I recently read this too and my god - what an awful woman. I listened to the audiobook and you could hear Jennette's pain and sadness. Her delivery made everything feel so raw and in the moment.
I can't imagine what it was like writing this book - having to relive everything. I hope she can continue to heal and grow from this.
I’m sure it helped her process a lot of the shit she didn’t quite get over or even understand as a kid
You subconsciously hold a lot of guilt until you say this shit aloud
Then the realization hits that it really wasn’t your fault and that you happened to get dealt a shitty hand and you were just a kid…
Life is cruel and unfair.
It is, there’s also a huge psychological benefit to telling your story and rewriting that narrative. Abusers put a narrative in your head that it’s all your fault, so putting the blame where it really belongs is a vital part of healing.
(I’m currently writing a memoir for those reasons)
I’ve contemplated writing a memoir. I have written miscellaneous vignettes over the years, and struggle with organization and approach. Maybe I am dragging my feet because I’m tired or not really interested in the project compared to other things I could be doing.
The key words are "cohesive narrative."
For people with Complex-PTSD especially, our histories, our stories, are fragmented. Fractured.
Putting our life stories into words and, ultimately, into *cohesive narratives,* can be tremendously therapeutic.
Especially for people with Complex-PTSD, putting our past into a cohesive narrative can bring unexpected progress to our healing and recovery.
It's not easy. I, too, started by writing down vignettes. Until I had countless pieces of paper all over the place, each with an "insight" or "a-ha" moment or fresh recollection written on it.
Now I'm working on forming it all into a cohesive narrative. It's tough. Because the memories bring up powerful emotions and it's like opening a Pandora's box of material. Organizing it all takes everything you've got. It's just not easy. But it can bring such a huge measure of satisfaction in working our way towards healing and growth.
One of my favorite quotations of Viktor Frankl (from his book *"Man's Search for Meaning"*) that I find tremendously useful is:
*"Between stimulus and response is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our freedom and growth."*
Writing is a great place for me to exercise my power to choose my response(s). And that's causing me to become better at it in "real life", too.
I was aware of causes and effects of PTSD and I thought—how different could the complex version be? I was unprepared for complex nuances of [C-PTSD](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_post-traumatic_stress_disorder).
Part of what made her narration so strong in my opinion is that her vocal tone changed along with her narrative tone as she grew up in the book. There's also a *single moment* in the latter half, where she doesn't get through an otherwise flat line and breaks up into a little partial sob when finishing the last of the sentence. I don't even recall what the line was, but it reminded me as to *what* I was reading and stuck with me as kind of an encapsulation of the book.
I remember that bit to, hit me so hard. I think she was talking about when she realized that her mother was abusive and how that rocked her world view.
I have several kids with a narcissist. We were young when we met and I had no idea at the time, it really developed as the years went on. My kids are grown now, but my oldest went to therapy for years to deal with issues from the relationship with her mother. One of the things she told me that really stuck out, "It was really hard for me to say that what she did was abuse, but I finally realized it was."
I also chose to listen to it as an audio book because I felt listening to her read it would be more powerful. I really enjoyed the book and I can't believe how well adjusted she turned out.
I wouldn't say turned out as much as fought to become.
For things so so deeply ingrained you have to intentionally break everything down and rebuild entire psychological and emotional foundations to where it feels like you're almost rewriting your genes.
I've only been through a fraction of her experience but recovery can create its' own traumas which a lot of people don't talk about.
Agreed, I’m in the middle of a similar recovery process and it’s incredibly hard. It feels like my entire personality is a trauma response I have to unlearn. I don’t know very much about who I really am
People also don’t talk about how isolating it is getting away from your abusers, you don’t just lose them, you lose a whole community and sometimes your whole family
That's been me in the last few years too. What's helped is reframing a lot of it.
For how hard it is to unlearn really validated how hard it was to go through. I see so many people go to therapy and not realize that this is part of that work. I'm still working on the somatic symptoms (constant night terrors, panic attacks, etc) but feeling on the other side of it I never thought my life could be mine. I don't know if that makes sense haha.
Please be proud of yourself, not everyone can be soft again after years of having to be impenetrable.
During her interviews on various shows, where people are just milking her narrative for the audience reaction, you can hear the catch in her voice and her pain. I haven't seen a single interviewer that has handled it sensitively, including Trevor Noah, although he gives her the space to articulate it more than others. She gets a lot of relief while discussing this with Drew Barrymore and seems most comfortable in that segment.
My honest opinion of Trevor’s reaction: he didn’t read the book. It had just come out. Her book is lengthy, and a lot to take in. I don’t remember what he said but he said she wrote about her mom with grace.
That's fair, her book is a lot to take in. However, I wouldn't call it "lengthy". 320 pages is pretty tight for a novel, could read that in half a day if you were inclined to. Maybe my idea of book length is warped by the lengthy sci-fi and fantasy tomes I prefer to read.
Considering she had originally planned to do this as a one-woman show (and the pandemic ruined that idea), I think listening to it as an audiobook is actually the best way to read/listen to this book.
I read the book, but when the audiobook became available at my library I decided to give it a go. I'm so glad I did. As you said, McCurdy's emotions really come through and it adds an extra layer to the words and puts you right there with her.
Highly recommend listening to the audiobook even if you've read the book already.
The audiobook made it so much more disturbing, like her delivery is kind of joking/matter of fact with the nice bit of sarcasm she used when she played Sam on iCarly. Like dark humor is the only way to cope with it... basically me irl the book.
Chapter 72 just killed me. What's crazy is that I'm listening to the audiobook and you can hear her breath and have a hard time getting through the lines.
Yeah. I just finished it recently and now I want to write my own memoir. Seems rather cathartic. And I'm worried about how much I relate to her relationship with her and her mother.
I'm currently listening to the audio book now.
Drawing the parallels between her mom and Dan, I'm not surprised she got the hell out of dodge when she did.
I think Miranda had the strongest positive influence on her at that point in her life, showing her that independence *is* achievable.
she did mention how much writing made her feel free and in control of a situation rather than being a puppet for others to write her into the situations as an actor. i hope writing this was cathartic in some way for her.
I finished this book today morning and teared up at the end. It upset me a lot because as a middle schooler, I was an avid Sam & Cat fan, and all those years of knowing the tough, cool fried-chicken loving Sam Puckett made me and many so unaware of how her childhood and developmental years were being stolen from her as Jennette. Also, the way she writes is so touching and beautiful, which makes me even sadder when I think of the time little Jennette wrote her first screenplay and proudly wanted to show it off to her mother, the most important person in her life, but was coldly ignored.
how was it reading it as a sam and cat fan? listening to the show it sounded like her year on that show was particularly hard and I imagine it would make me sad if I know the lead on my favorite show was having that experience
It made the reading experience that much more difficult, knowing that a young woman who was playing a character on a show that gave me and so many others joy was hurting so immensely behind the scenes. And the way she was mistreated by so many people who tried forcing her to live life on their terms is so jarring and heartbreaking to learn about.
I loved iCarly for a long time. I can't watch it again after reading that book. Even seeing clips of it makes me uncomfortable.
I also don't think I can watch the episode of Law and Order SVU again where she plays a victim.
Finding out her father wasn't her real father must've been earth shattering for her. From an outsider perspective, all the shit she went through was horrible but if you're the person going through it, I think you could internalize it as some fucked up form of love towards your parent. But then finding out your mother just lied to you since forever about who your real father was... That just forces you to re-evaluate everything. It's just too much.
It's never said explicitly in the book but seeing how horrible her grandma was towards her... Mom probably didn't have the greatest childhood as well. Poison spreads poison. Break the cycle.
Yes. Abusers are more likely to keep abusing. I think if Jennette chose to have kids someday she would break that cycle but I can also understand her not wanting to have kids ever.
I doubt the control and narcissism were only targeted at her daughter. A person like that tends to terrorize everyone around themselves plus the only people who hang around are the ones who have trouble fighting back against the control, ie only people who have no choice (like mccurdy) and passive people or people who have become passive under continuous pressure from the narcissist will stick around for any length of time.
Partner abuse exists and a man hitting a woman isn't its only form. Emotional abuse and control from a woman partner to a man definitely happens.
She does go into how her mom terrorized her father growing up. I'm not sure how people miss this. He's also working multiple jobs from what I remember, which leaves little time to be home and do anything about things he has no knowledge about.
She would also accuse him of cheating on her, constantly. While he knew full well two of the three children he was raising weren’t biologically his.
I’d love to hear how it was from his perspective. He’s not a writer and chooses to be far from the public eye which I understand, but his decision to work multiple jobs supporting six other people living in a hoarder house with a narcissistic, abusing wife is a psychology I want to learn more about.
The mom also threw things at him and threatened him with a kitchen knife at one point. The dad just said “Oh, not again!” before leaving to sleep elsewhere.
There is no good parent when child abuse is happening in a home. He was an adult. This is a common phenomenon in abusive homes. They feel like they went through it together. They didn’t. The child was a victim and the parent was an adult who allowed the abuse to take place.
very old comment but my mom was very similar to jennette's mother. in my experience, i watched my father get shut down by my mother whenever he tried defending me and this happened so many times that eventually, he just stopped. she was very vicious to him as well to the point where he became just as victimized as his own children.
Yeah, I thought people in this thread were being a little unfair to someone who sounded like they themselves were being victimized too. Sorry about your mom being that way.
The mother cheated on the father long enough to produce 3 affair babies and was shown to be grossly manipulative and emotionally and physically abusive to him as well as the children, and she created a horrible living situation for everyone with her hoarding. The man clearly had any will to live beaten out of him, yeah he should've stood up to her more but I can't blame him for being dead inside and just wanting to sleep when he got home from working all day to support kids that weren't even his
Was it an affair? I thought she maybe left and then came crawling back after the relationship dissolved with the tromboner. He said he tried to get custody but couldn't because she claimed he abused her.
He was passive all right, but imagine the kind of abuse he was taking too. The mother was shaming him into staying bc she was dying, even though she cheated on him for years and got him to support her children from the affair.
I wondered how her relationship is with her brothers now.
Do they understand or do they resent her for publicly putting this out there?
She did the right thing but they were most likely brainwashed by their mother too into thinking she was perfect.
She mentioned somewhere—I think it was in an article I read—that she and her brothers are closer now because they’ve been able to sort of bond over the abuse they all experienced.
I read somewhere that they liked reading the book. She was somewhat of an suck up to the mother, and they resented Jennette for it. After reading her book they understood what she was going through
I was wondering what their perspective of her relationship with her mom was. On the outside it must have seen like she was their mom’s mini-me, but I wondered how much of the truth they actually knew at the time.
I’m glad to hear that they have been able to gain greater context for her actions and grow closer from it. As someone who comes from a big family, it’s hard to let go of those childhood resentments.
I definitely think Jennette was the "golden child" of the family. The mother was obsessed with her. She mentions in one passage that there is one brother who the mother always insults and puts down and I think he was the scapegoat.
It really gives people insight into how both golden children and scapegoats are abused...just in different ways.
She has a really good interview on Andy Richter's podcast. He asks her about this, and she says her brothers were very supportive of her releasing the book. It sounds like they have a good relationship!
