lory_enterenchanted's reviews
413 reviews

More Than Words by Jill Santopolo
Did not finish book.

This was an attempt from a StoryGraph out of my comfort zone category. I was bored by the rich people's problems after a few chapters.

Running on Empty: Overcome Your Childhood Emotional Neglect by Jonice Webb
Did not finish book.

I skim read this for the most useful and relevant information. I do believe emotional neglect is real and formative but needs more study. Some of what wenn describes here is emotional abuse. Most interesting to me is the category of well meaning but neglected themselves parents but that is given the least detailed attention. 

The joggest aha was about my lack of self discipline and the hope that o can solve that not by self criticism but by better self care. 

Theater Shoes by Noel Streatfeild

informative lighthearted

3.0

A return to the Academy of Dancing and Stage Training from Ballet Shoes! Although that is fun, too much of the same is not a good thing; as other reviewers have mentioned, there is too much similarity to the first book. On the other hand, rather than solitary orphans, the main characters are suddenly confronted with a large theatrical family, and along with the interesting glimpses of life in wartime London, that presents the greatest interest. More interaction among the cousins, and a more carefully worked-out ending would have improved the whole book greatly; as it is, it seems as though Streatfeild had to suddenly meet a deadline or stick to a reduced number of pages, and cut the book off in a hurry. 

Circle of Hope: A Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church by Eliza Griswold

challenging dark emotional sad tense

3.5

For the Nonfiction Reader Challenge category of a book published in 2024, I sampled a number of forthcoming releases, but this was the only one that caught my attention and made me want to read further. It's a fairly up-to-the-minute story, too, as the main action covers the last few years, up to Easter of 2023. The pandemic thus plays a key role, of course, though one unexpected by the author when she started the project in 2019. 

The subject is a Philadelphia church called Circle of Hope, which up to that point had been a remarkable growth story, at its height comprising over 700 members spread among four congregations. The founder, a "Jesus freak" from the 60s, was heading toward retirement, facing the challenge of handing his creation over to the next generation. The church had become an important local source of services and community building;. While aiming to uphold the values of the early Christians, to share resources and empower the disenfranchised, through enterprises including two successful thrift stores, it had amassed $1 million in assets. An offshoot of the Anabaptist movement that emphasized the priesthood of all believers, it eschewed old traditions in favor of creative engagement with the way of following Jesus, with "love" as the watchword. 

Sounds great, but there was trouble ahead. Just as the church was grappling with "Founder's Syndrome" (a common organizational difficulty in transitioning away from the influence of a strong leader), the pandemic hit, a legacy of racism was unearthed, and longtime resistance to affirming LGBQT individuals surfaced as well. In an enclave of well-meaning, idealistic, liberal people, some uncomfortable truths had to be faced, including the fact that the percentage of BIPOC members of the church was significantly lower than in the city as a whole. As educated white people joined the church and moved into low-rent neighborhoods, they were driving out the former residents, and though they might think what they were doing was opposing capitalism, in fact they were enabling gentrification. 

Griswold, the daughter of an Episcopal presiding bishop who found his own denomination deeply riven over LGBTQ affirmation, seems to have been drawn to the church out of interest in its liberal values, but found herself chronicling its demise. Over the course of just a few years, a hard time for most denominations, it was hemorrhaging members at four times the rate of the church in general. From a "circle of hope," its seemed to have fallen into a death spiral of dissent and internal conflict. 

This complex story is organized in four parts, each in turn composed of chapters that focus in turn on each of the church's four pastors (with one exception). We see the same events and the same ideas from different, sometimes diametrically opposing points of view. There's a lot of backtracking and jumping around in time and place. Sometimes this makes for a confusing narrative, sometimes there's unnecessary repetition. I wished a timeline had been included; I also wondered whether it would have been better to focus on two of the pastors, with the others playing more of a supporting role. I really would have liked to hear more from some of the congregation members to whom Circle of Hope meant so much, but they remain mainly in the background. 

What is developed clearly is a personality conflict that centers around the one BIPOC pastor. As he calls out racist tendencies in the church, his white colleagues appear to sincerely want to hear him and other members of the congregation, and to initiate change. But that proves to be impossible, in the way it's carried out. An anti-racist consultant is hired, but soon leaves, saying the pastors can't do the work. 

In fact, it's not at all clear what the anti-racist campaigners want the white members to do. The latter agree to be led into a transformative process, but then they are scolded for asking questions, for being sad, angry, or upset about what is happening, and for leaving when they can't take the tantrums and bullying any more. (The one white male pastor is badgered until he quits, then excoriated for "hijacking the narrative.") Absolutely everything white people do or say can be considered evidence of their white supremacist ideology, and no practical, actionable steps are given to them to work their way out of that condition. 

Meanwhile, when some BIPOC members of the congregation say they don't feel they have experienced racism and want clarification, they're told that those who have experienced it don't have to explain, as that would traumatize them further. Any disagreement between BIPOC members is to be suppressed at all costs, and there is only one right way to see events. 

Griswold reports all of this in a dispassionate, objective way, without giving much sign of her opinion about it all. Readers can try to make up their own mind about what is going on. Indeed, although to me the behavior of the pastor and congregation member leading the campaign seemed not only ineffective but unethical, to some they might come across as heroes. Exacerbated by pandemic stress and everything else conspiring to unhinge us these days, the whole situation seems to demonstrate how people want to retreat into their own minds and turn everything opposing them into a fearful "other," wiping out any possibility of communication or change. 

