Book 38 - Some Women Don't Have Kids

Title: No One Tells You This: A Memoir Author: Glynnis MacNicol Genre: badasslady memoir

Most of the notes I jotted down over the course of this personal journey of a book are just straight quotes, because on multiple (MULTIPLE) occasions, MacNicol just puts a feeling, an emotion, a human phenomenon, into the most perfect words that nothing can be done except copy that shit down.

The Life Stuff "My life had felt like a debate with invisible voices telling me what to do, how to dress, hurry, hurry, hurry, lest happiness pass me by."

"We're always drawn to the clearest articulation of what we think we lack".

"Was it always going to be like this? I wondered. This roller coaster of doubt and elation?"

Reading these three quotes felt like watching the sky open up, basking in rays of pure sunlight, and bursting into flames of ultimate understanding. The first is a personification of anxiety, of the cumulative voices from internal and external forces telling me I'm never enough, and that happiness is the goal and not the path - the goal I'll never reach without a very specific (yet all-my-own!) equation. The second is the bane of inheriting the internet. Doubting something about yourself? Don't worry, Instagram is HERE with infinite examples of other people who are prettier, more adventurous, more creative - more more more. And the last - well. The last prompted one of those well, shit moments, because if someone who just celebrated their 40th birthday is still asking this question, then at 26 I am in for a lifetime of that goddamn roller coaster.

The Baby Stuff

Ah, babies. These little creatures are becoming a hot topic as more of my friends become established in their careers, get married, and start to think about what they want their lives to look like in the next few years - and as a woman in a serious relationship, my uterus and what lives in it (temporarily) is more and more becoming everyone's business. How thrilling.

In one scene, MacNicol sits with her sister's newborn and gets down to the business of deciding whether or not motherhood is what she truly, actually, really wants. I've never read anything as stirring and still-water-calm as that chapter, where she sits with that kid in her arms and lets bodily and emotional reactions wash over her, telling her what she needs. Her decision, informed by only herself, is the same one I have come to, but for reasons I either haven't had the words for, or simply haven't been mature enough to realize:

"I wasn't going to have a baby as an insurance policy against some future remorse I couldn't yet imagine. I had more respect for myself than that."

The End Stuff In Sloane Crosley's memoir, Stay Alive Out There, I relate to the young-and-upcoming vibe, the stories of a mid-20s/early-30s woman searching for her place in the world and awkwardly weaving one. MacNicol taps into something similarly familiar, but obviously different. She is the after, in a way, and says herself that she feels as though she is at a tipping point of some kind. She's slogged through the young-adult doubt, risen out of the heavy expectations of an increasingly intrusive world, and has become someone she is proud to be with a life she loves to live. Frankly, she is the ultimate badass version of myself that I hope to one day achieve - "a rolling interrogation of myself[,] living in a constant state of reinvention."

Glynnis, thank you for writing this book.

Rating: 🐎🐎🐎🐎🐎/5