Talk to me long enough about life, and I’ll recommend Anne Lamott’s non-fiction to you. Got a new baby that you don’t know what to do with it (and think that you are only person who ever felt this way), pick up Operating Instructions. Need some coaching on a writing life? Try Bird by Bird. Got some spiritural journeying going on, try Traveling Mercies, Plan B or Grace (Eventually).
I am in the midst of reading Grace (Eventually) and just had to stop and write about the essay I just finished. A Field Theory of Beauty starts with Anne’s little boy, Sam, holding her face and saying, “I love that little face.” Oh, to see ourselves as children do with all that kindness and ungilted eyes. I want you to take your cheeks in your hands next time you are saying unkind things to your self in the mirror and just say, “I love that little face” to your self. I think we’d all be a lot kinder to ourselves if we made a habit of saying that daily.
Anyway, you would have thought I was at church the way I was reacting to the essay. When she wrote, “This culture’s pursuit of beauty is a crazy, sick, losing game, for women, men, teenagers, and with the need to increase advertising revenues, now for pre-adolescents, too,” I thought “Amen!” And when she wrote, “if you cannot see that you’re okay now, you won’t be able to see it if you lose twenty pounds. It’s an inside job,” I thought, “preach it, sister!”
There are other essays that I have been marking up with my Bic # 2 Mechanical Pencil that I’m sure I’ll share with you later. In the meantime, if you want more scoop now, check out this review of Grace (Eventually).