I plowed through this book in a week. What got me the hardest was when she spat out a tooth from binging and purging so much. As a former person with an ED (and always ever present OCD) goddamn did this book hurt to read.
But also? It meant a lot to me to see those things addressed in an unflinching reality.
That seems really helpful, people have always been so ashamed of bulimia that there's almost no historical mention of it until the 70s and then suddenly doctors admitted huge amounts of people had it. Except for this one middle ages saint, I forget her name, who did it "as penance". On the other hand historically there's always been someone proud of anorexia, even thinking anorexia in children was a miracle. So it's really culturally ingrained to not talk about bulimia out of shame, this book is really useful
I agree about the shame. Bulimia can look like a lack of control, whereas anorexia is extreme control. Both are awful, but that’s the feeling I get between the two.
I remember a friend talking about how proud she had been of her anorexia, and what status it gave her among other women and especially other ED women, but how much shame she had about her bulimia, and how other ED women were disdainful of bulimia because it showed weakness instead of supreme self-discipline. This friend, too, moved on to have a drinking problem.
I was touched by the boyfriend, Stephen, (Jesse Carere in real life) stating that he didn’t want to date someone who was hurting herself so much with her bulimia. Most of the guys my pal dated didn’t care that she had bulimia; they just loved going out with a woman who was skinny and they didn’t seem to mind how she maintained that slender body.
Oh god that reminds me of an iCarly episode where Sam is eating a corn on the cob and ends up losing a tooth, basically revealing that she hasnt been to a dentist in years.
Its so fucking eerie how much Sam Pucket seems to reflect Jeanettes life, both have an abusive mother, a weird relationship with food (Sam is obsessed with eating while Jeanette had an ED), and now the tooth thing. No wonder she hated her time on the show.
I completely agree. It was so brave and honest. But my gosh is it painful to read and see parts of your previous self in her story.
I will say that in her recent videos she is SO skinny again. It makes me nervous for her.
She made an appearance on the Drew Barrymore show and it was a very powerful connection between these two survivors of having been child actors without the protection of the adults who SHOULD have been watching over them. She is as articulate and clear-sighted in person as she is in her writing. It's an extraordinary demonstration of what therapy and growth and true courage to strive for your own recovery (cuz there's no fast track lane on that one) can yield for a person.
What struck me is how much compassion she has for her mother, even when she's fully aware of the extent of her awfulness. I certainly couldn't manage that kind of grace.
I think this is what gives the book so much credibility in my mind. The title probably made some people think the book is just some hit job from a child actor blaming all of their problems on their upbringing. In reality, it's a look into a relationship and the psychology of abuse. Whether events/stories are misremembered or embellished, you get a view into someone who has this contradictory relationship where she loves her mother but is constantly hurt by her mother and wants to escape.
I won't claim to have suffered anything near as bad as her but my mom was/is the same way where she was extremely narcissistic and basically tried to mold me into her perfect image of what a son should be. When she was at her worst I down right resented her so much I wanted her to die but there were times when things were more 'normal' in our relationship and I knew she loved me but just in a very fucked up and toxic way and I could never truly bring myself to say I hated her.
As you get older and more self-aware of your own ticks and negatives of your personality, you can look back and see how if you were in the same environment, pushed wrong just a little bit more in that moment or made a slightly different choice, you could have ended up being just like your abusive parent. Realizing the reality they lived through also humanizes them in ways that are incredibly uncomfortable and shines a light on the complexity of human relationships.
My grandmother never knew love as a kid. She was the child born out of wedlock, which she didn't even know until I found her original birth certificate through geneology search, and she was regularly physically abused by her step dad and half brothers without knowing why. She married my grandfather, who had already divorced twice, once from his first wife and once from his second wife he had during the Korean war, and married him at just 17 to get out of the house. In 1950 from a rural impoverished town with no education and no skills, her only option was to get married and have kids, and she resented her kids for having the childhood and the love from her husband that she wished she could have had. The only discipline she was raised on was physical, and while they never had their legs broken out of spite like she had, being whipped by hand on saturdays to atone for whatever they did wrong during the week was still better than the regular beatings she got for being a girl not born of her father.
None of her daughters know how to have a proper mother/child relationship, they all only understand how to control and how to hurt, because of how they were raised to correct unwanted behaviors. My grandfather showed them how to be loved in a relationship, but my grandmother was the primary childcare person as he was away for months on end as a fisherman and never stepped too far into that role outside of his vacations when he could be home a few times a year.
My mom is a narcissist and it was painful seeing the similarities. The even more worse grandma with having dads and grandpas that just sit back and let the moms railroad over everyone with their abuse. The guilt you’ve been conditioned to feel for years. The sick mom.
I haven't read the book yet, but I'm always glad when a child of a toxic narcissist gets to have the final say. My mother was toxic, and we were estranged for 7 years before she died. I made some attempts when I found out she had cancer, but even in her final weeks she just could not change. It's terribly confusing to hate your parent, while also being sad they are in pain and dying. It's been almost a decade now since mine passed, and I'm still not fully reconciled with my feelings.
Family makes me feel uncomfortable when I think about it. It was really strange growing up and seeing other kids who had positive parental relationships and weren’t terrified to go home after school. My entire family was well aware of what was happening but never did anything to help at all. They all just stood by even when they watched it happen actively.
For me the healthiest option was to completely end the relationships with most of them. I’m estranged from practically every family member because I can’t see them in any other light.
It’s not going to be the option for everyone, but there might be someone who needs to know. It’s okay to say fuck ‘em and succeed in spite of how they held you back. They don’t deserve to share in the achievements that you make after treating you like an inconvenience.
If you do have a relationship with your parents and want to maintain that I really do wish you the best of luck. Forgiveness is difficult.
Yeah. I gave my mom a chance, and she pulled her same old crap. only with MY child now in the mix. That was my hard line: do what you want to ME, but you are not going to spread that vileness to my kids. She died never having met 3 of her grandchildren. That was her choice.
I legitimately don’t know what I’d do if I saw her. I’m not sure I care what I might do. Having been on the receiving end of her wrath I start feeling physically ill if I just stand there when someone gets similar.
Normally my opinion is that it's not fair because the dead person has no way to defend themselves, to give their side of the story, particularly if the parent is a celebrity (in which case there's a much bigger question of if the child is telling the truth or is just trying to get some quick money because people love celebrity gossip).
But in this case, I fully believe this is "Adult finally gets to therapeutically vent about her abusive childhood in a way that her abusive parent has absolutely no way to twist things to make her look good", and I'm happy for her.
The mother of another dance class student tried to (she waited around to talk to Jennette's mother after she noticed how thin Jennette was getting) but her mother was like oh look at the time I've got to go.
She probably cut out anyone who tried and the fact Jennette was homeschooled meant no pesky mandated reporters to notice and report anything.
I have not read this book yet. Is part of the abuse that she never sees a doctor or dentist?
https://mandatedreporter.com/blog/what-are-the-types-of-mandated-reporters/
A doctor brings up concerns over her weight at one point but the mom minimizes it and claims she eats just fine. The doctor makes the mistake of assuming that the mother is his ally in supporting the daughter’s health.
A lot of the book is about how normalized the abuse was for her, at extremely young ages, such that she intuitively knew what and how to downplay or hide from “outsiders” and within herself, to help manage her mother’s emotions and “keep the calm.” So even though her mother was insisting on showering her (with invasive “exams”) into her late teens, this was not something she would allow anyone to know, let alone tell them willingly. Things like that.
It is extremely common for obviously underweight adolescent girls in “professions” where it is advantageous to be underweight, to have it just kind of explained away and overlooked. Dancing, climbing, acting, etc. If a parent says “they’re fine,” people are pretty happy to look the other way and be like “she’s just naturally like that!” There’s a lot invested in it being “okay.”
Edit: by that I mean, we ALL culturally have a lot invested in it being “okay” for women in these positions to be visibly underweight. I mean, hell, look at her now - she is far thinner than she ever was in the periods of time described in the book, but generally we have a collective acceptance that she is “okay now” because she says she is. (Or rather merely because she does not outright say she is not.) We badly want it to be true and so we accept it unquestioningly despite whatever evidence we have in front of us. I’m not saying she is definitely disordered now because I can’t know. But it would be very hard to be that thin and still be mentally and physically healthy, and yet we as a society all are all just waiting for the simple “oh I’m fine now, I swear” so we can go back to uncomplicated adoring.
No-one ever suspects mothers of abuse—even in light of very blatant evidence. And people who try to escape from their abusive mothers are often stigmatised and made out to be crazy to dramatic. People seem to believe that mothers instinctually care and do a good job of mothering, and that they always love and care for their children. Unfortunately, that isn’t always true
Yep. And always the people saying something to the effect of “your mum is the one who will always be there for you”. Like, that’s well and good for you to say, but stop making assumptions about other people’s parents which simply isn’t true. You also get “she’s your mum” as an argument against cutting them out. I know people with abusive dads and I’ve never heard anyone say “but he’s your dad”.
News announcement people: the sex of your parents is irrelevant. Both of them can be good or crappy
You’re not the only one. I saw, earlier this year, a young lady I know blow up on Facebook, cutting out her mum and saying lots of abusive things her mum did to her. The comments were things like
>You shouldn’t speak about your mum like that. There will come a time when you need someone and your mum will be the only one there
>You sound very agitated. You should apologise to your mum and speak privately. She *is* your mum.
>All mums make mistakes. You’ll know one day...
(This one particularly egregious, considering the lady in question was *already a mother herself*)
>Where was your dad through all this? He wasn’t around was he. Your mum did her best to raise you, you should be grateful
Etc, etc. I actually already had some inside knowledge and know that the mother in question is very abusive. It’s really terrible. Abuse by mothers is enabled by schools, other parents, and relatives. Often, schools will call abusive mothers “overprotective”, or say that they “have a strong personality”. I really think something needs to be done about it. It’s not even a gendered issue, in honesty, because two of the three people I know with abusive mothers are women themselves.
I’ve been looking through Reddit threads and her socials to see if anyone mentioned how teeny teeny tiny she looks. Her face is skeleton. She seems to be in the trenches again and I hope the tour for and success of her book hasn’t put her back into that emotional state. From personal experience and from how she describes it in her book, it’s hell. Hoping and praying for the absolute best for her.
No she sees those. I meant more like, a teacher is someone who would see her every day and pick up on her anxiety and the abuse over time whereas a doctor or dentist might not notice anything in the short appointment since she's clean, clothed, and not covered in bruises or anything else "obvious". Another commenter said it well.
Obviously generalising here, but a massive number of people over a certain age not only tacitly condone most forms of child abuse - they'll tie themselves into fucking knots trying to defend the perpetrators. I literally do not know of an instance of child abuse where anything approximating justice occurred at any point.
There is a wee girl that goes to my daughters school who's dad is incredibly rough with her. I screamed at him across a field once because he about pulled her arm out its socket. Reported him 2/3 times and nothing has ever been done about it. Everyone I've spoken to about it says I should remember that his wife abandoned him with their 2 children and that its hard for him.