Partway through this depressing tale, I was tempted to stop reading, but I was glad that I continued. Only late in the story did I start to understand how this could be happening, how when people latch onto causes with such passion, fighting a distant, amorphous enemy, sometimes it's really something closer to home that they are even more afraid to face. It's not that the cause is not worthwhile, but their fight can't be effective when they are blinded by what they don't want to see in themselves. 

And sometimes whole institutions are built around such a blind spot, and however much good they may have done, they have to fall apart and die in order to reveal that weakness. Rebuilding can take place then, on stronger foundations, but only when we have the courage to face and learn from what we have done. 

The church was broken, but the people remain. They will reform, reconnect, and create something new. And it is in such a dying and reviving, not a closed circle of perfection but an open spiral of becoming, that Christ can actually work. The book had to stop somewhere, but the real story has no end. 

When Fragments Make a Whole by Lory Widmer Hess

emotional hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced

This is my book, so I'm not going to give it a star rating! But I will say that it's been a deeply gratifying and humbling process to write it, and to see my words launched into the world. I hope that they will touch readers in search of healing and grace. To learn more and subscribe to my newsletter, visit my website and blog, enterenchanted.com.

Emil und die Detektive by Erich Kästner

funny lighthearted mysterious

3.0

A simple story with some local color (boy from a village visits relatives in Berlin). There could have been a bit more twistiness in the plot or in the relationships between the boys, but it was all quite straightforward. Best for me was that I got through reading a book in German! 

I Thought We'd Never Speak Again: The Road from Estrangement to Reconciliation by Laura Davis

emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective

3.0

Moving stories about the path from estrangement to reconciliation. 

The Emotionally Absent Mother, Updated and Expanded Second Edition: How to Recognize and Heal the Invisible Effects of Childhood Emotional Neglect by Jasmin Lee Cori

emotional informative inspiring reflective

4.0

I found this to be a thorough and helpful guide. The missing piece I would personally be interested in is more information about what to do when one has been an emotionally absent mother oneself and is trying to change. 

The Collected Schizophrenias by Esmé Weijun Wang

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad

4.5

Ever since reading Hidden Valley Road (which I highly recommend), I’ve been wanting to read more about schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, to learn more about these mysterious and very challenging states of soul, from as many points of view as possible. I’ve put a number of titles on the TBR, to work through gradually. 

The Collected Schizophrenias is a good way to gain a window into the experience of someone living with schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type — the diagnosis author Esmé Weijung Wang was eventually given. In the first essay of this collection, she acknowledges that any diagnosis is a human construct and this might change, but also movingly describes the reassurance it gives her just to have some kind of handle on a condition that by its very nature makes reality hard to grasp. 

It also makes human relationships incredibly hard to sustain. In her epigraph, Wang quotes Sylvia Nasar: “More than any symptom, the defining characteristic of the illness is the profound feeling of incomprehensibility and inacessibility that sufferers provoke in other people.” (Emphasis mine.) The “schizophrenias” are not a single, easy to pinpoint deficiency, but a kaleidoscope of overlapping symptoms that disrupt the usual line between inner and outer worlds. In that process, they also disrupt the web of human connection that keeps us grounded in a common reality. 

I wonder to what extent they are also caused by the disruption of this web, and how much the withdrawal of others through the “feeling of incomprehensibility” they provoke exacerbates the ailment. Wang doesn’t say much about this side of things, but it’s clear the support of her husband, C., has been a key factor in her being able to come to a place of tenuous stability, and that there remain issues with her parents that are too painful even to go into. Would Wang not even have been born, if her mother had been more willing to take responsibility for her own untreated mental illness? It’s hard to face life with the feeling you shouldn’t exist. 

Another quote from Andrew Solomon describes the common understanding of schizophrenia as erasing a person and replacing them with someone or something else. Wang helps to challenge that image, as she presents herself to us as honestly as possible, including vivid accounts of what it’s like to start believing things she knows are not true. When someone becomes inaccessible to others through ordinary thought and language, are they really gone? Where do they go? It makes me think about how fragile each of our own images of the “real world” is, how dependent upon factors of which we know nothing. No doubt this is why it is so frightening when that thin line starts to be broken, and why we want to turn away and not look too hard. 

Wang, though, unflinchingly brings to our attention the suffering caused by a mental health system that is not about health care in any ongoing sense, but about categorizing people and neutralizing immediate threats. The indignity of losing her autonomy and being involuntarily committed three times, not one of which helped her. The frightening ease with which lies become truth when transmitted by social media, preying on susceptible minds. “For those of us living with severe mental illness, the world is full of cages where we can be locked in,” Wang writes. It’s hard, but necessary, to look at those cages and consider what we are doing to other human beings in order to keep ourselves safe. 

Even as her mind has sometimes been her enemy, it’s also been Wang’s greatest strength, and she displays her intelligence, research skills, and artistic gifts to their full extent here. At the same time, she fully acknowledges that “Yale will not save you,” as one of her chapter titles puts it. I also wonder to what extent our high-achieving society that overvalues the intellect and downplays emotional and relational skills contributes to the pain of mental illness. Certainly, institutions of higher education do a poor job of dealing with their mentally ill students — in Wang’s portrayal, their message is “we can’t deal with you, we take no responsibility, please leave.” 

That’s a shameful message to be coming from the institutions we most respect, the ones that should be dedicated to exploring and upholding truth, and more is demanded of us if we are to recover our true humanity. As I keep reading more on the topic, I know I’ll remember The Collected Schizophrenias as a uniquely valuable, moving, and confronting piece of work, a voice speaking up for a population that is too often reduced to silence and “incomprehensibility”.

Any Person Is the Only Self: Essays by Elisa Gabbert
Did not finish book.

Some enjoyable bits but ultimately too pretentious.