A heartening guidebook for finding healing through connection with one’s core values and with the world.
Teacher and activist Boxey frames recovery from addiction as a communal effort in this nonfiction guide.
The author grew up with an alcoholic father and had her own “party girl” era that began when she was a teen. These facts are related: the trauma of her childhood led to her own less-than-healthy choices as a young adult. As Boxey began her own journey to recovery, she found these words of her father’s, which her family had adopted as a credo, could serve as her guide: “You are part of a family. Be true to yourself. Glorify God in all that you do.” In this book, she expands upon these principles for those seeking sobriety. Family, she argues, is a product of our hardwired need to connect; addiction, on the other hand, is often the result of individualism run amok. Boxey asserts: “We’re attempting to meet needs that can’t be met alone, no matter how hard we try. Instead of asking for help, we turn to comforts and coping tools, or self-medication.” For the author, “family” extends beyond her family of origin to include all of humanity. Boxey posits that being in good relationships with others begins with living one’s values fully, without fear or shame, and without lies. As for glorifying God, the author explicitly states that this “is not a Christian book.” Here, “God” means higher power—or, as Alcoholics Anonymous puts it, “a power greater than ourselves.” (Among the exercises offered at the end of each chapter is one designed to help those raised without religion to define what a “higher power” might mean for them.) Boxey is a gentle coach; she recognizes that habits we may regard as bad might have begun as adaptive traits—that is, behaviors that, at some point in our lives, helped us to survive. She is also refreshingly honest about the fact that she is speaking from a place of imperfection: One section of the book is called “THE LIBERATING EXPERIENCE OF BEING A FUCKUP.”
A heartening guidebook for finding healing through connection with one’s core values and with the world.Pub Date: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9781959524021
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Rise Books
Review Posted Online: July 25, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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