This Week In My Library 10.24.23

Betas, MLMs, and Swimming from Cuba

Life of a Bookman

Bookman: 1. a person who has a love of books and especially of reading. 2. a person who is involved in the writing, publishing, or selling of books. Oh, hi thats me!!

Book for the nervous system: Where you're reactive is where you're wounded. That's my biggest takeaway from finishing The Origins of You: How Breaking Family Patterns Can Liberate The Way We Live and Love by Vienna Pharaon. I highly recommend reading it for anyone trying to improve their interpersonal relationships. Pharaon not only gives an intellectual & psychological roadmap for understanding why we react the ways we do, but she provides easy exercises to move through the original wounding that caused it. Also, it just helps to understand yourself!

Returning to: Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living by Pema Chodron. I was recommended this book by an astrolger many moons ago. It's a beautiful meditation on compassionate living. I opened it back up, flipping to a random page and landed on: “When the world is filled with evil, transform all mishaps into the path of bodhi (enlightenment). It's a good time for this book or any of Pema right now, when the world feels pretty dark and terrifying.



What I'm writing: Holy, hell y'all. I sent That Novel to beta readers!!!!! I've got a whole highlight story series on IG right now explaining the process if you're interested in the details. I can't wait to hear their feedback. It's really wild (and nauseating) to write a thing and know that people you respect and admire are reading that thing. I guess it's good preparation for when That Novel hits shelves one day ;)

Women’s Studies

What gets passed down becomes our history. A few for the canon: I've been listening to The Dream podcast, because Multi-Level-Marketing is fascinating to me. How I made it this far into my adulthood without becoming one myself is a huge mystery to me (there's still time!!! jkjk). But this season of The Dream is dedicated to the intersections of MLMs and Life Coaching. It's interesting how much the host doesn't know about the coaching world (because I've been adjacent to it for so long while working in women's leadership), but it was fun (and sometimes harsh) to re-discover the self-help idiosyncrasies through her POV.



Ok, this is now my third mention of my friend Carrie Keller-Lynn's reporting on the Israel-Hamas War for The Times of Israel, but today it's because she's started a Telegram channel for real-time reporting. It's been so helpful to cut through the noise on social media and get the facts of what's happening from a world-class reporter who is there. Follow her on Telegram.

Pass it on

Stories are heirlooms. Here's one of mine: This weekend I went to the SCAD Film Festival for a screening of Nyad, featuring Annette Bening and Jodie Foster. It's a scripted telling of Nyad's five attempts to swim from Cuba to Key West. At age 64!! It has so many elements I love in a story, grappling with age, womanhood, friendship, strong personalities, courage. I left feeling like, “what would we achieve (or feel!) in life if not for our women friends.” The movie is worth the watch on Netflix!

xx