Toast. You know when you're trying to make it and you just can't get it right? It's too light or too soft, then... totally burnt. Are you the kind of person who tries to scrape off the black? Or do you smother it with jam to hide the taste? Do you throw it away, or do you just eat it?

 

Up 'til now, I ate the burnt toast. I learned that from my mother. She always took care of everyone and everything else before herself. This habitual self-sacrifice was a mixed message for a child. It taught me that women should expect and settle for the worst and that even if I did get the golden buttered slice, it meant someone else had to suffer.

Then I hit forty. Did I really want to spend another ten years this way? The easy answer: no. The harder realization was that in order to change, I needed to stop eating the burnt toast. I had to be done anticipating failure. I had to be done feeling like I didn't deserve good things, tasty things. And I was. I didn't want to do it anymore, and I don't want other people to do it either.

That's why i wrote this book. It's my wacky, serious, skittish, heartfelt attempt to share my jagged route to happiness with other people like me. "

In 2005,  Teri Hatcher won the Golden Globe award and Screen Actors Guild award for best actress in a comedy for her portrayal of Susan Mayer on the hit TV show Desperate Housewives . The Emmy-nominated actress -also starred as Lois Lane in the TV series Lois & Clark , and has appeared in many feature films, including Spy Kids, Tomorrow Never Dies, Soapdish, and Two Days in the Valley California native , she lives in Los Angeles with her daughter, Emerson Rose,

Deanna Hurst is an actress, voiceover artist, and singer/songwriter. She has read several audiobooks. She lives in Los Angeles, with her husband and two dogs.