Decker - Just Jessie: my guide to love, life, family, and food

Contents

Contents

JESSIE JAMES DECKER is a country singer, TV personality, and fashion designer. Her most recent album, Southern Girl City Lights, debuted at number one on the iTunes Top Country Albums Chart and as the number one country album on the Billboard Hot 100 chart following the success of her gold-certified single Wanted. A star of E!s hit reality show Eric & Jessie, she is the creator and designer of Kittenish, a playful fashion line inspired by her personal style. She lives in Nashville with her husband, NFL wide receiver Eric Decker, and their three children.

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JUST JESSIE . Copyright 2018 by Jessie James Decker. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Cover design by Yeon Kim

Cover photographs: Alysse Gafkjen, courtesy of Epic Records, a division of Sony Music Entertainment

FIRST EDITION

Digital Edition SEPTEMBER 2018 ISBN: 978-0-06-285138-3

Version 09212018

Print ISBN: 978-0-06-285137-6

I dedicate this book to my fans

who inspired me to write it

and to my sweet babies.

Yall are the best thing Ive ever done.

I wake up smiling every day

because I get to be your mommy.

The reason I decided to write this book is because my amazing fans frequently ask me how I do it all. How do I balance my work, family, and personal time? How did I overcome being bullied in school or moving fourteen times before I graduated high school? How am I able to balance being a wife, a new mother, and a friend? What I love about my fans is they arent afraid to ask. In every meet and greet I do, almost every young girl asks me how I do this or do that. Within those three minutes we have for our picture, I cram in as much advice as possible because its so important to me. But its never enough time to say everything I want to.

Ever since I was young, dreaming of being a big country star singing to sold-out arenas, I wanted to be that girl other girls could look up to. My main mission has always been to inspire, help, and build confidence in women.

Tec Petaja

Just Jessie is just that! In telling my storywhere Im from and who I am nowI want women everywhere to know: you can do anything you put your mind to, from landing your dream man to losing the baby weight. Whether youre a stay-at-home mom tired from an afternoon of folding laundry or a career woman disappointed by yet another bad date, Ive got some easy advice that will lift you upor at least make you laugh.

Tec Petaja

I want women to throw off their heels, get into a bubble bath with a glass of wine, and smile or cry with me. I want you to turn the oven to 350 degrees and whip up something delicious with me. I want you to break a sweat with me. And I want you to grab your eyebrow pencil and fill those babies in with me, because we all know how I feel about eyebrows.

We are in this together, and that is why I wrote this book. So grab a warm chocolate chip cookie, lay like broccoli, and enjoy Just Jessie.

I was born in Vicenza, Italy, at a military field hospital. When my mama set foot on Italian ground at age nineteen, she said it was like coming home. She tells me that when she landed, she felt like dropping to her knees and kissing the ground. Probably because our entire family was from Sicily.

I came into this world faceup. They call that a stargazer, and a stargazer I have remained. Coming out faceup, though, is difficult in the delivery process. I was two weeks late, and my poor mama was on day three of being in laborand with no epidural. It was so bad they thought we both might not make it. I guess you could say I was a mamas girl before I was even born because I didnt want to come out. A story my mom tells me is that after three days of my refusing to come out, and as a last-ditch effort before an emergency C-section, the doctor propped his foot up on the table and yanked me out. I finally came into the worldall nine and a half pounds of me. My poor mother. My mom even tells me that when she screamed after they cut the umbilical cord, the doctor said, You arent supposed to be able to feel that. With her eyes still closed, drenched in sweat, and barely able to speak, she replied, Well, I did. I guess you could say thats how connected we were and always would be.

Despite the horror of my birth and the fact that she was pretty much on her own when I came home from the hospital, my mom says I was instantly the joy in her life. Once you were born, I didnt see anything else but you, she has told me. With my dad busy in the military and the rest of the family miles away, it was just my mom and me. She took me everywhere: to pastry shops, museums, on the bus for hours to see Rome. I received a rosary blessed by the Pope himself. Those are some of her fondest memories.

Some of my fondest memories are from spending summers with my mamas family in their tiny little country house in a strawberry field in Independence, Louisiana. I can still remember the smell of sweet garlic that always hung in the air, the sound of the air conditioner propped on the window that buzzed throughout the day, and the way walking on the floors would make the whole house shake when you went from one room to the next. I used to perform for all my Sicilian relatives, just as I did for my young mother, who would encourage me in her sweet Louisiana accent by saying, Sing for Mama.