on adulting
Your Turn
Your Turn: How to Be an Adult
New York Times bestselling author Julie Lythcott-Haims is back with a groundbreakingly frank guide to being a grown-up
What does it mean to be an adult? In the twentieth century, psychologists came up with five markers of adulthood: finish your education, get a job, leave home, marry, and have children. Since then, every generation has been held to those same markers. Yet so much has changed about the world and living in it since that sequence was formulated. All of those markers are choices, and they’re all valid, but any one person’s choices along those lines do not make them more or less an adult.
A former Stanford dean of freshmen and undergraduate advising and author of the perennial bestseller How to Raise an Adult and of the lauded memoir Real American, Julie Lythcott-Haims has encountered hundreds of twentysomethings (and thirtysomethings, too), who, faced with those markers, feel they’re just playing the part of “adult,” while struggling with anxiety, stress, and general unease. In Your Turn, Julie offers compassion, personal experience, and practical strategies for living a more authentic adulthood, as well as inspiration through interviews with dozens of voices from the rich diversity of the human population who have successfully launched their adult lives. (A ‘Commitment to Inclusion’ is part of Julie’s practice as an author; you can read about her commitment here.)
Being an adult, it turns out, is not about any particular checklist; it is, instead, a process, one you can get progressively better at over time―becoming more comfortable with uncertainty and gaining the knowhow to keep going. Once you begin to practice it, being an adult becomes the most complicated yet also the most abundantly rewarding and natural thing. And Julie Lythcott-Haims is here to help readers take their turn.
TED Course: How to become Your Best Adult Self
Life awaits. I want to help you get over the hurdles.
Maybe you’re just launching your adult life, or maybe you’re older and finally giving yourself permission to question what you assumed to be true about adulthood. In this TED Course, I share stories and practical strategies to build a future that fits you and all you can offer to the world.
More books by Julie
on race
Real American: A Memoir
In this powerful and award-winning reflection on identity, belonging, and community, Julie details growing up Black and biracial in white spaces. She shares the toll that racism, discrimination, and microaggressions took on her self-worth, and how she found acceptance through the healing power of community.
ON WRITING
Writing Memoir
This little book of writing prompts from The Writer’s Grotto, where Julie was a member, opens with a foreword by Julie that offers pointers for crafting a compelling narrative from your own experiences. The rest of the book consists of prompts and space to write, providing opportunities to reframe aspects of your life in thoughtful and interesting ways.
On parenting
How to Raise an Adult
A New York Times best-seller. In this provocative anti-helicopter parenting manifesto, Julie highlights the ways overparenting harms children, their parents, and society at large—and offers practical alternative strategies for raising kids to be self-sufficient, resilient, and successful.
