Curious, Healing

Books about healing, business, and fun

healing

“Surviving Domestic Violence” by Elaine Weiss

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Subtitle: Voices of Women Who Broke Free
Recommended to me by: Finding it in a Little Free Library

A compassionate and thorough look at how women get ensnared into abusive relationships with men, and how they get themselves out. Elaine Weiss includes her own story. She clarifies repeatedly that the abuse is not the victim/survivor’s fault, and there is no “type” of woman that is more vulnerable. Any woman can get into a relationship with an abusive person, and that’s what creates an abusive relationship.

The book was published in 2000, which only partially excuses its heterosexual and gendered lens. Yes, many abusive relationships are men abusing women. And some are not. This book could have also addressed queer relationships and women abusers in at least one of its examples.

The stories are also strongly biased toward the women finding loving marriages after leaving the abusive relationships. This supports the point that it’s not the women’s fault, but also pushes the narrative that a positive relationship is the ultimate goal and measure of success in healing.

It took me a long time to start reading the book after picking it up. And I did skim a couple of the stories where I didn’t want to read about the verbal abuse the woman was enduring. The bewildered teen looking around to see if anyone will tell her the abuse is wrong and not her fault breaks my heart. But I’m glad I did finally read the book. It is a great resource for people who carry stereotypes about who gets abused and why, both as bystanders and as people who have been abused themselves.

Available via Biblio.com.

“Too Flexible to Feel Good” by Celest Pereira and Adell Bridges

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Subtitle: A Practical Roadmap to Managing Hypermobility

Recommended to me by: Andy

Celest Pereira and Adell Bridges explain hypermobility and how to address it with a mix of the latest neuroscience, cartoon characters, and photographs of themselves doing yoga poses and exercises.

They say that hypermobility spectrum disorder occurs in up to 25% of the population. They are addressing the mild-to-medium forms of the issue, not the extreme form which is Ehlers Danlos Syndrome. Hypermobile people have overly stretchy connective tissue, which causes issues not just with their joints, but also with proprioception (sensing one’s own body), digestion, and anxiety.

It makes sense that hypermobile people are drawn to yoga where they can be immediately successful, but it is also easy to practice yoga in a way that causes injuries. This book has a series of explanations and exercises on how to add strength and core support to protect joints prone to overstretching.

They call for mindfulness and careful experimentation to find what works best for each body. They advocate for using active range of motion, going as far as muscles can take you on their own, rather than passive range of motion, pulling yourself deeper into stretches by force. For example, seated forward bend with hands reaching forward, rather than with hands around feet pulling you further into the stretch.

I appreciated concrete permission not to hold still in a pose if my body is done with it, not to pull my shoulder blades down when I’m reaching my arms up, and not to pull myself deeper into stretches. I didn’t feel like I was quite the target market for this book, because I don’t need cartoon characters to lighten up neuroscience, and I do a little yoga and a lot of other kinds of exercise. I might be mildly hypermobile, but I’m not a yoga superstar.

Recommended if you’re hypermobile (they have a few easy movements to check), do a lot of yoga, and want to get stronger and more aligned to protect your joints. Mindfulness and body awareness can help us all.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Ask for Horses” by Tina Tau

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Subtitle: Memoir of a Dream-Guided Life

Recommended to me by: The author is a friend

This book is both honest and kind. It looks directly at hard times and painful emotions, and maintains enough buoyancy and narrative flow to carry the reader forward without getting mired in pain. It holds the tension between personal autonomy and spiritual direction inclusively, without needing to choose one or the other. It looks tenderly at mistakes and stuck places, holding compassion for younger selves that were doing the best they could.

The included dreams are brief, powerful, mysterious. They are interpreted with gentle curiosity, an eye toward word play, and a willingness to explore new paths. “Dreams tell you something you don’t already know.” There are no fixed interpretations of dream symbols, and the dreamer is always in charge. Other people helping with a dream say, “If this were my dream,” offering rather than imposing interpretations.

The book pulled me through it, and I felt accompanied in some of my own life struggles. Recommended!

