An intermittently helpful interactive workbook for caregivers that overinvests in its Old Hollywood themes.
A Wizard of Oz–themed guide to self-care for caregivers from Green.
The Wizard of Oz and its adaptation, The Wiz, are employed as metaphors for the caregiving experience in this self-help book. The author is a registered nurse and tells us that much like landing in Oz, assuming a caregiving role involves “all sorts of new customs, expectations, relationship dynamics, challenges, and personal insecurities to navigate. And it can feel like everyone knows the landscape but you.” The book is meant to evoke the proverbial yellow brick road, leading readers “home” in a sense. Divided into six sections, the book covers how to map a path forward, cultivate self-love and compassion, embrace acceptance, harness the power of intuition, adapt in the face of change, and find joy amid challenges. Green recommends delegating tasks based on one’s strengths and drafting a personal mission statement to create achievable goals. To foster a positive mindset, the author advises treating yourself like a friend and emphasizes the importance of working through grief, anger, trauma, and anxiety. Green offers strategies for overcoming human and circumstantial roadblocks, such as pausing for reflection or connecting with those facing similar challenges. Asking for what you want, like Dorothy did with the wizard, is among Green’s pithy Oz-referencing communication tips. Green also explores the symptoms of resilience fatigue and strategies to overcome it and concludes with encouragement for finding inner joy. This comprehensive book combines anecdotes, reflection exercises, goal-setting prompts, and practical strategies to help readers create a personalized roadmap toward authentic and healthy caregiving. Readers seeking increased self-awareness will appreciate the ample opportunities for written reflection. The book’s design, including charts, section dividers, and shaded text boxes, makes for an engaging reading experience. The Wizard of Oz metaphor is appropriate for the most part but doesn’t strengthen the author’s often generic advice, like taking up shopworn self-help activities like journaling and mindfulness. High-gloss AI-generated images of glamorous people feel jarringly out of sync with the vintage Hollywood aesthetic and a caregiving audience.
An intermittently helpful interactive workbook for caregivers that overinvests in its Old Hollywood themes.Pub Date: June 24, 2025
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Green Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.
The late actor offers a gentle guide for living with more purpose, love, and joy.
Mixing poetry, prescriptive challenges, and elements of memoir, Heche (1969-2022) delivers a narrative that is more encouraging workbook than life story. The author wants to share what she has discovered over the course of a life filled with abuse, advocacy, and uncanny turning points. Her greatest discovery? Love. “Open yourself up to love and transform kindness from a feeling you extend to those around you to actions that you perform for them,” she writes. “Only by caring can we open ourselves up to the universe, and only by opening up to the universe can we fully experience all the wonders that it holds, the greatest of which is love.” Throughout the occasionally overwrought text, Heche is heavy on the concept of care. She wants us to experience joy as she does, and she provides a road map for how to get there. Instead of slinking away from Hollywood and the ridicule that she endured there, Heche found the good and hung on, with Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford starring as particularly shining knights in her story. Some readers may dismiss this material as vapid Hollywood stuff, but Heche’s perspective is an empathetic blend of Buddhism (minimize suffering), dialectical behavioral therapy (tolerating distress), Christianity (do unto others), and pre-Socratic philosophy (sufficient reason). “You’re not out to change the whole world, but to increase the levels of love and kindness in the world, drop by drop,” she writes. “Over time, these actions wear away the coldness, hate, and indifference around us as surely as water slowly wearing away stone.” Readers grieving her loss will take solace knowing that she lived her love-filled life on her own terms. Heche’s business and podcast partner, Heather Duffy, writes the epilogue, closing the book on a life well lived.
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781627783316
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Viva Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.
The former iCarly star reflects on her difficult childhood.
In her debut memoir, titled after her 2020 one-woman show, singer and actor McCurdy (b. 1992) reveals the raw details of what she describes as years of emotional abuse at the hands of her demanding, emotionally unstable stage mom, Debra. Born in Los Angeles, the author, along with three older brothers, grew up in a home controlled by her mother. When McCurdy was 3, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Though she initially survived, the disease’s recurrence would ultimately take her life when the author was 21. McCurdy candidly reconstructs those in-between years, showing how “my mom emotionally, mentally, and physically abused me in ways that will forever impact me.” Insistent on molding her only daughter into “Mommy’s little actress,” Debra shuffled her to auditions beginning at age 6. As she matured and starting booking acting gigs, McCurdy remained “desperate to impress Mom,” while Debra became increasingly obsessive about her daughter’s physical appearance. She tinted her daughter’s eyelashes, whitened her teeth, enforced a tightly monitored regimen of “calorie restriction,” and performed regular genital exams on her as a teenager. Eventually, the author grew understandably resentful and tried to distance herself from her mother. As a young celebrity, however, McCurdy became vulnerable to eating disorders, alcohol addiction, self-loathing, and unstable relationships. Throughout the book, she honestly portrays Debra’s cruel perfectionist personality and abusive behavior patterns, showing a woman who could get enraged by everything from crooked eyeliner to spilled milk. At the same time, McCurdy exhibits compassion for her deeply flawed mother. Late in the book, she shares a crushing secret her father revealed to her as an adult. While McCurdy didn’t emerge from her childhood unscathed, she’s managed to spin her harrowing experience into a sold-out stage act and achieve a form of catharsis that puts her mind, body, and acting career at peace.
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982185-82-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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