Broken (in the best possible way)
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4.4 • 135 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
An Instant New York Times Bestseller
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Furiously Happy and Let’s Pretend This Never Happened comes a deeply relatable book filled with humor and honesty about depression and anxiety.
As Jenny Lawson’s hundreds of thousands of fans know, she suffers from depression. In Broken, Jenny brings readers along on her mental and physical health journey, offering heartbreaking and hilarious anecdotes along the way.
With people experiencing anxiety and depression now more than ever, Jenny humanizes what we all face in an all-too-real way, reassuring us that we’re not alone and making us laugh while doing it. From the business ideas that she wants to pitch to Shark Tank to the reason why Jenny can never go back to the post office, Broken leaves nothing to the imagination in the most satisfying way. And of course, Jenny’s long-suffering husband Victor—the Ricky to Jenny’s Lucille Ball—is present throughout.
A treat for Jenny Lawson’s already existing fans, and destined to convert new ones, Broken is a beacon of hope and a wellspring of laughter when we all need it most.
Includes Photographs and Illustrations
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
This book of personal essays by Jenny Lawson—whom you might know as the Bloggess—takes us on a fast-paced ride through life’s ups and downs. Lawson is a humorist first and foremost, capable of hilarious riffs on topics from imaginary Shark Tank pitches to the poop emoji. But her primary subject is herself, and that means she’s often exploring heavy topics like autoimmune disease, clinical depression, and anxiety with her signature wit. Lawson has covered these topics in previous collections like Furiously Happy and the art therapy manual You Are Here, but the pieces in this collection feel even more honest than usual. Occasionally, as in a deeply emotional open letter to an insurance company that refused to pay for her medical treatments, she drops the humor entirely. This exuberant book will move you—in the best possible way.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Lawson (You Are Here) returns with a wry and entertaining take on her battle with depression, anxiety, and rheumatoid arthritis. As always, the author is unrivaled in her ability to use piercing humor and insight to take on heavy subjects. In the poignant "I Already Forgot I Wrote This," Lawson shares moving reflections on her family's history of dementia ("My mother jokes about it now and I do too, because you either laugh or you cry"). In "The Things We Do to Quiet the Monsters," she details the transcranial magnetic stimulation treatment she underwent to cure her medication-resistant mental health issues ("It feels like an invisible chisel drilling holes into your head while you have an ice-cream headache and also you're paying for it to happen to you"), and she excoriates her insurance provider in "An Open Letter to My Insurance Company": "you decided that it wasn't medically necessary' that I have the drug that had kept me away from suicide." In "Six Times I've Lost My Shoes While Wearing Them," she chronicles the strange places she's lost her left shoe after "walking out of it" due to fluctuating ankle swelling from chronic arthritis. The beauty of these essays lies in Lawson's unfailing hopefulness amid her trials. "After all," she notes, "we are changed by life... it puts its teeth in us... makes us who we are." Lawson's fans are in for a treat.
Customer Reviews
Moving and laugh-out-loud funny
I’m now a Jenny Lawson fan
Profoundly Real
Dear Jenny: you capture the wondrous absurdity of life and living so perfectly, and by perfect I mean broken and organic and growing and healing and stubbornly persisting and finding the way to go on no matter what. You make my broken bits feel acceptable and even worth nurturing and celebrating, as I stumble toward the light. And you make me laugh giant belly laughs in terrible places, which feels like Winning Life. High-fives for All The Win. I love you.
3rd times the charm!
The third book touches you emotionally and turns you around to spitting out water that your laughing so hard. Jenny tells of the struggles and hardships of depression, it’s ugly lies but the beauty that can still be found when you resurface.