I'm Just Happy to Be Here Quotes

“If you’re sitting in the living room but want to be in the kitchen, the first thing you have to do is realize you’re in the fucking living room.” Oh God, I thought. Good News Jack is speaking in metaphor again. I nodded, following the concept thus far. “Otherwise,” he said, “you’ll never know to get up and walk into the kitchen.” I stared at him with my mouth open. We can’t get someplace new until we’re honest about where we are.”
― Janelle Hanchett, I'm Just Happy to Be Here: A Memoir of Renegade Mothering

“I would look around at the disorder of my life, the chaos and ambiguity—emptiness and servitude alongside exquisite beauty—and I’d think, Somebody else must feel this way too. Because I knew I was grateful. I knew I was so happy to be here I sometimes felt the hand of God himself had spread across my broken shoulders. And yet, maybe I hate motherhood.”
― Janelle Hanchett, I'm Just Happy to Be Here: A Memoir of Renegade Mothering

“I just feel pathetic, Jack. I was sitting there like a motherfucking loser, and I just feel pathetic.” Against all evidence of my time working with him, I still expected words of encouragement, words like, “Oh you’re not pathetic. Look at all you’ve done, Janelle! You’re a shining star!” But after a pause, he asked, “Wouldn’t it be great if you could be okay with being pathetic?”
― Janelle Hanchett, I'm Just Happy to Be Here: A Memoir of Renegade Mothering

“I didn't overcome my fear. My fear lives always like a low hum in the back of my mind. I simply lost faith in it.”
― Janelle Hanchett, I'm Just Happy to Be Here: A Memoir of Renegade Mothering

“There's no power in being angry over the past. You weren't responsible for what happened, but you're responsible for what you do with it now.”
― Janelle Hanchett, I'm Just Happy to Be Here: A Memoir of Renegade Mothering

“Do you really want your life to change, or do you want to remain an asshole with better consequences?”
― Janelle Hanchett, I'm Just Happy to Be Here: A Memoir of Renegade Mothering

“When they called me in for an interview, I knew I had a chance, because I did well with first impressions, particularly when sober. It was everything following the first impression that troubled me. I could give you what you wanted. I just couldn’t keep giving it to you. Sitting across from me in a large conference room, an extremely put-together, reserved woman with long, curly brown hair asked, “What experience do you have with administrative work?” She wants honesty. “Well, I spent a summer as an intern at an office supplies business, but I don’t have a ton of experience.” I smiled and made a little face, as if to say, Can I really say that? As if I were a bit coy. “I graduated from UC Davis about a year ago, but stayed home with my baby,” I continued, “but I am a quick learner. I am very thorough.” My mother had told me once while I was sweeping out our motor home that I was “very thorough.” I stuck with it. “What do you think your greatest asset is?” She offered a quick smile between jotting notes. I noticed she was left-handed and that her blouse perfectly matched her cardigan. Humility. Tie it in with the honesty, Janelle. “I am willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done. If the firm needs me to scrub toilets, I’ll do it. I’m here to work and I don’t have too much ego wrapped up in that.” She smiled again, and I felt bolstered. You’re doing great, Janelle. “We are extremely focused on collaboration. What is your greatest weakness?” Captain Morgan. Nope. Don’t say that. “Oh, well, I think it must be that I can be a bit of a perfectionist. I don’t want to let things go if they aren’t perfect, or close, you know? So sometimes I get frustrated with people who don’t have the same focus as I do.” I failed to mention that I thought most people around me were fucking idiots who should lose their jobs. That if I thought things, they were true, even if I had no evidence for them, and that, frankly, I was not exactly shining in my own life, and threatened to leave my husband on the daily. And, speaking of daily, I drank at that exact interval, and used to chase my brother around the house with a large kitchen knife. I kept all that to myself and crossed my legs.”
― Janelle Hanchett, I'm Just Happy to Be Here: A Memoir of Renegade Mothering

“We can't get someplace new until we're honest about where we are.”
― Janelle Hanchett, I'm Just Happy to Be Here: A Memoir of Renegade Mothering

“Maybe I don't care quite so much about being better than you. Sometimes I want to be better than youl. But in the end, I have nothing left to prove: to you or myself. I have no polish to fix what I am.”
― Janelle Hanchett, I'm Just Happy to Be Here: A Memoir of Renegade Mothering

“I realized we are all a bunch of fakers. We've got too much past to remember, too much on the line to forget. We become some mother. We show up. We work and drive and love. It all feels like a tiny miracle. It all feels so boring we could puke. For some of us, that becomes enough and we don't have to dance anymore.”
― Janelle Hanchett, I'm Just Happy to Be Here: A Memoir of Renegade Mothering

“I was worn out by all the talking, the worries, the desire to trust, to know when people were going to show up, so I transformed into a ball of red, to get some power. To get some control.”
― Janelle Hanchett, I'm Just Happy to Be Here: A Memoir of Renegade Mothering

“I want them to see that the water they need to wash themselves clean flows always and immediately to the lowest possible places. And I know that God, to me, is that kind of love.”
― Janelle Hanchett, I'm Just Happy to Be Here: A Memoir of Renegade Mothering

“Motherly small talk was complicated because we were not actually talking about the thing we were talking about. We were both supposed to know this and stick to the rules, but I’ve been bad at that since the sixth grade, when my teacher duct-taped my mouth shut because I wouldn’t stop talking.”
― Janelle Hanchett, I'm Just Happy to Be Here: A Memoir of Renegade Mothering