Book review: I Love You And I’m Leaving You Anyway
I believe I can sum up Tracy McMillan’s book I Love You And I’m Leaving You Anyway in one word.
Gritty.
grit·ty
1. consisting of, containing, or resembling grit; sandy.
2. resolute and courageous; plucky
Yep, definitely gritty.
In a very good way, I might add!
Resembling grit
You know when you are walking along the beach and you get sand in your shoes? And the walk along the beach is extremely pleasurable, but the sandy grit in your shoes is a bit painful? That’s exactly what it felt like reading this book.
Extremely pleasurable because it is a well told and written story, and I didn’t want to put it down. A bit painful because Tracy was hitting just a little too close to home.
Not because my dad is a convicted pimp and drug dealer. Tracy’s dad is.
Not because my mom is a former prostitute. Tracy’s mom is.
Not because I have lived in foster homes. Tracy has.
Because Tracy all too well writes about what it is like to doubt being a desirable woman, worthy of a strong stable loving relationship. This I could relate to!
Regardless of childhood and upbringing, I am sure it is something we all struggle with as women at some point in our lives.
Resolute and courageous
Did I mention Tracy’s dad was convicted drug dealer and pimp, her mom was a former prostitute, and life consisted of foster care?
Sounds like the perfect recipe for an Oh Poor Victimized Me story.
Instead, what we get is an honest assessment of Tracy’s life with no trace of lingering bitterness. I say ‘lingering’ because she takes us through each emotion felt during the various stages of her life. Bitterness. Outrage. Anger. Grief. Fear. But it is very clear Tracy is simply reliving those emotions for us, not still trapped by them.
There is a very fine line between blaming someone for your undesirable behaviours, such as drug and alcohol abuse, and explaining your behaviours in terms of other people’s influence on your choices. It is all too easy to slip into absolving oneself of accountability over one’s actions.
However, Tracy takes a very interesting approach. Each chapter juxtaposes the events of her upbringing against the development of a more recent day relationship. In this way, we see how her past experiences led to her current choices. As do our own past experiences! But, there isn’t a trace of sensationalism or dramatizing to be found.
Instead, we see how one woman resolutely and courageously works her way through the pain and disappoints of childhood to become a strong, whole and healthy woman.
I would love to hear your thoughts
I summed up Tracy’s life story with the word gritty. If you were to write your life story, what one word would you use to sum it up?
More information!
Make sure you return on August 11, 2010, to win a copy of I Love You And I’m Leaving You Anyway.
You can follow Tracy McMillan on Twitter at http://twitter.com/TracyMcMillan
This book review was sponsored by TLC Book Tours. To read more reviews of I Love You And I’m Leaving You Anyway, please check out the schedule by clicking here.
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Book review: Healing with Words
There are very few books that I read in one sitting. However, Diana M. Raab’s Healing with Words happens to be one of them. And not because it was a light read either. A short story, yes, but by no stretch of the imagination light reading.
You see, Healing with Words is all about Diana’s journey through breast cancer, followed up with a diagnosis of multiple myeloma. I couldn’t put the book down, because I needed to know how on earth she got through this and came out strong enough to share her journey with all of us!
Diana got through it one day at a time.
But this book is not so easily written off with that over used cliché. Many of Diana’s days were filled with grief, fear, depression, and an ocean of tears. In other words, Diana tells it like it is.
A large part of Diana’s healing came from writing poetry and chronicling her emotions in her journal. Healing with Words is actually a workbook intended for women diagnosed with cancer. By adding questions and space to write at the end of each chapter, Diana created a tool for women with cancer to journal their own experiences and emotions.
While careful to state that medical choices documented in the book are uniquely her own, Diana provides advice on cutting through the information overload to be found on cancer and treatments. As well, she provides guidance on the questions to ask and whom best to ask them of.
We are also treated to Diana’s beautiful, yet intense, poetry. Again, there are no holds barred, such as this short but to the point poem entitled Bifurcation:
Having a breast sliced off
leaves a woman with two lives –
the one before the lost
and the one after.
