Book Review - A Weekend to Change Your Life by Joan Anderson

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

I recently picked up A Weekend to Change Your Life: Find Your Authentic Self After a Lifetime of Being All Things to All People by Joan Anderson from the library in an attempt to get started on the Non-Fiction Reading Challenge I signed up for a while ago. One of the things I really want to accomplish with this challenge is to read more Women centered books. Titles about women's lib, women's rights, women's history or biographies of women. This is a book to empower women to take a hold of their lives slow down, figure out what you want and do it, and to be comfortable with the fact that you are allowed to have things that are only for yourself. Don't give all of yourself away all the time.
Most of the people the author talks about, including herself are in more of midlife, they have already raised their kids or are almost ready to have the fly the coop. I wonder if by being interested in these types of books so early in life am I ahead of the game or am I over reacting to the life I have. I don't think I will know that until years in the future and I am looking back this way.



Copied from Amazon in turn from Publishers Weekly:

In her popular A Year by the Sea, Anderson wrote about a time she chose to live apart from her husband on Cape Cod in order to better understand herself. Anderson has turned her private retreat into a program, Weekend by the Sea Retreats, to help women learn how to have a full life apart from the needs and demands of spouses, children, aging parents and careers. Here, Anderson shares the exercises and activities she has developed to encourage change and growth. She draws on Erik Erikson's eight stages of life from infancy to old age and suggests listing the gains and losses from each phase in order to identify one's personal strengths. Another technique is the beach walk, which allows women to get in touch with their bodies and emotions as they trek alone on the shore, collecting shells, rocks and driftwood, swimming, or drawing pictures in the sand. Anderson's warm, inviting tone will appeal to women who feel, as she did, that they need time and space to reinvent themselves. (Apr. 4)
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