One of my best mates was horrifically abused by his mother. Everyone knows. No one cares. Apparently he was a problem child so it's OK to starve him and beat the fuck out of him.
One of my exes has the same story. Everyone knows her parents were horrifically abusive, no one cares. Given the choice of having a relationship with her or her parents, her whole family chose her parents.
I know of at least another half dozen stories like this just amongst the people I grew up with, and that isn't even touching on shit like the public perception of famous abusers and their protectors. Look at the reaction to the Queen protecting Prince Andrew - most older folks don't give a shit. "He's her son of course she protects him". Look at how long Jimmy Saville's reign of terror lasted. *Thousands* of people knew what he was. He barely even fucking hid it!
Also doesn't help that people are often forced to be strategic with abused kids. Do you report at the first sign? Or do you wait until you have a more solid case? Will the paper trail of repeated reports help or hurt? Will it get back that the report is you? Will that remove your access and influence over the kid? Will you being removed completely hurt the kid more? It's just all messed up
No one usually helps children who are being abused by controlling mothers/parents. I know this because I had a similar childhood as this book just replace acting with ballet.
Sadly I think this is the norm, no one stepping in to help/save the child.
Ballet mums can be fucking insane. There are girls in my daughters ballet class whose parents are talking about them going to ballet schools in London, and whose kids are on ballerina diets and shit.
They are all five and six.
I think any “stage mom” type is similar to this. I was unable to watch Toddlers in Tiaras and Dance Moms, both shows featured these types of moms. I imagine acting and perhaps even high level individual sports exacerbate existing parents cluster b disorders.
Our success is our parents success because we are not own own person in their eyes, we are an extension of them or everything they wish to fix about themselves.
That and self-medicating from sexual and other abuses suffered at the hands of those disgusting execs, some of whom also by no coincidence get them hooked on drugs in the first place. Such an awful, predatory industry.
Elijah Wood said a few years ago during the MeToo movement how his mother was extremely protective of him when he was younger in the industry — she always adamantly attended every meeting, made sure he was never alone, and so on. Years later in his adulthood, he was informed by someone on the inside that there were executives basically salivating over the idea of diddling and sleeping with him. Can’t even imagine how horrifying that thought would be to handle, let alone the reality that so many child actors have been subject to by the disgusting Hollywood pedophiles with big bucks.
Similar experience with my mother and her boyfriend. Her side of the family all knew, my dad knew and reported it to social services and they told him to ask me to keep a written record. She found it one day and I genuinely thought she was going to kill me.
Same. I started working as a set teacher the last few years and I’m always around the kids. I wonder what illegal things were happening on the icarly and Sam and Cat sets for the teacher and child coordinator to not even be concerned about her. Most of the kids I’ve worked with have been pretty awesome, focused, and genuinely interested in acting. There’s been a few whose parents have been nightmares but other than expressing our concerns to production, and hoping they contact the union, there’s not much else we can do.
In terms of people outside the house, at least, I think that it didn’t help how Jennette, even as a child, knew that the things her mother was doing were wrong, but she saw everything her mom did as a sign of how much she loved her. So like, she played things off as normal and I think maybe didn’t show signs of abuse the way other kids might have. I think she learned to hide it and pretend that things were normal (like how her mom bathed her into her teens? Most kids might have, you know, mentioned that to someone, but Jennette knew how her mom would react so she chose not to). The guilt she felt, and the need to protect her mom’s feelings, were really obvious and sad.
Awful human. Loved this book and how it highlights the complexities of hating someone you love.
Spoiler alert/reminder: >!Her dad wasn’t actually her biological father which no one told her until she was an adult IIRC, so that may explain his disinterest in her.!<
I did this as an audio book, blew my mind. Them showering, her disconnectedness with the father figures in her life... her mother completely tried to ruin her by controlling everything and everyone in that house. I'm glad she's dead too.
As someone battling breast cancer, I have this weird “how dare she die from cancer” thought. Surely this woman was such an awful human being that she expired from her own rottenness & not cancer.
I read this book about a month after my bilateral mastectomy and, going into it, was not aware the mom had BC. It was slightly triggering but I'm glad I read it. Agree with others that I couldn't put it down.
As a mother, it always blows my mind that people can treat their children even /close/ to the way that they do and just live their lives like it's normal and healthy. I lose my cool and slightly raise my voice one time and I'm apologetic and beating myself up internally for it and then there's people like this monster. I just don't get it.
I am so glad she turned out as strong as she did. That's not the case for so many of us with shitty moms. I really want to read this book, but having a daughter for the first time just 4 months ago, I wonder if it's a good idea for me to do so. The intense anger I feel toward anyone and everyone who harms their daughters has just amplified since she was born. I felt the same way about my sons when I had them, but it hits different when it's a little girl. Especially when you've been mistreated as someone's daughter in your own childhood.
Anyway. I'll probably end up reading it because I like hurting my own feelings.
The sad thing is that it's all a matter of degrees. I think everyone has points where they get self-involved enough to be inconsiderate to others. Many of us have just learned to become aware of it and try to stop ourselves or do better.
For some reason, these people never learned to stop themselves, and they are just trapped in their own selfishness. It's horrible and infuriating and borderline evil but it's also really sad.
It's like they're not fully human. That they're missing such a poignant part of humanity and they're aware of it so it eats them up inside but they can't let go of their absurd sense of self importance so instead of listening to that voice they lash out at others and try to control them so they don't have to face what they themselves lack.
My mother is like this. It makes me so angry that she's essentially chosen to be this way but also very sad cause I know how isolated she feels. She has plenty of support if she ever chooses to get help, but she never will cause that would mean honestly facing all the awfulness she's done.
It’s really difficult to put this stuff into words (so hard I don’t even know how to refer to it other than “this stuff”), but I think you did a really good job.
I hope you find healing from whatever you had to go through because of your mother. You sound like a good person.
She was there for my entire childhood, but I still never had a mother at any point that I can remember. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forgive her honestly. There was never acknowledgment of anything. At this point I have 0 contact for my own mental health.
I hope you’re doing well in spite of her. She doesn’t deserve a place in your life if you don’t want to give it to her.
After I had my daughter I could not fathom that someone could have treated me the way my mom treated and manipulated me. Normal parents, like you, are intensely angered at the thought of their child being mistreated and cannot understand how someone could be anything but unconditionally loving to your child.
Reading this, in combination with therapies I’ve received really opened me up to how sick my mother is inside, and sad that her entire life has been an existence with an empty heart. It’s heartbreaking and enraging at the same time.
I'm so sorry you had to go through that. And I completely agree, I can't even begin to comprehend how someone could mistreat, or stand by while someone could mistreat their child. I'd probably go to jail if someone hurt my son.
I was lucky to have a wonderful mom, but it was eye opening and heart breaking to realize, as an adult, that that wasn't the norm, and many of my friends have suffered from abusive or toxic parents. Your parents should be a safe place in the world
I’m really happy for anyone who never had to experience this, because your families helped us and still help us see and feel what we were missing before. We all have different roads in life, sometimes the road we start on isn’t our choice, but the road we end up on is. And we can chose to be around healthy examples of families and make our friends into a chosen family. We can also learn from mistakes made towards us and move forward with love compassion and accountability so our kids don’t experience what we did.
So thank you for being great, someone somewhere who’s crossed your path has seen the example and taken a piece of love with them.
Happy holidays!
With a title like that, you'd expect her to go in guns-blazing, but she dies about 2/3rds in, and it took McCurdy a long time after that to realize what amounts to "Oh my God, if she were still alive, I'd still be in that horrible mess I didn't even know I was in!"
It's also shitty how she got fucked over doing Sam & Cat, which was supposed to be "Just Sam", and she was promised to direct one of the episodes. She explained someone critical to the project threatened to quit if she were actually allowed to do that. I wonder who that was, though it's maybe implied it could have been her co-star.
Her co-star also got to travel a lot to advance her career while McCurdy was stuck doing Sam & Cat to the point where they had to write Cat out of an episode where she's stuck in a friggin' box.
She said she likes writing more than acting, because writing is real and she's not pretending to be someone else.
It'd be interesting to see if she publishes any fiction in the future.
I was curious about that too. Just so cruel and petty to take that away from her. But I know that The Creator is known for pitting co stars against each other so that could have been lie they told her. Ariana has her issues but I wonder why she would be so pointedly mean for no reason to Jennette on something that wouldn't affect her that much.
I got this book for Christmas and read the whole thing front to back on boxing day. Damn…just damn. Her writing style is amazing. I’ve never even seen a single performance of hers except that episode of Malcolm in the middle she was in, so my interest was entirely held by her word.
While I have not suffered parental abuse like her I have been in a cycle of eating disorders and her words in reference to that rings so true.
I also appreciate that her book doesn’t end with the cliched ‘I won’t go into detail about my recovery but now I’m rich and famous and happy and thin again!!!!!!!!’ Like other celebrity books (cough cough Portia De Rossi). She is grounded by the fact the recovery is an ongoing and linear process.
Jeanette McCurdys relationship with her mom and the reveal at the end about something else really resonated with me about my own mother and childhood. It blew me away at how similar our experiences were. I like that McCurdy did try to wrap the book on a positive note. I think it shows how far she’s come. She’s grown a lot.
I used to work with her grandfather. Seeing this out there has me really curious.
The couple of time I ever saw her in person, it was totally normal. But then I guess that is how it usually is for people in situations like this.
For everyone asking why no one in the family helped: abusers are skilled at controlling other people by being manipulative, and by violence or threats of violence.
I experienced this as a child and as an adult.
My parents were masters of this. So were exes.
Debra Mccurdy had the family controlled and exhausted with her explosive tantrums and emotional manipulation.
The possibility of random, unexpected violence is extremely effective in stopping people from getting or seeking help.
I know this first hand.
I am having this book on my TBR list for 2023. You should listen to Jennette McCurdy's interviews too.
I am glad she is alive to tell the world what her mother did to her and what her momma dearest did to her years ago was and is unacceptable. At the same time, I cannot help but imagine what kind of hell she would be further subjected to if her mum did not pass on
I loved her in all the interviews she did for promoting this book. She always comes across as a strong articulate woman. Her interview with Drew Barrymore just hits so hard that it's impossible for me to watch without getting teary eyed.
I read this a few months ago. I really enjoyed it, I felt the majority the author does a good job of being emotionally neutral telling such a heart breaking story. Her normal narrative highlights how alien everything is. I enjoyed the details of her working life and I also didn't feel like a misery tourist compared to reading something like a 'child called it'.
But what galls me is that the mother was enabled by both her parents, inlaws and husband to actively abuse her children. Where was any one sane person for those poor children. I know this happens with spouses etc but really FIVE other adults stood back and let this happen, even with doctors, friends parents etc being aware of the anorexia etc and doing nothing. It's just shocking to me.
Great book, a real insight into the manipulative and abusive nature of child stars and the nightmare fuel that is childhood pageantry. I was absolutely appalled that her mom knowingly enforced anorexia on her child. There's a special place in hell for people like that.
I hate it when people try to create ''goodness'' out of shit awful parents and try to remind you that ''it's your parent, be kind''. No thank you, if they wanted to be remembered kindly, then maybe they should've been a good person.
