Seeking Peace: Chronicles of the Worst Buddhist in the World, by Mary Pipher

Mary Pipher came to Indianapolis recently and spoke about family issues, ones she details in her book "The Shelter of Each Other." After Pipher's talk, as I passed by the obligatory book selling table, the title that caught my eye was not Shelter, but her newest book, "Seeking Peace," a memoir. It seemed fitting that Pipher, who exuded a self-effacing, homespun, calm that is stereotypical of her Nebraska hometown, never once mentioned her memoir that night.

In "Seeking Peace," Pipher, a therapist who has written extensively about family and women's issues, has a "break-down," ironically, at the pinnacle of her success. She tours the country promoting "Reviving Ophelia," her breakout book, but feels increasingly burdened by the evil cousins of depression and anxiety.

As Pipher details how she faces her crisis, she allows us to see the desperation of her struggle as well as the resolve she uses to get her life back on track. Pipher looks at the story she has always told herself about her own upbringing, and she discovers the seeds, until then not only unnoticed but suppressed, of the feelings of abandonment that stayed long dormant, but finally flowered into the suffering and anguish she was experiencing. She notices that throughout her life there had been hints: brief, fleeting appearances, of anxiety-ridden stumbling blocks, but they had always resolved unattended.

So how does Pipher, a famous therapist, approach her treatment when she falls into the rabbit hole of the same paralyzing symptoms her own patients present with? Pipher is scathingly honest here, as she tells of how she began using many of the same modes of treatment she uses with her patients, while also exploring ones outside her usual lexicon that provided relief. She tells us how she nourished and restored her soul, using the tools of yoga, massage, rest, mindfulness, and yes, medication.

Pipher gives us her story straight up. She's not a "spicy" memoirist, but she is an honest one, and that's really the only prerequisite that's mandatory for entry into the game. This quote from "Seeking Peace" sums up Pipher's journey, one I related to in many ways: "...I do not hold myself up to be a paragon of mental health. But who is? ...I now realize we are all misfits, at least to ourselves. We all secretly suspect we are freaks, uniquely burdened and especially crazy. Yet that doesn't mean we can't find our place on earth and come to feel loved and welcomed here. When we learn to face our pain and the pain of others, we start flourishing."

Pipher's memoir comes to a satisfying end as she learns to slow down her life, to listen to and accept her busy mind, thereby regaining her equanimity. She writes that she has put her very personal story on paper only because she thought it might help others and, after hearing her speak, I believe her. "Seeking Peace" is a provocative read, a story of one woman's truth. I think others will recognize many of these same truths in their own lives. I know I did.

Traveling With Pomegranates, by Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor

Having just survived another Mother's Day, it seems only fitting to post a review of the Monk females' mother/daughter memoir.

(Please, tell me I'm not the only person whose relationship with her mother was, um, complicated. Tell me I'm not the only one who, on the day society mandates we express our love to our mothers, still wrestles with guilt, anger, and resentment -- and my mother died over twenty years ago. And, as if that's not enough darkness to navigate, there is the extra guilt that comes with realizing that the blessing of my own kids, which feels as though it should bring enough light to cancel out the shadow of the day, doesn't. Which is, of course, not at all a reflection of my great kids, but of the depth of my own mother-daughter struggle.)


Sue Monk Kidd's breakout novel, "The Secret Life of Bees," already feels like a classic, but the novel that followed, "The Mermaid Chair," didn't feel as solid. In "Traveling with Pomegranates," Sue shares the author- stage with her college-age daughter, Anne, as they each dish up the story of "their lives at that moment" during a trip they took together to Greece. Sue, who has finished up a decade's worth of Jungian therapy, is pondering how to continue to feel generative and creative as she enters menopause. Anne, who has just been rejected from a graduate school program for which she figured she would be a shoe-in, grapples with depression. Just like in real life (because this is the story of their real lives), a lot happens at the same time. Anne becomes engaged and begins to plan her wedding. Lots of transitions for both women.

Let me preface my complaint by stating the obvious: I have never been accused of under-thinking an issue. My brain is busy. Too busy. I can turn something over and over in my skull until I'm so dizzy I not only forgot where I started but also where I was supposed to be heading. So it's telling that, even for me, Sue's ruminations were too much. I love memoir, and I love personal essay, but in "Traveling with Pomegranates," Sue goes on forever. Or at least it feels like forever. I appreciate the hard work of introspection that she details, but the gesture of memoir calls for the author to "show" us, through the characters' actions, how she arrives at these insights, not to "tell" us. "Traveling with Pomegranates" gave me lots to think about, but I found myself wanting to shake the Monk women, saying I wanted more of their story, and less of their thoughts.

On a related note, also having trouble with Mother's Day is one of my favorite authors: Anne Lamott. Read of her beef, of how we glorify mother-child love when, more democratically and realistically, this intense love belongs to all of us in all our varied relationships, in the link below....



