The Wrong Way to Save Your Life audiobook

"I’ve always engaged with the heart as a metaphor: a desire, a thing to survive, to heal from or shoot for. Now I know there’s nothing more real. We walk through the world at its leisure. We’re here at its mercy and with its blessing. At some point, we have to ask ourselves how we want to live.”I picked up this book of essays completely on a whim. In all honesty, it should have been lost forever under the weight of several hundred books on my list. I may have read a review or two several years ago, but haven’t seen it since - until a few days ago when I decided to peruse my virtual essay bookshelf. Seriously, the title alone is what made me head to Libby with my fingers crossed that my library would have a copy. And they did! And what a book! Megan Stielstra, why have I not heard your name before?!! I adore you. Really, I do! This collection of essays made me laugh and cry, and most importantly, gave me some much needed courage. Megan is the kind of person we all need living next door - or at least a quick phone call away.“There are so many reasons not to try. They all start with I’m scared.”Megan writes frankly about fear, mistakes, and our ability and responsibility to continuously learn in order to better ourselves and our world. There’s nothing pretentious or judgmental in her observations. She’s that friend that can always make you laugh, telling it like it is. She’s constantly on the search for truth and meaning, and is more than willing to listen to all opinions. She is refreshingly open-minded. Not a trait one comes across very often these days. She doesn’t apologize for not understanding; rather, she asks what she can do to improve and takes action.“No matter how set in our ways, we still have much to learn. We can listen. We can try. That is possible… You don’t get to hate something just because you don’t understand it.” Creativity, the struggle to make a living as an artist, gun control, relationships and finding love, sex, parental divorce, motherhood, and post-partum depression are all topics she shares with candor. Some of her essays are rather brief, summing up in a few words some idea she’s had. I could imagine her freezing in the middle of the produce aisle with some brilliant thought, and scrambling to write it down in some little journal so she could later share it with us. Even her longer pieces never meander. Every bit is clear and incisive. As usual, I found myself highlighting the hell out of this collection. Here are a few of my favorites that I just can’t wait for you to find out for yourself (especially if you refuse to take my advice and read this book!!)“We should all be in awe of teenagers, of youth, youth artists in particular. Holy hell, the emotion! The love and the anger and the energy, all so huge, enough force to power a city. I think back to myself then, and I look at the young writers I work with now, and am blown away by their courage. It scares people, I think. We try to contain it. We teach them to hold back. To be 'appropriate.' To be 'respectable.' I wonder: What might happen if we got out of their way? What might happen if we actually listened?”"People are dying. That man should not have had eleven guns. That man should not have had a gun. His right to a gun is not greater than our right to walk through this world, alive and living.""Privilege isn’t blame or shame or fear. It’s responsibility." “So much of what’s sold to women is that motherhood is our purpose as opposed to our choice, that we have to have children and put the other parts of our selves at best second, and at worst away for good. I’m here to join the chorus of fuck that noise. If you want to be a mom, be a mom. Be a mom and a working artist and whatever the hell else you want and yes, you will make work after the baby comes and yes, it will be hard and yes, you will be tired but more than that, a thousand times more, it will be amazing and life changing in ways I’m only beginning to understand. And if you don’t want to have a kid, if you choose not to go that way, then I’m standing behind you, too, cheering my face off because what has meaning in this life is living it full and true.”“Sometimes I wonder how the world would be different if we shared resources and opportunities the way our kindergarten teachers made us share crayons.”I'm smacking my hand and stopping here! Though, there’s lots more I really want to include. I felt so passionate about Megan and everything she had to say. I was frequently reading bits of this aloud to anyone that would listen! Her writing is inspiring and funny and heartfelt. She doesn’t know it, but she’s a lifesaver! She just might have given me the push I need to stop whining and start acting! Maybe she can do the same for you someday.“I hope you have a person like that in your life. One who reminds you to choose joy.”

