‘Stop Trying to Be Perfect,’ Says Bestselling Author Nora McInerny
14 Dec 2022
APB speaker and bestselling author Nora McInerny is on a mission: to help people stop trying to overachieve. It’s a lesson she learned the hard way. During six hellish weeks in 2014, McInerny miscarried her second baby, lost her dad to cancer and became a widow at age 31 when her husband died from brain cancer. It taught her what’s important—and it’s not trying to be perfect for anyone.
In the ensuing years, McInerny became a "reluctant grief specialist," bestselling memoirist and founder dedicated to shining the light on the dark things in life with wit, humor and heart.
In a recent interview with CNN, McInerny shared her thoughts on those who are trying to always fix themselves. It’s something she has recently written about in her new essay collection, Bad Vibes Only (And Other Things I Bring to the Table). The essays focus on our aggressively, oppressively optimistic culture, our obsession with self-improvement and what it really means to live authentically in the online age.
“I want my work to lower the bar for people,” she told CNN. “We have so much intense pressure to achieve and to perform in the face of all the suffering and struggle of modern life. You do not have to do anything other than just be a decent person and survive.”
Survive, indeed. In addition to Bad Vibes Only, McInerny is the author of It’s Okay To Laugh, Crying Is Cool Too; No Happy Endings; and The Hot Young Widows Club. She has also written for The New York Times, TIME magazine and The Washington Post.
Along with her writing, McInerny is a popular speaker. She had the fourth most popular TED Talk of 2019 and is the creator and host of the podcast Terrible, Thanks for Asking. McInerny uses her personal story about living through loss, grief, change and new beginnings to engage with audiences on a deeply personal and universally human level.