Okay, so this one is by request. A reader left me a comment asking for recommendations for “self-help” books. Self-help not one of my biggest topics – with the exception of “what should I be when I grow up” books which I have way too many of, and the odd copy of Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway that I picked up because someone1 recommended it.
The exception would be this book.
A good friend gave me this book at a real low point in my life. I had been been working way too hard and was burnt out. We – my husband, this friend, his wife, and another friend – drove every year to North Carolina for a week on the beach in the Outer Banks, glorious weeks in a big house (shoulder-season), walking on the beach, cooking and eating for each other, and reading the huge bags of books that we had carried with us.
This year, after working a long week, I volunteered for an event my husband’s organization was running. They catered lunch but it was Jamaican food – not known for their vegetarian selections and, to be honest, not from the most sanitary restaurants, either. So I skipped lunch and, as soon as we finished the event, we rushed to the rental car agency before I could grab anything to eat, spent four hours stuck in traffic, then worked our way south, finally stopping at a McDonalds on Route 1 in Delaware at about 11 pm at night and they were trying to close up. They didn’t even have french fries, because the fry station had already shut down. My husband and our friend ordered burgers. I ordered a super-sized strawberry milkshake – I was so hungry! – and scarfed it down so fast. And then we started driving south again. I say “we started driving” but the guys – being New Yorkers – didn’t have their drivers licenses even through they were in the 40s because, well, New Yorkers.
About the time we hit Kitty Hawk, I was in gastric distress but it was maybe 5 or 6 am and there really wasn’t any place to stop and we were almost there – just another 30 miles or so – and we were so tired. We pushed on, got to the house, woke someone up, and fell into our beds. Or rather, everyone else fell into their beds: I spent the next two hours in the bathroom. My symptoms at this point had progressed to the point that I realized I needed an emergency room. I woke my husband up and we woke up the wife of the other couple we were sharing the house with, and they drove me to the emergency room which – it being the Outer Banks – was quite a distance away. So now, on top of my physical symptoms and exhaustion, I was overwhelmed by an incredible sense of guilt for waking her up at an ungodly hour, forcing her to drive me a long distance away and wait around in a hospital when she had been looking forward to a glorious day on the beach instead.
After a series of tests, the emergency room diagnosed eColi, put me on, I think, Cipro, and prescribed a week of clear liquids. Cipro (or whatever the Rx was for) made me photosensitive, so I had to stay out of the sun. So here I am, at the beach, sick, unable to join in the nightly feasts that were customary, unable to sit out on the deck or go to the beach or do any of the other outdoor things we liked doing. Oh, and there is one grocery store on Hatteras at the time, with a limited selection of vegetarian clear liquids. A little vegetarian gelatin (limited flavors), popsicles, miso soup, uh, ginger ale.
My peaceful vacation had turned into the vacation from hell and my mood took a dive south. On the day I reached bottom, I refused to even get out of bed.
One of my friends drove2 to Buxton books and picked up a copy of this book. He had read it and found it transformed his life. With nothing else to do – and feeling that the title was prophetic – I took turns that day reading the book and napping.
And the next day I got out of bed, moved into the living room with everyone else, and read it again from the start. And the following day, I dragged a deck chair into the shade, poured myself a glass of ginger ale, and read it again. When I got home, I bought more of her books, books by Ticht Nacht Han, a CD by Jack Kornfield, and started meditating. I meditated at home, during the lunch hour at work, in the dentist’s chair, on the subway. It changed my life.
Not technically a self-help book, this book is a series of essays about people whose lives “fell apart”, people living with fear, and sadness, and regret. It doesn’t give you a 10-step process or the secret to life, it just helps you learn to live with your feelings, and suggests how you might reframe things so that you don’t get mired down in negative emotions and give up hope.
Reading this book was the first step I took to reassessing how I was living and changing it. And my husband and our NY friend made a pact and got their drivers licenses so that, if there was a future emergency on our annual travels together, we had more than one driver.
All’s well that ends well.
Change+Management 