Kimberly Harrington

In this tender, funny, and sharp companion to her acclaimed memoir-in-essays Amateur Hour, Kimberly Harrington explores and confronts expectations, marriage, failure, a sort-of-divorce and the ways love, loss, and longing shape a life. Six weeks after she and her husband announced their divorce, Kimberly Harrington began writing a book she thought would be about divorce, heavy on the dark humor. After all, she and her future ex had chosen to still live together in the same house with their kids as they slowly transitioned from being a married couple to single people (someday) living separately. Over the course of two years of what was supposed to be a temporary period of transition, Harrington sifted through her past--how she formed her ideas about relationships, sex, marriage, divorce--and dug back into the history of her marriage--how they met, what it felt like to be in love, how she and her husband had changed over time, the impact having children had on their relationship, and what they still owed one another. But You Seemed So Happy is a time capsule of sorts. It's about getting older and repeatedly dying on the hill of being wiser, only to discover you were never actually all that dumb to begin with. It's an honest, intimate biography of a marriage, from its heady, idealistic, and easy beginnings to its slowly coming apart to its evolution into something completely unexpected. As she probes what it means when everyone assumes you're happy as long as you're still married, Harrington skewers engagement photos, small-town busybodies, Gen X idiosyncrasies, and the casual way we make life-altering decisions when we're young. Ultimately, this moving and funny memoir in essays is a vulnerable and irreverent act of forgiveness--of ourselves, our partners, and the relationships that have run their course but will always hold permanent meaning in our lives.

A Marriage, in Pieces and Bits

But You Seemed So Happy

"Welcome to essayist Kimberly Harrington's poetic and funny world of motherhood, womanhood, and humanhood--not necessarily in that order. It's a place of loud parenting, fierce loving, too much social media, and occasional inner monologues where timeless debates are resolved such as Pro/Con: Caving to PTO Bake Sale Pressure ("PRO: Skim the crappiest brownies for myself. CON: They're really crappy."). With accessibility and wit, she captures the emotions around parenthood in artful and earnest ways, highlighting this time in the middle--midlife, the middle years of childhood, and how women are stuck in the middle of so much. It's a place of elation, exhaustion, and time whipping past at warp speed. Finally, it's a quiet space to consider the girl you were, the mother you are, and the woman you are always becoming."--Page [4] of cover.

motherhood in essays and swear words

Amateur hour

Please Don't Get Murdered at School Today

An emotionally honest, arresting, and funny collection of essays about motherhood and adulthood... “Being a mother is a gift.” Where’s my receipt? Welcome to essayist Kimberly Harrington’s poetic and funny world of motherhood, womanhood, and humanhood, not necessarily in that order. It’s a place of loud parenting, fierce loving, too much social media, and occasional inner monologues where timeless debates are resolved such as Pro/Con: Caving to PTO Bake Sale Pressure (“PRO: Skim the crappiest brownies for myself. CON: They’re really crappy.”) With accessibility and wit, she captures the emotions around parenthood in artful and earnest ways, highlighting this time in the middle—midlife, the middle years of childhood, how women are stuck in the middle of so much. It’s a place of elation, exhaustion, and time whipping past at warp speed. Finally, it’s a quiet space to consider the girl you were, the mother you are, and the woman you are always becoming.

Kimberly Harrington

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