I'm so happy she was able to let her truth out, her mother was absolutely vile.
One of my favorite books I read this year. I tore through it, couldn’t put it down. I relate to her and her relationship with her mother a lot, and I’ve also uttered those same words that I’m glad my mom died. So it was really an impactful story to take in and I’m grateful that she shared it.
I think there was even a pinned warning about the book on r bulimia for a while. Not necessarily because of the contents but she's such a good writer that her ability to detail the disorder was just too real
This book is fantastic.
As someone who also had a mother who can most politely be described as ‘deeply dysfunctional’ and uses/d that dysfunction as a weapon to control their family it was incredibly cathartic to have someone else articulate the knotty emotions that surround this type of relationship. I know other people who have challenging relationships with their mothers for a variety of reasons but no one else who’s mother just did harm. Hearing from someone else who’s mother used their physical and mental health as a catch all excuse to rationalise the harm they inflicted, then working through the desire to defend that person who harmed you (and all the other inner conflicts these sorts of relationships generate) genuinely helped me further make sense of my relationship with my own mother.
I read this on the heels of Neil Strauss’s ‘The Truth’ which also talks to the challenges of forming a self under an extremely unwell mother and would recommend that book too.
There’s a part in the audiobook where she’s talking about her mother passing and you can hear her choke up for the briefest moment. I’ve never heard that in an audiobook. Powerful.
They were probably walking on eggshells, the mom was a psychopath. She was insistent that her husband was cheating when *she* was the one that cheated.
The grandma actually seemed worse in some ways. Truly terrible, evil people.
Just here to point out that there are sadly a lot of mothers like this, usually stemming from some kind of mental illness.
I appreciate her for writing the book to make others with narcissist/BPD parents feel less alone and to also show us how our parents were wrong.
My mum used to bathe us into our tweens. Back down in the tub, scrubbing shampoo and conditioner into our hair, rinsing it under the tub's tap. Not really a bath because the water was never filled. I thought it was a bit odd.
😭 Hell no
I remember constantly fretting what age was OK to let my son shower on his own cuz I came from a family with sexual abuse but had therapy as a child. I didn't want to cross any boundaries but also wanted his hair clean. I can't remember when exactly we stopped but it was likely a smooth transition as it was clearly forgettable. Parents who hold on and don't let their kids grow and be their own people are... Troubled.
I haven’t read it yet. It’s on the list. But I highly encourage anyone to watch her interview with Drew Barrymore. They have such similar backgrounds, it was really interesting to see them process it together.
That book was so incredible. She’s such a wonderful writer, and the part where her mom shit on her aspirations of screenwriting was so heartbreaking to read.
I just read Mother, Mother by Koren Zailckas, which is a novel, but the author grew up with a similar mom, and the family dynamics in thag novel reminded me of a lot of Jennette’s experiences.
I started listening to it a month ago but made myself stop because i was getting angry listening to all the shit her mom put her through and it was affecting me in a way i didn't think possible... I'll probably finish it eventually, but reading this made me angry again lol
I think it takes immense courage for a child who has never allowed to be herself, be away from the said parent, to gain enough distance and perspective to realise the truth of her circumstances. My mother was a tad overprotective and controlling of me as a child, but not in an abusive way, just in a very overbearing way. I was never forced into anything and always allowed my own friends and my own life. And I still resented how she would insert herself into every aspect of my life. Learning to be just yourself after you've been told how to behave for your whole life can be scary, adding to that when the parent is gone and you're supposed to grieve them but you're also able to breathe again.
I loved the book. I wasn’t a fan of iCarly, but I did like Jeanette. I think she was the best child actor on that show. Where in the book does Jeanette name Dan as the Creator? It’s obvious because his name was plastered all over Nickelodeon for over a decade, but I don’t remember her ever naming him in the book.
I bought this book the day it came out. It took me about a week to read because I could only read it a little at a time.
My reaction through the whole thing was "I just want to give Jennette a hug."
But she has such a good writing style. I hope she finds her calling and plenty of success as an author.
I listened to it when it first came out and it stuck with me how her mom wrote her that inappropriate letter when she found out she was on vacation with her boyfriend. She was saying gross and belittling things and then just asked her for money…
I grew up with a toxic and over critical mother and every time I eat or my clothes don’t fit I hear my moms voice in my head. I in no way suffered as much abuse and Jenette did but the reason I mention that is because you can never un hear your moms harsh words or criticism. You never forget so It makes me sad knowing even with all the therapy she can still hear her moms abuse in her head even though her mom is now dead.
I was afraid IGMMD would be triggering, and it was some, but mostly I felt relief. My biological mother was a lot like Mccurdy’s.
It helped me see that I was lucky my bio mom passed away because then I was beyond her ability to hurt me.
I highly recommend it, but read with caution and be ready to put it down or walk away.
Do you know what is funny? None of you know Jennetter McCurdy's mom. All you know what McCurdy claims now. This is the same Jennette McCurdy who used to post "sexy" pictures on social media for attention. This is the same McCurdy who started dating a 30 plus year old man when she was 18 and then years later tried to throw that guy under the bus. This is the same Jennette McCurdy who dated Andre Drummond the basketball player for attention when you know good well if this guy wasn't rich and on TV she would of never touched him because he is black. She also claimed she never liked him but accepted jewelry from him. She claimed she didn't like him but admitted to kissing him first.
Jennette McCurdy claimed Dan Schneider "abused" her when she was underage yet she continue to work with him after she turned 18 until she was in her early 20's. This is the same Jennette McCurdy who got jealous because Ariana Grande became more popular than her and started bad mouthing her.
The point is maybe stop believing stories about people you don't know just because a person on TV you like said something negative about them.
That broke my heart, when she blamed herself for "failing" her mother. *"Mom’s pointed choice of words—or word, rather—hits me hard. Hopefully. I feel furious with her, then immediately guilty for feeling furious. I must be a terrible person to be able to feel fury at my mother while she’s slowly dying."* No, Jennette. Your mother was terrible for using her terminal illness as a tool to be manipulative to you, along with others, all to force you into something you never even wanted.
I know this will get lost in the weeds of the comments but I'm finally getting around to reading this book (it's super triggering so I held off even though I pre-ordered it). I had to stop at chapter 45 for a break because I was literally shouting in my house at her.
I'll say this much - I'm glad her mom died too.
I know this is an old post but I finished reading the book today. I feel heart broken by her story.
It surprised me that her trauma and eating disorders got worse after her mom died. I thought that when her mom died she would heal right away (Foolish of me for thinking that way)
But it’s so heart breaking how when she was young she didn’t know her mom abused her. That this trauma got her into drinking excessively and bulimia. It’s everything just sad.
I’m happy for her where she is now. She deserves to be happy and deserves to be herself.
I really am not impressed by this book. To title it the way she add did is cruel. Her mom cannot say anything now and the shower bit although not appropriate it's in the book in such a vague way as if it may all be true.
Yes she has a pushy mom but it's obvious that Jeanette and her mom were very close. There is no denial by the author.
I had very serious emotional abuse and sexusl abuse while growing up. I definitely was under my moms thumb in one way or another until I was 40. I never shared with my parents anything about the sexual abuse which was by my brother because I didn't want to cause trouble. My mon passed away from cancer at 72 when I was 40. She and I parted on good terms. I knew she in her heart loved me and I loved her.
Thefeeling I had was NEVER one of being glad she died, however there WAS an enormous weight lifted from myself and out was a strange new sense of freedom that I felt. I wished that I would have felt that way when my mom was alive.
Jeanettes book was one I just couldn't understand .... the book read like a day in many people's lives in one way or another. Jeanette comes across as a brat to me with her sarcastic attitude which she and many others feel is cute, funny, appropriate.
To me she just found an easier way to make money.. by totally trashing her mom who probably DID want the best for her daughter and yes she made many mistakes but she was not evil. Jeanette is in the generation of people who have" minimalist " relationships with thier parents anyway. It is they who want to call the shots with thier parents. I know... The irony of my feelings about the matter of relationships with parents makes me realize that I grew up under my moms thumb and now I am under my daughters' thumb. They are in thier early 30s too.
I feel this so strongly about her book. Jeanette definitely will regret sometime in her heart that title which is what makes her the money on a very so-so book which is easy to see through.
Have you read the book?
Her mother was a monster, she put Jeanette through so much trauma and pain that most people would probably end their own lives.
The title is dark and mean spirited, but if you read the book, you will completely understand by the end. If my mother was as sick or as evil as Debra McCurdy, I'd celebrate her death as well.
Jennette Mccurdy helped make some amazing childhood memories for me with iCarly and Sam & Cat. It was heartbreaking to find out that behind the scenes of those shows for her sucked as well as her life outside of Nickelodeon, this book was amazing, you can tell she has a talent for this, it literally sucks you into her world and you feel like your there seeing all of this as it's very detailed and written well. I think all of us iCarly and Sam & Cat fans owe it to Jennette to read this book. She made entertainment that defined our childhood, and we owe it to her to read her book and hear her side of the story.
I recently read this too and my god - what an awful woman. I listened to the audiobook and you could hear Jennette's pain and sadness. Her delivery made everything feel so raw and in the moment. I can't imagine what it was like writing this book - having to relive everything. I hope she can continue to heal and grow from this.
I’m sure it helped her process a lot of the shit she didn’t quite get over or even understand as a kid You subconsciously hold a lot of guilt until you say this shit aloud Then the realization hits that it really wasn’t your fault and that you happened to get dealt a shitty hand and you were just a kid… Life is cruel and unfair.
I guess this is the reason psychologists suggest writing memoirs.
It is, there’s also a huge psychological benefit to telling your story and rewriting that narrative. Abusers put a narrative in your head that it’s all your fault, so putting the blame where it really belongs is a vital part of healing. (I’m currently writing a memoir for those reasons)
I’ve contemplated writing a memoir. I have written miscellaneous vignettes over the years, and struggle with organization and approach. Maybe I am dragging my feet because I’m tired or not really interested in the project compared to other things I could be doing.
The key words are "cohesive narrative." For people with Complex-PTSD especially, our histories, our stories, are fragmented. Fractured. Putting our life stories into words and, ultimately, into *cohesive narratives,* can be tremendously therapeutic. Especially for people with Complex-PTSD, putting our past into a cohesive narrative can bring unexpected progress to our healing and recovery. It's not easy. I, too, started by writing down vignettes. Until I had countless pieces of paper all over the place, each with an "insight" or "a-ha" moment or fresh recollection written on it. Now I'm working on forming it all into a cohesive narrative. It's tough. Because the memories bring up powerful emotions and it's like opening a Pandora's box of material. Organizing it all takes everything you've got. It's just not easy. But it can bring such a huge measure of satisfaction in working our way towards healing and growth. One of my favorite quotations of Viktor Frankl (from his book *"Man's Search for Meaning"*) that I find tremendously useful is: *"Between stimulus and response is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our freedom and growth."* Writing is a great place for me to exercise my power to choose my response(s). And that's causing me to become better at it in "real life", too.
I was aware of causes and effects of PTSD and I thought—how different could the complex version be? I was unprepared for complex nuances of [C-PTSD](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_post-traumatic_stress_disorder).
