Everything You Ever Wanted
A Memoir
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4.8 • 18 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
A Best Memoir of 2015, “This memoir is compulsively readable and full of humor and heart.”—AdoptiveFamilies.com
“A punk rock Scheherazade” (Margaret Cho) shares the zigzagging path that took her from harem member to PTA member…
In her younger years, Jillian Lauren was a college dropout, a drug addict, and an international concubine in the Prince of Brunei’s harem, an experience she immortalized in in her bestselling memoir, SOME GIRLS. In her thirties, Jillian's most radical act was learning the steadying power of love when she and her rock star husband adopt an Ethiopian child with special needs. After Jillian loses a close friend to drugs, she herself is saved by her fierce, bold love for her son as she fights to make him—and herself—feel safe and at home in the world.
Exploring complex ideas of identity and reinvention, Everything You Ever Wanted is a must-read for everyone, especially every mother, who has ever hoped for a second act in life.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Los Angeles author Lauren (Some Girls; Pretty) again demonstrates her keen ability to transform unusual experiences into brave writerly fodder. Married to a rock musician who established on the first date that he was looking to start a family, Lauren eagerly left her life as a drug-abusing exotic dancer to embrace a more conventional lifestyle as a homemaking wife in the upscale Los Angeles suburb of Eagle Rock albeit as the tattooed wife of Weezer's bass player. Unable to conceive a child, they tried fertility treatments and all manner of alternative remedies until, Lauren, in her 30s, decided it was time to consider adoption a process she was familiar with, having being been adopted herself. Her husband, Scott, was more wary, yet eventually embraced the idea of adopting a boy from Ethiopia. While the actual adoption went smoothly, and the year-old boy, Tariku, was healthy and bright, he had some trauma-related issues involving attachment and aggression. Lauren describes Tariku as a toddler prone to biting and hitting, which got him expelled from several groups and schools, and explains how she and Scott got help in implementing non-punitive techniques to ensure their son felt loved and safe while teaching him more sociable behaviors. This is a heartfelt story of a very real mom whose own baggage and fears did not hinder her from becoming a caring, suitable parent to a child with special needs.
