Buy Yourself the F*cking Lilies: And other rituals to fix your life, from someone who's been there

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She has been on medication for years for depression and anxiety and while she lays out long lists of guidelines to create rituals that will better oneself, she has included notes about how it’s ok to not follow them to the letter all the time. The author probably had little to do with this next part, but the "swear words in the title" trend needs to end.

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Writing a book isn’t a personal goal of mine but this “book” shows me that anyone can publish a “book” , even if they don’t bother much with the writing part. Schuster's family-of-origin did leave her with plenty of baggage to deal with, and I can see how this book could serve as a lifeline for others looking for a path out of their own trauma, pain, and simple confusion around how to live a meaningful and happy life. It’s authentic without being preachy, and while I listened to it, I’m also so glad to have a hard copy so I can underline. This is a regurgitation of the most overworked lessons from late 80s Oprah from the whiniest, least circumspect voice one could possibly imagine.And I actually agree with a lot of the things the author says, like how when you have depression and anxiety but you also come from a background of privilege, you might actually feel a lot of guilt over being so depressed and anxious because you don't feel like you "deserve" to. Growing up in a rocky household with parents who later divorced, becoming a self-proclaimed "party girl," and then working through her issues and later landing a pretty high up job with Comedy Central is the gist of the author's life.

Tara Schuster

There are moments when the author realizes her privilege, but most of the time, I think the things she has to say come off as incredibly tone deaf. It was selected byCosmopolitan, Real Simple,Goop, PublishersWeekly,and many more as one of the best booksof the yearon mental health and self-care. I can only guess that the editor who okayed this has the flu and has some kind of impaired judgement or something. No one knew that her road to adulthood had been paved with depression, anxiety, and shame, owing in large part to her minimally parented upbringing.If that’s something you are looking for, it’s a decent read, better than many dry tomes of this type. I don't know how you could live for a year in a house with gynecological equipment rotting in your front yard and not turn that into a hilarious anecdote? So, while it pained me, I didn’t need to waste any more time (this is a freaking LONG book and I was listening to it on 1. The author, Tara Schuster, after years of therapy, spent a good amount of time working on trying to reparent herself, trying different methods. on any more advice from someone “who’s been there” (not where I’ve been) that amounted to the same (superficial?

Tara wrote a very honest and insightful book about coming from difficult beginnings and realizing that she didn’t have the knowledge or skills she needed in life so she set out to teach them to herself and learn how to be a functioning successful adult and develop the skill sets she needed. But here’s what endlessly distracted me from what good stuff is in here: Tara seems to think she’s writing in the language of Tweets or something.Full of practical, free baby-steps we can take today, it's for people who are ready to liberate themselves from their emotional suffering, discover their purpose, and finally sit in the driver's seat of their experience. Personally, she lost me when she started talking about how much she loved journaling and the merits of positive psychology. With humor and a great deal of herself laid bare, Tara shows the reader where she was in her life when she realized it wasn’t working for her. It certainly didn't mean that I had worked out all of my issues from childhood and now everything was “perf, thanks, byeee . Over the next five years, Schuster examined every facet of her life, and by consulting other self-help books and trusting the wisdom that emerged from her own journalling efforts, she was able to find her way to a form of self-love that enabled her to then shine love out into the world as well (it's really not as cheesy as that sounds).

The book was a great read and learned a lot from it and was able to take the advice to apply to my own personal life. So much so that any personal “improvements” really are — at the end of the day — self interested, fragile and (I strongly suspect) superficial.I got an advance copy from NetGalley, so the first couple times I ran across the lowercase “rn,” I thought it was some kind of typo, which happens a lot in advanced reader copies. I’m guessing she took a lot of this from her own journals, and in my journaling, I also use shorthand because ideally, I’m the only one who is ever going to read those pages. Ruthlessly authentic and bitingly hilarious, Taratakes us on a roller coaster of self-discovery, revealing that we are allthe student and the teacher on our own pathsto growthandhealing. Glow in the F*cking Darkproves thatTara Schuster is a modern-day guru for people who really hate gurus. The third time, from the context, I realized she was trying to say “right now,” and apparently didn’t have the time or space to be clear about this.