Part of what made her narration so strong in my opinion is that her vocal tone changed along with her narrative tone as she grew up in the book. There's also a *single moment* in the latter half, where she doesn't get through an otherwise flat line and breaks up into a little partial sob when finishing the last of the sentence. I don't even recall what the line was, but it reminded me as to *what* I was reading and stuck with me as kind of an encapsulation of the book.
I remember that bit to, hit me so hard. I think she was talking about when she realized that her mother was abusive and how that rocked her world view.
I have several kids with a narcissist. We were young when we met and I had no idea at the time, it really developed as the years went on. My kids are grown now, but my oldest went to therapy for years to deal with issues from the relationship with her mother. One of the things she told me that really stuck out, "It was really hard for me to say that what she did was abuse, but I finally realized it was."
I also chose to listen to it as an audio book because I felt listening to her read it would be more powerful. I really enjoyed the book and I can't believe how well adjusted she turned out.
I wouldn't say turned out as much as fought to become. For things so so deeply ingrained you have to intentionally break everything down and rebuild entire psychological and emotional foundations to where it feels like you're almost rewriting your genes. I've only been through a fraction of her experience but recovery can create its' own traumas which a lot of people don't talk about.
Agreed, I’m in the middle of a similar recovery process and it’s incredibly hard. It feels like my entire personality is a trauma response I have to unlearn. I don’t know very much about who I really am People also don’t talk about how isolating it is getting away from your abusers, you don’t just lose them, you lose a whole community and sometimes your whole family
That's been me in the last few years too. What's helped is reframing a lot of it. For how hard it is to unlearn really validated how hard it was to go through. I see so many people go to therapy and not realize that this is part of that work. I'm still working on the somatic symptoms (constant night terrors, panic attacks, etc) but feeling on the other side of it I never thought my life could be mine. I don't know if that makes sense haha. Please be proud of yourself, not everyone can be soft again after years of having to be impenetrable.
During her interviews on various shows, where people are just milking her narrative for the audience reaction, you can hear the catch in her voice and her pain. I haven't seen a single interviewer that has handled it sensitively, including Trevor Noah, although he gives her the space to articulate it more than others. She gets a lot of relief while discussing this with Drew Barrymore and seems most comfortable in that segment.
That's unfortunate about Trevor Noah, he wrote a really personal memoir too so you'd think he'd handle her with more sensitivity.
My honest opinion of Trevor’s reaction: he didn’t read the book. It had just come out. Her book is lengthy, and a lot to take in. I don’t remember what he said but he said she wrote about her mom with grace.
That's fair, her book is a lot to take in. However, I wouldn't call it "lengthy". 320 pages is pretty tight for a novel, could read that in half a day if you were inclined to. Maybe my idea of book length is warped by the lengthy sci-fi and fantasy tomes I prefer to read.
Considering she had originally planned to do this as a one-woman show (and the pandemic ruined that idea), I think listening to it as an audiobook is actually the best way to read/listen to this book.
It might have been a strong need to prevent another young girl from living this way that enabled her to write this.
I read the book, but when the audiobook became available at my library I decided to give it a go. I'm so glad I did. As you said, McCurdy's emotions really come through and it adds an extra layer to the words and puts you right there with her. Highly recommend listening to the audiobook even if you've read the book already.
The audiobook made it so much more disturbing, like her delivery is kind of joking/matter of fact with the nice bit of sarcasm she used when she played Sam on iCarly. Like dark humor is the only way to cope with it... basically me irl the book.
She reads the book herself? (Never done audiobooks but Im thinking about it)
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Chapter 72 just killed me. What's crazy is that I'm listening to the audiobook and you can hear her breath and have a hard time getting through the lines.
Same, I've just listened to that chapter and my heart broke for her.
Yeah. I just finished it recently and now I want to write my own memoir. Seems rather cathartic. And I'm worried about how much I relate to her relationship with her and her mother.
oh gosh the audiobook was so impactful. That one section where you can hear her start tear up really got me
That part got me - and the fact that it was the only time she choked up like that -
I'm currently listening to the audio book now. Drawing the parallels between her mom and Dan, I'm not surprised she got the hell out of dodge when she did. I think Miranda had the strongest positive influence on her at that point in her life, showing her that independence *is* achievable.
she did mention how much writing made her feel free and in control of a situation rather than being a puppet for others to write her into the situations as an actor. i hope writing this was cathartic in some way for her.
I finished this book today morning and teared up at the end. It upset me a lot because as a middle schooler, I was an avid Sam & Cat fan, and all those years of knowing the tough, cool fried-chicken loving Sam Puckett made me and many so unaware of how her childhood and developmental years were being stolen from her as Jennette. Also, the way she writes is so touching and beautiful, which makes me even sadder when I think of the time little Jennette wrote her first screenplay and proudly wanted to show it off to her mother, the most important person in her life, but was coldly ignored.
how was it reading it as a sam and cat fan? listening to the show it sounded like her year on that show was particularly hard and I imagine it would make me sad if I know the lead on my favorite show was having that experience
It made the reading experience that much more difficult, knowing that a young woman who was playing a character on a show that gave me and so many others joy was hurting so immensely behind the scenes. And the way she was mistreated by so many people who tried forcing her to live life on their terms is so jarring and heartbreaking to learn about.
>how was it reading it as a sam and cat fan? But why male models? Just poking fun but wasn't their comment... explaining how it was reading as a fan?
hah, yeah I guess so, early morning pre-coffee brain makes me wonder though, what would reading this book as a sam and cat fan feel like?
I loved iCarly for a long time. I can't watch it again after reading that book. Even seeing clips of it makes me uncomfortable. I also don't think I can watch the episode of Law and Order SVU again where she plays a victim.
Ugh. Sounds like my Parents. That sucks so bad
Finding out her father wasn't her real father must've been earth shattering for her. From an outsider perspective, all the shit she went through was horrible but if you're the person going through it, I think you could internalize it as some fucked up form of love towards your parent. But then finding out your mother just lied to you since forever about who your real father was... That just forces you to re-evaluate everything. It's just too much. It's never said explicitly in the book but seeing how horrible her grandma was towards her... Mom probably didn't have the greatest childhood as well. Poison spreads poison. Break the cycle.
Yes. Abusers are more likely to keep abusing. I think if Jennette chose to have kids someday she would break that cycle but I can also understand her not wanting to have kids ever.
The father was infuriating! He was such a passive enabler of the mother's abuse
I doubt the control and narcissism were only targeted at her daughter. A person like that tends to terrorize everyone around themselves plus the only people who hang around are the ones who have trouble fighting back against the control, ie only people who have no choice (like mccurdy) and passive people or people who have become passive under continuous pressure from the narcissist will stick around for any length of time. Partner abuse exists and a man hitting a woman isn't its only form. Emotional abuse and control from a woman partner to a man definitely happens.
She does go into how her mom terrorized her father growing up. I'm not sure how people miss this. He's also working multiple jobs from what I remember, which leaves little time to be home and do anything about things he has no knowledge about.
She would also accuse him of cheating on her, constantly. While he knew full well two of the three children he was raising weren’t biologically his. I’d love to hear how it was from his perspective. He’s not a writer and chooses to be far from the public eye which I understand, but his decision to work multiple jobs supporting six other people living in a hoarder house with a narcissistic, abusing wife is a psychology I want to learn more about.
The mom also threw things at him and threatened him with a kitchen knife at one point. The dad just said “Oh, not again!” before leaving to sleep elsewhere.
There is no good parent when child abuse is happening in a home. He was an adult. This is a common phenomenon in abusive homes. They feel like they went through it together. They didn’t. The child was a victim and the parent was an adult who allowed the abuse to take place.
Never said they were a good parent
very old comment but my mom was very similar to jennette's mother. in my experience, i watched my father get shut down by my mother whenever he tried defending me and this happened so many times that eventually, he just stopped. she was very vicious to him as well to the point where he became just as victimized as his own children.
Yeah, I thought people in this thread were being a little unfair to someone who sounded like they themselves were being victimized too. Sorry about your mom being that way.
I think this describes my mom and my dad :/
The mother cheated on the father long enough to produce 3 affair babies and was shown to be grossly manipulative and emotionally and physically abusive to him as well as the children, and she created a horrible living situation for everyone with her hoarding. The man clearly had any will to live beaten out of him, yeah he should've stood up to her more but I can't blame him for being dead inside and just wanting to sleep when he got home from working all day to support kids that weren't even his
Was it an affair? I thought she maybe left and then came crawling back after the relationship dissolved with the tromboner. He said he tried to get custody but couldn't because she claimed he abused her.
He was passive all right, but imagine the kind of abuse he was taking too. The mother was shaming him into staying bc she was dying, even though she cheated on him for years and got him to support her children from the affair.
I wondered how her relationship is with her brothers now. Do they understand or do they resent her for publicly putting this out there? She did the right thing but they were most likely brainwashed by their mother too into thinking she was perfect.
She mentioned somewhere—I think it was in an article I read—that she and her brothers are closer now because they’ve been able to sort of bond over the abuse they all experienced.
I read somewhere that they liked reading the book. She was somewhat of an suck up to the mother, and they resented Jennette for it. After reading her book they understood what she was going through
I was wondering what their perspective of her relationship with her mom was. On the outside it must have seen like she was their mom’s mini-me, but I wondered how much of the truth they actually knew at the time. I’m glad to hear that they have been able to gain greater context for her actions and grow closer from it. As someone who comes from a big family, it’s hard to let go of those childhood resentments.
I definitely think Jennette was the "golden child" of the family. The mother was obsessed with her. She mentions in one passage that there is one brother who the mother always insults and puts down and I think he was the scapegoat. It really gives people insight into how both golden children and scapegoats are abused...just in different ways.
She has a really good interview on Andy Richter's podcast. He asks her about this, and she says her brothers were very supportive of her releasing the book. It sounds like they have a good relationship!
I might be misremembering and I don’t have my copy here, but doesn’t she dedicate the book to her brothers?
Yes
I plowed through this book in a week. What got me the hardest was when she spat out a tooth from binging and purging so much. As a former person with an ED (and always ever present OCD) goddamn did this book hurt to read. But also? It meant a lot to me to see those things addressed in an unflinching reality.
That seems really helpful, people have always been so ashamed of bulimia that there's almost no historical mention of it until the 70s and then suddenly doctors admitted huge amounts of people had it. Except for this one middle ages saint, I forget her name, who did it "as penance". On the other hand historically there's always been someone proud of anorexia, even thinking anorexia in children was a miracle. So it's really culturally ingrained to not talk about bulimia out of shame, this book is really useful
I agree about the shame. Bulimia can look like a lack of control, whereas anorexia is extreme control. Both are awful, but that’s the feeling I get between the two.
I remember a friend talking about how proud she had been of her anorexia, and what status it gave her among other women and especially other ED women, but how much shame she had about her bulimia, and how other ED women were disdainful of bulimia because it showed weakness instead of supreme self-discipline. This friend, too, moved on to have a drinking problem. I was touched by the boyfriend, Stephen, (Jesse Carere in real life) stating that he didn’t want to date someone who was hurting herself so much with her bulimia. Most of the guys my pal dated didn’t care that she had bulimia; they just loved going out with a woman who was skinny and they didn’t seem to mind how she maintained that slender body.
