On Being Human: A Memoir of Waking Up, Living Real, and Listening Hard Kindle Edition

I've read Jennifer's writing through her essays and her blog Manifest-station, so I was looking forward to reading her story as a whole, as opposed to the bits and pieces of her relationship with her father and other parts of her life. I found the synthesis, On Being Human, really beautiful, and also way more raw than a lot of memoirs.For instance, when Jennifer is talking about being a teenager and sinking into the patterns of anorexia, it was completely transporting, for me. She talks about standing at her hostess job absently touching her stomach (exposed in a crop top) to make sure it's still flat enough. This is hard to read -- hard to be thrust into the center of, for though I've never had full-blown anorexia, I had at that age such severe dislike of the body I was born into it makes me cry for my past self. I think in a "literary" memoir--many of which I've read--you have the person's suffering described with such spare language that you're supposed to infer that when the narrator/person whom the memoir is about glances at a cirrus cloud in the sky, they're feeling remorse and sadness. Jennifer doesn't sublimate everything she experienced into some "high art." She serves it up raw. And it's not easy to read.I'll admit that until she started finding her way to more love for herself, I found some parts hard to get through. I'd say that is a mark of really good "literature," however...accompanying the protagonist through the darkness and getting the reward of seeing them turn something hard into a thing of beauty. Yes, she didn't just move on from those things that used to tear her down; she talked about them and how she made sense of them, and shared the stories with others in her retreats and through her website. Actually, I'd call that dramatic irony--definitely part of literature I enjoy!

I was up all night reading. I thought, well, I've read virtually everything she's written. She can't get any better. She can't possibly. I've had literary orgasms reading this woman's essays online. Wrong. I was So wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Because I am a voracious reader, I knew It was possible to fall in love with a book. But I didn't know that I would literally want to lie down on the pages and pull the binding around me, like a blanket. I wanted the book to become part of me. So that I never had to be alone again. That's one thing this authors words did immediately and deeply. They let me know I wasn't alone. Her prose is so spectacalur and striking in its depth, it transcends the page.The writing by itself, is worth the loss of sleep. Gorgeous and lyrical. Stunning and vivid. It's like walking into an eclipse of the sun. Sitting down inside the ventricles and muscles of a heart.This is not a book. It's a survival scream. It's an actual heart. A heart that refused to lie down and die. A heart that refused to let a dream become rust and cobwebs.Jennifer asks this frequently: What would you do, if you weren't Afraid?This book is the answer.Read it. You will be gutted, grateful, snot streaming and laughing. and have a new definition of hope. For this thing called humanity.

I bought this book because Cheryl Strayed recommended it and I've been reading so many heavy books that I wanted something uplifting and relatable. I opened it, intending to just give it a skim, read a few pages and save it for later, but the introduction hooked me and I just kept reading. Jen Pastiloff's voice is the voice I want in my head, a voice that is determined to find the beauty and forgiveness and truth and humor in the world but isn't going to pretend that's always easy to do. Her story was entertaining and inspiring, unique and universal. It's like a self help book but written by someone you actually want to know, someone who isn't pretending to have all the answers but made me feel like I could find a little more love and beauty and generosity in myself and for myself. I'm excited to share this book with friends, to give it as gifts, because I'm confident that everyone will find something in it that speaks to whatever they're going through, whatever way they can treat themselves and the world with a little more ease. On Being Human is going to sit on my nightstand so I can read and reread parts anytime I need. I'm confident I'm going to find more layers of meaning and inspiration each time I do. Highly recommended.

I may have realized this book was more memoir than "self help" when I downloaded it; I don't remember. I put books in my Kindle library such a long time before I actually read them, that I seldom remember the description. The majority of the book is about Jen's life happenings and how her mostly self-imposed limitations played out. Perhaps this is so during the next part going more into her breakthroughs we remember what was going on around her and what she was telling herself at the time so we more clearly see the profundity of the breakthrough. Jen's writing is excellent at immediately turning her breakthroughs into our possibilities. Very little in my pathological life is like Jen's, so my enjoyment wasn't about identification with her experiences, finding new tools or new understandings for myself. It was about learning more about being human and what it takes to lift each other up. Jen's great writing talent conveys her ideas and experiences just as though I were watching a movie play out in front of me. I have overcome a lot during my almost 8 decades of life; but Jen has overcome more than I think I could stand. The miracle she is is such a blessing.