Tell Me More: Stories about the 12 Hardest Things Im Learning to Say By Kelly Corrigan
It’s a crazy idea: trying to name the phrases that make love and connection possible. But that’s just what Kelly Corrigan has set out to do here. In her New York Times bestselling memoirs, Corrigan distilled our core relationships to their essences, showcasing a warm, easy storytelling style. Now, in Tell Me More, she’s back with a deeply personal, unfailingly honest, and often hilarious examination of the essential phrases that turn the wheel of life.
In “I Don’t Know,” Corrigan wrestles to make peace with uncertainty, whether it’s over invitations that never came or a friend’s agonizing infertility. In “No,” she admires her mother’s ability to set boundaries and her liberating willingness to be unpopular. In “Tell Me More,” a facialist named Tish teaches her something important about listening. And in “I Was Wrong,” she comes clean about her disastrous role in a family fight—and explains why saying sorry may not be enough. With refreshing candor, a deep well of empathy, and her signature desire to understand “the thing behind the thing,” Corrigan swings between meditations on life with a preoccupied husband and two mercurial teenage daughters to profound observations on love and loss.
With the streetwise, ever-relatable voice that defines Corrigan’s work, Tell Me More is a moving and meaningful take on the power of the right words at the right moment to change everything. Tell Me More: Stories about the 12 Hardest Things Im Learning to Say
Kelly Corrigan ↠ 7 Read & Download
Sometimes, there just aren’t enough stars. English All of Kelly Corrigan’s books have been winners.
Here is another one.
Read this book alone, just for the chapter “Onward.” What a beautiful tribute to an incredible friend. My heart shattered and then, piece by piece, was put back together. Both better and worse for the wear.
And the “No” chapter, because who doesn’t need reminding?
And of course, I fully intend to make my own “Things I Will Always Say Yes To” list, starting with Häagen-Dazs Deep Chocolate Peanut Butter Ice Cream, (naturally.) I fear my list may be overrun by food.
But still, this book! Each and every word is important. What’s frustrating is that I know I will forget them, and have to fumble through life with my imperfect choices, learning all these truths for myself.
“Accepting things as they are is difficult. A lot of people go to war with reality.” English Other reviewers have described this book as being like a conversation with a friend. Yes!!! But it's that friend who dominates the conversations and jumps from topic to topic, none of which are interesting to you. At all. After reading almost half the book, I just couldn't waste any more time. And I am completely bewildered by all the 5-star reviews. English The subtitle of this book is “Stories about the 12 Hardest Things I’m Learning to Say” and her chapter headings are those twelve phrases. Corrigan’s grandmother always reassured her that she was “good enough,” and would be able to withstand the vicissitudes of life because when she failed, she just got right back up again and did something else. That resilience is a quality more important than beauty or intellectual horsepower when it comes to success in life, though nobody believes that when you’re young.
Some of these stories are sad, like when Corrigan loses her dad, and at little later, her best friend Liz. Corrigan can be eloquent when describing how important her best friend was to her, and what a horrifying shock it was to discover she would die. But she leavens her memories with the funny bits…the bits where both their families travelled together with the kids and shared laughs and more.
She is irreverent about her own accomplishments, a career writing, two daughters and a loving husband, but we can tell how much it means to her to be with them. It’s all she wanted: “Four by Forty,” is how she put it. Well, she did not have four kids because breast cancer intervened, but there were still four of them when she turned forty, two kids and two parents, so she satisfied herself with that. Corrigan volunteers to hold newborns at a local hospital once a week, getting her baby fix while giving relief to the corona of families and staff that surround a baby at risk.
One thing Corrigan had learned to say was “tell me more,” which works when someone is upset or when they are angry. The very fact of listening draws people out and clarifies their anxieties so that those stressors can be dealt with or dismissed. One doesn’t have to have any special expertise for this listening and yet people often find it most consoling.
The lesson I liked best was her learning to say ‘No.’
“Sexually, professionally, personally…saying ‘No’ takes balls. One friend told me her one big take away from three years and $11,000 of therapy was ‘Learn to say no and when you do, don’t complain and don’t explain. Every excuse you make is like an invitation to ask you again in a different way.’”I learned this lesson early and all my life it has been my super power. Corrigan tells us her mother was a ‘No Pro’ who had no desire to curb another’s activities. “She had her own mind and she used it.” If she didn’t want to go somewhere everyone else wanted to go, she’d wave them off and settle happily to spend her evening alone.
