Author: Jenny Lawson
Published: September 22nd 2015 by Flatiron Books
Genre: Autobiography, Humor, Nonfiction, Memoir
Rating: ★★★★✰
In LET’S PRETEND THIS NEVER HAPPENED, Jenny Lawson baffled readers with stories about growing up the daughter of a taxidermist. In her new book, FURIOUSLY HAPPY, Jenny explores her lifelong battle with mental illness. A hysterical, ridiculous book about crippling depression and anxiety? That sounds like a terrible idea. And terrible ideas are what Jenny does best.
Jenny’s first book, LET’S PRETEND THIS NEVER HAPPENED, was ostensibly about family, but deep down it was about celebrating your own weirdness. FURIOUSLY HAPPY is a book about mental illness, but under the surface it’s about embracing joy in fantastic and outrageous ways-and who doesn’t need a bit more of that? (Goodreads Summary)
Furiously Happy…This was a book I didn’t even realize I needed to read. I debated even writing a review for this due to just how closely I related to this book. but here it is.
What does Furiously Happy even mean? Well in the words of Jenny herself:
“AWESOME. In fact, I’m starting a whole movement right now. The FURIOUSLY HAPPY movement. And it’s going to be awesome because first of all, we’re all going to be VEHEMENTLY happy, and secondly because it will freak the sh*t out of everyone that hates you because those a**holes don’t want to see you even vaguely amused, much less furiously happy, and it will make their world turn a little sideways and will probably scare the sh*t out of them. Which will make you even more happy. Legitimately. Then the world tips in our favor. Us: 1. A**holes: 8,000,000. That score doesn’t look as satisfying as it should because they have a bit of a head start. Except you know what? F*** that. We’re starting from scratch. Us: 1. A**holes: 0.”
Well that’s all fine and dandy you say, but tell me Taylor, why is there a raccoon on the cover? What does a bug eyed raccoon have to do with mental illness and being furiously happy? Well that raccoon’s name is Rory and he is taxidermyed. I know that’s not a word but for this post it is. (now I really feel like I’m channeling my inner Jenny) Rory is a stuffed raccoon that Jenny LOVES, she will hide him under the covers to scare her husband or peek his head out the door to freak out the mailman and she takes him on airplanes as her “Therapy Pet”. She just really really loves taxadermyed animals and it’s a theme throughout the book
This is the first thing I have read by Jenny Lawson and I immediately added her first book Lets Pretend This Never Happened to my TBR before I even finished chapter 2. Jenny’s explanations of how her mental illnesses affect her and what it’s like to deal with them is perfection!
“When you come out of the grips of a depression there is an incredible relief, but not one you feel allowed to celebrate. Instead, the feeling of victory is replaced with anxiety that it will happen again, and with shame and vulnerability when you see how your illness affected your family, your work, everything left untouched while you struggled to survive. We come back to life thinner, paler, weaker … but as survivors. Survivors who don’t get pats on the back from coworkers who congratulate them on making it. Survivors who wake to more work than before because their friends and family are exhausted from helping them fight a battle they may not even understand. I hope to one day see a sea of people all wearing silver ribbons as a sign that they understand the secret battle, and as a celebration of the victories made each day as we individually pull ourselves up out of our foxholes to see our scars heal, and to remember what the sun looks like.”
“When I went on my first antidepressant it had the side effect of making me fixated on suicide (which is sort of the opposite of what you want). It’s a rare side effect so I switched to something else that did work. Lots of concerned friends and family felt that the first medication’s failure was a clear sign that drugs were not the answer; if they were I would have been fixed. Clearly I wasn’t as sick as I said I was if the medication didn’t work for me. And that sort of makes sense, because when you have cancer the doctor gives you the best medicine and if it doesn’t shrink the tumor immediately then that’s a pretty clear sign you were just faking it for attention. I mean, cancer is a serious, often fatal disease we’ve spent billions of dollars studying and treating so obviously a patient would never have to try multiple drugs, surgeries, radiation, etc., to find what will work specifically for them. And once the cancer sufferer is in remission they’re set for life because once they’ve learned how to not have cancer they should be good. And if they let themselves get cancer again they can just do whatever they did last time. Once you find the right cancer medication you’re pretty much immune from that disease forever. And if you get it again it’s probably just a reaction to too much gluten or not praying correctly. Right?”
“I can tell you that “Just cheer up” is almost universally looked at as the most unhelpful depression cure ever. It’s pretty much the equivalent of telling someone who just had their legs amputated to “just walk it off.” Some people don’t understand that for a lot of us, mental illness is a severe chemical imbalance rather just having “a case of the Mondays.” Those same well-meaning people will tell me that I’m keeping myself from recovering because I really “just need to cheer up and smile.” That’s when I consider chopping off their arms and then blaming them for not picking up their severed arms so they can take them to the hospital to get reattached.”
Her explanations and thought processes make so much sense to me. That quote right there is why I am so hesitant and nervous to tell people that I struggle with depression and anxiety.. It’s something that I have been ashamed of and feel guilty about. Like, I have a great life, I know I do. I have a wonderful husband and amazing family who love me, a great job with awesome coworkers, a nice home, no debt and a relationship with Jesus Christ. I have a great life, why do I feel this way? Why do I sit in my car after work staring at the steering wheel trying to find the will to turn the key and go home? What is wrong with me? Everyone else sees that I have a great life, what will they think? Will they think I’m faking? What kind of Christian am I if I’m on antidepressants? Who is going to believe anything I say about having a relationship with a loving God when they see this? And then something Jenny wrote stuck with me “I used to feel a lot of guilt about having depression but then I realized that’s a lot like feeling guilty for having brown hair.” Or in my case blonde hair..but that guilt is something I will have to move past. It’s not my fault that my brain is like this. This is just a sickness that has to be managed just like the herniated disks in my back and my psoriatic arthritis. I have to medicate to be able to function. It’s just like any other illness and it’s not. my. fault.
I know a lot of people who read this book won’t understand it. They won’t understand the humor or the funny ways in which Jenny deals with her mental illnesses but that is only because they don’t know anyone struggling with mental illnesses or have experienced the struggle themselves. This book truly is a funny book about horrible things. Mental illnesses are horrible, they take things from you and the ones you love. But knowing your not alone helps with the horrible. If you struggle with depression or anxiety your not alone. I’m dealing with it too.
And if you do suffer from these or any mental illnesses I highly suggest reading this book. I actually listened to the audio book and Jenny Lawson herself reads it which made it that much better!
“I AM GOING TO BE FURIOUSLY HAPPY, OUT OF SHEER SPITE.”
― Jenny Lawson, Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things
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