Hello, Molly! by Molly Shannon

Hello, Molly! by Molly Shannon
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

You probably know Molly Shannon from Saturday Night Live in the '90s. She's been in many movies and TV shows since then, but I always think of her first as Mary Katherine Gallagher (Superstar!) or the radio host from the Schweddy Balls sketch.

Hello, Molly! rounded out my picture of who she is and the amazing, hilarious, tragic, upbeat life she's led.

Sprinkled throughout are stories illustrating how a positive outlook repeatedly made things better for her (and, I'm sure, those around her). It's genuinely inspiring. 

For instance, after a horrific accident when she was a small child, she felt bad for all the other kids in her hospital ward that were sick and suffering. She wrote: "Since nobody would tell me what was going on, this was something I could do while I was waiting. And once I started helping them, it really cheered me up. I introduced myself and talked to them. And soon I was in a circle and getting everyone to play games." I'm fighting tears thinking about this. What a lovely outlook, and she's had it all her life.

She also came to enjoy eating in hospital cafeterias as a child, and would return there with a friend to enjoy seeing all the people congregating there. "If you ever feel stuck, just go into a completely different atmosphere with different kinds of people and see how stimulating it is. There’s nothing better," she wrote. See what I mean? Upbeat as hell, in a way that involves generally liking people and being interested in others.

Her outlook on lots of things is a bit askance and more than a little nutty, thanks to her wonderful/troubled father. And as often as that took her down strange and sometimes risky roads, it seems to have served her well overall.

Page after page, the stories are interesting and her actions or reactions often surprised me. I highlighted several passages and hope to remember them for my own life. Like: "Struggle itself is meaningful. You never know where anything is going to go. You don’t know. I didn’t know if I would ever make it. But I have a positive attitude and I think people always see that in me."

And, "No matter how far you’ve come, what level of success you’ve achieved, you’re always going to have to get to the next place, so you might as well enjoy where you are. Be creative and enjoy your work. Just enjoy the process."

This is a great book about not only succeeding in show business, but succeeding in life.

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