There is a time for platitudes, but there is also a time for “hey, this is the reality of what it is like”. Healing with Words is that reality. But, it is also validation that the roller coaster of emotions is normal, and they need to be experienced in order to heal emotionally and physically.
I would love to hear your thoughts!
Do you write to help heal? What other methods do you use to work through pain, be it physical or emotional?
More information!
Make sure you return on August 3, 2010, to win a copy of Healing with Words.
Diana can be found at Diana M. Raab
This book review was sponsored by WOW! Women on Writing
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Book review: It’s Not That I’m Bitter …
I love to laugh. As a matter of fact, people at work say they know where to find me by following the sound of my laughter.
I love, therefore, people who make me laugh, and one of the great things about reviewing books is finding new funny authors.
E, author of Shmirshky, is very funny.
Barbara Barth, author of The Unfaithful Widow, is very funny.
And now I have found my new funny author, Gina Barreca, with her book It’s Not That I’m Bitter … Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Visible Panty Lines and Conquered the World.
Reading It’s Not That I’m Bitter … is like watching a stand up comedy routine, without being subjected to the inevitable annoying heckler in the audience. Unless you count my Siamese if I happen to be reading during his treat time.
The great thing about stand up comics is that they are simply stating facts about everyday life. They just happen to point out what nobody else is willing to, or they put a fantastic spin on the facts.
Gina Barreca has this down to a science when it comes to the daily life of the us over forty gals.
Take bathing suit shopping. Her description of women attempting to purchase bathing suits is brilliant, but I really laughed out loud at this part:
No man – no straight man in Western civilization, that is – has ever tried on a bathing suit. Men wear the bathing suit their mothers bought them when they were seventeen until there’s a hole where they put their keys, and then they walk into some cheap store, find the sale bin, find a suit, hold it up, say, “it’s blue; it’ll fit,” and then they leave.
It’s true! Name me a man — straight man in Western civilization — that tries on a bathing suit before buying it!
It’s Not That I’m Bitter … is full of obvious, yet funny, facts like this. From bathing suit shopping, to gift giving, to feminism, Gina covers it all.
But, just as I was getting really comfortable and thinking It’s Not That I’m Bitter is a laugh a minute, I find a few poignant moments. Like what it is to love a man who is not available to freely love you back.
Then … right back to laughter.
And like any good comedian, Gina’s stories are really to make us stop and think about issues. As she explains at the being of the book, her ‘role is to notice patterns of foolishness in our collective human behaviour and to chronicle them.’
I say she did an excellent good job.
More information!
Make sure you come back on July 15, 2010, to enter to win a copy of Gina Barreca’s It’s Not That I’m Bitter …
You can find out more about Gina and her book at Untamed & Unabashed
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Book review: The Shadow Effect
I love Deepak Chopra, so when I saw The Shadow Effect on the TLC Book Tour, I said “Me! Me! Me!”
Then the book arrived, and I realized it was only co-written by Chopra. “Oh dear,” I thought, “I don’t like co-written books.” I find them quite disjointed, and the voices too dissimilar.
I am happy to report this is not the case with The Shadow Effect. Rather, the book flowed smoothly from one author to the next. And total bonus, I discovered two more authors I now thoroughly enjoy, Debbie Ford and Marianne Williamson.
The Shadow Effect refers to the piece deep down inside of each us, that we would prefer remain buried. It doesn’t though. Instead, it shows up as a snide or hurtful comment. Or a self-sabotaging decision. Or self-destructive and addictive behaviours.
Chopra, Ford and Williamson contend that the more we try to silence the Shadow’s voice, the louder it gets. The more we try to ignore its presence, the stronger it becomes.
Instead, they give us very compelling reasons to acknowledge the existence of our Shadow. Then, bring it right out in the open and claim it as a piece of our humanity.
At this point, we can shine a bright light of self-love on it.
When a shadow is bathed in light, it disappears.
