This book arrived late last year, coming hard on the heels of a dramatically difficult year for me. Anyone who has ever endure great hardship understands that it takes a great deal of courage to keep going, to not just shut down or distance ourselves from the flow of life all around us. We are injured and have a hard time putting ourselves back on the playing field – after all, what if we get hit again?
SARK (Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy) has long inspired millions of readers to achieve their dreams in previous works (e.g., Succulent Wild Woman, and Eat Mangoes Naked). But the deaths of her mother and cat and the end of a treasured relationship tested her positive outlook to its limits. In Glad No Matter What, she journeys through the spirals and layers of grief and loss and emerged stronger and more whole, once again providing a guidebook for others, offering a path to a profound, positive transformation through, rather than despite, life’s inevitable travails.
"If we do not allow ourselves to feel or express our emotions, they will get larger or louder or may go into our bodies and present themselves as some kind of medical condition. Feelings are meant to be in motion. E-Motion. Feelings are made to be expressed. You've probably heard: "If you can feel it, you can heal it." And this is true - yet many try to stop feeling before the healing takes place, especially if it seems like a "bad" or difficult feeling."
Sark has a way of expressing and describing feelings in ways that never feel cliched or saccharine. She has a way of pointing out our role in the grand pattern of our life and then helps us work it out for ourselves to come out even better. She doesn't pontificate from a pedestal, she's right there on the ground with the rest of us, offering practical tools for transformation.
Like many self-help books, there isn't a lot of depth to the writing, but the authentic voice of SARK more than makes up for this lack: she doesn't claim to be an expert; she merely shares from her experience. Each chapter focuses on an idea, a concept, something she herself either needs to learn or has learned or continues to learn and ends with a list of resources.
Highly recommended.
Author: SARK
New World Library, 2010
pp. 224, $18.95
