09/27/2025
I'm Glad My Mom Died is not just a provocative title. It's a truth that hurts to say out loud. It’s the kind of truth that lives under the surface for years, waiting to be named. What Jennette does in these pages is nothing short of brave — she tells the whole story. The love. The fear. The control. The loss. The grief that doesn’t look like grief because it’s mixed with relief and rage and guilt.
This isn’t a book about hating your mother. It’s a book about what happens when love is conditional, when boundaries are never taught, and when your body becomes someone else’s project instead of your own home. Jennette’s story is personal, but it speaks to something many live through quietly — the pain of being someone else’s version of you for too long.
Here are 7 lessons from this book:
1. You can love someone and still be deeply harmed by them.
Jennette adored her mom. She wanted her mom’s approval more than anything. And yet, that love was never safe. It was tied to control, to performance, to silence. This book teaches us that love without boundaries can become manipulation. That someone can say “I love you” and still leave wounds behind. And that part of growing up — painfully — is learning that love alone is not enough if it costs you yourself.
2. Abuse doesn’t always look like violence. Sometimes it looks like devotion.
Much of the pain Jennette experienced was wrapped in a bow — concern for her weight, career guidance, constant involvement. But underneath was a mother who crossed every boundary: from showering her child into adolescence to managing her eating to pushing her into a career Jennette didn’t choose. It reminds us that abuse often hides behind what looks like care. Just because someone says it’s love doesn’t mean it isn’t control.
3. Your body is not a battlefield for other people’s fears.
Jennette’s eating disorders were not just about food. They were about her mother’s obsession with keeping her small — physically and emotionally. They were about fear, control, identity. What this book makes so heartbreakingly clear is how easily girls are taught that their worth lives in their appearance — and how that belief can take root when modeled by the people they trust most. Reclaiming your body is an act of resistance. And Jennette’s journey through disordered eating is a painful but powerful example of that.
4. Grief is complicated when the person you lost also hurt you.
The title of this book shocks, but it is also honest. Jennette grieved her mother deeply — but not in the way we’re taught grief should look. There was anger. Relief. Freedom. Confusion. This memoir gives space for a kind of grief we rarely speak of: grieving a relationship that was never safe, mourning not just the person, but the childhood that could have been. It is okay to feel all of it. Even if none of it is tidy.
5. Fame doesn’t protect you from trauma — sometimes it deepens it.
To the outside world, Jennette was living a dream: a successful actress, beloved by fans, admired. But behind the scenes was exhaustion, emotional manipulation, and years of people pleasing. Her story is a powerful reminder that success is not the same as well-being. That being seen by millions can still feel like invisibility when your real self isn’t known by anyone — especially yourself.
6. Healing begins when you stop minimizing your pain.
For so long, Jennette told herself it wasn’t that bad. That other people had it worse. That her mom didn’t mean to hurt her. And maybe all of that is true. But healing doesn’t come from comparison. It comes from acknowledgment. From telling the truth. From holding your pain gently instead of pushing it away. Jennette’s healing began when she started writing. When she allowed herself to be angry. When she let the truth be ugly and human and hers.
7. You are allowed to become someone your younger self never imagined — or was never allowed to be.
Perhaps the most powerful message in this memoir is this: you can rebuild. You can change your mind. You can heal, even imperfectly. Jennette steps into her adulthood with fear, humor, and honesty. She questions everything she was raised to believe. And in doing so, she becomes something she never had a model for — a free, flawed, authentic version of herself. That is the real ending. Not a bow. But a beginning.
Jennette McCurdy does something few people in the spotlight are brave enough to do: she tells the whole truth, not to shock, but to liberate — herself, and maybe others too. I’m Glad My Mom Died is not a book about bitterness. It’s a book about boundaries. About truth-telling. About what happens when we stop pretending the people who hurt us were perfect — and start healing from the parts of them we were never allowed to name. It is raw. It is heartbreaking. It is, in places, darkly funny. But most of all, it is real.
Book: https://amzn.to/4265yPt
Audiobook also available using the link above.
