In this debut memoir, a personal trainer shares how fitness helps in handling life’s challenges, including her own.
Blackerby’s narrative begins with her father’s ghost: She reprints portions of a letter he wrote in 1993, which asked her to write again “[i]f you feel so inclined,” then briefly recounts his death by cancer, although his demise really began long before. “I know this now,” she notes. “Life is merely a procession towards death, its meaning defined only by the results of our movement, our journey through it.” She then describes her own journey, largely through the lens of her work as owner of Spirit Fitness Training in Austin, Texas. In chapters organized by exercise concepts (“Balance,” “Breathe,” “Triggers,” “Pain,” etc.) that often contain client stories, Blackerby explains how to find one’s core, to persevere and to achieve “overload”: “If we want growth in our lives, we must be willing to bear the stress and discomfort of the change we seek: Overload. If we do not achieve overload, we will not achieve growth.” Blackerby established her company after a breakdown that followed a stormy past filled with abuse, racism and rape. Her doctor father was autocratic and abusive; her mother was timid and defeated; as a 6-year-old, she was repeatedly raped by a 15-year-old family friend; she was also raped twice in college; and her multiracial family experienced major upheaval when they had to leave their privileged existence in Jamaica for Canada and, eventually, America. Blackerby concludes her saga by recalling her grandmother, a positive force in her childhood, and with a poem of self-empowerment that ends: “See you at the gym.” One can easily see how Blackerby must be a wonderful trainer. She demonstrates great empathy: Her encouragement of a retired widow seeking to climb to the heights of Machu Picchu is a particularly inspirational and heartwarming example. Blackerby is at times a bit elliptical relating her own rather overwhelming story, which may leave some readers wanting more. Overall, however, Blackerby has effectively harnessed the power of “muscle memory,” providing a series of gracefully written vignettes from her own and others’ lives to support a larger narrative trained on hope and recovery.
An evocative, compelling account of childhood trauma and the strength of a mind-body connection.
Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1497318229
Page Count: 130
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 7, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
A moving, heartfelt account of a hospice veteran.
Lessons about life from those preparing to die.
A longtime hospice chaplain, Egan (Fumbling: A Pilgrimage Tale of Love, Grief, and Spiritual Renewal on the Camino de Santiago, 2004) shares what she has learned through the stories of those nearing death. She notices that for every life, there are shared stories of heartbreak, pain, guilt, fear, and regret. “Every one of us will go through things that destroy our inner compass and pull meaning out from under us,” she writes. “Everyone who does not die young will go through some sort of spiritual crisis.” The author is also straightforward in noting that through her experiences with the brokenness of others, and in trying to assist in that brokenness, she has found healing for herself. Several years ago, during a C-section, Egan suffered a bad reaction to the anesthesia, leading to months of psychotic disorders and years of recovery. The experience left her with tremendous emotional pain and latent feelings of shame, regret, and anger. However, with each patient she helped, the author found herself better understanding her own past. Despite her role as a chaplain, Egan notes that she rarely discussed God or religious subjects with her patients. Mainly, when people could talk at all, they discussed their families, “because that is how we talk about God. That is how we talk about the meaning of our lives.” It is through families, Egan began to realize, that “we find meaning, and this is where our purpose becomes clear.” The author’s anecdotes are often thought-provoking combinations of sublime humor and tragic pathos. She is not afraid to point out times where she made mistakes, even downright failures, in the course of her work. However, the nature of her work means “living in the gray,” where right and wrong answers are often hard to identify.
A moving, heartfelt account of a hospice veteran.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-59463-481-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
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