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 Year of Yes – 304 Little boy was Kaz Brekker from Six if Crows for Halloween. He 3-d printed a crow’s head to attach to his cane and we painted the whole thing at home. I am not a fan of Halloween and yet I really enjoy watching others get into it. I love that little boy is always in the spirit to celebrate and have fun. I love that both my boys went to be with friends tonight. And now that it’s the end of Halloween, bring on Christmas! Yes to friendship. #yearofyes #karenikayearofyes  Year of Yes – 303
Saturdays are for lying on the couch. I miss summer already and I am also excited about Christmas season. I am grateful for the quiet of these cold days. Snuggling up with a good book, music I love and a warm drink. Yes to simplicity. #yearofyes #karenikayearofyes  Year of Yes – 302
Hello Friday. Glad you’re here. I’ve been told not to take things personally my whole life. I’m slowly starting to understand how to do that and what might be possible for me as a result. Yes to growth. #yearofyes #karenikayearofyes  Year of Yes – 301
I miss going places and doing things. A friend of mine at work told me a few weeks ago that the top way people feel included at work is by feeling recognized. Which I guess is a way people feel seen and appreciated maybe? So I’ve been thinking about how I prefer to be recognized and how I can communicate clearly about that. And what makes me feel seen. And I’ve also been thinking about how I can do that for others. How I can listen better for what makes them feel seen and appreciated. Yes to being seen. #yearofyes #karenikayearofyes  Year of Yes – 300
300 days into this year. This year for which I had so many hopes. This year which we spent getting tested and vaccinated and tested more. A year spent in solitary. Alas, parts of this year turned out so much better than I hoped and others so much worse. Isn’t that life for you? I discovered a new-to-me musician today and have been listening to his work nonstop and it has given me endless joy. So grateful for artists who share their soul with us so we might have more color and joy in our lives. Yes to art. #yearofyes #karenikayearofyes  Year of Yes – 299
Feeling calm and rested from a few days off. Lately I’m finding that I love moving slowly more and more. I notice my rushed thoughts or anxiety around no doing enough and I remind myself that I have all the time I need. I say it out loud because I am also noticing that I need to hear myself say it. As part of my one little word class, I’ve been doing affirmations for a few weeks and this is one of the ones that really resonates each time. Yes to feeling abundance and calm. #yearofyes #karenikayearofyes
What a sweet, heartbreaking and honest story of a relationship. Instead of seeing the story unwind into the future we see it unwind into the past. Knowing the ending of how it falls apart, the author slowly walks back in time for us to see it come together. It’s beautiful and heart breaking all at once. Reminded me of Why We Broke Up
Burke’s book is unflinching, kind, vulnerable, heart-wrenching, and inspiring all at once. It is the story of her own childhood and the unspeakable things she’s had to endure. It’s the story of her work and activism in speaking up for others who have had to endure unspeakable things. Her work that is so much more than a hashtag and so much more than a moment in time. She is vulnerable and open as she shares her own journey and her own learnings and moment of opening up as she does her activism. Her own journey with motherhood and all that it teaches her about being a mother and a person in the world. Her point about capacity and desire as a mother was a huge revelation for me as a mother. I will not forget this book for a long time.
I swallowed this book up in a single sitting. The characters were each interesting and explored just enough to get to know them and their motivations and to leave room for intrigue and the possibility that there’s more going on than one might think. In fact, there were a few instances where I felt disappointed to find out that more ominous things weren’t going on with the characters. This is definitely a plot-driven story about a married couple that go to see an ex-therapist who has a fool-proof ten-step method to “cure” her patients. As it is with these books, there’s more than meets the eye, of course. There’s an ominous feel the whole time you read the book. Both of the characters who tell the story are jumpy and not comfortable in their skin so they constantly are on edge and so is the reader as a result. Even though I guessed the ending a bit before it unraveled, I enjoyed reading every page of this book and i am confident others will, too. with gratitude to netgalley and St. Martin’s Press for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.
