Book Review: Dream Big

I feel like I am on a non-fiction kick this summer, right? I've read so many and luckily they have all been really good. I have to tell you that I didn't know about Bob Goff, or rather, I thought I didn't know about him until I realized he wrote Love Does which I read when it first came out. Plus, the subtitle of this was "Know What You Want, Why You Want It, and What You're Going to Do About It" and I just felt like every part of that was calling to me. So here we are. 

Dream Big - Bob Goff

Bob Goff, the New York Times bestselling author of Love Does and Everybody, Always, is on a mission to help people recapture the version of their lives they dreamed about before fear started calling the shots. He wants them to dream big.

In his revelatory yet utterly practical new book, Bob takes you on a life-proven journey to rediscover your dreams and turn them into reality. Based on his enormously popular Dream Big workshop, Bob draws on a lifetime of living and dreaming large to help you reach your larger-than-life dreams. In Dream Big he shows how to

learn to define clearly your dreams for yourself,

identify the obstacles holding you back,

come up with a specific plan for reaching goals, and

develop the tools that will help you act on the plan.

Dream Big is the only book you need to uncover the wild and exciting dream for your life you’ve hidden from yourself--and help you take the steps necessary to achieve it.

If ever there was a time that I wondered what the heck is happening in my life... this would be it. The last four years, actually. I felt like we had be doing fairly well after the birth of Penelope, finances weren't great but manageable. Our marriage was doing really well, we were parenting three kids pretty well together, and overall it was just a nice, cohesive unit. 

Then Lucy was born and it all kind of went down the tubes. Not only was I struggling to stay alive, I was battling the worst (or what I thought was the worst) depression of my life, I was trying to parent four kids, Matt and I were struggling, we were in spiraling into financial ruin (for the second time in our marriage), and it just felt like we can't be up for too long. We can't have a good run for too long because surely life has to even it out. It's like a ferris wheel, the top is so great but you can't be there forever. You have to come down so somebody else has a turn at the top. I felt like that was what was happening to us. 

One of my dreams has always been to write a book. I've always wanted to be a published author. I want to sign books, find my book in a bookstore, I want to get up at early hours to be on the Today Show or something, maybe meet Oprah. My only obstacle has always really been, what do I write about? Did I have anything anyone really cared about? 

The blessing in our trip to the bottom has been having a story handed to me, practically on a platter. When I saw this book I felt like maybe it would help me clear up some of the fuzzy edges, so to speak. I was really struggling with different parts of it and this was SUCH a motivational book .

If you don't know my personal story the summary is I had an Amniotic Fluid Embolism, I died giving birth, I was revived, I have a litany of medical issues resulting, including but not limited to, cognitive impairment and memory loss. Memory loss is one of the worst things a person can experience and Bob talks of that in chapter 4 titled Who Are You? A friend of his had a stroke and lost memories and had a hard time remembering her identity. Of course he explains that you don't have to have had a traumatic event and lose memories, but you can lose your identity through responsibilities you take on that no longer suit you. 

So much of the book references religion and God, but even as someone who is no longer feels firm in the beliefs I've held, you can still gain so much from this book. It lays out the game plan, at least the concrete steps, you have to fill them in. 

I've seen this quote floated a few times in reviews for this book, which is funny because I wrote it down as soon as I read it because I felt like it spoke to me directly: 

"What we do isn't who we are. Writing a book doesn't make me an author. It doesn't even mean I'm a guy who can spell. It simply means I'm a guy who tried."

No joke, I have it on a sticky note on my desk because it reminds me to just keep trying. I don't have to accomplish all of those lofty goals, I just have to try. 

A huge thank you to TLC Book Tours for having me on this tour, Thomas Nelson Publishing and Bob Goff for sending me a copy for review. I can't tell you how many times I've gone through this book, thinking through different things time and again, not to mention how many friends I've talked about this book with. Even if you aren't a big reader, get the audiobook and listen while you fold laundry or something. 

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Book Review: The Opposite of Certainty

It's been awhile since I've read a non-fiction but as soon as I saw the description for this I knew I had to read it and jumped at the chance. Even if you have never had a child with cancer you are going to relate to this mom and the journey of emotions just being a mom.

The Opposite of Certainty

Janine Urbaniak Reid

What happens when we can no longer pretend that the ground underfoot is bedrock and the sky above predictable?