What I found most impressive about The Shadow Effect was the authors’ call for personal accountability. It is one thing to examine events that gave rise to our individual Shadows, but at some point you have to move on.
To quote a passage from Williamson:
It is so easy, when a situation is difficult, to cast all blame for the problem onto others. But the true seeker says, “What did I do wrong? What was my part in this disaster?”
Hear! Hear!
If you are ready to examine your Shadow, this book is for you. It is written with Chopra’s usual scientific, yet passionate, voice. And if, like me, you are unfamiliar with Debbie Ford and Marianne Williamson, then you are in for a treat. They complement Chopra beautifully, while bringing their own styles and passions to the book.
More information:
Make sure you come back on June 24, 2010, to enter to win a copy of The Shadow Effect.
For more reviews on the Shadow Effect, please visit:
Wednesday, June 16th: World’s Strongest Librarian
Thursday, June 17th: Create a Balance Coaching
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Book review: The Unfaithful Widow by Barbara Barth
Barbara Barth’s book, The Unfaithful Widow, has got be one of the best books I have read. It is also one of the hardest books I have read … because it was so good.
Confused?
Allow me to explain.
At the age of sixty, Barbara lost her beloved husband. The Unfaithful Widow chronicles her life for the year following his death. The problem for me was she chronicled it so well, it pinched my heart imagining losing Mr. Very Right. And yet, I couldn’t put the book down.
The Unfaithful Widow is subtitled Fragmented Memoirs Of My First Year Alone. Each chapter describes exactly that, a fragment of life. Like flipping through a photo album and getting pieces of a person’s story.
Actually, it is a brilliant way to write a memoir. Cast your mind back over the past year. What do you get? Fragmented memories. Highlights of the ups and downs. However, Barbara describes the jigsaw pieces of memory so well, I am able to complete the puzzle. In the end, I felt like I had taken the year’s journey with her.
I laughed when she laughed. I cried when she cried.
Barbara lays it all bare. Literally, because I even know how many bras she owns, and the style of panties she prefers.
She is open about her forays into the world of dating, hence the playful title The Unfaithful Widow. And yes, dating within months of widowhood. And yes, including sex. All described with candour and humour. (Note to Barbara: I think you and I met some of the same men)
We also discover, as she did, the incredible support network she had. The neighbour who took over cutting her grass. The girlfriends who remembered to call on potentially painful days, and made sure she got out of the house. Cousins who called long distance just to chat. The techie who kept a straight face when Barbara told him her computer was possessed by her husband’s ghost.
In the last chapter, Barbara talks about the woman she became over that first year. She still cries, but not as much anymore. I started to cry too, until I thought back to something Mr. Very Right did.
I was telling him about the book and started getting all choked up at the thought of ever losing him. He picked up the book, flipped it over and said “‘Oh cool! She has a Corvette.”
Lesson learned from Mr. Very Right: Focus on what makes you happy.
And in the end, that’s what Barbara does. She focuses on what makes her happy. From her rescue dogs to antiquing, from driving a sports car to writing, Barbara shows us that life does go on after losing a loved one.
It just looks different.
More information!
Make sure you come back on June 16th to win a copy of The Unfaithful Widow.
You can learn more about Barbara, and find out how to purchase her book, at Barbara Barth living life on my own terms…
The Unfaithful Widow book review is sponsored by Women On Writing.
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Book review: Psychic by Sylvia Browne
When I was purusing the TLC Book Tours list for my next book review options, I landed on Sylvia Browne’s Psychic: My Life in Two Worlds. I knew I had to read this book.
Not because she is psychic. I have my own psychic and paranormal experiences, so I was not looking for good ghost stories.
Not because she is associated with controversy. What well known psychic isn’t?
No, I knew I had to read Psychic because of this statement:
Sylvia tells how, once she had reached her seventies, and believed her romantic life over, the real Mr. Right finally –impossibly–showed up.
This had Silver & Grace written all over it, and I knew I would want to share this book with you. I was not disappointed.