“It must be possible to say ‘No’ nicely and still be loved,” Corrigan opines. Her mother must have managed it, since Corrigan loves her now. She may not have at the time, however, and we know this because of Corrigan’s earlier book Glitter and Glue in which Corrigan settles into recognition and acceptance of her mother.
“Very few people I’ve known are able to set themselves free the way my mother has, liberated by the simple act of saying “no,” which I submit is impressive for any woman and downright radical for one raised in the “nice and easy” generation. My Mom had always been able to find outs where others could not. Looking back I think it came down to her impressive willingness to be disliked and her utterly unromantic position that people should take serious--if not total--responsibility for their own happiness.”Corrigan has lots of personality—that used to be a way for men to say women are loud—but she actually says stuff rather than just blow air, and she can be really funny. It you listened to her describe using her daughter's round-tipped scissors to cut off a shirt she’d bought on sale but couldn’t manage to take off past her boobs once on, you know what I mean. She may actually be a little bit loud, but she is definitely the one you’d aim for at a party or for a long walk—she’d never be without some observation worth developing into something bigger and deeper. I am nothing like her, but I appreciate that mother nature of hers to the end. I have always admired mothers for their stop-gap practicality and their attention to the things that matter.
The end of this memoir reads like a long eulogy for Liz, and what her friendship meant. It is the best darn eulogy I have ever heard…in the way it sounds like a wedding toast, it is so full of life an love and gratefulness and remembrance. It would be a wonderful model for someone wishing to find a way to say what is in their hearts for their own friends or relatives. We’ll all have to face it one day and judging from Corrigan’s experience, we are never ready.
Corrigan reads the audio of this book herself, and it is a good way to enjoy the Penguin Random House production. The book would be good as well because the eulogy passages you may want to read again. English I tried to like it, but it just smacks of self absorbed middle aged white lady. Meh. English
What a beautiful, poignant and moving book. Reading this is like sitting down with a good friend and chatting over lunch. She’s the friend who can say what's in your heart but expresses it so much better. She conveys these 12 phrases through offering us glimpses into her own life. One minute she's telling you how she went ballistic over a toilet that wasn't flushed (by the way, if you ever find yourself at Kelly's house don't let the dog lick you 😳), and the next minute she's breaking your heart over the deaths of her beloved father and one of her best friends.
As I read, I nodded in recognition, I laughed, and I cried. I'm not talking about my eyes welling up with tears, I'm talking actual tears running down my face. Kelly Corrigan has such a gift with words, of using just the right ones to convey exactly what she means to say, words that often pierce your heart. She’s funny, relatable and honest. She is self-deprecating, and doesn’t shy away from owning up to her less than desirable qualities, the mistakes she’s made along the way, and what she learned from them. And what a storyteller she is. She doesn't offer up magical solutions, she's learning right along with the rest of us.
I received an e-galley of this book but will be purchasing a hard copy for myself to keep by my bed and dip into from time to time. It would make an excellent gift for any woman in your life.
*many thanks to Netgalley, Random House Publishing, and Kelly Corrigan for an e-galley fo this book in exchange for an honest review. English ” Hold me now
It's hard for me to say I'm sorry
I just want you to know
Hold me now
I really want to tell you I'm sorry
I could never let you go
“After all that we've been through
I will make it up to you
I promise to
And after all that's been said and done
You're just the part of me I can't let go”
-- Hard to Say I’m Sorry,Chicago, Songwriters: David Foster / Peter Cetera
Twelve essays based on twelve phrases that we use to connect with others, to share our thoughts and feelings, to recognize the thoughts and feelings of others.
It’s Like This - Tell Me More - I Don’t Know - I Know – No - Yes - I Was Wrong - Good Enough - I Love You - No Words at All – Onward - This Is It
I haven’t read anything by Kelly Corrigan before, I’d forgotten I’d even seen her name before reading about this book, but this was a book that a few of my Goodreads friends had rated highly and had written reviews that spoke to me. And so I checked my library, got on the waiting list figuring it would be months before I ever had an opportunity to read this, and then yesterday saw that this and another book I’d added to my “wait” list were available for me.
I began reading Tell Me More this morning, and was completely pulled into this reflection on life, on personal, emotional pain, on love, and on the things we say to those we love, in anger, or out of our own pain.
In the beginning essay, ”It’s Like This”, Corrigan relays what started out as an average day (before anyone was awake, anyway), a morning sixty-eights days after the death of her father, with two daughters in the midst of puberty, fighting over a tee-shirt. A little thing that turns into a much bigger event.
