Blogs
Who's Publishing What: I Tried To Change so You Don't Have To
Loni Love has written an inspiring, hilarious memoir, I Tried to Change So You Don’t Have To, about learning to resist the pressures of conformity, love yourself for who you are, embrace your flaws and unlock your true potential.
Now cohost of Fox’s The Real and SiriusXM’s Café Mocha, Loni hasn’t taken the typical path to becoming America’s favorite straight-talking girlfriend and comedian. She was not the child of Hollywood legends and she never wore a size 00.
Rather, she grew up in housing projects in Detroit, more worried about affording her next meal than going on a diet. When she moved to Hollywood after graduating college with an engineering degree, seeking to break out in the entertainment world, there was nothing that would convince her to eat the kale salads and quinoa bowls that her colleagues introduced her to, which looked to Loni like “weeds my grandma used to pay me a dollar to pull from her yard.”
Still, despite the differences that set her apart in the status-driven world of entertainment where being thin, young, blond and bubbly are sometimes considered a talent, Loni spent years trying to fit in — trying to style her hair just so, dieting, dating the men she thought she was supposed to be with. In this book, she tells the uproariously funny story of how she overcame the trap of self-improvement and instead learned to embrace who she was. As she writes, “There’s a saying a lot of people live by: ‘Fake it till you make it.’ For me, it’s always been ‘fake it, and then have the whole thing blow up in your face.'” I Tried to Change So You Don’t Have To explores all of the embarrassing mistakes, terrifying challenges and unexpected breakthroughs that taught her how, by committing ourselves to our own path, we can take control of our destiny.
Loni is currently serving as one of four finalist judges for Nickie’s Prize for Humor Writing, a new writing competition sponsored by the University of Dayton’s Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop that seeks funny, original essays about sisters through Aug. 1.
