Tewksbury Public Library

I'm just happy to be here, a memoir of renegade mothering, Janelle Hanchett

eng

autobiography

no index present

non fiction

I'm just happy to be here

1031402020

Janelle Hanchett

a memoir of renegade mothering

"This 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 the bottom of addiction, all the way to 'society's hated mother,' makes it back, only to discover she will always remain on the fringe. At 21, Janelle Hanchett embraced motherhood with the reckless self-confidence of those who have no idea what they're getting into. Having known her child's father for only three months, she found herself simultaneously getting to know a newborn, husband, and wholly transformed identity--with questionable results. She was in love, but she was bored, directionless, and seeking too much relief in too much wine. Over time, as she searched for home in suburbia and settled life, a precarious drinking habit turned into treacherous dependence, until life became car seats and splitting hangovers, cubicles and multi-day drug binges--and finally, an inconceivable separation from her children. For ten years, Hanchett grappled with the relentless progression of addiction, bouncing from rehabs to therapists to the occasional hippie cleansing ritual on her quest for sobriety, before finding it unexpectedly through the guidance of an endearing misfit guru. Like her irreverent, hilarious, and unflinchingly honest blog, Renegade Mothering, Hanchett's memoir speaks with warmth and wit to those who feel like outsiders in parenthood and life--calling out the rhetoric surrounding 'the sanctity of motherhood' as tired and empty, boldly recounting instead how one grows to accept an imperfect self within an imperfect life--thinking, with great and final relief, 'Well, I'll be damned, I'm just happy to be here.'"--Dust jacket

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

I am just happy to be here