Available at Kelson Books and bookshop.org.

“You Don’t Look Adopted” by Anne Heffron

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Recommended to me by: an adopted client

Anne Heffron shines a light on the seams that adoption leaves behind, by sharing her story and her thoughts with painful honesty. She was adopted into a “good” (white, middle class, well-intentioned) family and is pressured by her emotionally fragile mother and all of society to act like her adoption was a blip that no longer affected her. But she feels chaotic and terrified inside. When her life has entirely fallen apart, she finally writes the book she always wanted to write.

“In a parallel universe, the universe of my imagination, I was sitting at an entirely different table with entirely different people, eating entirely different food, so it seemed pointless to give myself one hundred percent to my life.”

“I have heard too many stories to think adoption is something that happens at birth or in childhood and then fades into I am part of this family with no repercussions—no emotional issues, no health issues, no fear of future abandonment, no fear of loss.”

“I want to write the book that, if I had read it at seventeen, I wouldn’t have felt so badly about myself, so wrong, so destined for a shaky future.”

The book is written in brief sections with all-caps headers. Distractingly, the headers are sometimes at the bottom of one page and the section continues on the next page. She says the book is written in fragments to express her sense of being fragmented inside.

Highly recommended to anyone who is involved with adoption (adoptee, birth family, adopted family) or wants to understand adoption better.

Anne Heffron’s website.

Available at Amazon.

“The Magic Fish” by Trung Le Nguyen

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Recommended to me by: Soph

What a lovely, powerful graphic novel. Tien is growing up in the US with Vietnamese immigrant parents. He speaks mostly English, and they speak mostly Vietnamese. It’s a close, loving family and they read fairy tales together when they have time. The graphic novel interweaves slant-wise takes on three familiar fairy tales with Tien’s adventures in high school and as he struggles to communicate important truths about himself to his parents.

The art is gorgeous. Fairy tale dresses are especially elaborate, and the end of the book contains notes on the time periods the dresses are drawn from. The one thing I found confusing is that something about the proportions of the characters made them look younger to me. Tien looked like a much younger child, and his mom looked like his teen older sister, even though the story communicates that Tien is in high school and his mom is in her 30s.

The love in the book makes me cry, along with the difficult times around immigration and grief, conveyed with kindness. Highly recommended!

Content notes: brief homophobia, not endorsed by the author, and fairy tale violence.

Available at bookshop.org.

“freeing the natural voice” by Kristin Linklater

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Subtitle: Imagery and art in the practice of voice and language

Recommended to me by: Nadia Tarnawsky

This book is aimed at actors, but also has useful information for singers, although the one aside about Bulgarian singing does not match what I have learned about that art. And that leads to my summary of the whole book, which is that it is very detailed and knowledgeable within its scope, but does not acknowledge lack of expertise in neighboring realms.

There are many exercises to get in touch with the anatomy of the breath and voice in the whole body, and to release inhibitions that get in the way of free breath and voice.

The only explanation offered for inhibitions is “The young child desperately wanted a cookie and was required to ask in a nice voice, so had to separate voice from emotion.” There is no mention of physical violence, sexual abuse, or neglect that would cause a person to separate voice and emotion.

There is no awareness that reconnection needs to go slowly, with support, and that “resistance” is a clear message to slow down even more. There is one brief mention half-way through the book about working with “light” emotions in the exercises because “dark” emotions might require more support. I wonder how many of the author’s students had overwhelming reactions to these exercises.

Similarly, there is no mention of physical injuries or disabilities that might get in the way of doing these exercises, and no offered accommodations or workarounds.

I appreciate the idea of inviting a sigh of relief, and then observing with the breath and voice do with that. Rather than trying to control the breath and voice, we can allow the body to respond to what we experience and want to express.

The book could benefit from anatomical drawings, since it is based in very specific and detailed anatomy that is only described in text. There are cartoon-like line drawings showing people doing some of the exercises.

Recommended for people interested in the details of embodied voice, with the above caveats.

Available at bookshop.org.