Jennette McCurdy

Jennette McCurdy was six years old when she had her first acting audition. Her mother’s dream was for her only daughter to become a star, and Jennette would do anything to make her mother happy. So she went along with what Mom called “calorie restriction,” eating little and weighing herself five times a day. She endured extensive at-home makeovers while Mom chided, “Your eyelashes are invisible, okay? You think Dakota Fanning doesn’t tint hers?” She was even showered by Mom until age sixteen while sharing her diaries, email, and all her income.

In I’m Glad My Mom Died, Jennette recounts all this in unflinching detail—just as she chronicles what happens when the dream finally comes true. Cast in a new Nickelodeon series called iCarly, she is thrust into fame. Though Mom is ecstatic, emailing fan club moderators and getting on a first-name basis with the paparazzi (“Hi Gale!”), Jennette is riddled with anxiety, shame, and self-loathing, which manifest into eating disorders, addiction, and a series of unhealthy relationships. These issues only get worse when, soon after taking the lead in the iCarly spinoff Sam & Cat alongside Ariana Grande, her mother dies of cancer. Finally, after discovering therapy and quitting acting, Jennette embarks on recovery and decides for the first time in her life what she really wants.

Told with refreshing candor and dark humor, I’m Glad My Mom Died is an inspiring story of resilience, independence, and the joy of shampooing your own hair.

I'm Glad My Mom Died

A pushover is a bad thing to be, but an opinionated pushover is a worse thing to be. A pushover is nice and goes along with it, whatever it is. An opinionated pushover acts nice and goes along with it, but while quietly brooding and resentful. I am an opinionated pushover.

sina (she/her) 

? i didn’t sign up to be psychoanalyzed 

fira

Current Guy is wonderfully sweet and thoughtful and romantic. But I don’t love him. Maybe it’s because I don’t have space in my heart to love anyone right now while Mom’s dying, or maybe that’s me trying to blame a genuine lack of connection on grief. Grief is a great scapegoat. Regardless, I’m discovering just how powerful of a tool it is to not love someone.

Loving someone is vulnerable. It’s sensitive. It’s tender. And I get lost in them. If I love someone, I start to disappear. It’s so much easier to just do googly eyes and fond memories and inside jokes for a few months, run the second things start to get real, then repeat the cycle with someone new.

That’s where I’m at right now with Current Guy. The distraction has been nice, but I’m ready for a replacement.

Keira 💫

this entire chapter [chapter 65] is brilliant. she’s such a good writer and i feel for her so badly

I’m allowed to hate someone else’s dream, even if it’s my reality. 

Rina

My life purpose has always been to make Mom happy, to be who she wants me to be. So without Mom, who am I supposed to be now?

Victoria

Alli

I yearn to know the people I love deeply and intimately-without context, without boxes-and I yearn for them to know me that way, too.

Helen 

dana

i feel the wedge between mom and i growing by the day. with every lie i tell, i feel myself slipping further away from her. with every pound i gain, every binge i partake in, i feel myself getting more disconnected from her.

i'm so confused and troubled by this wedge. i'm desperate to feel close to her, but also desperate for that closeness to be on my own terms, not hers. i want her to know me for who i'm becoming. i want her to allow for my growth. i want her to want me to be me.

but that feels more like a fantasy than a possibility, for now at least. so for now, i lie.

Liv Gliese Johnsen

Molly Sanderson 

ARCHIVE.

this book is going to do me the absolute most damage any book has ever done to me.

I throw on my best fake smile. Mom doesn't notice the smile is fake. 

“The problem with this is that if we beat ourselves up after a mistake, we add shame onto the guilt and frustration that we already feel about our mistake. That guilt and frustration can be helpful in moving us forward, but shame… shame keeps us stuck. It’s a paralyzing emotion. When we get caught in a shame spiral, we tend to make more of the same kinds of mistakes that caused us shame in the first place.”

But life happens. Love happens. Loss happens. Change and growth happen at different paces for different people, and sometimes the paces just don’t line up

I'm Glad My Mom Died quotes

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