety, she still manages to infuse it with that special Bloggess touch. “It’s about taking those moments when things are fine and making them amazing, because those moments are what make us who we are, and they’re the same moments we take into battle with us” Lawson […]
“Winner: Everyone who isn’t my editor.”
A review is really unnecessary here. Just go buy/check out/borrow/steal Furiously Happy and get to reading. It is incredibly funny, incredibly moving, and really, really, REALLY funny. Did I mention it was funny? Because it’s really funny. This isn’t enough to make word quota is it? Do we have a word quota on the CBR blog? I should probably check in to that. No, I’m not just typing to fill out word space. How dare you, good sir or madam. If I had a white […]