How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

If you follow Lane Moore on social media, you've no doubt seen the smiling, playful, and hilarious side of her huge personality. The joy she exudes is infectious. When I first began following her on Twitter, her feed quickly became one of my favorites. When you read Moore's memoir, HOW TO BE ALONE, it becomes clear that her sunny disposition is genuine, but also earned. She has fought her share of life's battles to get where she is. Growing up with parents who weren't around, Lane learned to take care of herself as best as she could, helped along by her creativity and wondrous imagination. She recounts talking to her soulmate as a means of self-care — envisioning that there was a person out there who would care for her and love her unconditionally was a way to comfort and check in with herself. The life she's led since then has been exceptional. Moore has been through difficult situations and dark times, but she writes about it with a level of emotional introspection likely not achieved by many trained therapists. She talks about everything from attachment theory to the unspoken effect privilege has on the world of artists, writers, and content creators. Her insights into love and relationships with have you nodding your head while audibly agreeing. All of it is written while analyzing the happenings of her own life in a revealing style that is often hilarious, often raw and emotional, and always resonant. You will find something meaningful in this book if: —You've been alone for long stretches of time —You've struggled with depression and anxiety —You've given yourself to others but wondered why they didn't reciprocate —Or just if you're a human being with emotions If you're like me—a hopeless romantic who spent a lot of time growing up curious if my soulmate was out there while also getting impatient wondering when our sweeping epic of a love story would begin—you will connect to Lane's words and feel seen. Moore writes, "One of the perks of being alone this long, I guess, is I never want anyone to feel as awful as I have, even for a second." Her writing has the power to do that. It makes you feel less alone and less awful, which is truly a gift.

A little context for my review of “How to Be Alone: If you want to and even if you don’t” by Lane Moore. I make it a point to seek out young writers who are off the beaten path. I became aware of Moore’s book from a write up in Bitch Magazine, which is a publication that bills itself as a feminist response to pop culture. I was intrigued by the cover, which shows the trappings of her mind visually. The book did not disappoint, as Moore shared intimately and with astounding tenderness of what it was like to grow up parentless, made worse by the fact she did have parents but they were unable to deliver what all children require. Before I share my impressions, I want to suggest to the (very few) reviewers who wrote that this book disappointed them because it does not provide “wisdom.” I would respond, yes, that is the point. Moore is in the midst of her growth and development, a story in progress, not a self-help book tied up in a bow. Lots of those available. This one is raw. The cultural conversation these days often focuses on the concept of “privilege.” Who has it and who does not? Those without privilege are rightfully sick of those with it denying the step up they have in life. Mainly the conversation revolves around gender, race, and class. But just has insidious and perhaps, more profound in terms of immediate life challenges, is the privilege of having a family who cares about you. Michele Obama talks about her family in her recent memoir. A lower middle class family, an ill father, living in a two-story home with other family members in the south side of Chicago. Some would describe this situation as impoverished. But despite the modest circumstances, Mrs. Obama shares the deep love and support she felt and that gave her the foundation to build to a great life. She truly had a safety net no government can provide. Moore grew up without a safety net. She compelling shares the implications of that dire situation. I am surprised she did not try to commit suicide or was killed, as her lack of self-care and boundary setting put in her many perilous situations. I am not going to give away more of her story. Read about her journey. Even if you had, especially if you had, a loving supportive family, this book will give you a special understanding of your privilege and perhaps a deeper understanding of others who don’t. Bravo to Lane Moore. Keep doing what you are doing and know there are those who get it and support you. Thank you for being brave and kind and passionate. Final note on style. I am old school and like my literature tightly edited. So I was at first put off my Moore’s use of CAPITAL letters and heavy use of exclamation points!!!. But once I got into the flow of the book, I realized this was her speaking style and carried a lot of emotion. It worked.

I absolutely loved this book. For anyone who felt alone growing up and then tried to bandage that alone feeling with whatever they could find as they grew you will find solace in this book knowing you are not alone. That’s what I took away from it. To read about a person who experienced the complexity of life alone as i did and as so many do was refreshing and made me feel less alone. I was particularly touched by the holiday chapter because those couple months from Halloween to Valentine’s Day are a beast for me. I have kids and I do holidays with my kids and people don’t understand how I still feel alone on holidays but i do. It’s an old pain and one that gets better each year with more and more self love. I love that she ended it with a chapter on self love because that too is where I found my answer. I spent the past year intentionally being alone and refusing to date to get comfortable in that loneliness until it felt good to be there. I refuse to bandage it anymore with unhealthy relationships and I appreciated hearing from a similar soul doing the same thing. I feel a kindred spirit connection with Lane Moore for being so open and candid about her own experience. Written with honesty and vulnerability, simple and to the point, like a conversation at night with the lights off and secrets revealed is how this book will make you feel.

