Untamed

 A book reader’s to-be-read list is often built from their soul. Sometimes, you will pull a book from the shelf to read that has been sitting for a long time, but as you get into it, you realize that your soul needs that book at that moment. For me, this year, that book was Untamed by Glennon Doyle.

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It is a memoir in essays that relays Doyle’s story and transition of becoming a woman who is comfortable in her skin and confident in who she is as a person, a wife, and a mother. She shares some of her most vulnerable moments and thoughts with readers and how she has lived, grown, and learned from them. She talks of marriage, addiction, parenting, mental health, career shifts, and more.

What’s beautiful about her writing is her willingness to be vulnerable. In that vulnerability, she doesn’t hold back, she lays it all out–the ugly and the pretty–and we see the growth in her life in her writing. I wish that I could allow myself to be that vulnerable in my writing; maybe one day.

So many of her essays hit me deep in my soul. Some days, I could only read one because her words resonated so much that all I could do was sit and be in my thoughts and feelings for a while. That this book had been on my shelf for about nine months before I started reading it and that I began reading it as I began the process of a career and life shift is no coincidence. Again, my soul was in deep need of this book at this moment.

Everyone should read this book, especially women, but everyone would be better. We all have things that hold us back that we have to work through, things that have tamed us. Using her stories and experience, Doyle shows the world that we can be untamed and retrained to break free from what has been holding us back from being our authentic selves.

Savor

 Sometimes, a book just gets to you. It gets into your mind, your soul, and your feelings. I recently finished reading Savor, by Fatima Ali, and it has infiltrated my mind, soul, and feelings.

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If you’re unfamiliar with Fatima Ali, that means you don’t watch many cooking competition shows. She was introduced to so many people around the world by competing on Chopped and, more infamously, Top Chef. She always cooked with her soul and her heritage in every dish. Her dream was to awaken Americans to the delicious beauty of her native Pakistani cuisine. However, her dream had to be lived by someone else because, at the age of 29, she died of cancer.

The first 75% of the book has chapters from both Fatima and her mother discussing Fatima’s childhood and upbringing in Pakistan. They also discuss her move to the United States for culinary school and all of the opportunities that came afterward. They talk of the good and the bad, the struggles of family, and the unconditional support from those you love when you have a dream.

The last 25% is about her cancer battle, still with chapters by both Fatima and her mother. They talk of the death of Fatima’s dreams along with her body. They discuss the frustration, grief, stress, and heartache of watching a loved one die. But they also talk about the difficulties in processing a mother losing a child. 

As a mom, I felt the anguish coming off the pages. I felt sadness for her going through losing her child, watching her child die, and not being able to imagine being in that position. And then I look at Fatima’s bucket list and am reminded that my children will be left behind by me one day, and I need to fulfill their bucket lists with them, to leave them full of memories of a mom who made their dreams a reality.

While this was a heartwrenching read, I am so glad I read it. She has a fantastic story, and she wanted to inspire other women to take risks and live their dreams. Hopefully, her memoir will do that throughout generations to come.

The Women

 In 1965, America was changing. The children born during and right after World War Two were now adults, and they began envisioning America their way. Born the children of patriotic veterans, they are now watching their friends and brothers be sent to Vietnam for a war that doesn't make sense. But the patriots will still do the right thing: volunteer to serve their country. Finley McGrath is one such patriot, and so is his little sister, Frankie.

The McGraths were raised on stories of military heroism. The men joined up while the women made homes that supported their servicemembers. Frankie, however, isn't ready to settle down and become a housewife. She has a brand new degree in nursing, and there's a war that needs nurses, so Frankie signs up with the Army Nurse Corps and heads to Vietnam.

Every day, Frankie sees the worst of war. She also builds bonds with those she serves. Those who understand. When she returns home, though, it is an entirely different war. No one wants to believe that women were in Vietnam, and everyone thinks that Frankie needs to put that part of her life away and move forward. But without the support she needs to cope with the war experiences, Frankie feels like she's just a disappointing failure to everyone.

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The Women is a tragic and beautiful story in a typical Kristin Hannah style. It is a story that desperately needed to be told. While it focuses on one woman, it spotlights the fact that female servicemembers are often forgotten about. Those women need all the support that their male counterparts get.

I did have points where I struggled while reading. As a military spouse, PTSD sufferer, and child of an addict, some things were difficult to read. But these things are the reality for many people, and just because they hit too close to home doesn't mean I should avoid them because those stories are just as valid as mine.

I can say that this is one book that lives up to all of the hype it has been given, and I recommend it highly, especially for book clubs, as it has so many perspectives for discussion.

Reading with Global Intentionality

 I turned 40 earlier this month. It’s big, but I always knew it was coming. Two years ago, I set myself on a reading challenge to see how globally I could read by my 40th birthday. 

