Don’t Forget To Laugh

The book

Twenty-nine short stories about the days that nearly won.

In this collection of personal stories, Kaye Laine shares her journey of navigating life’s challenges with humor and grace. From unexpected turns to small daily triumphs, she explores how a sense of fun can be a powerful tool for resilience.

The stories are short on purpose. Some are four pages, one is a single paragraph, and several are about nothing more consequential than a grocery run gone wrong. Read straight through or open it anywhere — it was built for the nights when you only have ten minutes and no patience for a slow build.

A practical, heartfelt, and vital guide for finding joy when life gets heavy — without pretending it isn’t heavy.

248pages

6 × 9paperback

ISBN978-1-64532-123-4

Audiobook6h 12m

The meaning behind the story

Laughing was never the opposite of taking it seriously.

Kaye started writing these during a year she would not have chosen. What she found was that the moments she could still laugh at were the moments she could still look at directly — and that turned out to be the whole point.

Humor

Laughter isn’t denial.

Making a joke about something is not the same as deciding it doesn’t matter. More often it is the first sign you have stopped flinching — that you can hold the thing in your hands and turn it over.

Scale

The small things carry the weight.

None of these stories are about the big moment. They are about the cup of coffee afterwards, the ridiculous errand, the phone call you almost didn’t make. That is where the recovery actually happens.

Practice

Grace is something you do.

Not a temperament you were issued at birth. It is a set of small, repeatable choices — and like anything repeatable, it gets easier to find the second time, and the tenth.

“You are allowed to find it funny. That is not the same as being fine, and nobody said you had to be fine.”

From the introduction

About the author

Kaye Laine

Kaye writes about resilience, family, and the small absurdities that keep us upright. She spent a decade in work that taught her how people talk about hard things when they think nobody is listening, and she has been writing it down ever since.

Don’t Forget To Laugh is her first book. It began as a set of emails to a friend who was having a worse year than she was, which is the only reason any of it got written down at all.

She speaks to book clubs, workplace groups and conferences about humor as a resilience practice, and reads the audiobook herself — badly, she says, but honestly.

Contact

Say hello.

For speaking requests, book club visits, press enquiries, or to tell Kaye about the day you nearly didn’t laugh at — this reaches her directly.

Direct

hello@kayelaine.com

Press & rights

press@kayelaine.com