Let's Pretend This Never Happened

In her New York Times bestselling memoir, Let’s Pretend This Never Happened—A Mostly True Memoir (2012), Jenny Lawson explores why the moments we want to forget about are the ones that truly define us. Receiving various award nominations, critics praise its blend of humor and humanity. Lawson, an Internet blogger, journalist, and social media influencer, runs an award-winning blog. Best known for her cynical, bizarre, and comical outlook on life, in 2011, The Huffington Post named her the “Greatest Person of the Day” for her charity and outreach work. Let’s Pretend This Never Happened is her debut book.

Lawson challenges us to remember the most mortifying things that have ever happened to us. These are the events we want to forget ever happened. Lawson believes we shouldn’t forget these experiences because they make us who we are. Without these experiences, we wouldn’t be where we are today. Lawson shares her own defining moments with us to show that they are nothing to be embarrassed about. She wants to unite us in our shared humanity.

Lawson begins with her childhood memories. She grew up in West Texas with an eccentric father and her long-suffering mother. A defining moment in her childhood is when her father brings home a dead raccoon and turns it into a puppet. Lawson still gets shivers when she remembers this incident because it was horrifying. Nevertheless, her childhood wouldn’t have been the same without this episode.



Lawson’s mother was a great believer in the idea that what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. She took this to the extreme by bathing her children in radon-poisoned well water. Although Lawson questioned her mother’s logic, she sees now that if she could survive these deadly baths, she can survive anything life throws at her.

In college, Lawson meets the love of her life, Victor. At first, Lawson can’t believe she fancies him. A quiet, wealthy Young Republican, he is Lawson’s complete opposite. However, Victor teaches Lawson how to see past labels and to love people for who they truly are. She has never met a kinder man; eventually, she marries him.

Introducing Victor to her eccentric family doesn’t go as planned. Lawson’s father surprises Victor with a live bobcat before showing him his beloved taxidermy collection. Although the collection terrifies Victor, he wants to fit in with Lawson’s family, and he tries his hardest to understand them. The episode mortifies Lawson, but Victor doesn’t mind. He even sources a wolf for her father’s next project.



As Victor and Lawson settle into married life, they travel around the country for Victor’s job. They travel home to West Texas regularly, but Lawson soon realizes that it is not her home anymore. With a new Starbucks on every corner, there’s barely any open space left. It doesn’t look like the West Texas of old. However, this is only part of why it is no longer Lawson’s home. She has outgrown West Texas: Home is wherever Victor is.

Despite living elsewhere for a few years, they ultimately return to West Texas to have their first daughter, Hailey. It is not an easy pregnancy because Lawson has a blood clotting disorder. She needs her family’s support to get through it. Remembering how thankful she was when she delivered a healthy baby girl, she will never forget that overwhelming, initial feeling of love.

Now that Lawson is settled into family life, she decides it is time to tackle other problems in her life. Suffering from severe social anxiety, she doesn’t have many friends. Now that she is home all day looking after Hailey, she wonders if it is possible to make friends online. She decides to seek out other stay-at-home mothers who understand what she is going through.



Finally, Lawson makes some online friends. When she is ready, she meets these friends in real life. These women are now some of her closest companions; she will never forget the impact they have had on her life and her mental health. To Lawson, these women are more than just friends she met online—they’re family.

Emboldened by her new friendships, Lawson sets up a blog. The blog gives her something to work on while she is bedridden for days with sickness including rheumatoid arthritis. She spends some days curled up in bed watching cartoon reruns with Hailey, thankful to have someone at her side when she needs company the most.

Most of all, Lawson appreciates Victor’s unwavering loyalty, patience, and love. Through her ill health, and the highs and lows of married life, Victor is her rock. Eccentric in some ways like her father, in other ways, he is a stable influence she can always rely on to make sensible decisions. At the end of the book, she claims that some of the strangest, most awkward moments of her life brought these wonderful people into her life, and she wouldn’t change any of it for the world.