Never Too Much (A Memoir)

From the author who redefined motherhood for the modern age comes an unflinchingly honest account of midlife, identity, and recovery

By her mid-forties Angela Garbes had built a good life. She was a successful author with a loving husband, two kids, and a thriving community. Her writing on motherhood was hailed as urgent and groundbreaking by peers and critics. Internally, though, she was consumed by feelings of unworthiness, professional pressure, fragmented memories she’d rather not confront, and a substance use habit that was no longer tenable.

As the first generation daughter of Filipino immigrants, Garbes had learned how to be the type of daughter her family needed, translating American customs to her hardworking parents and assimilating herself into her rural surroundings. As a latchkey kid of the 1980s, she learned that big feelings were an inconvenience and external achievement offered a clear path to approval. She found solace in tv, books, pop culture, and carefree visits to the Philippines, all the while burying truths that threatened family happiness. Thus a child who knew how to be everything to everyone without knowing herself became an adult who found relief and belonging in alcohol and cocaine, coping mechanisms that morphed into an addiction that poisoned the joys and responsibilities of mothering and daily life.

Never Too Much is the story of Garbes’s recovery, and an honest examination of the forces that landed her there. It is also the story of an artist becoming herself and a fierce excavation of youth from the vantage of midlife. Readers are invited on her journey to see the way motherhood, relationships, and aging collide with generational trauma, abuse, and the search to reclaim identity. Garbes does the exhilarating, terrifying, and liberating work of confronting her past to know herself, this time on her own terms.

For readers of Leslie Jamison, Claire Dederer, Meaghan O’Connell, and Cathy Park Hong, In Translation is Garbes’s most personal work yet, and her most unforgettable.