Hello, Florida! Today I’m at Books &Books in Coral Gables, Florida at 7pm. Come see me? Pretty please? Space is limited for the event so you may want to buy a book from the store to have a guaranteed spot for the reading, but I’ll stay later and sign anything you want for free even if you don’t have a book at all.
This is my last stop on the first leg of the tour and I love you all for your support! It’s been exhausting and wonderful and terrifying and brilliant all at once. But it’s the final stop for a week, which is good because I miss my couch and everyone who snuggles with me on it. So let’s make this awesome, Miami, because I am leaving it all on the stage. And by “it” I mean my dirty laundry, probably some empty bottles and what’s left of my dignity.
See here for the rest of the tour. Pretend I said something witty here, okay?
Love.
Your grandma shot straight from the hip…Maybe that’s why they are always getting them replaced.
Enjoy my old stomping grounds!!! And eat some Chicken Kitchen!! Extra yellow sauce!
I just drove there yesterday. I’d have stayed an extra day if I knew you were there! Bummer
Your grandma sounds awesome.
I will work hard to make sure your Grandmother’s quote is on the next tee shirt I purchase.
Your grandmother sounds wise. And feisty. Plus, you made me laugh:). I hope you got an empanada while you were in Miami. Crying shame if you don’t!
Come to Australia, plz. Thanks!
Best quote I’ve read in awhile. I hope Miami is treating you great. I loved the pictures of the hotel where you are staying. It looks amazing! It’s been raining here for 13 days straight. I’m ready for some sunshine.
<3 all of this. I am laughing out loud reading FURIOUSLY HAPPY, and thanking all the gods and goddesses in the universe for making sure I found you and this tribe.
I’m so excited to see you when you come to Portland! I ordered one of your wonderful signed book plates (just in case I can’t get to you for a live signing), but it never arrived. Did you run out? Did I do something wrong?
I was so excited to get a bookplate…
I think I love your grandma.
I’m still very sad you’re skirting Boise. Happy you have some downtime. Stay strong!
Finished the book this week and re-reading ‘LPTNH’. Can’t wait to see you in St. Louis next month!
You grandma way cooler than mine!
My grandma would have said “your opinions are valid, unless they differ from mine. I which case you can go fuck yourself”
God bless her and her loving ways.
Wahhhhhh – 2-1/2 hour drive which I think I could do to get there but there is no way that I could do the return trip after waiting in line. My fibro and associated depression have been kicking my butt since moving to Florida. I wish I could come and bring you a Papillon to snuggle. (We met at the Tempe AZ signing for Lets pretend and I had my foster dog, Pierre with me.) One of my all time favorite pics is the three of us – with Copernicus in the background. Love you Jenny, loved the book. Thank you for having our backs and letting us know we are not alone in our journeys.
Thank you for sharing grandmother’s wisdom, Bloggess… it’s helpfully shutting the door on an incredibly deep dark hole that opened between my sister and me last weekend. A week it’s taken me to get over that incident. Excess personal bullshit is great at distorting things that way.
I hope to see you sometime in December. I’d love to go to Santa Cruz instead of Pasadena, even though P is “local”. Who else here will be at either?? – Christina
… and I hope you thoroughly enjoy your week back home!
11/2 hour drive but I’ll be there tonight! Can’t wait!
I instantly like your grandmother.
I am aiming at seeing you in Boston. I wish you were coming to Providence or some place that wasn’t a 2 hour round trip. I do love your book. <3<3
You are a class act, Ms. Jenny. I hope you get some good rest before the next leg of your tour.
Kick butt, take names and then go home and rest up. We need a fresh & fighting Jenny in DC. Alternately, we can all take turns hearing you read whilst hidning in the bathroom.
or HIDING. sigh
I made it to your first reading/signing but I can’t be there tonight. I ordered a bookplate, but I haven’t received it yet. I’m excited to put it in my book. Is it delayed? Did you run out?
(The bookplates were a bit delayed but I think they’re going out soon. 🙂 ~ Jenny)
My gran never gave me any advice, but she DID leave my grandpa when she was 65 because she was sick of all HIS bullshit. So I guess she was a role model for female independence. Plus, she made a mean Yorkshire pudding, and that’s no easy feat.
Of course I just discovered you and your new book and your blog this week, and you’re only a few hours away down the coast… but my family’s sick with the virus-du-jour, so traveling isn’t an option tonight. Otherwise I would absolutely be there to listen and cheer and hug like crazy, because it’s so awesome and brave of you to be doing this tour for us. I’m thrilled to find this tribe – to know there are others willing to talk about what nobody else seems to want to. Hello and warm fuzzies to all!
You’ll be very close to me tonight and I’ve wavered back and forth, even thought of bringing a cake, but nope, I can’t do it. Good luck, I know you’ll be wonderful.
