Jann Arden--bestselling author, recording artist and late-blooming TV star--is back with this funny, heartfelt and fierce memoir on becoming a woman of a certain age. The power, gravity and freedom she's found at fifty-seven are superpowers she believes all of us can unleash.
Digging deep into her strengths, her failures and her losses, Jann Arden brings us an inspiring account of how she has surprised herself, in her fifties, by at last becoming completely her own person. Like many women, it took Jann a long time to realize that trying to be pleasing and likeable and beautiful in the eyes of others was a loser's game. Letting it rip, and damning the consequences, is not only liberating, it's a hell of a lot of fun: 'Being the age I am--that so many women are--is just the best time of my life.'
Jann weaves her own story together with tales of her mother, grandmother, and great grandmother, and the father she came close to hating, to show her younger self--and all of us--that fear and avoidance is no way to live. 'What I'm thinking about now aren't all the ways I can try to hang on to my youth or all the seconds ticking by in some kind of morbid countdown to death,' she writes, 'but rather how I keep becoming someone I always hoped I could be. If I'm lucky one day a very old face will look back at me from the mirror, a face I once shied away from. I will love that old woman ferociously, because she has finally figured out how to live a life of purpose--not in spite of but because of all her mistakes and failures.'
Jann Arden is funny. And sincere. She has legions of devoted fans. And a radio show. She is a darling of the music scene - always candid, always unplugged. You thought you knew Jann Arden, but there is more - to her readers' delight, in Falling Backwards Jann reveals her childhood, her bond with family, her struggle in the formative years and what keeps her so grounded in the whirlwind entertainment industry. Jann has always been true to herself, except for a minor lapse when she was young. Oh wait, wasn't that all of us?
From the tender and honest to the laugh-out-loud funny, Jann's stories from home and from the road during her pre-celebrity years will take you to unexpected places, including high school parties in farmer's fields, sleepovers under the stars, hard-to-believe summer jobs and the time she was stuck upside down in a brick barbecue. She reminds us of the inestimable value to a child of having teachers who believe in you and wide open spaces to play. But with the good times come the bad (and not just the bad perm). Jann opens up about the darker side of her so-called prairie perfect nuclear family and the first signs that her eldest brother was a uniquely troubled young man. In the days when Jann was experiencing a lot of firsts - first school play, first home perm, first kiss - how lucky for all of us that she stole away to her basement and taught herself her first song on her mother's guitar.
In addition to being an incredible musician and multi-award-winning lyricist, Jann is a natural writer and simply an inspiration. Jann will capture your heart - and keep you in stitches - with her powerful stories about coming of age as an artist and as a human being. Jann brings her wit and that infectious sparkle to everything she does. This book is no exception.
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Based on her hugely popular Facebook posts and Instagram photos, Feeding My Mother is a frank, funny, inspirational and piercingly honest account of the transformation in Jann Arden's life that has turned her into the primary 'parent' to her mom, who is in the grip of Alzheimer's.
Jann Arden moved in to a house just across the way from her parents in rural Alberta to be close to them but also so they could be her refuge from the demands of the music business and a performing career. Funny how time works. Since her dad died in 2015, Jann cooks for her mom five or six times a week. Her mom finds comfort in her daughter's kitchen, not just in the delicious food but also just sitting with her as she cooks. And Jann finds some peace in caring for her mom, even as her mom slowly becomes a stranger. 'If you told me two years ago that I'd be here,' Jann writes, 'I wouldn't have believed it. And yet we still fall into so much laughter, feel so much insane gladness and joy. It's such a contrast from one minute to the next and it teaches me constantly: it makes me stronger and more humble and more empathetic and caring and kind.'
The many people who are dealing with a loved one who is losing it will find inspiration and strength in Jann's wholehearted, loving response and her totally Jann take on the upside-down world of a daughter mothering her mother. Feeding My Mother is one heck of an affirmation that life just keeps on keeping on, and a wonderful example of how you have to roll with it.