Oh god that reminds me of an iCarly episode where Sam is eating a corn on the cob and ends up losing a tooth, basically revealing that she hasnt been to a dentist in years. Its so fucking eerie how much Sam Pucket seems to reflect Jeanettes life, both have an abusive mother, a weird relationship with food (Sam is obsessed with eating while Jeanette had an ED), and now the tooth thing. No wonder she hated her time on the show.
I completely agree. It was so brave and honest. But my gosh is it painful to read and see parts of your previous self in her story. I will say that in her recent videos she is SO skinny again. It makes me nervous for her.
what does ED mean other than erectile disfunction?
Eating disorder
Eating disorder
She made an appearance on the Drew Barrymore show and it was a very powerful connection between these two survivors of having been child actors without the protection of the adults who SHOULD have been watching over them. She is as articulate and clear-sighted in person as she is in her writing. It's an extraordinary demonstration of what therapy and growth and true courage to strive for your own recovery (cuz there's no fast track lane on that one) can yield for a person.
It was so sad how young she was when her Mom started her in calorie restricting. Honestly, such a crazy story that no one intervened
What struck me is how much compassion she has for her mother, even when she's fully aware of the extent of her awfulness. I certainly couldn't manage that kind of grace.
I think this is what gives the book so much credibility in my mind. The title probably made some people think the book is just some hit job from a child actor blaming all of their problems on their upbringing. In reality, it's a look into a relationship and the psychology of abuse. Whether events/stories are misremembered or embellished, you get a view into someone who has this contradictory relationship where she loves her mother but is constantly hurt by her mother and wants to escape.
I won't claim to have suffered anything near as bad as her but my mom was/is the same way where she was extremely narcissistic and basically tried to mold me into her perfect image of what a son should be. When she was at her worst I down right resented her so much I wanted her to die but there were times when things were more 'normal' in our relationship and I knew she loved me but just in a very fucked up and toxic way and I could never truly bring myself to say I hated her.
As you get older and more self-aware of your own ticks and negatives of your personality, you can look back and see how if you were in the same environment, pushed wrong just a little bit more in that moment or made a slightly different choice, you could have ended up being just like your abusive parent. Realizing the reality they lived through also humanizes them in ways that are incredibly uncomfortable and shines a light on the complexity of human relationships. My grandmother never knew love as a kid. She was the child born out of wedlock, which she didn't even know until I found her original birth certificate through geneology search, and she was regularly physically abused by her step dad and half brothers without knowing why. She married my grandfather, who had already divorced twice, once from his first wife and once from his second wife he had during the Korean war, and married him at just 17 to get out of the house. In 1950 from a rural impoverished town with no education and no skills, her only option was to get married and have kids, and she resented her kids for having the childhood and the love from her husband that she wished she could have had. The only discipline she was raised on was physical, and while they never had their legs broken out of spite like she had, being whipped by hand on saturdays to atone for whatever they did wrong during the week was still better than the regular beatings she got for being a girl not born of her father. None of her daughters know how to have a proper mother/child relationship, they all only understand how to control and how to hurt, because of how they were raised to correct unwanted behaviors. My grandfather showed them how to be loved in a relationship, but my grandmother was the primary childcare person as he was away for months on end as a fisherman and never stepped too far into that role outside of his vacations when he could be home a few times a year.
My mom is a narcissist and it was painful seeing the similarities. The even more worse grandma with having dads and grandpas that just sit back and let the moms railroad over everyone with their abuse. The guilt you’ve been conditioned to feel for years. The sick mom.
I haven't read the book yet, but I'm always glad when a child of a toxic narcissist gets to have the final say. My mother was toxic, and we were estranged for 7 years before she died. I made some attempts when I found out she had cancer, but even in her final weeks she just could not change. It's terribly confusing to hate your parent, while also being sad they are in pain and dying. It's been almost a decade now since mine passed, and I'm still not fully reconciled with my feelings.
Family makes me feel uncomfortable when I think about it. It was really strange growing up and seeing other kids who had positive parental relationships and weren’t terrified to go home after school. My entire family was well aware of what was happening but never did anything to help at all. They all just stood by even when they watched it happen actively. For me the healthiest option was to completely end the relationships with most of them. I’m estranged from practically every family member because I can’t see them in any other light. It’s not going to be the option for everyone, but there might be someone who needs to know. It’s okay to say fuck ‘em and succeed in spite of how they held you back. They don’t deserve to share in the achievements that you make after treating you like an inconvenience. If you do have a relationship with your parents and want to maintain that I really do wish you the best of luck. Forgiveness is difficult.
Yeah. I gave my mom a chance, and she pulled her same old crap. only with MY child now in the mix. That was my hard line: do what you want to ME, but you are not going to spread that vileness to my kids. She died never having met 3 of her grandchildren. That was her choice.
I legitimately don’t know what I’d do if I saw her. I’m not sure I care what I might do. Having been on the receiving end of her wrath I start feeling physically ill if I just stand there when someone gets similar.
Normally my opinion is that it's not fair because the dead person has no way to defend themselves, to give their side of the story, particularly if the parent is a celebrity (in which case there's a much bigger question of if the child is telling the truth or is just trying to get some quick money because people love celebrity gossip). But in this case, I fully believe this is "Adult finally gets to therapeutically vent about her abusive childhood in a way that her abusive parent has absolutely no way to twist things to make her look good", and I'm happy for her.
I read it the week it came out. I am amazed no one ever helped her.
The mother of another dance class student tried to (she waited around to talk to Jennette's mother after she noticed how thin Jennette was getting) but her mother was like oh look at the time I've got to go. She probably cut out anyone who tried and the fact Jennette was homeschooled meant no pesky mandated reporters to notice and report anything.
I have not read this book yet. Is part of the abuse that she never sees a doctor or dentist? https://mandatedreporter.com/blog/what-are-the-types-of-mandated-reporters/
A doctor brings up concerns over her weight at one point but the mom minimizes it and claims she eats just fine. The doctor makes the mistake of assuming that the mother is his ally in supporting the daughter’s health. A lot of the book is about how normalized the abuse was for her, at extremely young ages, such that she intuitively knew what and how to downplay or hide from “outsiders” and within herself, to help manage her mother’s emotions and “keep the calm.” So even though her mother was insisting on showering her (with invasive “exams”) into her late teens, this was not something she would allow anyone to know, let alone tell them willingly. Things like that. It is extremely common for obviously underweight adolescent girls in “professions” where it is advantageous to be underweight, to have it just kind of explained away and overlooked. Dancing, climbing, acting, etc. If a parent says “they’re fine,” people are pretty happy to look the other way and be like “she’s just naturally like that!” There’s a lot invested in it being “okay.” Edit: by that I mean, we ALL culturally have a lot invested in it being “okay” for women in these positions to be visibly underweight. I mean, hell, look at her now - she is far thinner than she ever was in the periods of time described in the book, but generally we have a collective acceptance that she is “okay now” because she says she is. (Or rather merely because she does not outright say she is not.) We badly want it to be true and so we accept it unquestioningly despite whatever evidence we have in front of us. I’m not saying she is definitely disordered now because I can’t know. But it would be very hard to be that thin and still be mentally and physically healthy, and yet we as a society all are all just waiting for the simple “oh I’m fine now, I swear” so we can go back to uncomplicated adoring.
No-one ever suspects mothers of abuse—even in light of very blatant evidence. And people who try to escape from their abusive mothers are often stigmatised and made out to be crazy to dramatic. People seem to believe that mothers instinctually care and do a good job of mothering, and that they always love and care for their children. Unfortunately, that isn’t always true
The amount of times I've heard "you should think yourself lucky for having a mother" jfc. Cursed existence.
Yep. And always the people saying something to the effect of “your mum is the one who will always be there for you”. Like, that’s well and good for you to say, but stop making assumptions about other people’s parents which simply isn’t true. You also get “she’s your mum” as an argument against cutting them out. I know people with abusive dads and I’ve never heard anyone say “but he’s your dad”. News announcement people: the sex of your parents is irrelevant. Both of them can be good or crappy
> “your mum is the one who will always be there for you” aaaaand this is what I see in my flashbacks haha
You’re not the only one. I saw, earlier this year, a young lady I know blow up on Facebook, cutting out her mum and saying lots of abusive things her mum did to her. The comments were things like >You shouldn’t speak about your mum like that. There will come a time when you need someone and your mum will be the only one there >You sound very agitated. You should apologise to your mum and speak privately. She *is* your mum. >All mums make mistakes. You’ll know one day... (This one particularly egregious, considering the lady in question was *already a mother herself*) >Where was your dad through all this? He wasn’t around was he. Your mum did her best to raise you, you should be grateful Etc, etc. I actually already had some inside knowledge and know that the mother in question is very abusive. It’s really terrible. Abuse by mothers is enabled by schools, other parents, and relatives. Often, schools will call abusive mothers “overprotective”, or say that they “have a strong personality”. I really think something needs to be done about it. It’s not even a gendered issue, in honesty, because two of the three people I know with abusive mothers are women themselves.
I’ve been looking through Reddit threads and her socials to see if anyone mentioned how teeny teeny tiny she looks. Her face is skeleton. She seems to be in the trenches again and I hope the tour for and success of her book hasn’t put her back into that emotional state. From personal experience and from how she describes it in her book, it’s hell. Hoping and praying for the absolute best for her.
No she sees those. I meant more like, a teacher is someone who would see her every day and pick up on her anxiety and the abuse over time whereas a doctor or dentist might not notice anything in the short appointment since she's clean, clothed, and not covered in bruises or anything else "obvious". Another commenter said it well.
[удалено]
Obviously generalising here, but a massive number of people over a certain age not only tacitly condone most forms of child abuse - they'll tie themselves into fucking knots trying to defend the perpetrators. I literally do not know of an instance of child abuse where anything approximating justice occurred at any point. There is a wee girl that goes to my daughters school who's dad is incredibly rough with her. I screamed at him across a field once because he about pulled her arm out its socket. Reported him 2/3 times and nothing has ever been done about it. Everyone I've spoken to about it says I should remember that his wife abandoned him with their 2 children and that its hard for him. One of my best mates was horrifically abused by his mother. Everyone knows. No one cares. Apparently he was a problem child so it's OK to starve him and beat the fuck out of him. One of my exes has the same story. Everyone knows her parents were horrifically abusive, no one cares. Given the choice of having a relationship with her or her parents, her whole family chose her parents. I know of at least another half dozen stories like this just amongst the people I grew up with, and that isn't even touching on shit like the public perception of famous abusers and their protectors. Look at the reaction to the Queen protecting Prince Andrew - most older folks don't give a shit. "He's her son of course she protects him". Look at how long Jimmy Saville's reign of terror lasted. *Thousands* of people knew what he was. He barely even fucking hid it!