Why I hate Mother's Day

Game Change, by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann

Were you stoned in civics class? Do your eyes still glaze over at political commentary? Some of us, and by us I mean me, missed out on the learning the first time around and ever since have been too lazy and embarrassed to admit ignorance, pick up some books, and figure out the complicated maze that is American politics.

Will "Game Change" fill in those gaps? Nope, but it's so much fun to read, it just won't matter. This book, like one of those special People Magazines, could be titled, "People Magazine - The Presidential Election Issue." It was satisfying to read that the candidates are exactly as I've imagined them: a trip to "Hillary-land" brings to light a woman who is earnest, but hard, and driven by an insatiable hunger for power; Bill is a narcissistic, hungry for sex, blowhard (and I did NOT intend that as a pun); Edwards is a lying, narcissistic, pretty-boy, and Elizabeth a crazed, bitchy control freak. And then there are the Republicans. McCain as clueless and cranky. Palin as a charming, it's-all-God's-plan, neophyte. It's delicious and dishy.

"Game Change" was a fun, well written read. I didn't learn much, but I loved that my belief (although uninformed and unsubstantiated by actual knowledge) that, for the most part, our elected officials are bloated, misguided, and self-serving was confirmed. My only bit of disappointment came when I found that the one thing I was most interested in learning -- where the sparks of Obama's innovative, grassroots campaign ideas came from -- were not included. "Game Change" is about the defeats, the missteps and failures that abound at every turn of a campaign, and the candidates, who, like our most dysfunctional family members, we love to hate.

It is a well known fact that most men don't read. As hard as I try, it's near impossible for me to find a book to interest my husband (unless it's written by David Sedaris) but "Game Change" is a book that crosses gender lines. A Father's Day gift idea, if ever there was one....

Click the link below for a great article by Laura Miller on how the abundance of women in the publishing industry effects what we read.

Why men don't read books

On driving, and "Corked," by Kathryn Borel

This was a two-schoolbus accident day! Thank G-d everyone is fine, but this is indeed a strange confluence of events. This morning my oldest daughter called me to say that her school bus had been hit. A car, driven by another high schooler, rear-ended her bus. Thankfully, no one was hurt. Later this morning, after dropping my two other kids at their school, I drove past the flashing light of the police car, the tow truck, the offending car, with its hood scrunched up and its door open wide, and the inward-looking teenager, now with his mother.

Once home I caught up on my morning blogs, and found an essay by Kathryn Borel that tells the story of how she hit a pedestrian, nine years back, and how the weight of that event has never left her. Apparently, Laura Bush has a similar story in her new memoir.

This afternoon I picked up my two chauffered kids from school, only to hear that the schoolbus my son was about to get on earlier that day -- it was due to take him back to school from his fieldtrip in Brownburg -- had its stop sign torn off by a side-swipe-and-run lawn service trailer.

I can't help but feel pummeled by two lessons here. First, I can't help but think of how easy it is to let your full attention slip away just for a moment, and the devastating consequences that can follow. All the kids were lucky today -- my daughter, my son, their busmates, and the kid who smashed his car into their bus.

I also can't help but thinking about secrets, how toxic and weighty something becomes once shame's ugly hands fall upon it. The link to Borel's essay is below. I'm going to have my daughter, who is almost driving age, read it tonight. I'll be reading Borel's "Corked", and Laura Bush's memoir soon.

Laura Bush's deadly car crash and my own

Mary Pipher

Mary Pipher spoke at the Jewish Community Center last night. The event, sponsored by The National Council of Jewish Women, was the first in a series dealing with family issues. Pipher recently turned sixty and sported a shock of natural, wavy, gray hair that seemed to echo many of the points she made about solving the problems of the modern family: a return to focusing on what we truly value in life; spending time with our family; taking the focus away from the pop-culture values of consumerism and superficial beauty; slowing down the rush of time.

She spoke of how, in these fast paced times of Blackberries, laptops, iPods and iPhones, we face an incessant barrage of media messages. We are constantly miseducating ourselves, and our children, about the value of family and community, the glue that had, until now, provided us with a safe foundation. Echoing the proverb, "It takes a village to raise a child," Pipher said that raising children is a tribal issue, and that, unfortunately, the tribal wisdom has gone from our culture.

Here were some of her suggestions on how to begin to address these issues: Clarifying and redefining our values (what do the constructs of "family" and "wealth" really mean to us?); declaring "media blackout days" in our homes; designating a corner, or even an entire room, in our homes as a "calmness center."

Pipher's book, "The Shelter of Each Other," speaks to these issues in more depth, but her newer book, "Seeking Peace: Chronicles of the Worst Buddhist in the World" is the one that has caught my eye. In a recent interview about "Seeking Peace," which is a memoir, she tells of her personal crisis and depression that came after the success of her first, and perhaps most famous book, "Reviving Ophelia." In this interview, which is linked below, she says something about specifically about herself, that she thinks applies to all of us, that I've always thought was true, and I'll paraphrase here to suit my own point: that, as we go through our day to day lives, it is uncomfortable to look inward. We wear the smiley face mask of every day life, walking among people in crisis, unaware of their suffering, and perhaps even our own.

http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/books/features.php?id=18949

Goldengrove, by Francine Prose

My mother died unexpectedly when I was thirty, but when I heard the news I suddenly felt thirteen again. The protagonist of "Goldengrove," Nico, is thirteen years old when her older sister drowns. Prose's novel is a stunning rendering of a girl dealing with overwhelming grief at that fragile age, a time when life for a girl is really not just one thing, but is more a passage to becoming to what lies ahead.

