For the past almost two years, it’s been all but impossible to go into any bookstore without seeing the now indelible image of Jennette McCurdy holding a pink urn with confetti sprouting out of it as she bears an expression somewhere between hopeful, happy and defiant. As the book, titled I’m Glad My Mom Died, makes clear, it took McCurdy a very long time to get to such a place of hopefulness, happiness and defiance. The majority of her life up to now, in fact. Before these past few years, McCurdy was still deeply entrenched in the emotional after-effects of the brainwashing she endured (and no, not just from her “second-rate Mormon” upbringing).

Few people would survive a childhood and adolescence like McCurdy’s, helmed by her mother, Debra, a histrionic, narcissistic woman who shut out all other influences from her daughter’s life. Except maybe her brothers, Marcus, Dustin and Scottie, to whom she dedicates the book. Likely because, when it comes to a fucked-up childhood, one’s siblings are the only other people who can understand the specific horrors of what transpired to make a person become so dysfunctional. Granted, McCurdy appeared, from the outside looking in, highly functional indeed. That was all part of not only being a people pleaser (or, more to the point, a mother pleaser), but being in a total state of denial about her own unhappiness and dissatisfaction. Something she was always keenly aware of, lurking there in the back of her mind, even when she first started acting—pushed into it at just six years old when her mother framed it as: “I want to give you the life I never had, Net. I want to give the life I deserved. The life my parents wouldn’t let me have… I think you should act. I think you would be a great little actress. Blonde. Blue-eyed. You’re what they love in that town.” Jennette asks, “In what town?” Debra replies, “Hollywood.”

When Jennette follows up with the question of whether or not that isn’t too far from where they live (Garden Grove a.k.a. Garbage Grove, as Jennette reminds her readers that that is its nickname), Debra lays it on real thick with the response, “An hour and a half… I’d have to learn how to drive freeways. But it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make for you, Net. ‘Cuz I’m not like my parents. I want what’s best for you. Always. You know that, right?” 

And so the brainwashing kicks into high gear as an unwanted acting career is born. One that Debra pushes, strong-arms and bulldozes so hard for that it does end up happening. Even though one of the casting agents forewarns, “It’s important that Jennette wants to act, in order for her to do well.” That wasn’t necessarily true as, despite her constant state of nervousness and anxiety, she was able to advance from background work to principal work rather quickly. And in large part thanks to her “surly” attitude about acting in the first place, which led the director of a short film called Golden Dreams (made for Disney’s California Adventure theme park just before it opened in February of 2001) to put Jennette front and center for being the “sad-looking kid.” After all, this was an informational video about Great Depression-era California. A “role” like this would be a harbinger of the early gigs Jennette booked before finally landing a series regular role on iCarly in 2007, where she would be condemned to play the part of Sam Puckett for six seasons, plus an additional one season (at thirty-five episodes) on the spinoff series, Sam & Cat. 

Although this was the “steady work” that her mother had been pimping her out for all along, Debra still found reasons to complain about the career coup of this fourteen-year-old (who turned fifteen by the series’ initial air date). Mainly that the paycheck Jennette would be getting wasn’t as good as if she had landed a sitcom deal on broadcast TV, assuming perhaps that Jennette was capable of getting “Friends-level” money. “Nickel-and-Dime-odeon,” she balks, hoping to have milked more out of the network, ergo her daughter. In fact, the only people more overt about their interest in wielding their child like a cash cow were the Spearses. No coincidence, then, that Jamie Lynn Spears was on the Nickelodeon payroll, too—or that Britney wrote her own scathing memoir, The Woman In Me, detailing the experiences of abuse she underwent while not only rising to stardom, but being placed in an unnecessary conservatorship. Unlike Jennette, however, Britney had no need to wait for anyone, including her father (the biggest abuser of the lot), to die in order to express the truth. 

During the promotion cycle of I’m Glad My Mom Died (which remained number one on the NYT bestseller list for an entire year), Jennette did an interview with fellow child stardom survivor Drew Barrymore. One during which McCurdy brought up the alleged platitude that goes, “Write as if everyone you know is dead.” That’s practically what Britney did (especially when it came to Justin Timberlake). And Truman Capote definitely adhered to that, too. Though, look where it got him. So maybe it is better, in some cases, to wait until the person that fucked you over is dead to write about them. In Jennette’s scenario, it was just a stroke of good luck that her mom should die “before her time” (or maybe karmic retribution is real once in a while). Not only so she could write unabashedly, but because she likely never would have untangled herself from such a toxic relationship otherwise. One that she can’t even see is toxic from within the deliberately-clouded-by-her-mother haze of the bubble she’s been locked inside of (complete with being home-schooled).

As she told Barrymore, “When you’re a kid, you don’t know that you’re in a traumatic situation or that you’re in a not-normal situation ‘cause it’s just your reality, you have nothing to really compare it to, so I had no idea it was a traumatic environment.” This, too, brings up the tacit issue of how the people who are supposed to “care about us the most” when we’re young and vulnerable are frequently driven by the dollar signs in their eyes thanks to the capitalistic world we’re all forced to live in. It is through her lens of total naïveté while growing up that Jennette speaks throughout the memoir, with her realizations that her mother was an abusive puta only dawning very slowly (and with a lot of reluctance) toward the end. Even though they also reveal themselves in slight flickers early on in her childhood and adolescence. But denial is not just a river in Egypt…it’s also a powerful coping mechanism.