A lot of reviews I saw include complaints that the book isn't some kind of survival guide on how to be alone, but I disagree. It's not a step-by-step manual, but it is one person's very real experience with loneliness and heartache. For me this book was like sitting down to talk honestly about my feelings with someone who understands. Lane Moore is brave and funny and seems great, and while her writing isn't earth-shattering (she does that thing memoir writers do where she uses run-on sentences frequently), her message is. This book is worth reading.

I bought this book because I've always made jokes and comments about how much I enjoy being alone. However, I'm walking out of it feeling less alone than ever. The way Lane writes about her childhood and her experiences makes you want to scoop her up into your arms and hold her as tight as you can. More than once I had the urge to ask her to please come over and watch Netflix and eat ice cream with me. I read one review that said they had wished they read this book in their early 20's, which was one of the reasons I bought it, and they were certainly correct. Lane's insight, raw honesty, and perspective are something to behold. How to Be Alone taught me not only how to look back on the pain we've all experienced throughout our lives in an introspective way, but to forgive (not forget) and to move forward in life refusing to let these hurts define us and refusing to blame ourselves when we sometimes do. She does so in a way that is gut-wrenching and heartbreaking but also with the light-heartedness and humor in which a lot of us talk about our own traumas, for which I was thankful, because it made this deeply thoughtful reading experience also one that I could enjoy without having to mentally prepare myself every time I opened up the pages. This was my first exposure to Lane Moore and I'm excited to fall deep into everything she's written and said before this and everything to come.

More of a biography than anything learning. I thought this book was going to have information on there on how to deal with these situations, and she talk about the trauma. It seems more published to get her truth out, and what she has been through. For someone like me who came from child adversity I understand a lot of the situations she has been in, and it was nice too see that there is a universal experience in that. (Why the 3 stars was given) I just think she should have labeled it differently, more along the line of “why I chose to be alone”. Definitely a great book to read if you’d like to compare lifestyles from someone who has also not hand a great upbringing. Also I don’t know how she identifies, but lots of bisexual content in there, going back and forth between men to women.

I've been wanting to read this book for awhile, but I was scared of my feelings. About two pages in, I took a photo of a paragraph on my ereader and texted it to my cousin, then just ordered her her own copy. And then I finished the book in a single day, which I never do because I am a slow reader, but this book was like arriving at a slumber party and having so much fun that the next thing you know, whoa, the sun is coming up. Spoiler alert: none of us are ever alone, not really. And sometimes the people we're not alone with treat us badly and then, no matter who we're with, forever, we run the risk of feeling profoundly alone. There's an anecdote in here about wanting someone to brush one's hair for them, and that is what this book does--it sits down, patiently and lovingly, with your knotty hair you'd considered so hopeless you were ready to shave it all off, and slowly works through the tangles. This strand got twisted with that one, and then they attracted more strands that got twisted too. But see, we're unraveling them! You're not an ugly mess. You're good. My Feelings kept me away from this book for awhile, which is a shame, because I haven't laughed this hard reading something since Samantha Irby's last collection. Yes, Moore delves into painful personal narratives, but she's SO FUNNY. I'm a believer that you can't be truly funny unless you've spent some serious time in pain, and this book solidified that for me. This is a must-read for anyone who's been neglected, abandoned, or hurt by someone who was supposed to care for them, and a maybe-you-really-should-read-this-too-cough-cough for anyone who's ever cared about such a person.

As someone who has lived alone for approximately 15 years, I bought this book, thinking it would give me some tips that perhaps I needed. While I think living solo is a joy 90% of the time, I thought why not look for that extra 10%? The book arrived today. I read the table of contents (which should have been a warning as to what was lying ahead), the first and last chapters and skimmed through the rest of the book. Then I threw it in the trash-something I rarely do with any book. If I hadn't purchased it used, I would have immediately returned it for a refund. The writing is very bad. Lots of 'I was super bummed,' or "I was super sad" or 'super (fill in the blank.') Lots of describing things as 'that sucked' or 'that sucks.' Use a thesaurus, Lane. A fair smattering of 'f**k' is in the book and while I am not a prude and use that word at least a few times a week, in the context of this book, it just shows lazy thinking and poor grammar. Nothing that I read seemed helpful to the subject of living alone-by choice or otherwise. Everything I did read seemed like it was ALL ABOUT THE AUTHOR and her tremendously low self esteem. She's like a black hole that absorbs energy yet remains empty. Do I myself as reader have a perfect, loving family? No! Did I grow up in a lovely, nurturing environment? No. Was or is my family supportive? No. Is my life even now a bed of roses? No. In spite of that, I am content most of the time and happy more often than not. If you are going to be living alone any time soon or live alone now and need a guide to make it more fulfilling and enjoyable, definitely look elsewhere. Avoid this book.

