Pretty Weird: Overcoming Impostor Syndrome and Other Oddly Empowering Lessons, Hardcover

Acclaimed writer and editor Marissa Miller was born into what you would call a nice Jewish family. But she somehow grew into anything but a Nice Jewish Girl. From openly discussing any and all bodily functions with whoever would listen, to encouraging her peers to join her in undressing in the hallways at school for no reason other than to fight the oppressive institution of modern academia, she was continuously scolded by members of the Jewish community for exploring her identity and pushing the boundaries of what a "nice girl" is allowed to do. To make sense of being the odd one out, she did what any confused teenager would do: she wrote. She wrote poems on MySpace, articles for her school newspaper, extra credit English assignments to compensate for her complete and utter lack of math skills, and eventually, reported pieces for many of the world's most prestigious media publications.

But the transition to a lucrative journalism career didn't come without is growing pains. Getting anywhere past the school newspaper stage and being asked to provide journalism lectures around the city inspired a sense of panic, dread, and most notably, impostor syndrome--the sense that success is a product of coincidence and luck as opposed to hard work and talent. No fellow journalists she idolized growing up seemed to have had a history of behavior so crude it would make your Rabbi blush. Surely, the Universe was thisclose to taking everything away from her. And to some extent, it did.

In Pretty Weird--a series of true stories that are at once relatable, funny, and heart-wrenching--you'll learn about why, like Miller, you're worthy of success by virtue of you thinking you're not, about why there's no such thing as being "not sick enough" to deserve help, and that living in that liminal space of being too normal to stand out, yet too weird to fit in, is truly where all the magic happens.

About author(s):Marissa Miller is a journalist and editor covering health, nutrition, fitness, style, beauty, travel, tech and mental health with work published in the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN Style, NBC News, the Wall Street Journal, Vogue, USA Today, BBC Travel, Cosmopolitan, Women's Health, GQ and more. Miller judges journalism and poetry contests across North America, and lectures at universities to aspiring writers. She holds a degree in journalism and creative writing from Concordia University, and a certificate in plant-based nutrition from the T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies at Cornell University. She lives in Montreal, Quebec.