Book Review: You Are Here: An Owner’s Manual for Dangerous Minds by Jenny Lawson

 

You Are Here: An Owner’s Manual for Dangerous Minds

(Crayons & matches not included, but recommended.)

by Jenny Lawson

I received this book as a gift from my husband because we both love Jenny Lawson’s candid memoirs. (If you haven’t read Furiously Happy yet, I highly recommend you pick it up post haste.) She is utterly transparent about her experiences with mental illness and writes vividly, and humorously, about events in her life.

This book is a little bit different. It includes some of her writing, her thoughts, and a few anecdotes, but mostly her musings, and things she has done to help herself, along with beautiful pen and ink drawings that she created herself. Many of the drawings incorporate a thought or musing in writing that meanders around the lines of the drawing. Almost a meditation. They can be treated as coloring pages, if the reader wishes, though they are beautiful just to contemplate as drawings. I’ve found this book very relaxing just before bed.

One of my favorite pages, though I haven’t even done the exercise yet, asks the reader to write down five outrageous things that they’ve done, along with at least one that is a lie. Maybe she uses a bit of hyperbole and interesting word choice to describe hers, but that’s exactly what we’ve come to expect from Jenny — a colorful reframing that brings humor to the situation. For example –

“One time I made a human without even using an instruction manual. Like, hair, fingernails, all that jazz. It was a tiny human, but still, it was like making a clone except I did it inside my body where I couldn’t even see anything. Science!”

Many of the musings are incredibly poignant.

“Not all pain is visible. But not all love is visible either, and that doesn’t make it any less real. We believe the pain because we feel it, but we often forget how much we’re loved because it doesn’t always present itself in ways that make you physically gasp. It’s real, though. And you’re soaking in it.” P93

Another beautiful book from Jenny Lawson. I can’t recommend it highly enough.