This book really helped me be kinder to myself, people with no family support are often misunderstood and loneliness is our only certainty, i can only thank Lane for sharing her experience and made me feel less alone in this world.

Lane Moore es una humorista, escritora directora, actriz, cantante, compositora y multi-instrumentalista norteamericana residente en Nueva York. Ha escrito para The Onion, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, GQ, Elle, Esquire y Marie Claire y ganado varios premios por su trabajo. Actualmente contribuye con The New Yorker y The Washington Post, es líder del grupo musical “It was Romance” y destaca notablemente por su aclamado show “Tinder Live”, en el que se conecta en vivo a la aplicación de citas y, siempre desde la improvisación, disecciona los distintos perfiles y “matches” que aparecen. “How to be alone: If You Want To And Even If you Don’t” es su primer libro y esperemos que no el último. Una autobiografía inolvidable que resulta en un homenaje a la aceptación, la humildad, la esperanza, la resiliencia y, en definitiva, a la vida. La gran inteligencia y sensibilidad de Moore quedan patentes ya al principio de su relato, entrando apenas en detalles sobre los malos tratos y negligencia que marcan su infancia, evitando por lo tanto caer en victimismos y dramas, centrándose en el trastorno por estrés post traumático que inevitablemente lleva a cuestas y cómo lo gestiona: con fantasía y, sobre todo, con mucho humor. Y es que “Un gran sentido del humor puede ayudarte a salir de momentos difíciles. Y así mismo, mientras haces reír a los demás mantienes una cierta distancia de protección. Si ríes no tienes que llorar. El humor es una forma de lidiar con la tragedia, con un profundo dolor” (The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse, de Ellen Bass y Laura Davis). Ella ilustra a la perfección tal premisa de la psicología, tanto los niveles de ingenio como el silencio en relación a su pasado hablando por sí solos. Desde salir huyendo de su casa siendo tan solo una adolescente con 200$ en el bolsillo, pasando por situaciones inverosímiles y relaciones tortuosas de todo tipo, la autora va pavimentando un camino de éxitos sin ni siquiera pretenderlo, suficientemente ocupada intentando mantener la cabeza a flote y movida más por la ilusión que la ambición, en una madurez forzada que se empeña en echar mano de la ingenuidad propia de la niñez de la que fue privada. Tal cual una guía sobre cómo convertir las adversidades en oportunidades a medida que éstas te golpean, su visión del mundo en el que vivimos y de las relaciones humanas son impagables y el canal a través del cual puede conectar con cualquier lector, independientemente de las vivencias de éste. Con ella aprendemos que hay heridas que probablemente nunca sanarán; sin embargo venir de un lugar oscuro no es en absoluto sinónimo de una vida oscura. Podemos transformar un montón de mi*rda en algo que no está nada mal. Todo es cuestión de risas y empatía.

Es un muy buen libro, llevado con un excelente humor, verdades claras, secas, y directas. Me he reído con este libro, he llorado, he conocido aspectos de mí misma desde un ángulo diferente, y conocer las experiencias de otras personas siempre es interesante, porque siempre es más fácil entender al otro que a uno mismo. No es un libro de autoayuda, es un libro que sentirás cómo ese amigo muy sincero que ha pasado por muchas cosas similares a las tuyas, que poco a poco lo vas conociendo, entendiendo por qué es cómo es y de vez en cuando te dice: Hey, pero no seas tan duro contigo mismo. 10/10 el contenido, me encantó, es excelente también para practicar inglés, es muy fácil de leer y de entender para principiantes. 9/10 la versión del libro pasta blanda no la recomiendo porque ya se me rompió y despegó el lomo de las hojas, entonces por este lado no nice la calidad.

If you get it, you get it. Feels like reading a deep late night d&m session with a good friend.

This book helped me a lot!