Ooookay. If you're friends with me on Facebook or you follow me on Instagram you might have noticed that I attempted to post yesterday and ALL THE THE WORK WAS LOST!!! So frustrating... I really felt like I had a great post. This one... prompts me to think about changing platforms again (TBD on that) and IT ALWAYS SAVE MY WORK!!! In an attempt to recreate what I wrote yesterday, I am posting Woman Crush Wednesday... one day late. Hopefully this is as good as the original.
Last week, on a Thursday, I posted a list of 8 books that have really motivated me to not only be a better woman but a person as well. Not only were they great books for women, but they were all written BY women. I'm about half way through Jordan Dooley's 'Own Your Everyday' and she's doing a great job of helping me not play the comparison game and reminding me that we need to lift each other up as women.
I want to continue that by talking about a few more titles and authors that have really pushed me to be a better believer, a better woman, and a better athlete. Without further a ado here, in no particular order, is a list of this week's women crush Wednesday authors.
The Hiding Place
The hiding place is part autobiography part historical novel. It's a true story of a woman lived the first 50 year so fo her life with her life, working in her fathers watch shop, watching and helping her sisters grow and raise children. Being there when her mom passed. Almost kind of normal life expectancy. Then the Nazis regime moved into Holland and suddenly she is forced into a world where she has opened her home, her heart, and her life, to not only family and friends but strangers. For a time she was able to hide these people and even help them find safety, and the unthinkable happens. She loses everything she's known and loved for 5 decades. Abandoned in a concentration camp, witnessing her sisters cruel and slow death. How, how does she continue to hold onto her faith?
“This is what the past is for! Every experience God gives us, every person He puts in our lives is the perfect preparation for the future that only He can see.”
Wild
I must confess I had a bit of a hard time with this book. It's also for one reason. However, I am also learning to meet people where they are at. As someone who has been wanting for a baby for a few years it was very hard to read Cheryl's "seemingly" quick and "easy" decision to get an abortion. It was a blip and that barely got a second eye blink... or so it seemed.
The thing is Cheryl Strayed experienced loss after loss and then had the worst experience watching her mother, her best friend, die slowing and horrifically to cancer. After years of being lost in a drug haze she decides to embark on a 3 month long journey, BY HERSELF, without a cell phone (HELLO GPS!) across the pacific crest trail. Essentially from Mexico to Canada, beginning to end. In that time frame Cheryl essentially met herself where she was at. I ended up LOVING the book by the end. How she got to where she is now and how she conquered not only a physical feat but a mental and emotional one as well. “I knew that if I allowed fear to overtake me, my journey was doomed. Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told. I decided I was safe. I was strong. I was brave. Nothing could vanquish me.”
I am Malala
I have a beautiful 16 year old cousin who was essentially born and raised out in the country. She is wickedly smart and actually gets in trouble for reading to late into the night when she should be going to bed to get ready for school the next day. Not to long ago she rattled Benedict Arnold's name in reference to helping her mom with one of her younger siblings. (I had JUST learned about him that year! Listen - I was not always good in school, as I could never stop talking long enough to retain anything.) This young cousin of mine understands that books can take you to thousands of different places all from the comfort of your bedroom.
Malala was just 15 when she was shot 3 times by the Taliban for believing the girls had a right to do what my young cousin can freely do. It was interesting learning about why and how she started to speak about an oppressive regime. What life was like in her country post 9/11. I have to confess, as I never gave much thought how 9/11 impacted other counties, especially ones that not only bordered counties that housed terrorists, but actively had ones taking over her country as well. “One child, one teacher, one book, one pen can change the world.”
The Pursuit of Endurance
Another confession... I sometimes don't remember what I write about. HAHAHAH That's terrible, but it doesn't make it any less true. I only say this because I posted my review of this book last year, almost a year ago, to the day! Instead of telling you about the book again, I am just going to link you to my original post, here. This book, by far has been the most motivating to me as a woman athlete. She doesn't shy away from how endurance training, such as completing the ATP in 46 days, messed with her cycle. It's an incredibly read and one I will come back to again. "When it feels as if you are constantly losing and everything good is slipping away, it is difficult to muster the strength to keep trying again and again. But endurance is the ability to continue despite past results and with disregard for future outcomes."
Challenge accepted
I only recently started reading this book but barely a chapter in and I am already laughing my booty off. Celeste is the social media's anti-it girl. She gained fame by recreating celebrity photos and videos without make up on and often in her underwear. Recreating master pieces of dancing with her hubby pool side but in an uncoordinated lunatic sort of way, and what it must be like to go grocery shopping in your granny pants. Celeste is out there to tell us that were A-OKAY in the packages we come in, and we also need to not take ourselves to seriously. I cannot wait to finish reading this one.
Alright friends, I have to let the girl out and start the night time routine.
Thank you for being patient with me while I had technical difficulties last night. Don't worry I saved this one like 500 hundred times...so we should be good!
Next Wednesday I'll be back to talk about Fiction Female writers!
Blessings,
A
Last week, on a Thursday, I posted a list of 8 books that have really motivated me to not only be a better woman but a person as well. Not only were they great books for women, but they were all written BY women. I'm about half way through Jordan Dooley's 'Own Your Everyday' and she's doing a great job of helping me not play the comparison game and reminding me that we need to lift each other up as women.
I want to continue that by talking about a few more titles and authors that have really pushed me to be a better believer, a better woman, and a better athlete. Without further a ado here, in no particular order, is a list of this week's women crush Wednesday authors.
The Hiding Place
“This is what the past is for! Every experience God gives us, every person He puts in our lives is the perfect preparation for the future that only He can see.”
Wild
The thing is Cheryl Strayed experienced loss after loss and then had the worst experience watching her mother, her best friend, die slowing and horrifically to cancer. After years of being lost in a drug haze she decides to embark on a 3 month long journey, BY HERSELF, without a cell phone (HELLO GPS!) across the pacific crest trail. Essentially from Mexico to Canada, beginning to end. In that time frame Cheryl essentially met herself where she was at. I ended up LOVING the book by the end. How she got to where she is now and how she conquered not only a physical feat but a mental and emotional one as well. “I knew that if I allowed fear to overtake me, my journey was doomed. Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told. I decided I was safe. I was strong. I was brave. Nothing could vanquish me.”
I am Malala
Malala was just 15 when she was shot 3 times by the Taliban for believing the girls had a right to do what my young cousin can freely do. It was interesting learning about why and how she started to speak about an oppressive regime. What life was like in her country post 9/11. I have to confess, as I never gave much thought how 9/11 impacted other counties, especially ones that not only bordered counties that housed terrorists, but actively had ones taking over her country as well. “One child, one teacher, one book, one pen can change the world.”
The Pursuit of Endurance
Challenge accepted
Alright friends, I have to let the girl out and start the night time routine.
Thank you for being patient with me while I had technical difficulties last night. Don't worry I saved this one like 500 hundred times...so we should be good!
Next Wednesday I'll be back to talk about Fiction Female writers!
Blessings,
A
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