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Broken (in the Best Possible Way) by Jenny Lawson

15 reviews

novella42's review against another edition

I adored her essay / letter to the health insurance system. This is such a good book, and I think it's sadly beyond my capacity to handle. There's just a lot of things in it that hit my personal traumas. I tried skipping chapters, tried powering through, and finally accepted that it would be kinder to my mental health to not read this particular book on mental health. I lau hed aloud at many points, though, and I can think of half a dozen people who would love this and not have the same issues with it that I did.

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davianareads's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

This book had me laughing out loud during the comedic chapters and sympathizing with Jenny’s struggles with mental health.

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irisameliaink's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

4.25

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qrschulte's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful informative reflective sad fast-paced

5.0

This book is just as enjoyable and funny as her first two, but boy was it also soooo sad at parts. Highly recommend the audiobook, read by Lawson herself. And to anyone who says our healthcare system is fine and doesn’t need reform, I request you read Chapter 9: An Open Letter to My Insurance Company, and then tell me the US HAS a really great system. A favorite quote from the book: “If simple words fixed terrible things, then terrible things wouldn’t exist.”

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kelly_e's review against another edition

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emotional informative inspiring fast-paced

3.25

Title: Broken (In the Best Possible Way)
Author: Jenny Lawson
Genre: Non Fiction Humour
Rating: 3.25
Pub Date: April 6, 2021

T H R E E • W O R D S

Relatable • Unscripted • Vulnerable

📖 S Y N O P S I S

In Broken, Jenny brings readers along on her mental and physical health journey, offering heartbreaking and hilarious anecdotes along the way.

With people experiencing anxiety and depression now more than ever, Jenny humanizes what we all face in an all-too-real way, reassuring us that we’re not alone and making us laugh while doing it.

💭 T H O U G H T S

Broken is my first experience reading Jenny Lawson, despite this being her third book and I was left with very mixed thoughts upon finishing it.

On the one hand, I absolutely love the focus on mental illness, and some of the chapters felt so thought=provoking and validating. She definitely gets real, humanizing mental illness, and that's where the value of this book lies. She talks candidly about how difficult is it to get appropriate care and treatment, while also acknowledging her own privilege on that front. The difficulty of receiving proper care is in part where the shame and stigma stem from.

And on the other hand, her humour and oversharing just didn't work for me. As someone who also deals with anxiety and depression, I found the self-deprecating to be too much. I know it's the lived reality, but it was extremely difficult to read. Lastly, the writing definitely felt disjointed, which was maybe the intent, but the lack of flow made the whole experience less than enjoyable.

I took away some extremely validating quotes, and while some parts were 5 stars, unfortunately others were completely unnecessary. Broken is certainly a deep dive into the workings of her mind, and is a valuable addition to mental illness literature.

📚 R E C O M M E N D • T O
• people dealing with mental illness
• mental health professionals

🔖 F A V O U R I T E • Q U O T E S

"Forgive yourself. For being broken. For being you. For thinking those are things that you need forgiveness for."

"Nothing lasts forever. The good and the bad."

"You can't fight severe mental illness without mental health programs. Without therapy, medication, and outreach. We rely on these to keep us going - to save us from ourselves. Out families rely on them to help us and to protect the world from us. But actually getting help has been [and continues to be] the most difficult, unrewarding, shame-inducing, and unending project I have ever undertaken in my entire life.
It's hard. You give up. you give up fighting for treatment. Sometimes you give up your treatment altogether. Sometimes you give up on living.
I worked with doctors and the TMS people and submitted appeal after appeal. I fought with my insurance company. I finally submitted a letter to them. It's the one from two chapters back. And then it was approved. I'm not sure why. Maybe they just have up on fighting me. If I could have cried I would have, but I was too numb. I still had to pay a lot of it, but it helped.
And I'm lucky. I have support and insurance and a voice and money to buy the medication and treatment that isn't provided to me. What about those who don't have those things? We fail them. We fail ourselves. They are our children and our coworkers and our parents and the homeless person on the street and the boy who will marry your child and the girl who will save your life. They are the insurance clerks I speak with who tell me they deal with the same problems. They are us.
If you've dealt with this bullshit and you're still around, I salute you. It is hard and embarrassing and makes me furious. You deserve better. We all do. End rant."

"Sometimes the people you love leave you even when they don't want to and you shatter into pieces. You may not be able to find all of those pieces again because when they left they took a few with them. It hurts, but the pain eventually becomes bearable and even sacred because it's how you carry the people you've lost with you. And if you're lucky you can one day see that the hollow spots you carry are in the shape of their face or their hands or the love they gave you. Those holes ache, but they are a monument to the lost, a traveling sacred place to honor them and remind you of how to love enough to leave your own marks on others."

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