I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy

I'm Glad My Mom Died

Jennette McCurdy

It is strange how we perceive the idea of love. When love is meant to set a person free, it does just the opposite. Full possession of the other and controlling their choices in the name of giving the best for them isn't love. It is pure and apparent abuse. No one can build a better life for another. As far as we try, we can give them the best time and memory when we are together. But otherwise, I don't know. It's their life and making it the best or worst is in their hands.

It is not easy to acknowledge an abuse when one loves the abuser. But it is even more difficult when a person is being abused by their mother. Especially when we've romanticised and divinized, if I may say, the motherhood. The deified mother can never go wrong. She can never imagine anything bad for her child, lest she'd abuse them.

'I'm glad my mom died' is Jennette McCurdy's memoir where she relates her relationship with her late mother with an openness that's intense. It was sad. The fact that it was all true made it more uncomfortable to read. 

I pitied the little Jennette (she might not like that) who loved her mother so much and so blindly. But I also pitied Jennette's mom (sometimes). Maybe she did need help like Jennette's father points out. It could've been her life and failures, her childhood or her lost dream. Nothing justifies her actions, of course, but I tried to understand her beneath all the red flags. She was manipulative. She was also pitiful (she wanted to be). She was ignorant. But sometimes she was well aware of what's happening. She loved her daughter. Or she loved the daughter who was famous, successful, living the life she couldn't and brought in more money. But, in the end, pitiful or not, ignorant or not, nothing really matters. We cannot disagree to the fact that she made Jennette's childhood miserable and that's unforgivable. 

After her mother's death, Jennette had the taste of freedom, pure autonomy, for the first time in her life. She struggled with her eating disorder and addiction all alone. But her determination leaves a spark of hope in the end. The transformation from being a naive little girl to being a strong young lady and building her life all by herself in her twenties is incredibly inspiring.

This is the first nonfiction that I've ever read and really liked. And I love Jennette McCurdy. Not as Sam or other roles she played but as a writer. I adore her so much as a writer 🌟

She's glad her mom died. And I'm glad she's glad.