A practical, encouraging workbook for finding and maintaining serenity.
A guided workbook about noticing and adjusting nervous-system patterns.
Stephenson-Laws’ compassionate workbook based on her self-help tome From Chains to Wings (2025) outlines nonjudgmental self-awareness and strategies for maintaining mind-body balance. The approach consists of three steps: Notice, validate, adjust. Stephenson-Laws recommends observing one’s behavior patterns nonjudgmentally and shifting from “I am anxious” to “I notice anxiety.” She provides tools to track how stress shows up in the body—headaches, clenched jaw, stomach upset—and invites readers to become their own “Body-Stress Detective” and document their somatic experiences. When panic hits, Stephenson-Laws recommends finding parts of the body that are not in crisis, like the earlobes, and focusing on them as a reminder that “there’s at least one safe place in your skin.” The book’s second part covers cultivating new responses. The author distinguishes between “window days,” when you have the capacity to handle various challenges, and “keyhole days,” when you don’t; she suggests adjusting your expectations accordingly. A checklist outlines factors that affect capacity—poor sleep, weather, and even anniversaries. Window days are best for complex projects, challenging conversations, and difficult tasks, while keyhole days involve canceling or postponing nonessential commitments, practicing self-care, and resting. The “Both/And Practice” acknowledges that self-worth isn’t tied to amassing achievements and includes ideas like “I want to help AND I need to protect my energy.” The book’s third part, which advises readers on how to stay regulated in relationships by protecting boundaries, covers topics like “emotional contagion” and consciously connecting with others. The book concludes with the reminder that “the real practice begins now—living with just enough consciousness to have choice when it matters.”
One of the workbook’s greatest strengths is that it doesn’t overpromise outcomes. At the outset, Stephenson-Laws reassures readers, “You cannot fail these exercises.” She doesn’t sugarcoat the process of healing. Instead, she gently nudges readers toward new perspectives with self-talk (“Some good things might actually be safe now”) and reconsiderations of prior beliefs (“Your body is trying to protect you, not punish you”). The book’s measures of success are actionable: “Not from tense to relaxed, but tense to slightly less tense.” The streamlined structure follows a predictable pattern, including reflection, recognition, and mental and behavioral experiments. The book offers a variety of creative exercises and tools, like a permission slip to “not be ‘over it’ yet” and to “take as long as I need,” and a script for talking to the inner protector (“What are you worried will happen?”). Stephenson-Laws offers sample responses to buy time in boundary-pushing situations, such as, “Can I let you know tomorrow?” She also validates readers with statements like “You’re not broken. Your patterns make sense.” The guide proactively prepares readers for hard times with an “Emergency Keyhole Day Plan,” which includes space for names and numbers of supportive people to text, things that can be canceled, and self-care strategies. Concepts like the “10/90 Rule” (a framework for identifying triggers) explain how little things can cause outsize reactions. Readers unfamiliar with the author’s accompanying self-help book may occasionally feel that context is lacking.
Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9798298590181
Page Count: 317
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Dec. 19, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.
An experimental, illustrated essay collection that questions neurotypical definitions of what is normal.
From a young age, writer and comedian Myers has been different. In addition to coping with obsessive compulsive disorder and panic attacks, she struggled to read basic social cues. During a round of seven minutes in heaven—a game in which two players spend seven minutes in a closet and are expected to kiss—Myers misread the romantic advances of her best friend and longtime crush, Marley. In Paris, she accidentally invited a sex worker to join her friends for “board games and beer,” thinking he was simply a random stranger who happened to be hitting on her. In community college, a stranger’s request for a pen spiraled her into a panic attack but resulted in a tentative friendship. When the author moved to Australia, she began taking notes on her colleagues in an effort to know them better. As the author says to her co-worker, Tabitha, “there are unspoken social contracts within a workplace that—by some miracle—everyone else already understands, and I don’t….When things Go Without Saying, they Never Get Said, and sometimes people need you to Say Those Things So They Understand What The Hell Is Going On.” At its best, Myers’ prose is vulnerable and humorous, capturing characterization in small but consequential life moments, and her illustrations beautifully complement the text. Unfortunately, the author’s tendency toward unnecessary capitalization and experimental forms is often unsuccessful, breaking the book’s otherwise steady rhythm.
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063381308
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
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