Review: Maybe You Should Talk To Someone

I have written more in the last year than ever before. And yet, the tragic collateral damage has been my reading. As someone who has failed at perhaps a bajillion diets so far, I am a strong believer in trying one more time. A new year seemed to be as good a milestone as any.

A reader of Womaning (and now one of my favourites) sent me this book as a gift over Christmas. I truly cannot imagine a better book to get back on the reading horse. Hell, I cannot recommend a book more to get back on the living-your-life horse.

I don’t know if that last sentence made sense to anyone reading this. But let me try to explain how it made sense to me writing it.

I suffer from one too many character flaws. (Not the least of which is that I am too self-critical.) And I numb my heightened awareness of my own flaws through my various addictions – a rather popular purpose for addictions to serve. What a person in my situation needs is for something or someone to come along, rip through the protective shell of numbness we’ve built around ourselves, and jolt us back to our humanity.

This book is that something and Lori Gottlieb is that someone.

Maybe You Should Talk To Someone is a collection of stories that trace the journeys of a few people (one of whom is Lori herself) as they go through therapy. Each one starts off as an emotional mess of a different kind – a terminally ill woman in her 30s, and a suicidal 69-year-old; a self-sabotaging alcoholic looking for love, and a rude Hollywood bigshot who likens his therapist to a prostitute in their first session. Through their journeys we learn more about their humanity, and – props to Lori’s writing here – about our own.

This book made me cry, chuckle, and dream about its characters when I slept. Words will run out before my adoration of this beautiful work of art and heart does. So let me just end with – maybe every year of ours should begin with a revisit of this one. ♥️

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