What I’m Reading

What I’m Reading is a collection of the things that bring me comfort when Bad Things and Dark Times threaten to overwhelm me. In reading stories of hope, redemption, courage, and love, I find courage to meet my own challenges, to rise above my fears and become stronger.

Here are the books that are giving me courage right now.

I’ve mentioned Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead before. I’m reading it slowly, so I can digest it fully and oh, is it ever exactly what I need to read right now. Here are a few quotes:

When I look at narcissism through the vulnerability lens, I see the shame-based fear of being ordinary. I see the fear of never feeling extraordinary enough to be noticed, to be lovable, to belong, or to cultivate a sense of purpose.

Boy, do I ever understand this. It’s hard to be ordinary. It’s hard to feel like I’m enough, just me, with my flaws and fears and talents and gifts. Someone, somewhere, is always more, better, smarter, farther along on this journey, while I’m just here, peddling as fast as I can.

Connection is why we’re here; it is what gives purpose and meaning to our lives. The power that connection holds in our lives was confirmed when the main concern about connection emerged as the fear of disconnection; the fear that something we have done or failed to do, something about who we are or where we come from, has made us unlovable and unworthy of connection.

That fear lives large in me. As a child growing up introverted and artistic in a community that valued practicality and extroversion, I was always afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing, of being laughed at or excluded or deemed unworthy by some metric. I worked hard to raise my children to know that they are loved and accepted unconditionally, that they are worthy. In mothering, I learned to give myself that same love. But being vulnerable is such a risk.

There are many tenets of Wholeheartedness, but at its very core is vulnerability and worthiness; facing uncertainty, exposure, and emotional risks, and knowing that I am enough.

Isn’t that beautiful? Anyway, I’m loving this book right now.

This one’s $1.99 in the Kindle store right now and it’s a winner! I read it last year, and loved it. Of course, I’ve loved everything I’ve read by Liane Moriarty, so that’s not a shock. Give The Hypnotist’s Love Story a try and let me know what you think.

Ellen O’Farrell is a professional hypnotherapist who works out of the eccentric beachfront home she inherited from her grandparents. It’s a nice life, except for her tumultuous relationship history. She’s stoic about it, but at this point, Ellen wouldn’t mind a lasting one. When she meets Patrick, she’s optimistic. He’s attractive, single, employed, and best of all, he seems to like her back. Then comes that dreaded moment: He thinks they should have a talk.

Braced for the worst, Ellen is pleasantly surprised. It turns out that Patrick’s ex-girlfriend is stalking him. Ellen thinks, Actually, that’s kind of interesting. She’s dating someone worth stalking. She’s intrigued by the woman’s motives. In fact, she’d even love to meet her.

Ellen doesn’t know it, but she already has.

I just picked this book up today, somehow having missed the earlier release date! It’s written by the very talented Deborah Small, who happens to be a friend of mine. I read her first book, My Dear One: A Novel and was blown away by her talent. These are beautiful western-set historical romances, people.

From the author of My Dear One… a gripping sequel that sweeps us back in time and across an ocean in a desperate race for answers that unearths dangerous truths, and inspires heart-breaking sacrifice, all in the name of love…

1914 A woman forced to face her past …Suffering amnesia following a tragic accident, Dianna Douglas struggles to fit into a marriage, and family, she has no recollection of helping create. When her memory returns with brutal clarity of her young son who’s vanished and is believed dead, victim of the same storm that almost killed her, she refuses to accept he’s gone forever…

A man desperate for closure…Jake Douglas lost his first wife and son in childbirth. To cope with the pain of their loss he walled himself off from those who would have loved him. Dianna, and the children they’re raising together, gave him reason to break out of his self-imposed prison and learn to live—and love—again. Now he’s willing to do whatever it takes to find answers—provide closure—for the woman, and family, he loves…

Two hearts determined to reclaim their own…The quest for clues to their son’s disappearance leads Jake to England just as Britain joins the war against Germany, while Dianna stays in Texas to keep home fires burning. But when weeks turn to months without word from Jake, Dianna is forced to leave her daughters behind and return to the land of her birth where she unearths dangerous truths and exposes devastating lies that send her on desperate race against time to save both the child and the man she loves… a perilous fight to reunite her family… make them, and their hearts, whole again.

This one is a re-read for me. Robyn Carr’s books are comfort reads for me and while the first one, Virgin River: Book 1 of Virgin River series (A Virgin River Novel) remains my favorite, this one, featuring a widowed pastor hero and an ex-stripper single mom heroine, is pretty great too. Reading a book with a Christian world-view AND a sex positive attitude, is SO refreshing to me. I worried that the book might lean too far to the religious side or take on a judgmental tone, but I should have trusted the author. Thank you, Robyn Carr, for writing such a great hero in Noah.

This book dovetails nicely with the concept of worthiness, as the heroine, Ellie, struggles with how her life choices have affected her children. But she isn’t cowed or self-pitying. She doesn’t expect much from men, but when she discovers love, she doesn’t question whether or not she deserves it. She knows she’s worthy – even if others have decided she’s not. She might be down on her luck, but she’s a queen.

This one is on sale in the Kindle store at the moment, so I grabbed it. $2.99 for a Jodi Picoult book, you can’t beat that with a stick. I haven’t read one of hers for a long time, so this might be next up for me. I’ll see. Have you read it?

Paige has only a few vivid memories of her mother, who abandoned her at five years old. Now, having left her father behind in Chicago for dreams of art school and marriage to an ambitious young doctor, she finds herself with a child of her own. But her mother’s absence and shameful memories of her past force her to doubt whether she could ever be capable of bringing joy and meaning into the life of her child, gifts her own mother never gave.

Harvesting the Heart is written with astonishing clarity and evocative detail, convincing in its depiction of emotional pain, love, and vulnerability, and recalls the writing of Alice Hoffman and Kristin Hannah. Out of Paige’s struggle to find wholeness, Jodi Picoult crafts an absorbing novel peopled by richly drawn characters, and explores motherhood with a power and depth only she is capable of.-

Another one on my To-Be-Read list that I haven’t gotten to yet. When our kids were small, a favorite movie of ours was The Secret of Roan Inish. Oh, what a beautiful story! This book sounds like it might evoke the same feeling. It’s $1.99 in the Kindle store right now and as Elizabeth Berg (love her!) praised it, I think it’ll be a winner. Have you read it? I’d love to know what you think.

There is an island off the west coast of Ireland called Inis Murúch — the Island of the Mermaids — a world where myth is more powerful than truth, and love can overcome even death. It is here that Lisa Carey sets her lyrical and sensual first novel, weaving together the voices and lives of three generations of Irish and Irish-American women.

Years ago, the fierce and beautiful Grace stole away from the island with her small daughter, Gráinne, unable to bear its isolation. Now Gráinne is motherless at fifteen, and a grandmother she has never met has come to take her back. Her heart is pulled between a life in which she no longer belongs and a family she cannot remember. But only on Inis Murúch can she begin to understand the forces that have torn her family apart.