You with the Sad Eyes: A Memoir

I have loved Christina Applegate since she burst onto our screens as Kelly Bundy in Married with Children. Big bangs, cool clothes and a role that required far more comedic precision than anyone gave her credit for at the time.She followed that with Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead, a cult classic my friends and I still quote to this day. Feeling gratitude as she held her own opposite Will Ferrell (in addition to his anchor-posse of a mega talented folks), as the razor-sharp Veronica Corningstone in Anchorman, and built a career defined by intelligence, impeccable timing, and an undeniable ability to command any room she walked into.I thought the real her was what I complied from the shows, movies and interviews I’ve seen. This book proved me wrong, but in the best possible way.What Applegate has written here is not a celebrity memoir. It is a reckoning. Real, raw, and unflinching, she pulls back the curtain on a life lived largely in service of others’ entertainment while quietly battling battles no one could see. So many women do this and I love that she is breaking the stigma and allowing us to give ourselves permission to not be okay.Her wit is alive on every page, but so is her vulnerability, and it is that combination of humor and heartbreak walking hand in hand that makes this book impossible to put down.The moment that wrecked me completely was learning that acknowledging her own success has caused years of trauma. That early in her career, when she dared to express pride in herself, someone responded with a dismissive “you’re doing it” and that those three small words cast a long, suffocating shadow over everything she accomplished afterward. It made me tear up for the young woman who opened up only to be torn down and betrayed by a person who should have been jumping up and down WITH her and turning that phrase into a positive mantra.Think about that. Decades of extraordinary work. A legacy that genuinely moved the needle for women in comedy and on screen. And all of it filtered through the lens of a wound inflicted by one careless, diminishing remark. It is heartbreaking. It is also painfully relatable for anyone who has ever been made to feel that their joy was too big, their pride unearned, or their success something to apologize for. So profound that it wasn’t glossed over in the book, it was a constant reminder throughout to NEVER let someone cast shade where sunshine should be.What I hope most is that she truly sees herself the way we see her. That she kicks that voice to the curb once and for all. Because Christina Applegate has not just “done it.” She has done it brilliantly, persistently, and on her own terms, through obstacles that would have felled anyone less determined. She has made women laugh, feel seen, and stand a little taller.This book is her best performance yet, and this time, she wrote every word herself.You did it. And I will use those three words to make a positive difference for my teen daughter so that her generation of women grow to applaud, celebrate and support accomplishments and every time a young woman is celebrated, know that spark of happiness, the joy and excitement of their success is because of you. You did that for us, for them, and we thank you

What a REMARKABLE story teller Christina Applegate (aka KiKi) is. From one Her reading her own life journey was very raw, and full of relatable emotions. When she cried I found myself crying, when she laughed, I too was laughing, and when she shared her struggles, I realized her struggles have been the same as my struggles down to us both having breast cancer and bilateral mastectomy both in the fall of 2008. I'm 47, I do not have MS, however my mother does, so I know those struggles as well. Thank you so much Kiki for writing your story, for sharing your truth, and telling the world that its okay not to be okay. May Kiki forever have more good hours or days than bad. May I be lucky enough to visit your rightfully deserved Hollywood STAR one day, only to find you there telling fables.🤭❤️🫂Side Note- She shares that her career is over, I refuse to believe that. I believe like the early days of mapquest its just guiding her on an unplanned & unwanted detour. But because she is clearly such an amazing talent, story teller and an amazing writer, I believe her life story is not finished.I for one would LOVE to see her writing and narrating her own Laurel Canyon series based on her upbringing, because the stories she shared in THIS BOOK bewere SO DELICIOUS & JUICY that I just found myself wanting to know MORE of that era of her life. Especially since she had the wherewithal to keep journals not only through that period of her life, but throughout her entire life, I NEED that series.❤️

This is a complex memoir and somewhat heartbreaking to read. The reason I bought the book is twofold. One, because my mother had MS and I wanted to know about Christina’s thoughts and experiences, especially since she also had a child. And two, because she had a lifelong career that started when she was very young and because she grew up in the industry. It never ceases to amaze me how people who are living what most people consider the dream (fame) often suffer from self-esteem and sometimes self-hatred even though they are physically beautiful. This book showed how real her life was in all of its harshness and beauty. It skipped around a bit so it often felt confusing. It did not have a linear timeline. Then I saw her intention was to share lessons or experiences and how they shaped her life. I did not care for her frequent use of her favorite curse word- but saw that she used it to express strong emotion and that she revealed her true thoughts when using that word. So I just tried to not let it pollute my overall assessment of the memoir. My other thought was how she often repeated feelings or memories and how they sometimes even contradicted each other. But isn’t that messy, just like real life? And her raw honesty about abuse that happened to her was impressive. As a young child her mind would black out what a child shouldn’t remember. As a young adult how she ended up staying in relationships that she needed to leave was a great example of how dysfunctional relationships work in real life and how the mind tries to make sense of what is so very wrong because it is also so painful to leave. This was a brave and honest memoir and in my opinion, worth reading. It’s very trauma-informed and insightful. In short, this is my favorite kind of book because it makes you think about life on a deeper level as you process things.