I'm Glad My Mom Died

Have you ever caught yourself living for someone else’s approval—shaping how you eat, work, dress, or speak to keep the peace? In I’m Glad My Mom Died, Jennette McCurdy argues that what many of us mistake for love can be enmeshment—an arrangement in which your sense of self is fused to another person’s needs. McCurdy contends that breaking free from this fusion demands unflinching truth-telling about family myths, the courage to set boundaries that will be misread as betrayal, and a reconstruction of identity from the inside out.

At the book’s core is a paradox: Jennette devoted her childhood and adolescence to pleasing her mother—becoming a professional child actor; keeping her body small through extreme calorie restriction; allowing invasive “exams”; tolerating chaos, hoarding, and volatility—only to discover, after her mother’s death, that her freedom required grieving not just the loss of a parent but the loss of the story she’d built about who that parent was. The memoir is scathingly funny and deeply compassionate, and its argument is practical: your life is yours to narrate, not to outsource to the loudest voice you grew up with.

What the book covers

You’ll watch McCurdy’s journey from a six-year-old “best friend” to Mom—an identity that masked control and dependency—into a teen star on Nickelodeon who becomes an industry workhorse valued for a “special skill” (crying on cue) and obedience. You’ll see how Hollywood amplified, rather than created, the family dynamics: it rewarded her self-erasure, monetized her compliance, and normalized mistreatment (most chillingly embodied by “The Creator,” an all-powerful showrunner who offers booze, boundary violations, and later hush money). You’ll also track the development of her eating disorders (anorexia, binge eating, bulimia), OCD rituals, and alcohol use—symptoms that made unbearable contradictions survivable until they didn’t.

Midway, the narrative pivots from survival to reconstruction. Therapy (with “Laura,” then “Jeff”) becomes a crucible for deprogramming: naming abuse without euphemism; replacing shame spirals with “slip, not slide” thinking; eating three meals; throwing away the scale; and risking honesty with people who may leave. McCurdy quits acting (and later refuses the lucrative iCarly reboot), ends relationships organized around fixing or being fixed (Joe; then Steven, who develops schizophrenia), and tests the hard practice of boundaries—with her grandmother, with Hollywood, with the cultural script that says mothers are angels beyond question.

Why this matters

If you’ve ever confused self-neglect for devotion, the book offers a mirror and a map. McCurdy gives you a vocabulary for recognizing enmeshment (“best friends” with a parent; invasive body policing; guilt that polices dissent), and she models the slow work of reparenting yourself with structure, compassion, and precision. The memoir’s sting comes from its refusal to romanticize what harms us—whether the glamour of child stardom or the halo we place on parenthood. Its warmth comes from the fact that McCurdy still finds gratitude where she can: for humor; for friendship (especially with co-star Miranda Cosgrove); for therapy; and for the creativity that blooms when your value isn’t a role you play.

What you’ll take away in this summary

We’ll unpack the mechanics of enmeshment and how to name it; the hidden costs of child celebrity and “good-girl” professionalism; the progression from calorie restriction to bulimia and what recovery work actually looks like; the ethics of grief when the person you lost also harmed you; and how McCurdy rebuilds a self—declining hush money, leaving acting, and learning to eat, love, and work on her own terms. Along the way we’ll compare other leaving-and-becoming memoirs (Tara Westover’s Educated, Jeannette Walls’s The Glass Castle, André Agassi’s Open) to show how truth-telling breaks intergenerational spells.

Big idea

Love without boundaries isn’t devotion—it’s disappearance. McCurdy’s life flips when she learns that protecting herself is not betrayal but the beginning of love.

By the end, “I’m glad my mom died” reads not as cruelty but as shorthand for an unspeakable truth: sometimes the death of an oppressive center is the only way a new center—your own—can form. You don’t need a parent to die for this to be true; you need the courage to let the story that kept you small finally end.

McCurdy explains that what looked like intimacy with her mother—“we’re best friends,” constant togetherness, total access—was actually enmeshment: a relationship without boundaries where one person’s needs eclipse the other’s selfhood. From infancy through late adolescence, her mother’s anxiety and control shaped everything: how Jennette dressed, ate, showered, worked, and even how she experienced her own body.