You still get a good dose of ghost stories. You still get insight into some of the controversy surrounding her. But most importantly, you get the story of an ordinary woman (yes, psychics are just ordinary people) who made her fair share of mistakes and unfortunate decisions.
Of course, the first place I went to was the insert of photographs. I am an unabashed photograph voyeur. It helps me connect to the story teller .. and admittedly get a good chuckle over the fashions back in the day.
Then I settled into a story I can relate too. Getting married too young before she had time to discover who she is. Extreme joy of motherhood. Marriage break up. New relationships. Shock of betrayals. Then finally taking ownership for her own happiness and her own career.
Then and only then did Mr. Right enter her life.
Sylvia does discuss her belief system about the spirit world, and there might be a tendancy while reading to go ‘Uh-huh, ya …. whatever you say, lady’. However, to her credit, she doesn’t ask you to believe what she knows to be true. She simply asks you to be open minded to the existence of other realms of being and energy. Fair enough, I say.
I found Sylvia to be honest and forthright, with a good does of self-depreciating humour thrown in. After all, the world may give her celebrity status, but she is just an ordinary woman.
Just like you and me.
More information!
I will be paying it forward with my copy of Psychic with a book give-away. Make sure you come back on June 3 and enter to win.
For other TLC Book Tour reviews of Pyschic go visit:
Tuesday, May 25th: My Odd Family
Wednesday, May 26th: Art and Angels
Thursday, May 27th: Silver & Grace
Monday, May 31st: Mommy Mystic
Tuesday, June 1st: In Pencil
Wednesday, June 2nd: Sitting in the South
Wednesday, June 9th: A College Witch’s Experiences
Thursday, June 10th: Wordsmithonia
Tuesday, June 15th: Spiritual-Web
Wednesday, June 16th: Paganites
Thursday, June 17th: Lizzie’s Logic
Monday, June 21st: Winterspells: A Magical Life in Faery Witchcraft
Tuesday, June 22nd: Cynthia Lou
Wednesday, June 23rd: Laura and her favorite things
Tuesday, June 29th: Psychotic State
Wednesday, June 30th: Your Dark Passenger
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Blog carnival
Do you have a post you would like to share on aging? Submit your post to the monthly Silver & Grace blog carnival.
Book give-away: The Girls from Ames
Book give-away contest time! The Girls from Ames is by Jeffrey Zaslow; a chronicle of female friendship that has withstood the test of time. Check out my book review if you haven’t already read it.
Here’s what you need to do to win a copy of The Girls from Ames:
1. Using the Silver & Grace contact form send me an email
2. In the subject line write Girls from Ames Give-Away
3. Submit email by April 26, 2010, midnight, Eastern Standard Time
After the contest close, I will number the submissions in order of receipt and pick a winner using a random number generator.
I will notify the winner by return email and ask for an address to mail the book to.
TLC Book Tours will then send you the book, and you can curl up and enjoy a good read.
Have fun and good luck.
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Book review: Work With Passion In Midlife And Beyond
Do you want to make a living by doing something you truly love? I sure do! I have aspects of my life that I am very passionate about. Work is not one of them.
Work is so not one of them!
According to Nancy Anderson, author of Work With Passion In Midlife And Beyond, we can be financially successful doing what we love.
Me! Me! I want a piece of that!
Work With Passion In Midlife And Beyond is a workbook, although not formally structured as such. Anderson advises us to read the entire book, then go back through and perform the tasks described in each chapter. Good approach, because seriously, how many of us start a book, put it down, spend days or weeks doing the assignment, then come back to read the next chapter?
When I pick up a book, I want to know how it ends. And this book ends with me loving my job so much it feels like play.
Me! Me! I want a piece of that!
Each chapter is written as if I am sitting in Anderson’s office for a counselling session. She provides plenty of information on what I need to do, and how I need to do it. But, she also goes a step further and anticipates the questions or concerns I would ask if I really was sitting with her.
The sub-title of the book is Reach Your Full Potential & Make the Money You Need. AND make the money we need.
Fantastic! How do we get there?