Pinned this one to my Inspiration board.
Grandma’s are great and always have the best advice…I had 2 wonderful ones and I am one…
LOVE this. MY little Italian Gramma’s advice was to wear a corset, because, “She push-a you up.”
I got the book today! Super excited to start reading Furiously Happy!
Jenny, congratulations on the completion of the first leg of your book tour!
I hope to follow in your grandmother’s footsteps someday and be brave enough to make statements like that. Thanks for sharing your life with us. You are truly making a difference in the lives of so many who are afraid to let people see us as we truly are. Thanks for letting me in to your tribe.
Reading your book now! and found this about Trichotillomani just this morning. Coincidence? I think not! Your book is enlightening. Thank you. http://cognoscenti.wbur.org/2015/10/01/trichotillomania-katie-koppel?utm_source=cc&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nwsltr-15-10-02
Re: comment 34 from Anonymous – I forgot to put my name — if you post it, please put me down as Pickledbeets.
I just finished your newer book, ” Furiously Happy.”
Enjoyed it because I struggle with some of the same things that you do.
I am maybe in the minority’s but would enjoy more without cuss words . I
I had a “take” on one of last chapters where you struggle with being
“successful.” I love what Mother Teresa said once in
response to an interviewer’s question. He was saying that
she had helped so many children in India but didn’t she wish she’d reached more- been more
successful? She said “God has not called me to be successful, but FAITHFUL.”
Jenny, New Zealand is only a 30 minute flight from Florida, so just grab another plane and I will meet you at the airport bookstore. We have cookies and stuffed Hobbits!
I haven’t had a chance to read your book but I read a very good article about you and the book all the way down here in Australia.
http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/sunday-style/how-this-blogger-overcame-depression-by-embracing-the-bright-side/story-fnizhafo-1227555921996?utm_content=SocialFlow&utm_campaign=EditorialSF&utm_source=News.com.au&utm_medium=Facebook
Congratulations! Will be heading out to the bookstore to get a copy.
I told a friend I wanted to read this book – they said oh, you must go read the first one! In fact, you must go listen to it as an audiobook, she did her own recording. (I’m currently starting out as an indie audiobook narrator, and am totally stressed to hear your sound effects and all the stuff I’m not set up to do.) Reading it, I alternate between “omg that’s totally how I am too” and “okay, I have it a bit better on that point”. Given that – how the HECK are you managing to do a book tour? I’d be strung out and under the bed by now.
(Meds, therapy, lots of down days, and this week I’m at home, blissfully receiving with a pile of pets and family. ~ Jenny)
Yaaaaay! You did it!!! Yaaaaaaaaaay!!!
My roommates and I will be there with bells on when you come to Dayton! Except I almost never wear bells. I’m not sure that anyone does. But we will be there, provided we can be convinced to leave the house that day. Good luck in Miami and rest up!
I just finished Furiously Happy and was sad there wasn’t more to read! I might have to start all over again. It deserves to be on the bestseller list and I’m sure it will get to number 1, just like your last one (which I have read several times). I saw this saying on facebook and it immediately made me think of you: “Tell someone you love them today because life is short. But shout it at them in German because life is also confusing and terrifying.” That seems to sum up everything you are saying in your last book. I don’t know how you’re going to top yourself, but I have no doubt that you will. I’m sure your publisher is already bugging you for the next topic.
I had a very bad car accident in August and my L-1 vertebrae just disintegrated. They were very worried about one piece of the bone that was too close to my spine and I had to be heavily sedated until they could take me by ambulance to the closest back surgeon specialist. Your book has made this part of my recovery a little more bearable. I did actually laugh out loud in places, making my husband look at me weird. You rock, Jenny and never forget that depression lies. You are AWESOME!
P.S. I love you in German is “ICH LIEBE DICH” which is pronounced ick leeby dick. So you can shout it at Victor and he’ll have no idea you’re not calling him a dick.
Nothing to do with your tour but I thought you should know, Hubs was trying to climb over a barbed wire fence & through a bramble bush to get to our cat who was being a total hoe & refusing to come out. Anywho, he slipped off the ladder & fell in the bushes screaming “NOOOOOOO! RORY!!” He had scratched the hell out of his raccoon tattoo he has on his leg…
Come to the Green Bay WI area and I’d be there!
If I were in the US I would love to come and see you 🙂
I would love to meet you, but I’m far away in Europe 🙂
Thank you, thank you, thank you!!! I don’t feel so weird after all. I think we would be good friends if my schedule and your schedule weren’t so crazy….and the fact that I live in VA and you are in TX. I can thank my sister for introducing your works to me-she does live in TX but is much more ‘normal’ than me. I’m introducing some of my friends that are also stopped-I wanted to say crippled but stopped is a better way to think about it-stopped by their anxieties and fears and depression and the whole ball of twisted mess that accompanies this misunderstood illness trying to gain control of our brains. My parents still do not accept it. Thank God for my husband and his family. They have kept me out of the mental hospital (really, my mother in law would not allow it and has kept me in her home several times when I “fall over the edge”.)
