When Jennifer Gilbert was just a year out of college, a twenty-two-year-old
fresh-faced young woman looking forward to a bright future, someone tried to cut
her life short in the most violent way. But she survived, and not wanting this
traumatic event to define her life, she buried it deep within and never spoke of
it again.
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I Never Promised You a Goodie Bag
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She bravely launched a fabulous career in New York as an event planner,
designing lavish parties and fairy-tale weddings. Determined to help others
celebrate and enjoy life's greatest moments, she was convinced she'd never again
feel joy herself. Yet it was these weddings, anniversaries, and holiday parties,
showered with all her love and attention through those silent, scary years, that
slowly brought her back to life.
Always the calm in the event-planning storm—she could fix a ripped wedding
dress, solve the problem of an undelivered wedding cake in the nick of time, and
move a party with two days' notice when disaster struck—there was no crisis that
she couldn't turn into a professional triumph. Somewhere along the way, she felt
a stirring in her heart and began yearning for more than just standing on the
sidelines living vicariously through other people's lives. She fell in love, had
her heart broken a few times, and then one day she found true love in a place so
surprising that it literally knocked her out of her chair.
As Gilbert learned over and over again, no one's entitled to an easy road,
and some people's roads are bumpier than others. But survive each twist and turn
she does—sometimes with tears, sometimes with laughter, and often with both.
Warm, wise, alternately painful and funny, I Never Promised You a Goodie
Bag is an inspiring memoir of survival, renewal, and transformation. It's a
tale about learning to let go and be happy after years of faking it, proving
that while we can't always control what happens to us, we can control who we
become. And instead of anticipating our present in a goodie bag at the end of an
event, we realize our presence at every event is the real gift.