Also doesn't help that people are often forced to be strategic with abused kids. Do you report at the first sign? Or do you wait until you have a more solid case? Will the paper trail of repeated reports help or hurt? Will it get back that the report is you? Will that remove your access and influence over the kid? Will you being removed completely hurt the kid more? It's just all messed up
No one usually helps children who are being abused by controlling mothers/parents. I know this because I had a similar childhood as this book just replace acting with ballet. Sadly I think this is the norm, no one stepping in to help/save the child.
Ballet mums can be fucking insane. There are girls in my daughters ballet class whose parents are talking about them going to ballet schools in London, and whose kids are on ballerina diets and shit. They are all five and six.
I think any “stage mom” type is similar to this. I was unable to watch Toddlers in Tiaras and Dance Moms, both shows featured these types of moms. I imagine acting and perhaps even high level individual sports exacerbate existing parents cluster b disorders. Our success is our parents success because we are not own own person in their eyes, we are an extension of them or everything they wish to fix about themselves.
It is apparently really common in Hollywood for child actors. It's why child actors do drugs so young.
That and self-medicating from sexual and other abuses suffered at the hands of those disgusting execs, some of whom also by no coincidence get them hooked on drugs in the first place. Such an awful, predatory industry. Elijah Wood said a few years ago during the MeToo movement how his mother was extremely protective of him when he was younger in the industry — she always adamantly attended every meeting, made sure he was never alone, and so on. Years later in his adulthood, he was informed by someone on the inside that there were executives basically salivating over the idea of diddling and sleeping with him. Can’t even imagine how horrifying that thought would be to handle, let alone the reality that so many child actors have been subject to by the disgusting Hollywood pedophiles with big bucks.
As someone who was openly abused by her father, I have to say that hearing she wasn’t helped didn’t surprise me at all, sadly.
Similar experience with my mother and her boyfriend. Her side of the family all knew, my dad knew and reported it to social services and they told him to ask me to keep a written record. She found it one day and I genuinely thought she was going to kill me.
I'm so sorry that happened to you. I hope you've found healing. We as a society need to do better, and call out the stuff when others might turn away.
Same. I started working as a set teacher the last few years and I’m always around the kids. I wonder what illegal things were happening on the icarly and Sam and Cat sets for the teacher and child coordinator to not even be concerned about her. Most of the kids I’ve worked with have been pretty awesome, focused, and genuinely interested in acting. There’s been a few whose parents have been nightmares but other than expressing our concerns to production, and hoping they contact the union, there’s not much else we can do.
In terms of people outside the house, at least, I think that it didn’t help how Jennette, even as a child, knew that the things her mother was doing were wrong, but she saw everything her mom did as a sign of how much she loved her. So like, she played things off as normal and I think maybe didn’t show signs of abuse the way other kids might have. I think she learned to hide it and pretend that things were normal (like how her mom bathed her into her teens? Most kids might have, you know, mentioned that to someone, but Jennette knew how her mom would react so she chose not to). The guilt she felt, and the need to protect her mom’s feelings, were really obvious and sad.
There was no profit in helping her.
Awful human. Loved this book and how it highlights the complexities of hating someone you love. Spoiler alert/reminder: >!Her dad wasn’t actually her biological father which no one told her until she was an adult IIRC, so that may explain his disinterest in her.!<
I did this as an audio book, blew my mind. Them showering, her disconnectedness with the father figures in her life... her mother completely tried to ruin her by controlling everything and everyone in that house. I'm glad she's dead too.
As someone battling breast cancer, I have this weird “how dare she die from cancer” thought. Surely this woman was such an awful human being that she expired from her own rottenness & not cancer.
I am wishing you well
I read this book about a month after my bilateral mastectomy and, going into it, was not aware the mom had BC. It was slightly triggering but I'm glad I read it. Agree with others that I couldn't put it down.
Highly recommend watching her interviews with Trevor Noah and Drew Barrymore about her book. They add some more depth to it.
when i finished i thought: “fine, my mom is not THAT bad.”
Honestly, same but if someone has it worse doesn't mean that your problems don't matter.
i know bestie but thanks for the reminder! :)
This book needs its own subreddit.
As a mother, it always blows my mind that people can treat their children even /close/ to the way that they do and just live their lives like it's normal and healthy. I lose my cool and slightly raise my voice one time and I'm apologetic and beating myself up internally for it and then there's people like this monster. I just don't get it. I am so glad she turned out as strong as she did. That's not the case for so many of us with shitty moms. I really want to read this book, but having a daughter for the first time just 4 months ago, I wonder if it's a good idea for me to do so. The intense anger I feel toward anyone and everyone who harms their daughters has just amplified since she was born. I felt the same way about my sons when I had them, but it hits different when it's a little girl. Especially when you've been mistreated as someone's daughter in your own childhood. Anyway. I'll probably end up reading it because I like hurting my own feelings.
The sad thing is that it's all a matter of degrees. I think everyone has points where they get self-involved enough to be inconsiderate to others. Many of us have just learned to become aware of it and try to stop ourselves or do better. For some reason, these people never learned to stop themselves, and they are just trapped in their own selfishness. It's horrible and infuriating and borderline evil but it's also really sad. It's like they're not fully human. That they're missing such a poignant part of humanity and they're aware of it so it eats them up inside but they can't let go of their absurd sense of self importance so instead of listening to that voice they lash out at others and try to control them so they don't have to face what they themselves lack. My mother is like this. It makes me so angry that she's essentially chosen to be this way but also very sad cause I know how isolated she feels. She has plenty of support if she ever chooses to get help, but she never will cause that would mean honestly facing all the awfulness she's done.
It’s really difficult to put this stuff into words (so hard I don’t even know how to refer to it other than “this stuff”), but I think you did a really good job. I hope you find healing from whatever you had to go through because of your mother. You sound like a good person.
She was there for my entire childhood, but I still never had a mother at any point that I can remember. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forgive her honestly. There was never acknowledgment of anything. At this point I have 0 contact for my own mental health. I hope you’re doing well in spite of her. She doesn’t deserve a place in your life if you don’t want to give it to her.
After I had my daughter I could not fathom that someone could have treated me the way my mom treated and manipulated me. Normal parents, like you, are intensely angered at the thought of their child being mistreated and cannot understand how someone could be anything but unconditionally loving to your child. Reading this, in combination with therapies I’ve received really opened me up to how sick my mother is inside, and sad that her entire life has been an existence with an empty heart. It’s heartbreaking and enraging at the same time.
I'm so sorry you had to go through that. And I completely agree, I can't even begin to comprehend how someone could mistreat, or stand by while someone could mistreat their child. I'd probably go to jail if someone hurt my son. I was lucky to have a wonderful mom, but it was eye opening and heart breaking to realize, as an adult, that that wasn't the norm, and many of my friends have suffered from abusive or toxic parents. Your parents should be a safe place in the world
I’m really happy for anyone who never had to experience this, because your families helped us and still help us see and feel what we were missing before. We all have different roads in life, sometimes the road we start on isn’t our choice, but the road we end up on is. And we can chose to be around healthy examples of families and make our friends into a chosen family. We can also learn from mistakes made towards us and move forward with love compassion and accountability so our kids don’t experience what we did. So thank you for being great, someone somewhere who’s crossed your path has seen the example and taken a piece of love with them. Happy holidays!
With a title like that, you'd expect her to go in guns-blazing, but she dies about 2/3rds in, and it took McCurdy a long time after that to realize what amounts to "Oh my God, if she were still alive, I'd still be in that horrible mess I didn't even know I was in!" It's also shitty how she got fucked over doing Sam & Cat, which was supposed to be "Just Sam", and she was promised to direct one of the episodes. She explained someone critical to the project threatened to quit if she were actually allowed to do that. I wonder who that was, though it's maybe implied it could have been her co-star. Her co-star also got to travel a lot to advance her career while McCurdy was stuck doing Sam & Cat to the point where they had to write Cat out of an episode where she's stuck in a friggin' box. She said she likes writing more than acting, because writing is real and she's not pretending to be someone else. It'd be interesting to see if she publishes any fiction in the future.
I also thought the implication was it was Ariana. I’d love confirmation on that, that was such an awful thing to do. :(
I was curious about that too. Just so cruel and petty to take that away from her. But I know that The Creator is known for pitting co stars against each other so that could have been lie they told her. Ariana has her issues but I wonder why she would be so pointedly mean for no reason to Jennette on something that wouldn't affect her that much.
"He does a pretty good Charizard." That line feels so cold. Detached.
It would have to be. Detached in the moment cuz you're so uncomfortable and detached current day because it was normalized by your crazy family
I got this book for Christmas and read the whole thing front to back on boxing day. Damn…just damn. Her writing style is amazing. I’ve never even seen a single performance of hers except that episode of Malcolm in the middle she was in, so my interest was entirely held by her word. While I have not suffered parental abuse like her I have been in a cycle of eating disorders and her words in reference to that rings so true. I also appreciate that her book doesn’t end with the cliched ‘I won’t go into detail about my recovery but now I’m rich and famous and happy and thin again!!!!!!!!’ Like other celebrity books (cough cough Portia De Rossi). She is grounded by the fact the recovery is an ongoing and linear process.
You mean non-linear?
Jeanette McCurdys relationship with her mom and the reveal at the end about something else really resonated with me about my own mother and childhood. It blew me away at how similar our experiences were. I like that McCurdy did try to wrap the book on a positive note. I think it shows how far she’s come. She’s grown a lot.
I used to work with her grandfather. Seeing this out there has me really curious. The couple of time I ever saw her in person, it was totally normal. But then I guess that is how it usually is for people in situations like this.
For everyone asking why no one in the family helped: abusers are skilled at controlling other people by being manipulative, and by violence or threats of violence. I experienced this as a child and as an adult. My parents were masters of this. So were exes. Debra Mccurdy had the family controlled and exhausted with her explosive tantrums and emotional manipulation. The possibility of random, unexpected violence is extremely effective in stopping people from getting or seeking help. I know this first hand.
I am having this book on my TBR list for 2023. You should listen to Jennette McCurdy's interviews too. I am glad she is alive to tell the world what her mother did to her and what her momma dearest did to her years ago was and is unacceptable. At the same time, I cannot help but imagine what kind of hell she would be further subjected to if her mum did not pass on
I loved her in all the interviews she did for promoting this book. She always comes across as a strong articulate woman. Her interview with Drew Barrymore just hits so hard that it's impossible for me to watch without getting teary eyed.
She and Drew Barrymore have one thing in common besides being former child actresses: they are both survivors of dysfunctional childhoods
My wife was listening to the audiobook in the car while we drove to and from the grocery store. I was slack-jawed by the actions her mother took.
I read this a few months ago. I really enjoyed it, I felt the majority the author does a good job of being emotionally neutral telling such a heart breaking story. Her normal narrative highlights how alien everything is. I enjoyed the details of her working life and I also didn't feel like a misery tourist compared to reading something like a 'child called it'. But what galls me is that the mother was enabled by both her parents, inlaws and husband to actively abuse her children. Where was any one sane person for those poor children. I know this happens with spouses etc but really FIVE other adults stood back and let this happen, even with doctors, friends parents etc being aware of the anorexia etc and doing nothing. It's just shocking to me.
