Intuitive and inspirational; an invitation to tranquility for tortured psyches.
Through personal experiences with “suffering addiction,” Duda (Coming Home: A Guide to Dying at Home with Dignity, 1981) shares practical exercises for recapturing joy in her self-help book.
“[J]oy is our birthright,” says Duda, a psychologist and end-of-life counselor. Quoting the Dalai Lama, she says, it’s “the purpose of life.” At one point, she wonders if we’re “doomed” to joy since, as evinced by smiling babies everywhere, “it’s our original nature.” Yet for many, like the author, there seems to be comfort in pain, drama and depression. Wounded after a series of life-altering accidents, Duda fell into a deep despair. One day, a blind beggar reminded her of the importance of gratitude, triggering a state of grace she has spent the last 30 years writing about. Sure, depression has its place, admits the author, calling it a “fertile garden, in which the seeds of change can grow,” but only by stealing visceral moments throughout our daily lives and striving to remain in the eternal present, do we discover the resilience of joy and the ability to conjure it at any time. She notes that fellow addicts seek out additional highs through the violence and fear peddled by mass media. For them, joy is even more elusive and ethereal. The first part of the treatise takes the form of a memoir, with teachable moments of joy gained and lost throughout a busy, jet-setting life, including a harsh awakening with a consciousness-raising group that turns out to be a cult, a seminal meeting with Mother Teresa in Calcutta and a year in Paris editing a book about torture. It’s also full of keen observations about our collective need to whine and the “killjoy” words and phrases we wield absent-mindedly in everyday conversation. The last third of the book provides exercises for readers to achieve Duda’s seven practices of joy. More than tips for meditation, the guide offers motivations and methods that make sense and, judging from her exuberant treatise on finding peace, seem to succeed.
Intuitive and inspirational; an invitation to tranquility for tortured psyches.Pub Date: March 28, 2013
ISBN: 978-1475263787
Page Count: 188
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 31, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.
More life reflections from the bestselling author on themes of societal captivity and the catharsis of personal freedom.
In her third book, Doyle (Love Warrior, 2016, etc.) begins with a life-changing event. “Four years ago,” she writes, “married to the father of my three children, I fell in love with a woman.” That woman, Abby Wambach, would become her wife. Emblematically arranged into three sections—“Caged,” “Keys,” “Freedom”—the narrative offers, among other elements, vignettes about the soulful author’s girlhood, when she was bulimic and felt like a zoo animal, a “caged girl made for wide-open skies.” She followed the path that seemed right and appropriate based on her Catholic upbringing and adolescent conditioning. After a downward spiral into “drinking, drugging, and purging,” Doyle found sobriety and the authentic self she’d been suppressing. Still, there was trouble: Straining an already troubled marriage was her husband’s infidelity, which eventually led to life-altering choices and the discovery of a love she’d never experienced before. Throughout the book, Doyle remains open and candid, whether she’s admitting to rigging a high school homecoming court election or denouncing the doting perfectionism of “cream cheese parenting,” which is about “giving your children the best of everything.” The author’s fears and concerns are often mirrored by real-world issues: gender roles and bias, white privilege, racism, and religion-fueled homophobia and hypocrisy. Some stories merely skim the surface of larger issues, but Doyle revisits them in later sections and digs deeper, using friends and familial references to personify their impact on her life, both past and present. Shorter pieces, some only a page in length, manage to effectively translate an emotional gut punch, as when Doyle’s therapist called her blooming extramarital lesbian love a “dangerous distraction.” Ultimately, the narrative is an in-depth look at a courageous woman eager to share the wealth of her experiences by embracing vulnerability and reclaiming her inner strength and resiliency.
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.Pub Date: March 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0125-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
PROFILES
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A vibrant, encouraging depiction of a sinister disorder.
A British novelist turns to autobiography to report the manifold symptoms and management of his debilitating disease, depression.
Clever author Haig (The Humans, 2013, etc.) writes brief, episodic vignettes, not of a tranquil life but of an existence of unbearable, unsustainable melancholy. Throughout his story, presented in bits frequently less than a page long (e.g., “Things you think during your 1,000th panic attack”), the author considers phases he describes in turn as Falling, Landing, Rising, Living, and, finally, simply Being with spells of depression. Haig lists markers of his unseen disease, including adolescent angst, pain, continual dread, inability to speak, hypochondria, and insomnia. He describes his frequent panic attacks and near-constant anhedonia, the inability to experience pleasure. Haig also assesses the efficacy of neuroscience, yoga, St. John’s wort, exercise, pharmaceuticals, silence, talking, walking, running, staying put, and working up the courage to do even the most seemingly mundane of tasks, like visiting the village store. Best for the author were reading, writing, and the frequent dispensing of kindnesses and love. He acknowledges particularly his debt to his then-girlfriend, now-wife. After nearly 15 years, Haig is doing better. He appreciates being alive and savors the miracle of existence. His writing is infectious though sometimes facile—and grammarians may be upset with the writer’s occasional confusion of the nominative and objective cases of personal pronouns. Less tidy and more eclectic than William Styron’s equally brief, iconic Darkness Visible, Haig’s book provides unobjectionable advice that will offer some help and succor to those who experience depression and other related illnesses. For families and friends of the afflicted, Haig’s book, like Styron’s, will provide understanding and support.
A vibrant, encouraging depiction of a sinister disorder.Pub Date: Feb. 23, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-14-312872-4
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2015
SEEN & HEARD
Readers Donate Depression Book After Star Suicide
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