The body as territory to occupy

The most jarring scenes are in the bathroom. Her mother “showers” her into her teens and performs “breast and front butt exams” to check for cancer. At eleven, when Jennette feels a sore “boob bud,” her mother reframes it as an emergency: not cancer this time, but puberty—a catastrophe for a child who books roles because she looks younger. The “solution” becomes “calorie restriction,” introduced as a loving secret project for mother-daughter closeness. Soon, Netty is weighing in weekly, measuring thighs, learning “safe foods” (sugar-free popsicles; applesauce), and collecting vocabulary that moralizes food (“water-dense,” “bloat”).

No one names this for what it is: abuse. Because it’s wrapped in care (“You’re Mommy’s best friend”), it’s hard to see. But abuse disguised as protection is still abuse. (Compare with Tara Westover’s Educated, where family “care” justifies medical negligence and physical risk.)

Chaos as normal

McCurdy’s Garden Grove home is a hoarder house: wall-to-wall storage bins, dead rodents in traps, a manual garage door that slams down, bedrooms unusable, kids sleeping on Costco tri-fold mats in the living room. Money is scarce, rent late, and arguments explosive. Dad is passive, often exiled. Grandma is dramatic, needy. The only reprieve is the Mormon church’s three-hour service—a weekly island of order and Pine-Sol.

In this noise, Jennette becomes hyper-attuned to her mother. She studies the micro-signals (a jaw clench vs. eyebrow twitch means Dad vs. Grandma is to blame) to keep the household’s bomb from detonating. When the system requires constant monitoring, your nervous system treats self-abandonment as safety. Cue OCD rituals (squint 5 times, tighten glutes for 55 seconds) that promise control.

“Best friend” as leash

Mom’s refrain—“You’re my best friend”—seems sweet until you see what’s attached: full access to Jennette’s body and time; orchestrating a Hollywood career at six; forbidding association with “judgers”; meltdown threats if anyone expresses independence (Scott asked to shower alone; Mom sobbed). In one of the book’s most blistering emails—after paparazzi capture Jennette with a boyfriend in Hawaii—Mom calls her daughter a “SLUT, a FLOOZY, ALL USED UP” and signs “Love, Mom (or should I say DEB since I am no longer your mother).” Then adds: “P.S. Send money for a new fridge.”

Enmeshment creates paradoxes: you’re both “best friend” and property; loved intensely and discarded instantly if you step out of role. If you grew up with similar contradictions, naming them is step one. Love that threatens annihilation for your autonomy is not love—it’s dependency maintained by fear.

Practice

Write two columns: “What my parent called love” vs. “What it required me to sacrifice.” If your security required your silence, that’s a red flag—not a family value.

McCurdy’s gift is that she narrates this without pity. She’s specific and wry (the family “eat on the White Thing” mat; Grandma’s perm and phone theatrics), letting you feel how the absurd covers the intolerable. If you laughed through pain to survive, you’ll recognize yourself here—and you’ll see why the laughter eventually must give way to truth.

Child celebrity didn’t invent McCurdy’s family dynamics—but it paid them. Hollywood rewarded the very traits enmeshment breeds: compliance, self-erasure, fragility marketed as cute. Early on, an agent dings her for being “shy,” code for not performing intimacy on demand. The fix? Train out your instincts.

The audition economy

Jennette learns “crying on cue,” her “special skill.” It becomes a calling card (casting directors literally call: “Tell me about the kid who cries”). She perfects the alchemy: think of Grandpa dying clutching a “sock doll”; let tears fall on the exact camera line; hit the joke after. She books Malcolm in the Middle, CSI, Law & Order: SVU, commercials—each credit deepening her identity as vessel, not person.

Landing iCarly flips the scale: fame, global brand, kids screaming “buttersock!” in public. But the grind—ten-hour shoot days; table reads; press—gradually liquefies her. “I despise fame,” she admits by 21. (Compare André Agassi’s Open, another “the thing I’m best at is the thing I hate” confession.)

“The Creator” and normalized boundary violations

Most disturbing is her relationship with “The Creator,” a kingmaking showrunner: he offers alcohol (“The Victorious kids get drunk together; you need edge”), drapes his coat over her shoulders, massages her without consent, and later dangles a solo spinoff (Just Puckett) contingent on total loyalty. After Nickelodeon cancels her show, they offer her $300,000 to never speak publicly about her experience—hush money she turns down.

