Teens, you got this: reassures Bryony
Undated handout photo of Bryony Gordon. See PA Feature BOOK Gordon. Picture credit should read: Dominic Lipinski/PA. WARNING: This picture must only be used to accompany PA Feature BOOK Gordon.
Una Culkin
Published: 05:39 Saturday 11 May 2019
By her own admission, acclaimed writer Bryony Gordon has had her share of moments of angst.
Alcoholism, low self-esteem and depression have been part of the backdrop to her life, charted over the years in her Telegraph columns, in her autobiography, Mad Girl, and in her work as a mental health campaigner.
Book jacket handout of You Got This by Bryony Gordon. See PA Feature BOOK Gordon. Picture credit should read: Wren & Rook/PA. WARNING: This picture must only be used to accompany PA Feature BOOK Gordon.
Now she tackles the plethora of issues teenagers suffer today - the raging hormones, peer pressures and body image aspirations plastered all over social media - in You Got This, her first book for young adults, in which she shares her own past insecurities and life lessons in this ultimately uplifting guide.
She urges teenagers to like themselves, to be who they are and be happy about that - something Gordon struggled with as a teen and beyond.
She writes amusingly about only having one eyebrow instead of two, how her hips melded with her thunder thighs, and how she wished she could make her handwriting look as cool as Isabel's in the lower sixth.
She's written the book partly for the teenage girl her daughter will one day become, and for the teenage girl she once was. Of course she worries about Edie, she says, and she just hopes her daughter feels able to talk to her openly about any issues that arise.
"It's fostering an environment of openness where she doesn't feel that she has to have shame about things that are actually perfectly normal."
The message in the book is to like yourself, she agrees.
"Just as teenage pressures were different when I was growing up to what they were in my mum's generation, the circumstances change - social media, cyber bullying and all of that - but at the heart of these things, the feelings are the same. You don't need to have a degree in social media to empathise with your teenager and remember what it felt like to be 14 and to be dumped for the first time."
She is positive, but understands that happiness is fleeting. "We see is as a final destination and a place where you go through other stuff to get to it, but it's a fleeting moment in the midst of other things."
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