Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily and Amelia Nagoski

Should you buy this book? Look down. Do you have breasts? A vagina? Do you identify as female? 

Buy this book.

I wrote earlier about the book and it was amazing from the beginning because from page 1 it's truth bomb after truth bomb with truly feminine/feminist sensibilities. Some of the negative reviews on Amazon center around the dislike of the feminist side of the book but I think that's what makes it stand out. Without understanding how the patriarchy (ugh) influences our lives, we can't live wholly and fully as ourselves.

There's no miracle cure. What there is comes to understanding how our bodies function best and how to bypass the "human giver syndrome" to claim the rest and self care we need to not just survive but to live.

There's just too many thoughts and truths to make a sensible review for me. But reasons I want every woman alive to read this book:

1. It explains how stress works and has no magic bullet to rid your life of stress. Instead it explains how stress works as a cycle so if you can complete the cycle, your mind and body can move on and not keep functioning in stress mode.
2. "Human Giver Syndrome". I've heard it with many names but it's a HUGE part of women's lives. We're caretakers for the world (and our families, friends, co-workers...) We are expected to give as much of ourselves as possible and even when it sickens us or makes us weak we should never be selfish enough to think self-care matters.
3. The madwoman in the attic. I like this phrase. It's an explanation of that voice in your head that says you're not enough, you don't deserve love, bad things happen to you because you deserve them... you know: too fat, too unlovable, too loud. Who is the madwoman in your attic?
4. Rest. We don't get enough sleep. Or rest. (Okay Carolyn, you might not relate to everything in the book.)
5. The game is rigged. It's 100% rigged against women.  

I don't know if I can express how amazing this book is. Really. It just seemed to fit into so much of what I have and still do experience, and overall made me feel seen. And honestly, to have someone tell you that yes, no matter how much you do it will never be enough so why not do as much as you want/can and then go get a manicure and a nap...

If you have the spare $$ get this book. It might not change your life but it will help you feel not quite so alone in it.

Cocks (A Poem)

I used to love men's cocks
those absurd, proud popinjays
posturing, silly, silky hard
pleasing when proud & excited,
then, like a sad prairie animal
when unaroused, like a lipstick
no one likes the color of
so never uses.

I used to like the sight
the taste and thrust of a cock
sometimes
I even liked the actual man
but not that often. They were
stains on my sheets, beads
crowding my busy bracelets,
stepping stones to my discovery:
they were something to me once.

I no longer care for the cocks
or the men, for their blustering
or politics, for sperm and thrust
aggression, oppression, wet spots
sore thighs, broken dreams
broken stones when you want
to tread lightly.

Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle

by Emily Nagoski, PhD and Amelia Nagoski, DMA

Okay, I just got this book and my mind is being blown on every page, and I’m only a few chapters in but I know it’s going to be one of those books I’ll read again and again because it makes total sense and it really will improve your life!

I first heard about the book from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. They were talking about how much they were looking forward to reading it. I put it on my Amazon Wish List and have just waited for it to come out in paperback.

So let me explain something about self-help books (my opinion only): if you’re open to it and the author isn’t a complete idiot then most likely you’ll find something that resonates with you. Then again you can find it anywhere. So a self-help book is a nebulous creature, more than able to nothing but sound-bites with no substance or something with complete substance that rocks you while you read it.

Burnout is rocking me because it’s not really about the things that stress us out, after all, life is nothing but stress upon stress. Finances constantly stress me, the sad state of my knees, my daughter being so far away, politics, work… the list goes on. And these are not miracle workers with miracle cures. After all, let’s be completely honest: some stresses resolve while others are with us always.

Burnout is about what happens to your body when stress gets involved. The muscles tightening, the adrenaline running and every part of you ready for flight or fight. We can live with stressors, we can’t survive the stress reactions in our body.

I’m only about a quarter through the book but I’m shook on every page. I feel like this is the right book for most women who feel overwhelmed by being superwoman, who wake up every morning and want to stay in bed because there’s so much to do, and who can’t sleep because of the lists and problems that keep her eyes open and her brow creased.

Carolyn told me to write as I progress through the book. I might. But I can tell you right now this book is a serious keeper.

The Power of Creating Definition

You know that moment when someone says something that blows your mind with its simplicity and truth? I saw that on Twitter yesterday when author N.K. Jemison responded to a Twitter post and said about close friendships: Don’t call them your friends, call them your partners. Relationships between people deserve their own definitions as decided by those people, not by society.

Do you know how simple and true that is? I mean, think about it. I live with my brother and sister-in-law and yes, they’re family and all but as far as living together we’re also roommates and partners. My friendship with Carolyn has spanned 15 years and we’ve written books together, shared happy and sad and websites, we’re more than friends, at this point Carolyn is my sister.

(Lea, I know you’re reading this and I think of you as my long-distance girlfriend.)

Anyway, the thing is that I loved the idea. The awareness that we all have relationships that skip around the random borders we assign. My night boss, the amazing Kozy is my boss, my friend, my soon to be divorced husband. We bounce around between loving each other, wanting to stick each other with sharp, pointy things and sometimes just doing the boss/employee relationship too.

Anyway, my mind was pleasantly blown and I’m delighted. And I just wanted to share.

**want to add that in 2 days a couple of 18 year olds have blown my mind. Yesterday I received a present from my daughter of a book she heard parts of in a class and thought I would enjoy. It’s the first time she ever bought me a present that wasn’t for an occasion. I was gobsmacked and delighted.

And my girl’s high school friend Winnie auditioned for a Performance Art College and was accepted at her audition! So she’s transferring colleges for next year. I’m so fucking proud of that girl. And her words of love to me after my words of congratulations to her made my heart melt.**