Jennette entered the acting world at her mother’s behest as a young child and reached considerable fame as a teenager on the Nickelodeon show iCarly. Though she showed an interest in writing from a young age, she was very aware that her mother’s happiness depended on her being an actress. Jennette was not happy acting and strongly disliked the attention and stress that comes with celebrity. From a very young age, she felt that her purpose in life was to please her mother and believed that she was worthless without her. This desire to be whatever her mother wanted her to be led to body image issues and eating disorders, and the weight of her mother’s expectations was a large factor that led to her eventual alcohol use disorder. Having been raised under her mother’s watchful eye, Jennette had very few typical teenage experiences. After her mother’s death, she struggled to address her grief along with her alcohol use and eating disorders. In recovery, she was able to reconcile the way she had worshipped her mother as a child with the reality of her upbringing and her mother’s abuse.

When the book begins, Jennette is a young child who has adapted to her emotionally unpredictable and difficult mother by always predicting how to please her.