A special place in hell ... healing an epidemic of unhappy women by April Churchill

Not everyone will get this book. I was definitely at a point in my life when I needed to reflect.

If all you've ever been taught is that you should put yourself last or that you are responsible for another's happiness and feel that someone is responsible for yours - you may need this book. Those "negative lessons" may not have been outwardly said but rather inwardly felt through certain life scenarios. You might be pressured from your own mind, your family, your friends, your partners, your boss, or heck even society to contort and cajole yourself into shapes you are not and were never born to be. Thus, ~~naturally~~ habitually, you'd bitterly and resentfully expect it from others.

source

I tried on several occasions to read this book in one sitting. I failed - eventually, I read it in two sittings after going over it again and again - to read it like how I wanted too - which was meant to be in one day. In the end, I gave up and decided that I would just start where I had last been (halfway through the book). Trying to be perfect my first mistake ...

However, my initial and perhaps most grievous error was to try while reading it, to give other women "tips" which I felt were relevant to their own "situation" ... Let's just say, I wasn't warmly received and I felt the backlash. Some of the unhappy women include; The Martyr, The Appeaser, The I Just Can't Win, The Brooder, The B*tch, The One Upper, The Hypochondriac, and then there's the Happy One.

If you're in need of a pep talk, a shoulder shakeup, a splash of cool water in your face to stop you from robotically falling into the traps and old programming, of now outgrown and stagnant negative conditioning - this would be a great book for you. Rather prophetically this brook foretells that depression would be one of the greatest debilitating diseases in 2020 and apart from a certain virus - I would say that estimation is true.

Now I'm not a doctor/health professional/counselor, etc but there's a saying that if the threat of disease doesn't physically get you - the fear of it just might - and that's why I think it's relevant to share my thoughts on this book and self-care topics. I'm just a person like you are, trying to navigate life with the tools of my forefathers and the extra nick-nacks I've bundled up in my pockets on the way. This is one of the gems I've put in my sachel ...

Extract from Chpt.7 The B*tch

This book gave me many "ah-ha!" moments and sometimes I had to put it down because it really did hit home - that I was not immune to being part and parcel, of the unhappy brood of miserable women sitting on the trash piles of her past and racing at lightning speed to an unknown and poorly planned future.

What's so hard in staying in the now? Now, is good, right? Now is just as fresh as the newness of the future and as fleeting as the past, now is good because I'm in it - I exist here. I have the power to go left or right, the beauty in deciding where I move onto and what I leave behind. Those pivotal and life-changing decisions always belong in the now and that I guess is why it is called a present because it is a gift (yeah I know you know that quote lol).

... I wish I read this years ago (it was published in 2008) but, I wasn't really into self-help books (what teen is?). If you're the kind of person who can honestly reflect on your past misdemeanors and you're at a point where you can take responsibility for the choices you made, without waging war on your the world for wronging you - you might be ready for this book. It's the red pill.

Chapters I found helpful? All of them. Each had scenarios that were relevant to either my own behavior or that which I had experienced or been around me.

Do you recommend it? Yes, I found it helpful. It's logical, relatable, yet sensitive to each unhappy woman problem. Plus, I think sometimes the people we have around us can get used to telling us what we may want to hear, what we are comfortable hearing and sometimes the bitterness they have stored up for us because they are perhaps (just as) unhappy. This book gives you that tough talk or those kind words with the neutrality necessary for you to make up your own choice without the bias, judgment, or resentment of knowing what you did in the summer of ...

Any important lessons you care to share? Hmm, happiness is a choice, forgiveness first begins with yourself and that worrying doesn't change anything (and once again is a choice). Perhaps, not groundbreaking stuff if you're familiar with biblical principles but nonetheless potent pills of truth to unsettle even the most fervent pew-pursuer to do better.

Overall, it's a great book that I will undoubtedly go over again and again. However, this time I will allow myself the freedom to do so out of happiness rather than misery.

Have you read any self-help books lately?

What gems of wisdom can you share for the miserable folks of this world?

Your comments are always welcomed and appreciated!