📚 I’m Glad My Mom Died
Genre: Memoir, Non-Fiction
Originally Published: 2022
💭 Quick Summary & Thoughts
When I originally read the title, my gut reaction was, well, that’s a bit much. But the more the story progressed, the more I understood it, and by the end I found myself agreeing with it entirely.
I knew to some extent that children in the entertainment industry don’t have it as good as everybody thinks, but I had no idea it could get this bad, to the point where it’s borderline abusive. I can’t fathom the amount of courage it would have taken Jennette to write this memoir, calling out all the things she got put through and how her mom basically abused her. For someone who has had a very happy childhood, I so dearly wished that this story wouldn’t be so excruciatingly sad, but it is, it really is. It’s a story about how manipulative love can be, how Jennette got robbed of a childhood and never got to be a kid, how she grew up far more mature for her age (as kids in abusive households generally do), and the long-lasting psychological and physical issues she developed going through the whole ordeal. It’s not a book anybody would be glad having read, and it’s depressing, and disheartening, and makes your blood curdle, but despite all of that, I would still recommend it, because if it’s this hard to read a book of what, 300 or so pages, how hard would it have been to live through it for a couple of decades?
The writing style is very cut-and-dry, very to the point, but in my opinion it works really well, because it gives credence to the fact that she really isn’t sugar-coating anything, mostly recounting incidents as they were. She brushes past things that could each warrant an essay of their own.
⚠️ Spoiler Zone
🚨 Click to reveal spoilers 🚨
I hate it when parents try to live their own dreams through their children. Clearly Jennette’s mom wanted to be an actress but couldn’t, so she put all her effort into making Jennette one, whether she wanted it or not. Encouragement would have been one thing, but the way Jennette describes it, she was pretty much forced into it. Young children look towards their parents and other authority figures for approval, and Debra basically used that to get Jennette into acting. And if that wasn’t enough, she even got Jennette onto this crazy diet to keep her from physically developing, so that she could still act in roles meant for 7-year-old kids. In my books, this is emotional and physical abuse, and it’s where Jennette’s eating disorders and body image issues take root.
I strongly suspect that Debra too had some form of mental illness, even though I don’t know enough medically to tell you which one. The rage tantrums she has, the constant obsession with her cancer, and the re-viewings of the old tapes from those times every Sunday, don’t feel like the actions of a healthy mind. I’m not saying this to excuse her actions, believe me, far from it, but it makes me wonder, how did nobody in Debra’s family realize this? What were Jennette’s father and grandparents doing when all of this was going down? When a not-even-a-teenager kid starts worrying about how her mother would react before she does anything, and all her actions are dictated by keeping mom happy, something seriously has gone wrong. The only shining light in the whole story is the friendship that Jennette had with Miranda, and honestly, even as a reader, I was so grateful to her for Jennette’s sake. Without her, Jennette would have been even more alone in an already isolated world.
Take the crying on cue, for example, I had no idea that existed as a skill, or what kids have to do to actually cry on cue. To imagine your most loved ones dying agonizing and excruciating deaths just to make yourself cry, that has to have lasting impacts on your psyche. I can’t imagine the industry has figured this out yet, so they’re mostly choosing to ignore it, or worse, hush it up the way Nickelodeon tried to give Jennette hush money.
I’m happy that Jennette finally got to be a writer and write something, even though I wish it would have been something that gave her joy rather than a recounting of all the painful experiences she had to live through…
And if I had to sum up the book succinctly? I’m glad her mom died too.
💬 Quote Corner
“Why do we romanticize the dead? Why can’t we be honest about them?”
“I’m allowed to hate someone else’s dream, even if it’s my reality.”
⭐ Ratings
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