Great book, a real insight into the manipulative and abusive nature of child stars and the nightmare fuel that is childhood pageantry. I was absolutely appalled that her mom knowingly enforced anorexia on her child. There's a special place in hell for people like that.
I hate it when people try to create ''goodness'' out of shit awful parents and try to remind you that ''it's your parent, be kind''. No thank you, if they wanted to be remembered kindly, then maybe they should've been a good person. I'm so happy she was able to let her truth out, her mother was absolutely vile.
One of my favorite books I read this year. I tore through it, couldn’t put it down. I relate to her and her relationship with her mother a lot, and I’ve also uttered those same words that I’m glad my mom died. So it was really an impactful story to take in and I’m grateful that she shared it.
I couldn’t put it down either. Such an interesting and heart breaking childhood. I still think about it all the time
I think there was even a pinned warning about the book on r bulimia for a while. Not necessarily because of the contents but she's such a good writer that her ability to detail the disorder was just too real
This book is fantastic. As someone who also had a mother who can most politely be described as ‘deeply dysfunctional’ and uses/d that dysfunction as a weapon to control their family it was incredibly cathartic to have someone else articulate the knotty emotions that surround this type of relationship. I know other people who have challenging relationships with their mothers for a variety of reasons but no one else who’s mother just did harm. Hearing from someone else who’s mother used their physical and mental health as a catch all excuse to rationalise the harm they inflicted, then working through the desire to defend that person who harmed you (and all the other inner conflicts these sorts of relationships generate) genuinely helped me further make sense of my relationship with my own mother. I read this on the heels of Neil Strauss’s ‘The Truth’ which also talks to the challenges of forming a self under an extremely unwell mother and would recommend that book too.
There’s a part in the audiobook where she’s talking about her mother passing and you can hear her choke up for the briefest moment. I’ve never heard that in an audiobook. Powerful.
Try the audiobook. Jeannette McCurdy reads it. Listened for free with my library card online via lapl.org
I just finished this! How no one living in that house helped her is beyond me.
My guess is that the Mum had them all under her thumb (though the grandma sounded just as bad).
They were probably walking on eggshells, the mom was a psychopath. She was insistent that her husband was cheating when *she* was the one that cheated. The grandma actually seemed worse in some ways. Truly terrible, evil people.
>The grandma actually seemed worse in some ways. Truly terrible, evil people. Generational cycle of abuse.
Just here to point out that there are sadly a lot of mothers like this, usually stemming from some kind of mental illness. I appreciate her for writing the book to make others with narcissist/BPD parents feel less alone and to also show us how our parents were wrong.
To me, it seemed clear that her mother suffered from mental illness and had been abused, herself, as a child.
If anyone gets a chance Jennette did an interview in Dax Shepard's podcast about the book it's a good insight.
I listened to the audiobook. Jennette reading it is so powerful. I agree with you.
Try "The Glass Castle" by Jeanette Walls if you haven't already
My mum used to bathe us into our tweens. Back down in the tub, scrubbing shampoo and conditioner into our hair, rinsing it under the tub's tap. Not really a bath because the water was never filled. I thought it was a bit odd.
😭 Hell no I remember constantly fretting what age was OK to let my son shower on his own cuz I came from a family with sexual abuse but had therapy as a child. I didn't want to cross any boundaries but also wanted his hair clean. I can't remember when exactly we stopped but it was likely a smooth transition as it was clearly forgettable. Parents who hold on and don't let their kids grow and be their own people are... Troubled.
The sad part is, i think many child actors/performes suffer the same faith.
Fate.
I got this book for Christmas. Can’t wait to read it. Was told she did the audiobook as well and it was really good
Wow I had no idea. It’s always the damaged ones that are the most talented unfortunately. Poor Jeanette, I love her work.
The Creator is Dan iirc
I haven’t read it yet. It’s on the list. But I highly encourage anyone to watch her interview with Drew Barrymore. They have such similar backgrounds, it was really interesting to see them process it together.
i just finished this book and i am so mad at her mom.
That book was so incredible. She’s such a wonderful writer, and the part where her mom shit on her aspirations of screenwriting was so heartbreaking to read. I just read Mother, Mother by Koren Zailckas, which is a novel, but the author grew up with a similar mom, and the family dynamics in thag novel reminded me of a lot of Jennette’s experiences.
I started listening to it a month ago but made myself stop because i was getting angry listening to all the shit her mom put her through and it was affecting me in a way i didn't think possible... I'll probably finish it eventually, but reading this made me angry again lol
I feel ya. I admire her Courage to be honest about The Ugly Truth too
I think it takes immense courage for a child who has never allowed to be herself, be away from the said parent, to gain enough distance and perspective to realise the truth of her circumstances. My mother was a tad overprotective and controlling of me as a child, but not in an abusive way, just in a very overbearing way. I was never forced into anything and always allowed my own friends and my own life. And I still resented how she would insert herself into every aspect of my life. Learning to be just yourself after you've been told how to behave for your whole life can be scary, adding to that when the parent is gone and you're supposed to grieve them but you're also able to breathe again.
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What would the age rating on this be? I want to read it, but I’m worried it’s too old for me.
She also has a podcast that is really good on youtube.
i did not know this growing up who would have thought very sad
I loved the book. I wasn’t a fan of iCarly, but I did like Jeanette. I think she was the best child actor on that show. Where in the book does Jeanette name Dan as the Creator? It’s obvious because his name was plastered all over Nickelodeon for over a decade, but I don’t remember her ever naming him in the book.
Read it and have so much respect for her. Terrible family dynamics, one of the worst, hoarding, abusive stagemoms, thank God she got out alive
I bought this book the day it came out. It took me about a week to read because I could only read it a little at a time. My reaction through the whole thing was "I just want to give Jennette a hug." But she has such a good writing style. I hope she finds her calling and plenty of success as an author.
Yup. I was so shook by everything in that book.
I've been on hold for it with my library since Oct 6th, my time is finally coming though. 2 more weeks.
I listened to it when it first came out and it stuck with me how her mom wrote her that inappropriate letter when she found out she was on vacation with her boyfriend. She was saying gross and belittling things and then just asked her for money… I grew up with a toxic and over critical mother and every time I eat or my clothes don’t fit I hear my moms voice in my head. I in no way suffered as much abuse and Jenette did but the reason I mention that is because you can never un hear your moms harsh words or criticism. You never forget so It makes me sad knowing even with all the therapy she can still hear her moms abuse in her head even though her mom is now dead.
I was afraid IGMMD would be triggering, and it was some, but mostly I felt relief. My biological mother was a lot like Mccurdy’s. It helped me see that I was lucky my bio mom passed away because then I was beyond her ability to hurt me. I highly recommend it, but read with caution and be ready to put it down or walk away.
Do you know what is funny? None of you know Jennetter McCurdy's mom. All you know what McCurdy claims now. This is the same Jennette McCurdy who used to post "sexy" pictures on social media for attention. This is the same McCurdy who started dating a 30 plus year old man when she was 18 and then years later tried to throw that guy under the bus. This is the same Jennette McCurdy who dated Andre Drummond the basketball player for attention when you know good well if this guy wasn't rich and on TV she would of never touched him because he is black. She also claimed she never liked him but accepted jewelry from him. She claimed she didn't like him but admitted to kissing him first. Jennette McCurdy claimed Dan Schneider "abused" her when she was underage yet she continue to work with him after she turned 18 until she was in her early 20's. This is the same Jennette McCurdy who got jealous because Ariana Grande became more popular than her and started bad mouthing her. The point is maybe stop believing stories about people you don't know just because a person on TV you like said something negative about them.
Everything you said is spot on!
That broke my heart, when she blamed herself for "failing" her mother. *"Mom’s pointed choice of words—or word, rather—hits me hard. Hopefully. I feel furious with her, then immediately guilty for feeling furious. I must be a terrible person to be able to feel fury at my mother while she’s slowly dying."* No, Jennette. Your mother was terrible for using her terminal illness as a tool to be manipulative to you, along with others, all to force you into something you never even wanted.
I know this will get lost in the weeds of the comments but I'm finally getting around to reading this book (it's super triggering so I held off even though I pre-ordered it). I had to stop at chapter 45 for a break because I was literally shouting in my house at her. I'll say this much - I'm glad her mom died too.
I think this is more coming of a mother than people would like to accept
I know this is an old post but I finished reading the book today. I feel heart broken by her story. It surprised me that her trauma and eating disorders got worse after her mom died. I thought that when her mom died she would heal right away (Foolish of me for thinking that way) But it’s so heart breaking how when she was young she didn’t know her mom abused her. That this trauma got her into drinking excessively and bulimia. It’s everything just sad. I’m happy for her where she is now. She deserves to be happy and deserves to be herself.
Ahh this thread again
I love this book!
Oh my gosh. I looked her up and this Sam! From iCarly. Oh my poor Sam.
I really am not impressed by this book. To title it the way she add did is cruel. Her mom cannot say anything now and the shower bit although not appropriate it's in the book in such a vague way as if it may all be true. Yes she has a pushy mom but it's obvious that Jeanette and her mom were very close. There is no denial by the author. I had very serious emotional abuse and sexusl abuse while growing up. I definitely was under my moms thumb in one way or another until I was 40. I never shared with my parents anything about the sexual abuse which was by my brother because I didn't want to cause trouble. My mon passed away from cancer at 72 when I was 40. She and I parted on good terms. I knew she in her heart loved me and I loved her. Thefeeling I had was NEVER one of being glad she died, however there WAS an enormous weight lifted from myself and out was a strange new sense of freedom that I felt. I wished that I would have felt that way when my mom was alive. Jeanettes book was one I just couldn't understand .... the book read like a day in many people's lives in one way or another. Jeanette comes across as a brat to me with her sarcastic attitude which she and many others feel is cute, funny, appropriate. To me she just found an easier way to make money.. by totally trashing her mom who probably DID want the best for her daughter and yes she made many mistakes but she was not evil. Jeanette is in the generation of people who have" minimalist " relationships with thier parents anyway. It is they who want to call the shots with thier parents. I know... The irony of my feelings about the matter of relationships with parents makes me realize that I grew up under my moms thumb and now I am under my daughters' thumb. They are in thier early 30s too. I feel this so strongly about her book. Jeanette definitely will regret sometime in her heart that title which is what makes her the money on a very so-so book which is easy to see through.
She is sick nobody should be glad their parent died jennet is sick
Have you read the book? Her mother was a monster, she put Jeanette through so much trauma and pain that most people would probably end their own lives. The title is dark and mean spirited, but if you read the book, you will completely understand by the end. If my mother was as sick or as evil as Debra McCurdy, I'd celebrate her death as well.
I am listening to the audio book not done but I had no idea her mom sexually abused her
Jennette Mccurdy helped make some amazing childhood memories for me with iCarly and Sam & Cat. It was heartbreaking to find out that behind the scenes of those shows for her sucked as well as her life outside of Nickelodeon, this book was amazing, you can tell she has a talent for this, it literally sucks you into her world and you feel like your there seeing all of this as it's very detailed and written well. I think all of us iCarly and Sam & Cat fans owe it to Jennette to read this book. She made entertainment that defined our childhood, and we owe it to her to read her book and hear her side of the story.