Nico's parents, who are wallowing in their own grief, pretty much check out. Nico, who Prose describes as chubby girl who looks up to her uber-talented sister, is left to deal with her grief, rudderless, and acts out in the risky ways that manifest the turmoil she feels inside. I love how Prose captured her character's experience. Nico reminded me of all the times I felt terrified, and fumbled, as if blind, when I was 13, (I wasn't grieving my mother back then, although I felt unmoored as she was not available because of her mental illness), and how that same experience flooded back when I did get that phone call, at thirty, telling me she had died. Looking back, the sense of loss, and the entire experience of grief, made me a little crazy. At the time I remember feeling like a different person was inhabiting my body, a person who might do things out of character, just like Prose describes Nico's journey down that same road. Prose's depiction of the family's grief, as they each drifted off on currents of their own felt very real.


Prose intrigues me. The name Francine Prose (with a name like that, how could she not become a writer?)would not normally set off my "Jewdar", but her name must be misleading, as there are so Jewish-related elements in some of her works. Before "Goldengrove" I had read only one other of Francine Prose's many novels - but that one was a doozy. The premise of "A Changed Man" was that a young Neo-Nazi enters the office of the head of a Jewish agency (someone who reads suspiciously like Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League) and claims to have turned over a new leaf. That novel, "A Changed Man" was so suspenseful and thought provoking, that when "Goldengrove" caught my eye, I had to bite.

Checking the library system, I found that among her many listings, Prose co-authored a children's book called "The Lamed-Vavniks", referring to the Kabbalistic concept that God has hidden 36 holy people in the world at any given time. (According to gematria, the system that assigns numerical values to Hebrew letters, the number 36 is derived by adding the values of the Lamed and the Vav.) Anyway, there is some definite Jewish connection here.


But I digress. "Goldengrove" is so well written that reading it is akin to sitting in a big, comfy easy chair. I don't mean to infer that this is an easy, fluffy beach read, because it's not. What I mean is that when you dig into a book like this, just as when you lower your behind into a well built, solid chair, you feel good, relaxed. You know you won't fall. You are in good hands. Prose's prose is stunning, in the way the best books are when they capture details about common experiences that we have never put into words. I love her storytelling and look forward to what comes next.

What Remains, by Carole Radziwill

Carole Radziwill lost her husband, Anthony, within the same two-week span that Anthony's first cousin, John Kennedy Jr. and his wife (Carolyn Bessette, Carole's best friend) died in a plane crash. It was an unbelievable confluence of tragedies, a story just waiting to be written.


Carole actually has some writing chops - she worked for ABC News before her marriage, winning an Emmy. In the back storyof this memoir, she tells of her modest, colorful family, and how her spunk facilitated getting her out of the small town where she grew up, just outside of New York. It was during her tenure at ABC News that she met Anthony Radziwill, a descendant of Polish royalty. I liked Carole Radziwill's writing, and her story is a compelling one, but I had a few issues with her telling.

The issue of privilege was the biggest issue at hand; from the time she meets her husband, "privilege" becomes almost a character of its own. Carole doesn't describe her family of origin as having a lot of money, but her transition into a gilded life appeared seamless. Her descriptions of the many events she attends always include the name of the designer of the outfit she wore. She tosses about the maker of the crystal of the wine glasses at the luncheon. Maybe in any story about the rich and famous these are details readers want, but I found them gratuitous. And, no, not all cancer patients can afford to hire Merryl Streep's hair and makeup man to come to the hospital and make a wig to cover a chemo-balding head. Or keep a personal trainer around the house to help speed the recovery after surgery. Does the fact that these tragedies happened to a wealthy person make them any less tragic? I want to say no, but I'm not entirely sure.



Another thing that caught my attention is that I had the feeling that sometimes Radziwill wasn't dishing out the whole story. For instance, as Anthony's health begins a steep decline, Carole talks about falling in love with an antique car she spotted for sale. Really? What is that about? Indeed, I thought there was something missing in her description of her relationship with her husband. I never got a sense that she stayed completely devoted to him and in love throughout his illness. And, this may just possibly be me and my own emotional baggage talking here, but I smelled something fake about Carole's bff relationship with Caroline. If it really was as close as she claims it was, she didn't show it in the book. In fact, when Carole casually drops the bomb that, at Carolyn's urging, she begins to see a therapist, but meanwhile, Caroline has just stopped seeing her own shrink, I thought she sounded petty, slightly hostile and possibly jealous.

The author's best line is, "We create narratives for people because they are simpler than the complexity of real lives." How true! I just wish Radziwill included the complexity in her own narrative.