Member-only story
We Can’t (and Should Not) Talk Ill about Dead people.
Entitling your book “I’m Glad My Mom Died” says more about you as a person than your mother.
I was reading yesterday a story in the New York Times about a woman who wrote a book about her dead mother called “I’m Glad My Mom Died,” which is a memoir of a girl that has been abused by her mother to live her dream of becoming an actor.
This woman, Jannette McCurdy, was a child actor in iCarly, a hit teen sitcom on Nickelodeon which started in 2007 and lasted for several years. According to her memoirs, her mother exploited her talent for acting as a child, a dream she had for herself which came true through her daughter landing this main role in the sitcom.
Her mother took her daughter’s job very seriously, even if she was only a child, keeping track of her calorie intake and allowing toxic people around her who didn’t treat her age appropriately. Jannette mentions being offered alcohol by the Creator — who was someone leading the production team.
Jannette complained she couldn’t make decisions independently under her mother’s constant supervision. Her mother died of cancer, and she apparently couldn’t replicate the success she got the second time when she co-starred with Ariana Grande in another teen sitcom, “Sam & Cat”.
