When I first came across the term “gateway book,” it gave me great hope. My firstborn is not a reader. According to him, he doesn’t enjoy reading even a little. He does the bare minimum required of him for school. And I keep hoping that someday, a gateway book will break through to him and help him love reading.

As I mentioned last week, after reading Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things, by Jenny Lawson, on the recommendation of my friend, Janeen, I realized even people who love to read can find gateway books into new subjects or genres.

Since I’ve been writing about the books I’m reading, I’ve noticed a pattern where often, I start a book and am slow to engage with it. It has happened enough times in the past few months that I’m starting to think it’s a reflection of me and not the books.

Furiously Happy was no exception. I started reading, and at first, a lot of the humor fell flat. I kept thinking, “Why is she cursing at me? I don’t even know her!” But as I got to know Lawson through the book, the laughs came more easily, and my respect for her grew. She balanced her humorous writing with moments of insight and just when you felt she was taking self-deprecation to new lows, she would bring you back up for a breath of air and some life insight.

One night, I lay down in bed, reached for the book, opened it, and immediately burst into laughter. The Chaplain looked over at me from the other side of the bed where he was reading his book. “Seriously?! You JUST opened it.” I started reading aloud, between snorts of laughter.

Lawson and I have the same trifecta – depression, anxiety, and autoimmune disease. Although her experience with it and the way she manages it are very different from mine, I felt a connection with her as I read. And I don’t believe you need to have ANY of those conditions to enjoy her writing.

All this to say, I never saw myself reading books about anxiety, although it has been something that has grown in my own life over the past number of years to the point that I’ve had to face it rather than pretending it’s not there, or gutting it out. There was always a low-level tension, and there still is, but there are break-through days when my skin is crawling and it feels like I’m trapped by a thin, stretchy, incredibly strong membrane that is squeezing me.

In Furiously Happy, Lawson gets it. How it’s not always lows – and the hope of those soaring highs are what you live for when you are in stretches of darkness. She accurately describes the amnesia that seems to exist during good AND bad times where it feels like whether you’re high or low, the other extreme is either light years away, or just a shadow.

Before I’d finished the book, I had a pile of other books about anxiety sitting on my reading pile. I looked at the Chaplain as I plunked a pile of books down next to our bed after a trip to the library. “I’m giving myself permission to quit any and all of these books if they don’t work for me.” He agreed to help me stay accountable (this benefits us both, because whether I love or hate a book, he’ll get an earful). Even only one of the titles is a keeper, I can thank Lawson for opening the door into another subject for me to binge on.