”This forgetting, this slide into smallness, this irritability and shame, this disorienting grief:
It’s like this. Minds don’t rest; they reel and wander and fixate and roll back and reconsider because it’s like this, having a mind. Hearts don’t idle; they swell and constrict and break and forgive and behold because it’s like this, having a heart. Lives don’t last; they thrill and confound and circle and overflow and disappear because it’s like this, having a life.
These felt so real, these feelings she shared, it was so easy to slip into her thoughts, her life and even though her personal battles may not be the same as mine, her sharing these honest and personal stories of her life made this feel more like a series of personal talks, or perhaps even letters or emails from a close, personal friend than from a woman I’ve never met.
“I Love You” had me reaching for tissues, but it was “Onward” that took my breath away. Still, there isn’t one of these that I would recommend anyone skip over, they are all worth reading, and each is heartfelt and personal, and also feels very real.
Many thanks to the Public Library system, and the many Librarians that manage, organize and keep it running, for the loan of this book!
English I had never heard of Kelly Corrigan. But I was encouraged to read this book of personal essays when I saw GR friend JanB’s lovely review that described reading Tell Me More as sitting down to talk with a close friend. At the core of the each chapter is Corrigan’s grief over the recent loss of her father and a close friend. But throughout the book there are many anecdotes and lots of relatable self reflections about being a parent, a partner, a daughter, a sibling and a friend. In an understated way, Corrigan dwells on what it means to strive for a good life — or a good enough life. Corrigan doesn’t offer any trite answers, which is precisely what makes her seem very human or like someone you would want as a friend. It’s short but well worth reading. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an opportunity to read an advance copy. English Kelly....
I cried. I laughed. I met you years ago - you wouldn’t remember- but I do.
While listening to you read your book- I felt drained of speech -( what else is there to say)..... other than you filled my heart profoundly with laughter, sadness, and love.
At times I hated that I loved your book as much as I did...
‘It hurt’.. but somehow I’m guessing you might say,
“I know”.
Thank you! Sincerely....thank you!
F#ck a review... I just want to say THANK YOU ...and probably could never say it enough! Thank you for sharing your dad, Liz, your family, yourself, your humanity!!!!
An Audiobook listener that is deeply moved!!!
English Reality always comes dressed in a point of view, try as we might to lay it bare. From the Author’s Note
This was my introduction to Kelly Corrigan, a writer deemed as the ‘poet laureate of the ordinary’ and I can attest to not only her extraordinary writing, but also her ability to tell a good story often moving me from laughter to tears and always landing me squarely in introspection. With genuine heart, humor and an unwavering honesty, she provides us glimpses into her life while she examines the connections between what we say and how it affects our relationships.
Starting with It’s Like This where she takes us through a morning in the Corrigan household replete with bickering siblings and barely present husband that ends in this reflection…
Minds don’t rest; they reel and wander and fixate and roll back and reconsider because it’s like this, having a mind. Hearts don’t idle, they swell and constrict and break and forgive and behold because it’s like this, having a heart. Lives don’t last; they thrill and confound and circle and overflow and disappear because it’s like this, having a life.
To the final essay, This Is It, an ode to domestic life…
The abstract performance art called Family Life is our one run at the ultimate improv. Our chance to be great for someone, to give another person enough of what they need to be happy. Ours to overlook or lost track of our bemoan, ours to recommit to, to apologize for, to try again for. Ours to watch disappear into their next self--toddler, to tyke, tween to teen--ours to drop off somewhere and miss forever.
Sandwiched in between these essays are 10 more words and phrases from simply saying yes or no, to tell me more and I was wrong. In the most moving and deeply personal of the essays, Onward, she lays bare the gut-wrenching journey of moving on from the death of a close friend and that of her father. It is the reflections she shares with us that brought about this book and if you read only one, read that one.
I started this book in May, it had been highly rated and recommended by GR friend JanB and it seemed my kind of ‘advice.’ But as life is wont to do, things got complicated, family emergencies and I was only halfway through my library copy, but the audio version became available and I downloaded it for yet another trip home. As much as I liked reading Corrigan’s essays, it was her voice that brought it all home. This sort of nasally, been there done that quality became endearing and I’ve now read and listened to the audio and I prefer the latter though I did just reread Onwards and welled up again.
I’m not telling you all of that as some self indulgent foray into navel gazing, what I want to say is that sometimes books pick US and even if it’s not exactly convenient at the time, the book WILL find you. This one certainly hit home for me. English
