A review by macykey
Sure, I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere by Maria Bamford

challenging dark emotional funny fast-paced

4.5

I personally love when you can tell an author’s personality through their writing, so I loved Maria’s memoir. It’s quirky and funny and interesting and genuinely helpful. There are a lot of things about mental illness that are still stigmatized, and there is a lot in here that could be seen as embarrassing. But Maria talks about it in such a candid way that it didn’t read as embarrassing. I also appreciated how in the book, Maria did not try to paint herself as a good person and was honest about her flaws. Additionally to that, she didn’t paint her relationship as something that cured or saved her. She didn’t paint her husband as the perfect person who loved her through her mental illness. Her husband is a flawed person just like her with his own difficulties, but they help each other and approach each other with grace and kindness. Additionally, as someone who comes from an extremely religious family, but isn’t religious herself, it drives me up the wall when people tie so much of mental healthcare to religion. I love how that was addressed here. Lastly, I loved the end message of ‘Do whatever you have to do and accept whatever you can accept because this mental illness shit isn’t fun or funny.’ I’m so tired of people saying that all you need to do is change your diet or think better thoughts or change your mindset or do this or do that. Sometimes the only thing I can do is get out of bed in the morning. So if it helps one person to tell the stranger in line or an underpaid employee their troubles, do it!!
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