Coming Undone
A Memoir
Terri White
“Every morning when I wake up, I'm always surprised, sometimes crestfallen, to have been spat out again, tender and bruised and somehow a little less.”
Available as Hardback, eBook, Downloadable audio
A powerful, raw and unflinchingly honest account of a life coming undone
‘BREATHTAKING’ Dolly Alderton, ‘REMARKABLE’ Marian Keyes, ‘LIFE-CHANGING’ Emma Jane Unsworth, ‘COMPELLING’ Amy Liptrot, ‘STUNNING’ Cathy Rentzenbrink, ‘EXTRAORDINARY’ Sali Hughes
To everyone else, Terri White appeared to be living the dream, named one of Folio’s Top Women in US Media and accruing further awards for the magazines she was editing. In reality, she was rapidly skidding towards a mental health crisis that would land her in a locked psychiatric ward as her past caught up with her.
Coming Undone is Terri’s documentation of her unravelling, and her precarious navigation back from a life in pieces.
“A stunning memoir, hard reading in places, but it feels urgent and necessary … White writes like a blood-stained angel”
Cathy Rentzenbrink
the Times
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“A breathtaking read … her honesty and her eloquence is the thing that makes it such a privilege to read … a raw, shocking, beautiful book”
Dolly Alderton
the High Low
”Coming Undone by Terri White is possibly the most affecting, moving memoir I’ve ever read. Painful and exquisite, her writing about how childhood trauma shaped her got to me in a very visceral way. It’s a remarkable book”
Marian Keyes
“Powerful and moving, beautifully written, packed with stunning set-pieces and, I thought, a stinging-but-dazzling, complicated love-hate letter to NYC, and to how our dreams can too often deceive us. I found it bittersweet and raw, and radical as a memoir narrative: not so much a redemption tale as a chronicle of the real fallout of trauma: messy, difficult, intricate, infinite … [A] life-changing read”
Emma Jane Unsworth
“I didn’t put it down until finished. White’s extraordinary memoir is gripping, unflinchingly honest and written with great wit”
Sali Hughes
Terri White
Terri White is Editor-in-Chief of Empire magazine, having previously edited some of the most read titles in the UK and US, including Time Out New York and Shortlist, where she was named Men’s Magazine Editor of the Year. She has also written for the Guardian and The Pool.
@Terri_White
‘On good nights, I lost my phone. On bad nights, I lost my sanity’
As Terri White’s memoir Coming Undone is published, this harrowing and incredibly powerful extract has run in the Guardian. It’s about what it was like to grow up with abuse, and then move across the world – to the dream job, in the dream city – only to still struggle, chaotically, with drink and with pain.
Terri White
Guardian