This book has haunted me. I downloaded the audio version and started listening as I walked into the grocery store. I strolled the produce section, bagging limes and tomatoes, as former child actress Jennette McCurdy introduced me to her family and early life. At preschool age, she knew to lie about liking her birthday gift in order to avoid her mom blowing up at her. She and her siblings were subjected to nightly replays of an old home video–the one where their mom told them she had cancer. Her mother would live narrate each child’s gestures and remind them how much they loved her.
The story was compelling. I kept listening on the way home and into the evening, for four hours with no breaks. I listened to the last two hours when I woke up the next day. It is a real Book of the Moment–everyone seems to be reading it, or at least to have an opinion about it. Opinions break into two camps–those who, for lack of a better term, “get it,” and those who are made uncomfortable by the title–“Come on, that’s your mom. You gotta work it out.”
If anything, this book is a crash course in empathy. Hopefully the uncomfortable folks can get past the title and into the story, which is one where McCurdy learns and practices from a very young age the art of tiptoeing around an explosive parent. She shapes herself into a soft cushion to accept the emotional and physically invasive blows she receives from her mother as a matter of course. Her mother’s mechanisms of control range from simple moodiness to an insidious lack of respect for Jennette’s personal space and physical autonomy. She isn’t allowed to wash her own hair or shower alone; she’s subjected to humiliating “body checks” well into her teens; and at age eleven her mother helpfully introduces her to “calorie restriction” (aka anorexia) as a way to keep her body prepubescent and cast in “younger” roles. This begins a cycle of anorexia, bulimia, and addiction that lasts into Jennette’s adulthood.
Speaking of playing young. Jennette becomes an actress not because she wants to be, or because she enjoys it, but because she sees in her mother’s eyes that there’s only one correct answer to the question “Wouldn’t you like to be an actress?” It’s her chance to live vicariously through her daughter (and collect a manager’s fee to boot) after her own dreams of Hollywood were dashed by Jennette’s grandparents. What’s to stop a mother from obsessing over every audition and acting class? Especially when the child has potential to support the whole family.
Control is an illusion, especially for kids, but Jennette did not have even a fantasy of control. Late in her teens, her mother’s recurrence of cancer means that for the first time, they can’t be together all the time. Jennette gets to live somewhat independently, touring to promote a country album that she didn’t like or want to make. However, her mother always finds a way in, whether it’s via abusive emails or requests for money. They are so enmeshed that adult Jennette walks out on a therapist who asks if she realizes she’s been abused.
As a therapist, this is a key moment for me. For those who haven’t been through abuse, I hope it’s illustrative of how an abusive relationship can seep into every corner of your being and change the colors of reality. It’s a good answer to the question “Why won’t she leave him?” Abuse makes you doubt yourself. In this case, the abuser made a point of always emphasizing how much she was doing for the victim, how she gave her whole life to make her daughter’s life better. All the other things might feel terrible, but how could you argue that point? It’s a matter of survival to be aligned with someone who holds so much power in your life.
For those who have been through abuse and are now in therapy, I think this moment is worth exploring. What could that therapist have done differently to keep Jennette in therapy? Could she have intuited that her client was not ready to hear that word–abuse–and held off on sharing it, building rapport that would hold Jennette when she was ready to face it? Or was it more respectful to be honest and put a name to the traumas that led her to addiction, multiple eating disorders, and broken relationships? That’s empowering.
Both of these approaches seem valid to me. Sometimes clients are upset with therapists for what is or isn’t said, and I want to point out here that we are people too, making our best choices based on the info we have in the moment. If you’re upset with your therapist for what they did or didn’t say, it’s worth a conversation to explore their motivations. I’ll have more to say on this topic re: Stephanie Foo’s What My Bones Know.
It would be easy to make this into a listicle of abuses. Even after her mom dies, the hits keep coming in the form of secrets and guilt. Despite the darkness, this book is funny. McCurdy understands that there is humor in everything. She doesn’t turn away from the absurdity of the stage mother persona and its attendant laughs. She develops herself and her mother into complete characters, with personalities, flaws, and vulnerabilities.
Most impressively, this book distills twenty years of abuse into a quick and even palatable read. For those who have been through parental abuse and enmeshment, it is a chance to feel seen and validated. For those who haven’t, it’s a way into another kind of life story, hopefully one that widens one’s sense of compassion and respect for those who struggle despite seeming to have it all.
A Therapist's Book Club 