My family still tells me I’m crazy and I’ve decided crazy is my normal-it’s taken a long time to realize that-and my girls tell me, “mom you’re loosing it”…correction, I’ve lost it! But I have a good support system and my doctors and pills…and I can always go snuggle in bed with my dogs on pajama days.
Again, I thank you for pulling me up and keeping me laughing.
I am sure a lot of your followers wish that they could do the same for you.
Blanket hugs. L.
MY grandmother raised 9 children on a farm in the prairie :-0.
She would say “a diamond is just a chunk of coal that hung in there”.
My Dad always said: “non est illegitimi carborundum” (loosely translated: Don’t let the bastards wear you down.” I’m thinking of creating a family crest with that motto. (I will also feature Koalas–my favorite animal–and probably a nerf gun.) I want to put it on a banner and hang in proudly over the fireplace. Seriously, I should do that.
Just finished Furiously Happy (audible version–LOVE that I got to hear your voice!).
I cannot tell you how happy I was to learn that I’m not the only one who hides from hotel housekeeping so I can create a little home-fortress when traveling.
I feel guilty of course for all the times I was unutterably joyful to hear of your struggles that I thought were weird when I only thought they were MY weird struggles.
Thanks for sharing your particular brand of broken, but furiously happy so the rest of us weirdos know we’re not alone. =)
I just went to the article linked by Jacqui in Oz (#38) and top of the page had the title of the next article:
‘I’ve always wondered, is my vagina normal?’
The world works in Bloggess ways!
Please, please, please make that image and quote available on something in your store. I must have it!
So, I totally freaked out at the book signing, and couldn’t even look you in the eye and say “Hi”, but you’re probably used to that from strangers by now, so whatever, at least I made it this time. I refused to leave the house the last time you were here.
Your Grandma would have liked my Grandma.
I’m feeling really brave today, so I’m going to admit something to you…Most people have no idea that every single day is a struggle for me to keep going. But my girls were abandoned by their birth parents and then left foster care to come to us. So, every day, I put one foot in front of the other and keep going because I WILL NOT abandon them again. It would simply be too much for them to bear and I cannot imagine hurting them this way. So I do whatever it takes to find the energy to keep going. No matter what.
I reeeeeeeally want to try to make it to Tempe. I’m about 5 hours away, and my son’s 11th birthday is the next day, and I seriously doubt you’ll be selling Nerf guns, so it may not all fly…but I can dream, right?
I’m in Sydney and the next plane isn’t until tomorrow!!! aaaaaaaaaargh. Definitely buying a copy of this and your last book though – Kindle me up baby!
I’m reading your book in fits and bursts to make it last as along as possible. I’ve been reading bits of it aloud to the family, because you are simply brilliant. Also, your grandma was way cooler than mine.
grandma’s give the best advice… mine likes to tell me “if you can’t be good, at least be good at it”
so i received your book the other day and I was reading it in bed while my husband was sleeping and i laughed so hard that I shook the bed and scared my husband awake. It was a win win. THANKS JENNY!!! YOU’RE AWESOME!!
Great post!
Heard you on NPR. You were fantastic!
“And sometimes…we fly”
THANK YOU for those words. They made my eyes all leaky and I nodded “me too” through the whole book. Beautiful words, my dear.
Yes, grandmas know best.
Victor does not understand cake at the level we do, Jenny.
Really looking forward to your visit in Somerville on 10/17. Hubby and I are planning on being on line for a long while. We will miss your reading but I’m deaf so it’s wasted on me. I just want to let you know that the Boston Globe listed your book #10 on the top 10 best sellers list. I haven’t read the book yet but I’m really psyched!
It was so wonderful to see you. I was so giddy I totally forgot to get contact info for the cool family who was behind me in line. They had this adorable baby, covered in stickers, and wearing a “Keep calm it’s just a giant metal chicken” onesie. We live near each other and I thought you guys were so cool and smart. Hit me up on Facebook @ Ariel McGovern. 😀
I am devastated that I missed you. I work about 5 min from that bookstore and I just finished Furiously Happy (already rereading it) and it is easily my top 5 books of all time. And I read A LOT. Thank you for your words. Hope to see you next time you visit South Florida!
and after all, who could resist that racoon on the cover, embracing us all from the store shelf? Third on the list. I am so impressed and not even slightly surprised…
I think hilariously sweary quotes over surprisingly calm photos may just be my favourite thing xo