I have always been a diverse reader, but I know I can get stuck in location ruts, so I set out to see how many places I could read about in two years. This could be done through the setting in a fiction book, a location for a memoir or biography, or just learning about that location in a non-fiction book. Going in, I knew I wouldn’t be able to do every country within the two-year deadline, so it was more about seeing how far I could travel when being intentional about my settings.

By being deliberate about finding new locations, I’ve read books I would never have picked up otherwise; I enjoyed some that I did not. By seeking new places, I found my literary horizons expanding not just globally but with new authors, new types of stories, and new understanding of cultures other than my own.

Where have I been able to travel read over the last two years? I have read books set in 33 of the 50 states (taking recommendations for the Dakotas and Idaho). And I have read books set in 47 countries, including El Salvador, Lebanon, Tanzania, and Croatia. I am working off of a list of 201 certified and named countries, so ending at around 25% isn’t bad, especially since I know that I read some countries more than once (default of a historical fiction junkie). 

Just because my 40th birthday has now passed doesn’t mean that I am finished. Far from it, I’ve already got books set in far-off places waiting for me to dive into soon. I will continue to read with global intentionality, and now I want to see how long it takes for me to mark off every state and country from the list. 

Do you have a favorite book set in a place where you don’t live? Drop the title so I can check it out!

Thoughts after a conversation

 Mental health is important to me.

Words that are followed up by actions are important to me.

Being kind and caring to others is important to me.

Having your family accept who you are is important to me.

Having someone treat you as they expect to be treated is important to me.

Being true to my values and core beliefs of kindness and acceptance in important to me.

Being told that I am in the wrong for focusing on what is important to me, on what furthers my hopes of healing myself and the world, is not alright with me. 

Being told this by someone who claims they can see through our differences but then refuses to accept my being different from them is not alright with me.

Sharing my feelings in a way of taking care of my mental health to then be told that I am being mean and hypocritical is not alright with me. 

Being accused of saying things I did not say is not alright with me.

More After the Break

At one point in my life, I wanted to become a journalist. That changed in the spring of 1999 when journalists invaded my community in ways that were unforgivable at the time. To be fair, we were the exception back then. In 1999, a school shooting was instantly national news, especially one as destructive as ours.

Even so, they still felt intrusive. I remember walking into church on a Sunday morning after attending a classmate's funeral the day before and having someone offer me condolences because they saw me on the news the night before in a camera pan clip of funeralgoers. I did not even know that news crews were there.

I recently read Jen Maxwell's memoir, More After the Break, in which she revisits some of the news stories that she covered that have had the most impact on her over her years of reporting. Through her stories, I have gained a new perspective on those reporting through the tragic moments that happen. Looking back almost 24 years later, I see how the reporters and news crews were just doing their jobs. Some of our local news people were possibly trying to find information on their niece or nephew; maybe they were related to a staff member.

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I had never thought to give them that type of consideration before. Until I had read Maxwell's book, I still saw them as unfeeling, cold-hearted leeches. I mean, they had us on the news for months without any appearance of sympathy or understanding for our situation, so why wouldn't we hate them.

Maxwell's entire book is interesting, but the last two chapters really tugged at me. I cried, smiled, and saw the side of journalism that interested and intrigued me in my younger days. I remembered the pre-Columbine girl who wanted to tell stories about her community and the world around her. I never lost my desire to write or share stories about what is happening around me. And now that I realize that doing their jobs on the worst day of my life wasn't easy on the newscasters either, I feel bad that I have spent over 20 years being angry with them.

Losing what you never had

 They say you can’t lose what you never had, but you can. And sometimes that hurts.

I have two children, but it is highly likely that I will never be a grandmother. Most days, I am good with that. It doesn’t usually phase me at all; it is just what is likely. I knew

that eventually, I would have a day where this fact would hurt, and today was the first of those days.

Having grandchildren has never been an expectation, but knowing it may not happen still brings a level of grief and disappointment. I’m at a point in life where some of the friends I have raised my babies with are becoming grandparents, and I know that means that I’ll be having more days like this as I see them experience things that I likely won’t get to do. 

We were out today, and I saw a junior edition of one of the games our family loves to play. I picked it up to look at it, and my husband saw something on my face because he asked me who I would buy it for. All I could do in response was cry. I cried because my first thought when I saw it was that it would be great for our daughter’s kids since she loves the original version. And since our daughter probably cannot have children, I probably won’t have grandchildren to buy that game for. And every time I think about it, I cry all over again.

But I know that not every day will be hard. And when the hard days come, I need to acknowledge, accept, and validate those feelings because they’re natural and reasonable to have and won’t last forever.