I read and really enjoyed Doller’s “Float Plan” so I was excited to request “The Suite Spot” hoping it might be just as sweet. I was not disappointed. The Suite Spot is about the other Beck Sister, Rachel, and most of the story takes place on an island on Lake Erie which sounds and feels magical throughout this lovely story. The characters, the dialogue, the friendship and the love are sweet, kind, and just what you’d like to see in a romance novel. It’s hard not to love these flawed and yet kind characters who grow and open up throughout the story and support and love each other. My only complaint with the story is the beginning and the ending. It opens with what I think is an unnecessary scene where a complicated and triggering issue is introduced without really being handled at depth and also ends with another complicated issue that gets wrapped up too easily and magically. I didn’t think either were necessary to the story and did more to take away from the magic and depth of this lovely story than to add to it. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the time I spent with this story and loved being swept away into the magic of Rachel and Mason and their idyllic town. with gratitude to netgalley and St. Martin’s Press for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.
“Like homes, we also need to be taken care of as much as we can; and to have something live inside us in order for us to live. But regardless, in the end, we eventually go back to nature, back to death, submerged by the will of the earth. And, in our most earnest moments, maybe we are all just homes, burning, and love is the water that saves us. And maybe, love is that someone who still sees, in all the burned down brokenness of our house, the beauty in us—the stories and memories that we hold inside, and restores us and makes us home.” This is the story of Michael Kabongo, a teacher in London. We see him in two timelines: when his plane is landing in San Francisco where he’s arrived with a few thousand dollars left to his name and he is determined to end his life once he runs out of money and when he’s in London in the past so we can see what his life used to look like. In both lives, he is sad, lonely and depressed. And the story definitely has the atmosphere of that loneliness and the gray haze of depression. “Not everyone seeks love, some seek quiet, seek peace. I slowly distanced myself from those around me and returned into the quiet where I had been all along. Where I long to be.” The writing in this novel is beautiful. The metaphors are vivid and they stay with you long after the story is finished. You can see them come alive and take root. And yet. the character development isn’t as strong. It’s hard to feel connected to Michael. It’s hard to truly understand him. Maybe because he’s so depressed, there’s a lack of intensity in most anything he does, except for a few scenes, it’s hard to see him feeling his feelings and thus it’s hard to feel much as a reader. I found this to be a quick read despite the sad subject matter and the metaphors will stay with me for a long time. “Inside me there is a man who lives in an abandoned city, and he walks around looking for company; another life, another soul, someone to touch, someone to hold. The city is endless, it has no limits, nothing to differentiate where it would end, or begin. Every day, this man wakes up and walks. He walks until his feet are blackened and burning like charcoal, until his limbs collapse into themselves and he can walk no more. Then he falls and lies there to rest—this man has no home. The next day, he wakes and walks again, and again, and again. But each day, he walks a little less than the day before, each day he gets a little more tired. This man knows it, feels it, that it’s only a matter of time until he can walk no more, and his only desire is to lie wherever he finds himself and sleep eternally.” with gratitude to netgalley and Atria Books for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.
“We so easily forget that accepting ourselves isn’t about reaching some final destination but is more about doing the deep work of slowing down, turning inward, and gently reintroducing yourself to parts of you that you were told you should fix.” What a joy and gift this book was to read. Lisa Olivera is a kind and gentle voice throughout this book as she walks you through the journey of unpacking your own stories and finding your way back to yourself. Lisa guides you to spend time seeing and understanding the stories you’re telling yourself so that you can put the distance you need between yourself and the stories and can see the distortion they cause in your life. This book doesn’t contain absolutes, quick fixes or easy answers. “Looking for confirmation of our stories is a way of consistently validating the belief that they are true, which makes it really challenging to see things through a different lens. But once you start, you can look for proof of the opposite—and make room for the possibility that the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves are wrong.” Instead it encourages you to look within yourself, ask yourself the questions and create room for the possibility that maybe your stories are not, in fact, truth. Maybe, just maybe, you are creating this lens that is not serving you and you might be able to let it go and choose a different way to see things. She gently pushes you to explore and question and make room for possibility. “The truth is that unless we do that work internally, a relationship will only mirror the work we haven’t yet done within ourselves.” This book is not a lecture. It’s an interactive experience. There are many questions at the end of each chapter, inviting you to participate in your own journey. Inviting you to explore. To dig deeper. To be willing to do the work. To show up for your own life. It gently guides you through the steps of slowly coming back to yourself. Being who you are meant to be without all the distortion. Giving yourself what you need. Creating the version of you that feels most true to you. Reminding you that you get to choose. You always get to choose. “The truth is that we get to choose who we are. We get to choose how we care for ourselves and how we show up in the world.” with gratitude to netgalley and Simon & Schuster for an early copy in exchange for an honest review. |
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