What’s happening around here?
- Houston is experiencing some beautiful Fall weather. Two weeks ago, I was forcing my family to eat some meals in the sukkah, but the mosquitos and humidity are just awful. Now… ahhhh.
- The Astros are in the World Series! It’s been fun watching the games.
- We all got our Covid boosters and flu shots, the adults voted to preserve our democracy, and we’re planning our holiday travels.
- I am taking two main classes, like for credit, and they are interesting but requiring a bit of extra focus until December 20! I have two more classes in the Spring and then I’m done with my Masters. It honestly feels like not long ago that I started it!
- I started the year of facilitating the Sunday and Thursday groups and that’s meaningful. We have some awesome new people to freshen up our discussions.
- Two more (informal) but intense classes begin in a couple weeks, just before Turkey Day. I’m excited that I was selected to be one of 10 for an advanced Mussar facilitation group. The other is Part IV of Alei Shur, a classic Mussar text by Rav Wolbe.
Here’s what I managed to finish last month and I apologize the reviews are so short. I’ve got too many books in-progress right now, some for school and some for fun. 🙂
Trust: A Novel by Hernan Diaz
This one was alternatively interesting and frustrating, but ultimately I’m glad I plowed through it. It’s kind of a puzzle to work out as layers of a story unfold, one after another. At one point, I stopped reading and Googled whether there were errors that got printed in the book by mistake, but no… that was just part of the memoir. The topic: wealth and power in New York City, up to the Great Depression. Whose perspective/story is the truth?
“Every life is organized around a small number of events that either propel us or bring us to a grinding halt. We spend the years between these episodes benefiting of suffering from their consequences until the arrival of the next forceful moment.”
“Most of us prefer to believe we are the active subjects of our victories but only the passive objects of our defeats. We triumph, but it is not really we who fail — we are ruined by forces beyond our control.”
Healthy as F*ck: The Habits You Need to Get Lean, Stay Healthy, and Kick Ass at Life by Oonagh Duncan
Listened on Chirp for $1.99. She is so funny! FIND YOUR MOTIVATION, which has always been what worked for me before. The habits she discusses here are great. Non-judgmental, realistic goals and perspective. P.S. Love your body no matter what.
Listening Still by Anne Griffin
I really liked this book about a woman who can converse with the dead soon after they die. She has to figure out who she is, what she wants, etc. Recommend.
The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller
I gave this book about 3 hours of my time and just couldn’t stand it. This woman is all about her affair… very selfish and self-absorbed.
Good Inside: A Guide To Becoming The Parent You Want To Be by Dr. Becky Kennedy
I didn’t know about Dr. Becky, who also has a podcast, but read about her in a blog and wanted to listen to his on Libro.fm. I really enjoyed Dr. Becky’s ideas. Basically… see any behavior as a symptom of an underlying feeling. The behavior itself doesn’t need to be punished… the feeling needs to be explored.
Warning: this is about connecting before you correct a child; time-outs and other punishments meant to shape behavior, which I never believed in anyway, are not recommended. A child needs help with regulating emotional upset, understanding what skills to carry forward. This book is a perspective changer!
I used this idea just this morning when my daughter answered a question with a rather rude retort. I noticed that my instinctive reaction was to feel hurt and angry, but I paused and asked myself instead, “what is going on for her underneath the surface?” Turns out, she had her own issues I didn’t even realize. When I asked in a friendly and curious voice, she shared with me her feelings. I said, “Woah, girl. No need to speak to me that way. I think something else is going on here. Would you like to share anything with me?” I am so proud of myself because had I gotten upset and defensive, I wouldn’t have gotten the full story. Kids need help with this kind of sharing of feelings, and if a parent is in the middle of their own emotion, they won’t rise above and find out what’s under the surface of their child. I was also able to use the two things are true tactic (below) in helping her navigate a conflict with one of her friends.
