Happy to Help

Happy to Help

Amy Wilson

January 7, 2025

 

“In this honest, insightful, and often hilarious account, Amy Wilson explores her experience and frustrations as a people-pleaser—her story will resonate with anyone who has said, 'Happy to help!' one too many times. I couldn’t put it down.”—Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project

 

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Award-winning podcast host Amy Wilson has always been an ultimate helper. As a big sister, Girl Scout, personal assistant, sitcom sidekick, and, finally, mother of three, Amy believed it was her destiny to be a people pleaser. She learned to put others first and to look like she had everything under control, even when she very much did not.


 Along the way, Amy started to wonder why doing it all had been her job. Still, when she tried to hand over some of her to-dos, no one was interested in taking them. And when she asked for help, in return, she got advice: have a sense of humor, quit nagging, and stop trying to be perfect.

 Hilariously relatable, Happy to Help is a collection of essays about how you can be the one everyone else depends on and still be struggling—how you can be “happy to help,” even when, for your own sake, you shouldn’t.

Happy to Help

Amy Wilson

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Meet the author

Amy Wilson

Amy Wilson is the author of When Did I Get Like This? The Screamer, The Worrier, The Dinosaur Chicken Nugget Buyer, and Other Mothers I Swore I'd Never Be (William Morrow). The book was an "Emerging Author" pick at Target, a top seller in Amazon's "Parenting" and "Humor" categories, and the recipient of a Mom's Choice Gold Award.

Amy is also the co-host of What Fresh Hell: Laughing in the Face of Motherhood, a Webby-honored parenting podcast which regularly appears at the top of the Parenting and Kids and Family charts in Apple Podcasts. With over 800 episodes and 10 million lifetime downloads, “What Fresh Hell” has a deeply connected and engaged all-mom audience that eagerly awaits new episodes and participates in a 40,000-member community on Facebook.

Amy has served as contributing editor for Parenting Magazine. Her writing has also appeared in Redbook, Parents, and New York Family magazines, and on websites like CNN, NPR, and The New York Times. She has discussed parenting issues on shows like Today, CNN's American Morning, and on ABCNews.com.

Amy is also an actor who starred on Broadway in the Tony-Award-winning The Last Night of Ballyhoo and appeared as a series regular on multiple network sitcoms.

Amy was the performer and creator of Mother Load, a solo show which toured to sixteen cities nationwide after its hit off-Broadway run. Her comedy solo work was also featured at the HBO US Comedy Arts Festival.

get to know Amy

What people are saying...

“In this honest, insightful, and often hilarious account, Amy Wilson explores her experience and frustrations as a people-pleaser—her story will resonate with anyone who has said, 'Happy to help!' one too many times. I couldn’t put it down.”

Gretchen Rubin

author of The Happiness Project

“My fellow type-A souls, Amy Wilson understands us. It's time to put down all we've been carrying, pick up this funny, all-too-relatable memoir, and rejoice in the empathy of a kindred spirit. Let someone else run the world today."

Mary Laura Philpott

author of I Miss You When I Blink

Why Zibby Loves It

I mean, don’t we all feel like this sometimes? It’s just easier to say yes or do it yourself than to delegate or decline. Amy Wilson uses her brilliance to analyze mom culture, a woman’s role in society, how we all take on more than is humanly possibly, and what, if anything, we can do about it. Her insights into her own experience only deepen the narrative.