One of the earlier times it dawned on Jennette that her mother might have some ill-intentioned motives occurred after going to the doctor at eleven years old and being weighed. Upon seeing her weight, Jennette’s physician asked to speak with Debra privately in the next room. A conversation Jennette could still hear through the wall as the doctor told her mom, “I wanted to speak with you about Jennette’s weight. It’s significantly lower than what’s normal for her age.” Overhearing Debra’s faux-casual reply about not having noticed, Jennette thinks, “That’s not true. Mom has noticed the changes because she’s the one who wanted the changes in the first place.” Confused by this lie, as she assumes Mother always wants what’s “best,” it becomes just one of many uneasy feelings Jennette suppresses, pushes way down.

As is the case with her mother’s inappropriate touching of her body well into her teens. The touching that not only extends to wiping her ass and showering her, but also insisting on “front butt” and breast exams to make sure she’s cancer-free. For, the second Debra mentions cancer, no one else can say shit because she survived it. Indeed, that’s one of the core aspects of her identity: cancer survivor. Well, at least until 2013 rolled around, and cancer beat Debra. After which, Jennette went right back to work on the show she hated, Sam & Cat. Something that, as Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV called out, “She took less than a week break from filming. And her quick return is something that people on set told us they were disturbed by.” While some might have thought her return was more related to catering to an abusive showrunner, who she refers to only as “the Creator” (but who everyone knows is actually Dan Schneider—likely to have gotten off on being given such a godlike nickname), the more accurate truth is that she was probably catering to her mother. Because, dead or not, Debra would have told her to keep working. That the show must go on. That’s exactly what she said when her cancer reemerged and Jennette was planning to scrap going on tour to promote her country album. And yes, dabbling in country is something she calls a “much regretted” “blip” (Beyoncé is not likely to do the same). 

There are many regrets spotlighted in I’m Glad My Mom Died, not least of which is Jennette’s inability to discern between “love” and abusive behavior. As she gets older and starts to feel a latently-brewing contempt for Debra, she ignores the “why” of these feelings, at one point giving us a glimpse into her thought process with the internal monologue: “Fame has put a wedge between Mom and me that I didn’t think was possible. She wanted this. And I wanted her to have it. I wanted her to be happy. But now that I have it, I realize she’s happy and I’m not. Her happiness came at the cost of mine. I feel robbed and exploited. Sometimes I look at her and I just hate her. And then I hate myself for feeling that. I tell myself I’m ungrateful. I’m worthless without her.”

Debra’s power to make Jennette feel either ten feet tall or two feet small is also in line with Schneider’s tactics on set. And there are moments when Debra and Dan (what a dastardly alliterative duo) being together with Jennette makes her feel so uneasy and uncomfortable that she feels on the verge of throwing up. And yes, the actual bulimia does come later, after the anorexia and the binge eating periods. When she realizes she can binge and purge, Jennette’s whole world “opens up,” or so she thinks. Just as it did when her mom told her she could keep looking younger (/not allow her tits to actually get bigger) by “restricting calories” (a polite term for becoming anorexic). But because Jennette is constantly operating within the false mental framework of believing that Mother not only knows best, but also wants what’s best for her daughter, she continues to go along with everything Debra advises. Which also makes for a grotesquely enmeshed relationship (this compounded by Debra having no friends her own age, and clearly not wanting Jennette to have any either).

As Jennette puts it, “I believe her. I always believe her. My body language shifts immediately. Mom has a way of doing that to me. Just as she can set my body on edge and make me rigid with fear or anxiety, she can also calm me down. She has that kind of power.” So, too, does Schneider, the man who shares a very similar personality disorder with Debra. That is, Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Both key figures in Jennette’s early life would wield the NPD signatures of manipulation and power-flexing through either emotional deprivation or effusiveness to get what they wanted out of someone. Namely, Jennette. 

In the years after Debra’s death, it gradually became clear to Jennette that another aspect of her blind adherence to everything her mother demanded of her was that her mind was at war with the image of what a mother “should be” (the saint-like protector society tells us she is, so often through advertising images and what can be called “Hallmark indoctrination”) and what her mother actually was: a self-serving bitch (let’s just say it). And that’s another takeaway from I’m Glad My Mom Died that makes it so resonant even to readers who have no experience with child stardom: we all need to check the false notions that a mother must be “perfect,” “angelic.” That she always has the noblest of intentions.

Not only does that set up most women up for failure, but it also sets their children up for vast disappointment as well. Mothers are filled with frailty, like any other human. Some more than others. Debra’s own frailty—an obsession with living vicariously through her daughter because she herself never got to pursue fame—is something that Jennette makes peace with by the end of the book (or as much peace as she can). And no, she will not be going back to visit Debra’s grave ever again. But maybe Debra could forgive that since, as a result of this memoir, Jennette has now fulfilled Mother’s lifelong dream of becoming famous in her own right.