“Because connecting to our kids is how they learn to regulate their emotions and feel good inside, understanding will come up over and over again as a goal of communication. What’s the opposite of understanding? For this argument’s sake, it’s convincing. Convincing is the attempt to prove a singular reality; to prove that only one thing is true. Convincing is an attempt to be right and, as a result, make the other person wrong. It rests on the assumption that there is only one correct viewpoint. When we seek to convince someone, we essentially say, “You’re wrong. You are misperceiving, misremembering, mis-feeling, mis-experiencing. Let me explain to you why I’m correct and then you’ll see the light and come around.” Convincing has one goal in mind – being right. And here’s the unfortunate consequence of being right: the other person feels unseen and unheard, at which point most people become infuriated and combative because it feels as if the other person does not accept your realness or worth. Feeling unseen and unheard makes connection impossible. Understanding (two things are true) and convincing (one thing is true) are two diametrically opposed ways of approaching other people.
“So a powerful first step in any interaction is to notice which mode you’re in. When you’re in one thing is true mode, you’re judgmental of and reactive to someone else’s experience because it feels like an assault on your own truth. As a result, you will seek to prove your own point of view, which in turn makes the other person defensive because they need to uphold the realness of their experience. In one thing is true mode, exchanges escalate quickly. Each person thinks they’re arguing about the content of the conversation when in fact they’re trying to defend that they are a real worthy person with a real truthful experience. By contrast, when we’re in two things are true mode, we are curious about and accepting of someone else’s experience and it feels like an opportunity to get to know someone better.”
The Latecomer: A Novel by Jean Hanff Korelitz
This is a story that unfolds slowly over time, but everything eventually comes together very nicely. I’d recommend it for the family dynamics and that it was narrated by Julia Whelan. Three siblings who want nothing to do with one another and couldn’t be more different eventually come together with the help of another sibling, born much later.
Voice Lessons for Parents: What to Say, How to Say It, and When to Listen by Wendy Mogel
Since I just finished Mogel’s book on teens, I figured I’d listen to her read this one on Libro.fm. She too has a podcast called “Nurture vs Nurture.” Most of this book is about the younger years, but I came away with a few good reminders. Tone of voice, not asking permission, etc. Basically it’s not so much what you say, but how you say it that matters. I could have skipped this one.
Mad Honey by Jodi Picoult
“Everybody is always trying to learn, day after painful day, how to be themselves.”
I learned about gender identity a bit more in this exploration of a teen relationship, as well grew to like all the characters. Great, but intense, read.
“What makes me different at this point a Y chromosome that you can’t even see. Is that really the thing that determines the truth of the world? … I don’t think it’s an invisible chromosome or the inability to get pregnant or anything else that makes people so cruel to transgender folks. I think what they hate is difference. What they hate is that the world is complicated in ways they can’t understand. People want the world to be simple, but gender isn’t simple, much as some might want it to be. The fact that it’s complicated, that there’s a whole spectrum of ways of being in the world, is what makes it a blessing. Surely nature or God or the universe is full of miracles and wild invention and things way beyond our understanding, no matter how hard we try. We aren’t here on earth in order to bend over backward to resemble everybody else. We’re here to be ourselves in all our gnarly brilliance, which is why I feel so ashamed to be in hiding. I ought to be standing in a spotlight on the stage shouting, “I’m trans and I’m proud. Everybody shout my name!”
Dinners With Ruth: A Memoir on the Power of Friendships by Nina Totenberg
A friend recommended this to me, and I mostly enjoyed it. It may be a generational thing… meaning I’m too young to be completely absorbed by the recollections. Still, her reflections on the struggles working women in the 70’s had were a good reminder of how far we’ve come, even if we still have much farther to go. Here’s the official blurb: “Celebrated NPR correspondent Nina Totenberg delivers an extraordinary memoir of her personal successes, struggles, and life-affirming relationships, including her beautiful friendship of nearly fifty years with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.”