All Janine Urbaniak Reid ever wanted was for everyone she loved to be okay so she might relax and maybe be happy. Her life strategy was simple: do everything right. This included trying to be the perfect mother to her three kids so they would never experience the kind of pain she pretended not to feel growing up. What she didn’t expect was the chaos of an out-of-control life that begins when her young son’s hand begins to shake.

The Opposite of Certainty is the story of Janine’s reluctant journey beyond easy answers and platitudes. She searches for a source of strength bigger than her circumstances, only to have her circumstances become even thornier with her own crisis. Drawn deeply and against her will into herself, and into the eternal questions we all ask, she discovers hidden reserves of strength, humor, and a no-matter-what faith that looks nothing like she thought it would. 

Beautifully written and deeply hopeful, Janine shows us how can we come through impossible times, transformed and yet more ourselves than we’d ever allowed ourselves to be.

Phew... I don't know where to even start with this one but when I say that this was therapy in a book, I really mean it. I go to therapy a few times a month and I feel seen when I'm there, but this book is written so well and I felt seen by the author. She gets it. It makes me feel like all of the irrational things that rattle through my head aren't crazy after all.

In this book we have Janine, a mom with three kids, a wife to a husband with a rising career. She's a Pinterest worthy mom at the cost of herself at times. Oftentimes it takes a tragedy for us to take a hard look at ourselves and gather the courage to fix it. For me, it was dying during giving birth, for Janine is was learning her son had been born with a brain tumor which was like them throwing themselves off the cliff. So much information with little time to process the situation let alone your options,but then having the feelings you do, trying to make sure you're doing the right thing for his son and maintaining his mental health, but making sure your marriage doesn't tank during all of it.

Frankly, how anyone makes it is a miracle, and I have first hand experience at how hard it is to keep going after that traumatic thing that happens to people.

I have to give you a couple of things that made me cry because it was someone else verbalizing something I feel and I can't articulate myself:

I wipe my eyes with the heel of my hand. Growing up I'd learned to stomp out inconvenient and scary feelings that threatened my ability to maintain control amid the chaos. This is a skill I've honed as an adult, a superpower I use to run the business of our family with a mostly affectionate efficiency. The problem is I now find myself leaking-all the time. 

I can relate to that so much. My parents weren't mean about it but it was made clear nobody had time for you to cry about things. People had real problems out there and I'm sitting here crying over something stupid. I find myself doing the same thing to my children sometimes and I have to consciously stop and validate those feelings and help them work through it.

My neediness is embarrassing. As a person who devoted her life to being super capable, it's particularly unsettling. I feel relief when Annie is on the other end of the phone. Eventually, though, we have to hang up, and I'm left with me. But this morning, instead of trying not to think about what might be going wrong in Mason's brain, I shift my focus to the neurologist who "forgot" to order an MRI during Mason's era of "migraines" and "normal" tremors. I also think of Dr. Window-In-The-Head scouring Mason's chart for what I'd done wrong, anything that could absolve the hospital and his colleague of liability. Had I breastfed him enough? Vacationed near Chernobyl? 

You guys. I had to actually put the book down and just cry it out because YES. Yes to all of this. I feel like I'm four years from my trauma and I'm not anywhere near over it for lots of reasons and though professionals tell me it is normal and maybe I won't ever get there and it's OK to not be OK, I'm certain people think I should be OK. After awhile on really bad days you stop reaching out because surely they see their phone and think, "are you kidding me? AGAIN?". Rational? Not really, but here we are. I identified with the guilt. I have experienced doctors telling me this is all my fault but I go over everything in my head wondering what did I do wrong? How does this happen on a fourth pregnancy? Why am I just NOW allergic to my own amniotic fluid?! Maybe I shouldn't have eaten so much pizza and nachos. Maybe I should have exercised more. Drank more water. It's endless and pointless, but I wanted to hug this author because I get it.

She mentions people, with well intentions surely, giving her unsolicited advice and suggestions. There is always someone who has something to say and knows someone or has a fifth cousin with the SAME issue and you know what they did? Ate grass and called it a salad. Worked wonders. *sarcasm*

In between all of that, there is this gripping story about her son, and imagining what it would be like if this is my child. You find yourself on this emotional roller coaster with her. She talks about her relationship to God and it being this confusing thing but also something she is relying on because at some point you have to just let go and hold onto hope. Aside from the surgeries, bleeds, and treatments, its a whole new life once you go home and her comparing it to like bringing a new baby home seems so on point.