How can a collection of personal essays with the central theme of fear make me laugh out loud, cry, examine facets of my life, break my heart, and put it back together? Somehow Megan Stielstra achieves this feat in her book The Wrong Way to Save Your Life.Her opening essay concludes "If we're going to make it, we have to look at the fear. We have to get into it. Throw it against the wall, stand back and take a good close look. It's ugly: heavy, dark, and centuries in the making. You might want to move on, to turn it off, watch something else, but wait--look again. Look closer. How was it made? When was it made? What was happening when it was made? What are you going to do about it? And when are you going to start?"Her collection turns into a memoir of sorts, though don't look for chronology here. Despite the frequent jumps, she somehow makes it work; and I can follow along. Some of the topics she explores are her parents' divorce, gun violence, toxic masculinity, post-partum depression, motherhood, her father's heart condition, relationships, and teaching.Stielstra's writing sparkles as she tackles heavy subjects with wit, passion, and attention.When concerned about Campus Carry legislation she tells us"At the University of Texas at Austin, students are fighting their recently enacted Campus Carry legislation with dildos. . . . The short version is this: dildos are considered "obscene" and prohibited from campus so students are tying them to their backpacks by the dozens and showing up en-masse at what student organizer Jessica Jin calls -- wait for it, strap ins. . . . It's always been easy to buy or sell a gun in Texas, but up until 2008? You couldn't buy or sell a dildo. And while there are no limits to the number of guns one may own, up until 2003 it was a felony to own more than six dildos."Telling part of the ongoing saga of her father's heart issues:"I pictured my dad on Barometer Mountain on Kodiak, its two-thousand-some elevation gain spread with wildflowers and ridiculously amazing views. He's wearing camo overalls, 7mm rifle at the ready, eye on something four-legged, almost has it, almost there, and then--a sort of tingle, like firefly wings on the inside of your skin, running up his arms, down across his chest, circling around his heart like a washcloth in a fist, squeezing tighter, tighter, body locked, and all you can see is sky. Look up: the ceiling is all clouds. So white. So close. The inside of your skin.[Uncle] Chuck and my brother, Thomas, were there to help. The clinic in Glennallen sent him by medevac to the hospital in Anchorage.Again.For surgery.Again."Writing about a good friend who has helped her through her post-partum depression and many fears:"Sarah is goddamn fucking sunshine. Weaponized optimism. You'll be all: 'I had a shitty day.' And she'll say, 'Oh, friend, that's terrible. Put down your things and we'll have a quick dance.' 'Sarah,' you'll say, 'we're in a parking lot.' Or: 'Sarah, it's raining.' Or: 'Sarah, there's no music,' and she will give you a look. You'll drop your stuff. You'll take off your shoes. You'll dance your face off to the sound of water hitting the pavement and yo know what? It's glorious.I hope you have a person like that in your life.One who reminds you to choose joy."Stielstra's essays are brilliantly written, personal, and messy. Read them. What are you afraid of?Thank you to my GR friends Candi and Justin who pointed me toward this book.

The title is a bit misleading because Stielstra's certainly helped me through a rough week. Maybe the book didn't save my life, but it could. I could see it. It's a light in the darkness. If everybody put a quarter of the passion, care, and empathy that bleeds out of every single sentence in this book, I feel like the world would be a much better place.

Love Megan Stielstra. Very passionate writer who has a relatable story for everyone. Language is a bit dramatic at times, so if you're prone to eye-roll, note that.

I often think of Chicago as my third parent and this book made me sob with nostalgia. I lived in those neighborhoods. I went to that writing program. I have my own stories about it all. This book found me in the middle of a writing drought and by the time I finished reading the last page 3 days later, I knew exactly where to start again.

Wow, wow, wow. These essays are powerful in so many ways. Throughout so much of this collection I was choking back tears because, with such delicacy, Stielstra puts to words the frustrations and insecurities resulting from all of the unfair things that happen in life. Never before have I seen the notion of white privilege handled with such care and self-awareness. "We were at your house for Thanksgiving. The boys wanted to play in the front yard with plastic swords and squirt guns. My son didn't understand why your son wasn't allowed to be outside with a toy gun. They looked at you. You looked at me. You and I had a conversation that didn't involve speaking, and my son and I went for a walk. I told him about Tamir Rice. About Tyre King. I grabbed the air for words to explain, knowing that my heartbreak is a puddle compared to the ocean you swim in every day." While most of her themes are 'serious' - fear, postpartum depression, privilege - she intersperses humor that breaks up the heaviness. "I am not proud of what happened next so I'll say it fast: When I got to the shelter the next morning there was a little girl, eight years old, maybe. She pointed at Mojo and squealed, saying, 'Daddy, look at that puppy! Can I have that puppy?''That's my dog,' I said, and I shoved her out of the way." Perhaps the most powerful essays were the four organized around age: "ten, or The Little Girl Character", "twenty, or Good Lord, It's Me, Jane.", "thirty, or Come Here Fear", and "forty, or Optimist". Each is a collection of moments or events from Stielstra's life that together show something about fear and resilience. There is something in this collection for everyone, Stielstra is a very talented personal essayist.

Please read this book. It will help you understand the power of personal stories that are told with wit, grace, and astonishing candor. It was amazing to read of relatives on different sides of the political spectrum that respected each other enough to keep reaching for understanding of the other side and each other. The most captivating part of this book were the stories about how art can reach us and make our lives better, as I've found this to be true. As for faith in God, Megan doesn't buy organized religion but is stopped short when someone says that God and people are the same thing. I don't buy that approach to theology wholeheartedly but I do know that God is love and we are called to love because of His love for us. So, spread some love and do some good today!For anyone who has a favorite piece of art, song, book, or movie, you'll feel as though you've found a friend who understands your obsession with it. There are incredible portions on empathy, depression, and overwhelming love.Read this book.

A combustible, heartrending, beautiful mix of family, artmaking, teaching, triumph, tragedy, and being a woman today, yesterday, tomorrow.More - http://www.changeyourlifethiswill.com...

A warm hug and a call to arms. Will be thinking about this one for a long, long time to come!