The Memoir That Made Me Feel Like Someone Finally Got It

written by Allison Santana

“One, your life sucks. But you're weirdly grateful and you know it could be so much worse...”

That was the hook from the post that first took off for me, and I meant every word of it. I said it because I had read enough celebrity memoirs by that point to notice a pattern. The ones that actually hit, the ones that stay with you, are never the ones where everything works out beautifully and the famous person is charming and gracious about their success. The ones that stay with you are the ones where someone looked directly at the hardest parts of their life and said it out loud anyway.

Gabrielle Union's We're Going to Need More Wine is that book for me.

I will be honest. I picked it up expecting something fun. Celebrity stories, Hollywood drama, maybe some tea. And there is tea. Genuinely good tea. She is a natural storyteller, and she will have you laughing and scandalized in the same breath. If that is all you come for, you will not leave empty handed.

But then she goes somewhere else entirely.

She writes about her assault with a clarity and a steadiness that I was not prepared for. Not because it is graphic, but because of how she holds it. There is no performance of being okay and there is no performance of being broken either. She is just honest. About what happened, about how it shaped her, about how she carried it while the world saw someone else entirely. Reading it felt like watching someone set something very heavy down in front of you and say, I have been holding this and I needed you to see it.

I had to put the book down for a minute after that section. Not because it was too much. Because it was too real and all too relatable.

Then she writes about motherhood.

If you know anything about Gabrielle Union's journey to become a mother, you know it was not simple or easy or fast. What I appreciated was how she wrote about wanting it. Not just motherhood and step motherhood, but the life, the wholeness, the version of herself she believed a family would complete. And how she had to sit with the complicated feelings of navigating these areas of life.

That part of the book hit differently than I expected. Because so much of what she describes, that tension between who you are now and who you are still becoming, is something a lot of us carry quietly. She just said it out loud.

Here is what I think makes a memoir worth reading. It is not the famous name on the cover. It is whether the person inside was willing to actually show up on the page. A lot of people write books. Not everyone is willing to tell the truth in them.

Gabrielle Union told the truth. The heavy parts and the funny parts and the parts that do not fit neatly into either category. She did it without making herself a saint or a victim. She just came as herself and trusted that would be enough.

It was more than enough.

If you are someone who has ever felt like your full story was too much, too complicated, too hard to explain, this book will make you feel less alone in that. And if you are someone who just wants a wildly entertaining read with moments that will genuinely catch you off guard, it delivers that too.

We're Going to Need More Wine is on my Amazon storefront along with the other memoirs that have shaped how I think, create, and show up. If you are building something, trying to figure yourself out, or just need to feel like someone gets it, that shelf is a good place to start.

You are not too much. You are not too late. Someone already wrote the book that proves it.

Here is the link to my Amazon Storefront: https://a.co/d/036HdmCF

Please remember as an Amazon Affiliate I may earn commissions from qualifying purchases at no additional cost to you. Your support means everything!

xo, Allison

This collage I created can be found in the link above to my Amazon Storefront. Each selection was made from my heart. : )