Step One: streamline your life
Wait, Eliza, this is about making money.
Yes, and Anderson gives very compelling reasons for decluttering and simplifying your life first. I did this the year I lived on my own after my long term relationship ended, prior to meeting Mr Very Right.
Step Two: write your life story
Now we have to write an autobiography? When do we get to the making money part?
After you deal with your ingrained life scripts that are holding you back. While I didn’t literally put my life to pen, I did spend my early forties figuring out what my family dynamics are and how they impact my belief system.
Step Three: recognize your passion clues
Ah, now we are getting somewhere. We can smell the money.
Interestingly, authoring Silver & Grace I hit all five passion clues.
Step Four: recognize your off-track signals
We are reading this because we are off track. Move on. Let’s get to the good stuff. You know, making money.
Ah ha!
Off-track Signal #1 is Money Is Your Priority.
At my day job, I work for the paycheque. It pays the bills. It’s a means to an end.
I also tried my own consulting business on the side. I gave it up after six months, because it was as draining as my day job. And now I realize money was my priority. I wanted to make money consulting so I could get out of my day job. Turns out, I was just trading one off-track endeavour for another.
Step Five: set yourself up for success
And you are saying, Eliza, that success is not measured by money?
I am saying that by the time you are done this book, you realize that true success is living your life with passion. The money ends up going part and parcel with that.
I consider a self-help book actually helpful when several light bulbs go off in my head. This book lit up my entire brain. I highly recommend Work With Passion In Midlife And Beyond if you are ready to put old belief systems behind you and truly Reach Your Full Potential & Make the Money You Need.
More information
A copy of Work With Passion And Beyond will be given away here at Silver & Grace on April 27th. Make sure you enter to win!
Learn more about Nancy Anderson and Work With Passion In Midlife And Beyond here.
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Book review: The Girls from Ames
The Girls from Ames, by Jeffrey Zaslow. The sub-title is A Story of Women & a Forty-Year Friendship. A perfect book for Silver & Grace. Right gender, right age group, right values. A book I was happy to review.
Then I found out it was eleven women. That’s right eleven women! Oh dear, I thought. I am not going to be able to relate to this. As I point out in my post The importance of female friendships, I am really not a sista type of gal.
But I endevour to be open-minded in my book reviews and dove in to see what I could find.
Getting to know the girls
First, I found photographs. I love photographs. Ask anyone who friends me on Facebook. The first thing I do is go and stalk every single one of their photo albums.
Photographs of the girls when they were little. Photographs of them in highschool. As young women. And now.
Okay, we are off to a good start. I already feel like I know these women, because I have a visual.
Hey, this is my life!
Next, they are all my age. As in born the same year as me, give or take one side of that year or the other. I got every single one of the pop culture references. It was like walking through my own life. Music, hair, clothes, food, movies. It was all there.
Now I have a visual AND I’m feeling at home.
Finally, I realized it didn’t matter that it was a story about eleven female friends, it was equally relevant to just two or three in a friendship. The support, the laughs, the tears, and even the cruelties described are universal amongst friends.
Huge kudos
Kudos to these women who laid their lives bare. Not so much to the world, but to each other. They took a huge risk allowing the author, Zaslow, to write about what they were really thinking in various situations. I can just imagine some of the tears that had to have happened. “Why didn’t you tell me that is what you really thought?”
And yet, the proof of their friendship is it survived this minute disection.
And kudos to Zaslow. He entered a world that most men simply just accept as fact while being careful to stay on the periphery.
Enter it and interrupt it. And quite well, actually.
Warning!
I do have two warnings.
At first, I found the flow of the story a bit disjointed. But then I had a good chuckle to myself recognizing that Zaslow wrote the book exactly the way women communicate. We finish each others sentences. We jump to new streams of thoughts with no warning. We return to old streams of thoughts with no warning. And yet, somehow, we know exactly what each other is talking about at all times.
It was probably the only way that made sense to write it. I can just image the poor man’s notes!
