A certified integrative coach shares how embracing all aspects of herself led to greater overall well-being in this debut memoir and self-improvement guide.
Mahaini, a Danish native now living with her husband and children in Dubai, was feeling ashamed about being an “angry bitch” while dealing with the demands of being a wife and mother. Such incidents finally led her to undergo training at the Ford Institute, which helped her to fully recognize and thus take responsibility for this pattern of behavior, which had been present throughout her life. She details how she had imposed a lot of pressure on herself while earning a Ph.D. in pharmacology at a university in Australia, for example, and had less-than-satisfactory relationships with men that “came partly from my biological father’s not having much contact with me when I was a child, which in a child’s interpretation meant that I was unworthy.” Mahaini notes that she is better at handling her life now, including making sure that she allots time for such activities as coaching work and writing this book. She believes this greater sense of happiness is due to her having “learned to absolutely love and adore my angry part, for showing me the way.” She now can also heal herself “so the anger doesn’t burst forth so frequently. I can listen to my needs much more carefully, so it doesn’t have to erupt to get my attention.” The author offers an engaging exploration of the “inner work,” as she terms it, required to transform one’s life. Many readers, particularly mothers, should connect to her challenges of being a caretaker of young children, particularly the difficulty yet also necessity of carving out personal time that will actually help alleviate these stresses. At times, however, Mahaini’s musings, such as her angst while at a “very nice beachside hotel in Oman,” come off like “first-world problems” rather than relatable crises. And more details on the tools of integrative coaching, which clearly benefited her, would have been welcome.
A highly personal narrative that nevertheless showcases the universal value of self-discovery.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4525-1821-3
Page Count: 172
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: SELF-HELP
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Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.
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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. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | SELF-HELP
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PROFILES
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
Categories: PSYCHOLOGY | SELF-HELP
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BOOK REVIEW
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