I just... I could talk about this book for days and it'll certainly be on my mind for a long time. If you're a mom who has a child who is (or has) gone down a similar path, you might gain some peace from this. If you're a mom struggling with the world right now, burning at both ends and feeling like a failure, this will remind you how critical you are. There's that quote along the lines of being a speck in the world, but to your kids you're the entire world? That's this book.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Thank you so much to TLC Book Tours for having me on this tour but also Thomas Nelson and W Publishing for sending me a copy to review. The biggest thanks of all to Janine Urbaniak Reid for not just getting it all down on paper but putting it out into the world. I don't think you realize how perfect and timely this will be for so many people.

   

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Book Review: Advice I Ignored

If you know me at all, or have been a reader for awhile, you know that I have depression. I have a lot of other things, but depression is pretty awful. For the longest time I really thought that this all started after I had Olivia and began as post-partum depression that just never really got better and morphed over time. Being in therapy the last three years has taught me that definitely isn't how it happened but rather, I've had this for a major portion of my life, certainly going back to my teen years. I think if I knew that I had depression way back then, or anyone ever thought to really ask me some questions, maybe the adult portion of my life would have gone in a drastically different direction.

We'll certainly never know, but if you are a parent of a teenage (or tween) child(ren), this would be maybe a helpful read for not just your teen but you as well.

Advice I Ignored - Ruby Walker

When Ruby Walker was fifteen, she went from a numb, silent, miserable high school dropout to a joyous loudmouth in one year flat. Advice I Ignored answers the question everyone's been asking her since: What happened? In ten illustrated chapters, you'll learn how to:

get out from under self-hatred

gain a sense of free will

deal with failure without falling apart

create your way through an existential crisis

use exercise to beg your brain for endorphins

have an identity beyond "sad"

and more!

Full of embarrassing stories, honest advice, and fierce hope, Advice I Ignored is a self-help book for people who hate help. And themselves.

While this is certainly a non-fiction book, it certainly can't be labeled as long and boring, over doing it on the dry reporting of what you really should have done in life. Instead, this is a young woman reflecting on her youth and realizing that while not all of the uninvited advice over the years was valuable, some of it turned out to be pretty useful once she decided to apply it.

I won't tell you that reading this is going to suddenly be the light bulb that lights the dark room you're living in. It's like that meme that is like, "When someone tells you to cheer up and I say, 'wow, Karen- thanks, I never tried that.'", while parts of this book were solid things to stop and think about, there are other parts that felt like that annoying yoga instructor telling you if you just sat in the sun longer and appreciated birds you'd feel better.

I really liked how she really focuses on self esteem and how it's OK to take up space. It's not OK to put others down, certainly, but that same thing needs to apply to ourselves. Whether we do it as a joke or not, we can't put ourselves down. Her example of whether she would say it to her best friend or not was a pretty easy way to teach this concept to middle school and high school children. If she wouldn't, she absolutely couldn't say it to or about herself. We can tell each other we have to love ourselves all day but nobody really tells you how. Well it starts with not talking about yourself like garbage. Even if you're alone. Even if it is a joke. It isn't even OK to be cruel in the name of honesty.

Throughout the book we learn a lot about the author and some of her struggles, and there is a section about her assault and it struck me then that I really related to a lot of it and have almost an identical story to tell and I know that as an adult, a lot of my intimacy issues stem from that. Not just that, but insecurities of people noticing me. Complimenting me, asking me out, everything always makes me feel like something else is coming and that I couldn't just earn a compliment. A compliment was a borrowed gift, kind of.

Overall? I would give this a solid 3 stars. It was pretty interesting, definitely a fast read. It has illustrations from the author that connect with her stories and information. I think the only downside for me was the lecture on exercise. Even though the author talked about her own health related obstacles, it almost feels like she didn't recognize that some people can't exercise to the level of having endorphins released if they still want to move the next day at all. I appreciate the benefits of exercise and I know in another life time I would have been waving that flag, but I also know if one more person tells me to exercise they will be the reason I go to jail.

I really do think this would be an excellent book to give to a teenager who may be experiencing depression, or just a difficult time in general. I do think it is a pertinent read for parents because the book does detail some behaviors that seem funny or harmless but are really detrimental for a child/teen's mental health and it might be the time to really check in with them.

Thank you to the author and PR By the Book for having me on this tour and providing a copy for review.

   

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