A useful resource for readers looking to turn their pain into purpose.
Speaker, entrepreneur, and author Kinuthia aims to help readers learn new principles to redefine past pain and find purpose in this self-help book.
This new work, which follows From Dreaming to Becoming (2013), explores the language around trauma and pain and asserts that readers can harness these things to change the trajectories of their lives. Having gone through many devastating and harrowing experiences himself—including depression, financial losses, and a family member’s terminal illness—Kinuthia says that he’s dedicated his life’s work to helping people understand how pain can either hold them back or propel them forward. He’s careful to point out that the “goal of this book is not to attempt to explain your past, fix it, or justify what you experienced; instead, it’s a guide and an invitation to help you navigate the process of getting unstuck and living forward.” Across nine chapters, the book presents axioms, personal and professional anecdotes, and digestible recommendations for understanding pain, its origins, and its potential. It also covers such topics as trauma awareness, self-love, and personal healing while helping readers apply various lessons to their own experiences. Kinuthia effectively invites them to identify, process, and redirect their pain and ask themselves how it’s affected their sense of purpose. By committing to action, evolution, accountability, and service to others in need, he asserts, one can expect “to repurpose your pain to give you the life you were meant to live.” Over the course of this book, Kinuthia effectively balances technical information with engaging and affecting stories that are likely to leave readers feeling energized. His inviting prose style will help to assure them that he’s not attempting to diminish their difficulties—he only seeks to help them channel them in fulfilling ways. He occasionally employs somewhat lengthy stories from his own life, but they always serve as colorful examples to illustrate his ideas. Many will find this book to be loaded with possibility and value.
A useful resource for readers looking to turn their pain into purpose.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2023
ISBN: 9798892383691
Page Count: 190
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2023
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
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