Happy to Help
Adventures of a People Pleaser
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1.0 • 1 Rating
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A Brit&Co Most Anticipated Books of 2025
Amy Wilson, co-host of the award-winning podcast What Fresh Hell, takes a funny and insightful look at how women are conditioned to be “happy to help”—and what happens when things don’t go that way.
Amy Wilson has always been an ultimate helper. As a big sister, Girl Scout, faithful reader of teen magazines, personal assistant, sitcom sidekick, and, finally, mother of three, Amy believed it was her destiny to be a people pleaser. She learned to put others first, to do what she was told, to finish what she started, and to look like she had everything under control, even when she very much did not.
Along the way, Amy started to wonder why doing it all had been her job. Still, when she tried to hand over some of her to-dos, no one was particularly interested in taking them. And when she asked for help, in return, she got advice: have a sense of humor, quit nagging, and stop trying to be perfect.
Amy dutifully took on these goals—with varying degrees of failure—until the day she started to question if something else needed to be fixed besides herself.
Hilariously relatable, Happy to Help is a collection of essays about how you can be the one everyone else depends on and still be struggling—how you can be “happy to help,” even when, for your own sake, you shouldn’t.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In these earnest if simplistic essays, What Fresh Hell podcaster Wilson (When Did I Get Like This?) reflects on how women can set boundaries on what others ask of them. "Know your value," she exhorts, recounting how as a recent college graduate, she performed endless menial tasks as the personal assistant of a demanding Broadway actor, until she worked up the nerve to quit. Wilson describes the myriad productivity apps she tried in an unsuccessful attempt to balance her familial, personal, and professional obligations, only to recognize that she couldn't complete everything and would have to focus on what mattered most. Elsewhere, she discusses how the many doctor's appointments she scheduled to get to the root of her son's seizures left him overmedicated, exposing the downside of trying too hard to help, and how her elementary school–age daughter, who suffers from debilitating migraines, learned to stand up for herself by insisting she rest despite her gym teacher's commands. The essays are a bit didactic, each boiling down to such platitudes as "saying ‘no' can sometimes be its own kind of bravery" and "the only one you can change is you," but Wilson imbues the stories with plenty of heart. Readers willing to overlook the clichés will appreciate this soulful take on charting one's own path.
