I bet the next lifetime was even better.

Her books are so filled with optimism and a love of nature!

"L. M. Montgomery 

Of all the biographies in this list, the one that surprised me the most was L. M. Montgomery’s. Her most famous books, the Anne of Green Gables series, although personal favourites, definitely err towards the saccharine, and are powerfully optimistic, even as Anne navigates various heartbreaks and griefs. So it’s bracing to read Montgomery’s diaries, in which she is tormented by migraines and depression, 'unspeakable horrors' and frequently describes her life as a 'hell' full of suffering and wretchedness. 

Montgomery’s mother died before she was two years old, and she was raised by her strict grandparents. She had a lonely and isolated childhood. As a young woman, she fell in love with a married man, who died of the flu a month after she broke things off. She later came to believe that her lifelong depression was caused by him haunting her from beyond the grave. She spent much of her adult life enmeshed in lawsuits against her publishers, with whom she had signed ill-advised contracts as a young and inexperienced author.

'But a large part of her suffering came from her profoundly unhappy marriage to a mentally ill Presbyterian minister, who was continually haunted by the idea that he and his whole family were doomed to eternal damnation, drove erratically as if trying to kill his family, and retreated into dour, month-long silences that set everyone on edge. Montgomery frequently recorded that she wished she had never married him. 

Together they had three sons, one of whom died in infancy, and Montgomery had a difficult relationship with her two adult children, particularly her son Chester, who was an unpopular loner with a reputation for indecently exposing himself. Towards the end of her life, she suffered from blinding migraines, constant nightmares, anxiety and a raft of other unpleasant symptoms including insomnia and vomiting. It’s extremely likely that Montgomery’s eventual death from an overdose of barbiturates was intentional.

'There has never been any happiness in this house – there never will be,' she wrote in her journal. 'The present is unbearable. The past is spoiled. There is no future.'"

~ Hera Lindsay Bird

"The most miserable and fucked-up children’s authors"

https://thespinoff.co.nz/books/20-09-2024/the-most-miserable-and-fucked-up-childrens-authors-rated