| Edition |
First edition. |
| Description |
viii, 310 pages ; 22 cm |
| Summary |
Pregnant at 21 by a man she'd known three months, Janelle Hanchett embraced motherhood with the determined optimism of the recklessly self-confident. After giving birth, she found herself bored, directionless, and seeking relief in wine, which she justified as sophisticated and going well with chicken. But over time, her questionable drinking habit spiraled into full-blown dependence, until life became bedtime stories and splitting hangovers, cubicles and multi-day drug binges--and eventually, an inconceivable separation from her children. For ten years, Hanchett grappled with the unyielding progression of addiction, bouncing from rehab to therapy to the occasional hippie cleansing ritual on her quest for sobriety, before finding it in a way she never expected. Hers is a story we rarely hear--of the addict mother not redeemed by her children; who longs for normalcy but cannot maintain it; and who, having traveled to seemingly irreversible depths, makes it back, only to discover she is still an outsider. Like her irreverent, laugh-out-loud funny, and unflinchingly honest blog, Hanchett's memoir calls out the rhetoric surrounding "the sanctity of motherhood" as tired and empty, boldly recounting instead how she grew to accept an imperfect self within an imperfect life--and think, "Well, I'll be damned, I'm just happy to be here." |
| Contents |
Family planning on Ecstasy -- Stop drinking when your lips go numb -- Sylvia Plath put her head in the oven over this shit -- Playing house in the suburbs with Captain Morgan -- Three a.m. ideas -- Rocketship rock-on -- Failure that isn't funny -- Nothing left to hide now -- Who's the sickest in the room? -- Maintenance whiskey -- I found God in a leaf blower, and I fucking hate leaf blowers -- There are three types of mothers in the world--I am none of them -- Failure that isn't funny: sober edition -- The childhood I could no longer blame -- What the hell is "soul work"? -- In the blood of our mothers -- If I knew the way. |
| Subject |
Hanchett, Janelle.
|
| Subject(S) |
Drug addicts -- United States -- Biography.
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Alcoholics -- United States -- Biography.
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Mothers -- United States -- Biography.
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Autobiographies.
|
| Added Title |
I am just happy to be here. |
| ISBN |
9780316503778 (hardcover) |
|
0316503770 (hardcover) |
|
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