A touching remembrance that will appeal to an audience that’s open to alternative spiritual practices.
A nurse’s memoir tells of a life devoted to spiritual progress.
Debut author Hill spent 13 years working in a hospice—an emotionally depleting but morally fulfilling profession. Along the way, she regularly confronted death and the idea of her own mortality, which always frightened her. However, she drew consolation and guidance from her spirituality, which she discovered at 14, when she had a premonition of her maternal grandmother’s imminent demise. She eventually studied Reiki, shamanic healing, and Kundalini yoga, as well as a number of 12-step programs; these studies not only helped her manage the painful emotional wounds of an abusive childhood, but also proved useful to her patients. Hill splits her remembrance into two parts. The first is a collection of short biographical sketches of her most memorable patients, emphasizing her spiritual connection with each. The second section of impressionistic vignettes provides an account of her own spiritual development, the challenges she encountered, and the lessons she learned, with a focus on her mother’s failing health and death. The author discovered that when one lifted the taboo on discussing death, it created a spiritual space for healing and acceptance: “It was uncomfortable and people thought they were protecting their loved ones” by avoiding the topic, she says. “The reality was that when it was brought out into the light and discussed with love and reassurance, magic happened.” Hill writes with clarity and passion, and she unpacks her own emotional stumbles with impressive candor. She also provides a thoughtful discussion of what she sees as the limitations of Western medicine, particularly the pharmaceutical industry, and advocates intelligently for the medicinal and spiritual benefits of cannabis. That said, readers uninterested in New-Age spirituality are unlikely to be find many of her accounts persuasive, as when she says that a patient communicated to her posthumously in the form of a butterfly.
A touching remembrance that will appeal to an audience that’s open to alternative spiritual practices.Pub Date: April 19, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-982202-00-2
Page Count: 210
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: Oct. 8, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Honest messages from one of America's best known women.
A compilation of advice from the Queen of All Media.
After writing a column for 14 years titled “What I Know For Sure” for O, The Oprah Winfrey Magazine, Winfrey brings together the highlights into one gift-ready collection. Grouped into themes like Joy, Resilience, Connection, Gratitude, Possibility, Awe, Clarity and Power, each short essay is the distilled thought of a woman who has taken the time to contemplate her life’s journey thus far. Whether she is discussing traveling across the country with her good friend, Gayle, the life she shares with her dogs or building a fire in the fireplace, Winfrey takes each moment and finds the good in it, takes pride in having lived it and embraces the message she’s received from that particular time. Through her actions and her words, she shows readers how she's turned potentially negative moments into life-enhancing experiences, how she's found bliss in simple pleasures like a perfectly ripe peach, and how she's overcome social anxiety to become part of a bigger community. She discusses the yo-yo dieting, exercise and calorie counting she endured for almost two decades as she tried to modify her physical body into something it was not meant to be, and how one day she decided she needed to be grateful for each and every body part: "This is the body you've been given—love what you've got." Since all of the sections are brief and many of the essays are only a couple paragraphs long—and many members of the target audience will have already read them in the magazine—they are best digested in short segments in order to absorb Winfrey's positive and joyful but repetitive message. The book also features a new introduction by the author.
Honest messages from one of America's best known women.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2014
ISBN: 978-1250054050
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Flatiron View Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An eye-opening glimpse into the attempted self-unmaking of one of Hollywood’s most recognizable talents.
The debut memoir from the pop and fashion star.
Early on, Simpson describes the book she didn’t write: “a motivational manual telling you how to live your best life.” Though having committed to the lucrative deal years before, she “walked away,” fearing any sort of self-help advice she might give would be hypocritical. Outwardly, Simpson was at the peak of her success, with her fashion line generating “one billion dollars in annual sales.” However, anxiety was getting the better of her, and she admits she’d become a “feelings addict,” just needing “enough noise to distract me from the pain I’d been avoiding since childhood. The demons of traumatic abuse that refused to let me sleep at night—Tylenol PM at age twelve, red wine and Ambien as a grown, scared woman. Those same demons who perched on my shoulder, and when they saw a man as dark as them, leaned in to my ear to whisper, ‘Just give him your light. See if it saves him…’ ” On Halloween 2017, Simpson hit rock bottom, and, with the intervention of her devoted friends and husband, began to address her addictions and underlying fears. In this readable but overlong narrative, the author traces her childhood as a Baptist preacher’s daughter moving 18 times before she “hit fifth grade,” and follows her remarkable rise to fame as a singer. She reveals the psychological trauma resulting from years of sexual abuse by a family friend, experiences that drew her repeatedly into bad relationships with men, most publicly with ex-husband Nick Lachey. Admitting that she was attracted to the validating power of an audience, Simpson analyzes how her failings and triumphs have enabled her to take control of her life, even as she was hounded by the press and various music and movie executives about her weight. Simpson’s memoir contains plenty of personal and professional moments for fans to savor. One of Kirkus and Rolling Stone’s Best Music Books of 2020.
An eye-opening glimpse into the attempted self-unmaking of one of Hollywood’s most recognizable talents.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-289996-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
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