I recently read the book Girl, Wash Your Face by Rachel Hollis.
I have to admit I had a love/hate relationship with this book. I wanted to love all of it. I wanted to love everything she had to say. But I didn’t.
The book is set up on the essential lies we tell ourselves, lies that Hollis has told herself over the years. She shares a lot of her life, willingly telling us the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Much of it is poignant, and sometimes I feel as if I am getting too much information despite her best efforts to keep it vague.
But Hollis always comes back to how she propelled herself to a solution She might have a faith-based solution or portion of the story to share.
As the book repeatedly came back to my library, I noticed who was talking about it. Then I started asking question about how they liked it. It was a fifty/fifty proposition. Some people loved it while others were willing to read just to get it done. This caused people to say they thought they would relate to her and were surprised when it didn’t go that way.
Some people liked the mild spiritual writings while others wanted it to be more ‘there.”
Maybe some people resented the spirituality. Others thought it could have been more.
Some people just don’t get it, some wished it wasn’t so much about Hollis despite this being her life story.
In the end I did take away a few things. Get together with friends, forget the “i’m too busy not to” excuse. Another was to make goals, set time limits to make your dreams happen instead of just saying you will get to it. Everything in this book is not going to speak to you so take what works or makes sense to you. The biggest take-away is that we need to honest with ourselves to make our lives more joy-filled.
Was it the greatest, maybe not but I did listen to it getting more inflection from the author.I would still refer this to my younger friends. As for the older women, I would say read it. You will get something out of it.
Notes from Rumbly Cottage 