When workplace abuse hides behind “he’s a genius” or “this is how TV works,” kids pay. Laws and HR may exist, but power is culture—and culture is who everyone protects. (Note how McCurdy is repeatedly thanked for being “a good sport,” code for absorbing harm without causing paperwork.)

Professional jealousy and the trap of comparison

As her co-star Ariana Grande’s music career explodes, Jennette spirals. Ariana gets excused from shoot days to sing at award shows; Jennette acts “with a box” written to explain a co-lead’s absence. When Ariana plays charades at Tom Hanks’s house, something breaks. This isn’t petty; it’s the existential crisis of realizing the industry’s ladder is rigged—you climb by being capital, not by being kind.

By the time a promised directing credit is yanked because an unnamed someone “would quit the show if you directed,” Jennette collapses mid-scene, sobbing, and retreats to the dressing room to purge. Industry gaslighting (“It’s not personal”) meets personal collapse. The only power move left? Refuse the script. She later quits acting entirely and declines the iCarly reboot despite generous pay, explaining: “There are things more important than money. My mental health and happiness fall under that category.”

Lesson

The compliment “you’re a pro” is cheap if it costs you the right to a body, a no, or your story. Professionalism without boundaries is a costume.

Hollywood isn’t uniquely poisonous; it’s just exquisitely efficient at monetizing what families already taught. If you were raised to be agreeable, workplaces will gladly turn that into revenue. McCurdy’s refusal—turning down hush money, declining the reboot—reads as radical because it disrupts a machine that assumes the show must go on, even if you don’t.

McCurdy’s eating disorder arc is painfully ordinary and therefore vital: childhood “calorie restriction” (sanctioned by Mom) evolves into anorexia, binge eating, bulimia, and alcohol use. The behaviors are solutions before they are problems: they give control, numb feelings, and translate inexpressible fear into something countable.

How it starts (and why it sticks)

At eleven, “calorie restriction” is framed as a loving secret; by fourteen, “safe foods” and five daily weigh-ins rule her life. On tour as a country singer, she discovers that binging (cinnamon Pop-Tarts, burgers) briefly blunts guilt; purging purports to erase it. But then the trap tightens: weight rebounds, cheeks swell, teeth soften, shame multiplies. The airplane bathroom scene—vomit in the bowl, a molar spits out—is a turning point. And still, she keeps going. That’s how compulsions work.

Therapy done two ways

With “Laura,” recovery is relational: sit with feelings, accept slips, build a life wheel, bring a therapist to a red carpet if that prevents a bathroom purge. This helps until Laura suggests Mom’s behavior was abusive—truth Jennette can’t yet bear—so she bolts and purges “until blood.” With “Jeff,” recovery is structural: three meals and two snacks, tracking without moralizing, weighing (with eyes closed), risky-food exposure, and the mantra “don’t let a slip become a slide.” The combo—somatic + structural—works. She throws out the scale for her 24th birthday and, later, calls herself “a person who sometimes exhibits bulimic behavior” on the way to being well.

Principles you can use

• Name the function. “ED behaviors protect me from feelings X, Y, Z.” When protection stops protecting, you’re ready to change it.
• Normalize, don’t negotiate. Eat on schedule. Hunger cues are scrambled; structure is a prosthetic until they’re not.
• Risky foods aren’t moral. Cookies are cookies; they’re not character. (Jeff has Jennette list “risk foods” and work through them.)
• Slip ≠ slide. Shame fuels compulsion. Interrupt the spiral with one structured meal, one call, one walk.

Recovery also requires telling the truth about enabling. When Mom dies, Jennette loses pounds fast—and thinks, “She’d be proud.” At the hospital deathbed, she whispers her new weight (89 pounds) hoping it will wake Mom from a coma. Later, she calls out our culture for praising “thin” without asking what it cost. The most healing act might be the least glamorous: she eats consistently, slowly restarts hunger, and learns to live without the scale’s verdict.

Tiny win to try

If nights are your binge window, pre-plan a satisfying afternoon snack + a real dinner you’ll actually eat. Starvation earlier is gasoline later.

McCurdy never reduces recovery to grit. It’s logistics, language, and loss. You mourn the part of you that survived so cleverly, then teach a gentler part to take over. The timeline is irregular; the project is your life.

