Book Review: Life Will Be the Death of Me by Chelsea Handler

Rating: 5 / 5

I didn’t think I’d be writing a review on a memoir since it sometimes feels like judging someone’s life, but this book struck me to my core and wanted to write down my thoughts: 

If I knew what this book was about before reading it, there’s a good chance I wouldn’t have read it out of fear, but I’m glad I did. I’ve been a big fan of Chelsea Handler -- I’ve read many of her other books, gotten tickets to her show, and watched her documentary -- so in a way, I thought I knew her but this book slowly made me realize that I didn’t. After reading four of her other books and thinking that I was gonna get a funny recounting of her many crazy adventures, this book went in completely the other direction. This book was so emotionally vulnerable and the most self-aware book I’ve ever read -- we essentially follow therapy sessions that Chelsea has as she tries to figure out why she is the way she is and how to become a more empathetic person and improve on her faults. She faces her trauma head on and acknowledges how her refusal of facing it for the last 30 years of her life had left her at an impasse. We slowly see how her previous trauma manifests itself in her everyday life -- her actions, habits, and basically the entire life she’s created for herself in order to shield and protect herself from similar things were they to occur again or provide herself the necessities she had lacked during her childhood. I found this book so deeply interesting in how childhood experiences come to the surface while also reflecting on how my own experiences and trauma inform my current decisions and actions. 

This book felt empowering in that I, too, can face my fears, past traumas, and future obstacles and overcome them, and I will be okay. I had always admired Chelsea because she has a lot of qualities that I wanted in myself and in some ways I felt like we were opposites -- she’s outgoing, doesn’t care what people think, outspoken -- but this book made me realize we had a lot more in common that I thought, and I wasn’t alone in some of my own struggles. 

Additionally, this book showed me how amazing of a writer Chelsea is -- as you can see in the quotes below, her words were emotionally moving and stuck with me. Even if you aren’t a fan of Chelsea Handler, I’d fully recommend this book (especially the audiobook) as fodder to empower you to understand and face your own internal struggles and (as cheesy as it sounds) know that it’s never too late to decide to become a better person.

(As a trigger warning, this book deals a lot with death and grief. There are some humorous chapters in between, which are pretty nice breathers but overall the book is a bit more on the intense side.)

Favorite quotes from the book:

“Everything with me had always been black and white. Life or death. I wanted more gray. I wanted to learn how to forgive.”

“Only a sister knows how to comfort a sister…Men can give us a hug or a pat on the back but only a girl will get her up off her feet to face the rain.”

“I felt sad, but not necessarily about my father. What I was mourning wasn’t just my brother, or my father, or my cousin, or Chunk, or Tammy. I was mourning the childhood that had lasted years into my adulthood—because I got stuck. I was reconciling myself to the loss of my youth as a self-actualized adult, now that I had the tools to face it all—and now that I was officially an orphan, and had no choice but to grow up.”

“I’ve learned that many people are just bridges to someone else. Some people become bridges that you take back and forth to get back to yourself. That’s how I interpret self-defining relationships. The people who bring you back to you. The ones who say, “You are always welcome here. You are family. I love you, and there’s nothing you can do about it, so get used to it.”

“Don’t let other people decide what kind of mood you’re going to be in. Don’t let anyone change your life in one day. Don’t let death take you down and keep you down. Go down, but get back up. If we don’t give in to our despair—and instead lock it away—we fail to properly mourn the people we love. How on earth are we honoring the very people we are grieving if we fail to mourn them fully? We should be celebrating the people we’ve lost.”

“Go after happiness like it is the only thing you can take with you when you die."

“No person is just one thing. People can be filled with light and affection and also be tortured and conniving and dishonest. Happiness can coincide with great pain. One can lead while also following, the same way one can follow while also leading”

“I got her to laugh and she got me to laugh because that is what sisters do for each other in the depths of their despair"

“for someone who’s lived with privilege their whole life, equality feels like a loss.”

“Seems to be a recurring theme in my life - performing for people who aren’t even watching”

“Whenever I have trouble standing up for myself (it’s happened), I think about whether I would tolerate the situation if it were happening to one of my sisters, mother, daughter, or niece. If it’s not acceptable for them, it’s not acceptable for me.”

“For the record, I would like to state that never in the history of humankind has a woman been told to calm down and then calmed down."