Second, this book comes with a serious tears warning. Just so you know, there is an entire chapter dedicated to the illness of a child. However, I do have to say this was my favourite chapter. Here is where the true intricacies of female friendship shone through loud and clear.
If you were born around 1963, you will totally get every word in this book. For the rest of you, it is an incredible telling of the psychology of female friendships.
More information!
A copy of The Girls from Ames will be given away on April 20th. Make sure you come back and enter the contest!
Check out the website for The Girls from Ames HERE.
Meet the girls and see all their photos HERE.
Read an excerpt HERE.
For more TLC Book Tour reviews of the Girls from Ames visit:
Wednesday, April 14th: Simply Stacie
Friday, April 16th: Chaotic Compendiums
Monday, April 19th: Rundpinne
Tuesday, April 20th: Luxury Reading
Wednesday, April 21st: Book Nook Club
Thursday, April 22nd: Suko’s Notebook
Monday, April 26th: Feminist Review
Tuesday, April 27th: Beth’s Book Reviews
Wednesday, April 28th: Bookworm with a View
Thursday, April 29th: She Reads and Reads
Friday, April 30th: Book Blab
Monday, May 3rd: Cafe of Dreams
Tuesday, May 4th: Janel’s Jumble
Wednesday, May 5th: Anniegirl1138
Thursday, May 6th: Peeking Between the Pages
Monday, May 10th: One Person’s Journey Through a World of Books
Tuesday, May 11th: Life in the Thumb
Wednesday, May 12th: lit*chick
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Book review: The Power Of Adversity
I have to admit, when I looked at the title of Al Weatherhead’s book, The Power of Adversity, I got stuck on the word adversity before I even cracked open the pages. I never say that I faced adversity in my life, rather I faced challenges. Each event in my life simply led to my growth and self-improvement. Why on earth is this author using such a negative word? Then I opened the book and I started to read.
The sub-title of The Power of Adversity is Tough Times Can Make You Stronger, Wiser, and Better. Ah-ha, now this is something that Weatherhead and I are on the same page about. He calls it adversity and I call it challenges, but regardless of semantics, each distressful life event can and should ultimately be used to our advantage to make us stronger, wiser, and better.
Weatherhead’s adversities –alcoholism, rheumatoid arthritis, heart disease, family estrangement — are his own, but the lessons he derived from them are universal. He expands upon twenty-two of them in his book.
I greatly appreciated that he didn’t try to sugar coat life’s challenges. While some self-help authors tend to say “Buck up, it’s all good”, Weatherhead writes:
“Facing adversity is never easy. I’ll do my best not to minimize the sheer terror and difficulty associated with suffering as I offer ways to use adversity to better ourselves and the world we share.”
He kept his promise. Throughout the book, Weatherhead is very honest about the anger and grief he experienced while in the thick of his own adverse circumstances. This makes the book extremely empathetic to any challenges we are facing. There is nothing worse than having someone pat us on the back while we are down, dolling out cliches like ‘everything happens for a reason’ or ‘that which doesn’t kill us makes us stronger’.
Empathetic, but lovingly firm. Ultimately, Weatherhead is saying you can wallow in self-pity and bitterness, or you can extract the lessons you need to learn and move on.
All twenty-two lessons might not be applicable to you, but I consider a self-help book a success when I extract even one lesson that resonates with me. In The Power of Adversity I found two that jumped out and said ‘hey, you need to apply these right here and now’:
- Instead of “Why me? … Why not me?
- Never think “I have to do it”. Instead think “‘I have it to do.”
If you are facing some life challenges, I can guarantee that at least one, if not multiple lessons from The Power of Adversity, will be meaningful to you and help you find opportunities for growth.
As Weatherhead says:
“Adversity is the bridge that can carry us to our future – it will take us to where we can live fully, bravely, and meaningfully in the world.”
More information!
A copy of The Power Of Adversity will be given away in a contest here at Silver & Grace on April 5th.
The Power Of Adversity is available for purchase through Amazon by clicking the Silver & Grace book recommendations.
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