What if your grief includes rage? McCurdy refuses the cultural script that canonizes mothers and flattens loss into platitudes. Her mother is dying (again) when the book opens. In the ICU, she and her brothers try to rouse Mom with life updates. Jennette’s turn? “I’m finally down to eighty-nine pounds.” Mom doesn’t wake. The question lingers: Who am I if I’m not here to make Mom happy?

The truth breaks in

After the funeral, secrets detonate. Her dad (Mark) confesses he’s not her biological father; the bio-dad is a trombonist who played on Star Wars scores. Jennette eventually meets him after a jazz show and learns he knew about the kids but didn’t reach out. Another parent fails the myth test. She also learns that romantic grief is complicated—she’s relieved Mom can no longer control her and also devastates herself wishing she could call her.

At the cemetery, she studies the headstone crammed with idealized adjectives—“brave, kind, loving, graceful”—and asks the forbidden question: “Was she, though?” That sentence is the book’s ethic. If we only grieve the version of someone we pretended they were, we inherit their delusion.

No sainthood for harm

Jennette details harm without stripping nuance: Mom’s cancer, poverty, thwarted dreams, and charisma exist alongside body policing, staged auditions, hoarding, and violence (knives, screamed accusations). The point isn’t to prosecute a ghost. It’s to make space for injury that won’t heal inside a lie. (Jeannette Walls’s The Glass Castle and Viola Davis’s Finding Me use a similar double lens: compassion without exoneration.)

Grief as boundary work

She stops romanticizing extended family theatrics. Grandma weaponizes tears, calls her “bitch,” and demands closeness; Jennette blocks her number. She allows herself to “miss Mom” without forfeiting hard-won boundaries; she can love and leave, at once. The result isn’t a tidy closure but a livable present.

Reframing

“I’m glad my mom died” is not a wish for death; it’s the language of release. A center of gravity that crushed you is gone; a new center can form.

By insisting that grief include the full ledger—what you lost and what you gained—McCurdy gives you permission to write an honest eulogy. You don’t owe sainthood to someone who didn’t protect you. You owe yourself the life that honesty makes possible.

Recovery is not a single exit but a set of new choices. McCurdy tries out many and keeps what fits. She quits acting—“an eighteen-year career ended in a two-minute phone call”—and later turns down the iCarly reboot despite equal pay to her co-star. She refuses Nickelodeon’s hush money. She pivots to writing and directing. She eats on a schedule. She throws away the scale. She allows friendships that don’t require performance (her bond with Miranda Cosgrove is tender, imperfect, real).

Love without rescues

Her relationships map the hazards of living as a solution. Joe—older, drinking, emotionally volatile—wants sexual access; Jennette wants safety. The Sheraton scene (coercive oral sex; “What’s cum?”) rivets because of its clarity: you can’t rescue someone by disappearing into their needs. With Steven, it’s more complicated: a deep connection collides with Steven’s psychiatric crisis (he briefly believes he is Jesus reincarnated) and heavy cannabis use. She tries to save him—articles, meetings, new therapists—until Jeff names their dynamic: codependency. She stops organizing around fixing and says goodbye in a swan boat on Echo Park Lake. Sometimes love is not staying for the part where you’re both drowning.

Friendship as repair

The steady thread through the chaos is Miranda. They bond over AIM, survive fame’s weirdness, drift as adults, and still care. When the reboot offer arrives, Miranda gently advocates; Jennette gently declines. No rupture, no rescue—just respect. After a childhood where affection was leverage, friendship without strings is medicine.

Art with a spine

McCurdy channels her story into stand-up, essays, films, and this memoir. The voice that once hit marks now sets terms. She honors the comic in the tragic (dead possums in traps; “Popcorn Popping” at church), not to minimize pain but to metabolize it. In an industry that once praised her for being “a good sport,” she instead becomes a good narrator. That difference is the point.

Try this

Make one boundary that costs money or status (turn down a gig, say no to the “opportunity”) and track the relief it brings. Relief is data.

By the last page, McCurdy hasn’t arrived at some frictionless self. She’s arrived at authorship. Work is chosen. Love is mutual. Food is food. And voice—the one that used to break into tears on cue—now tells the truth on purpose.