Mother Talk Blog Book Tour: On Becoming Fearless

When Andi Buchanan, author of Mother Shock, Managing Editor of Literary Mama, co-founder of Mother Talk, and all-round good egg asked me if I was interested in being part of the Mother Talk blog tour to promote the release of Arianna Huffinton's best selling book On Becoming Fearless . . . in Love, Work, and Life, I jumped at the chance. I was thrilled to take on a paid assignment. (Swag Alert: I received my review copy for free and was paid an honorarium to be part of the blog tour). While I might not have picked up this book on my own, I was in a highly anxious state at the time, and I thought that learning a trick or two from Arianna Huffington might not be such a bad idea.

Huffington, the force of nature behind The Huffington Post, is well known for her participation in those televised US political roundtables (usually she is the tall, passionate, redhead, sandwiched between the greying male talking heads), for launching "The Detroit Project," and, of course, for her run for Governor of California against Arnold Schwarzenegger. Daughter of a single mother in Greece, Huffington has had to conquer many of her fears in order to rise to be the person she is today -- author, mother, media star and one of Time Magazine's 100 most influential people.

Huffington wrote this book (her forst foray into the self-help genre) as a sort of guidebook for her teenaged daughters who were started to become overwhelmed by the same fears that nearly overwhelmed her as a teen. The are the same fears that plague (and often paralyze) so many women - fears that they are not attractive enough, not loveable enough, not smart enough, not good enough.

So Huffington combined essays from well known figures such as Diane Keaton and Nora Ephron with her own story to encourage her daughters, and the reader, to face their fears head on. She tackles fears surrounding body image, love, work, parenting, money, ageing and illness, god and death, leadership and speaking out and changing the world. Part of the book reads almost as manifesto.

Huffington is quite revealing in the books discussing things like her daughter's eating disorder, the dissolution of her marriage, and the personal character attacks she has faced over the years for daring to be a woman with moxy. I felt that she could have been more revealing in some areas in order in order to further draw in the reader, but I suspect she has to keep in mind the cruel fishbowl in which anyone with political aspirations is forced to dwell (I will be discussing this more in my profile of and interview with Arianna Huffington on Literary Mama in early May).

A lot of her advice was good. Her advice about money (thinking about one's abundance) is in line with the gratitude movement and law of attraction popularized today by Oprah's seeming endorsement of The Secret. I loved her discussion of gods - particularly the Greek pantheon which continues to be near and dear to her heart (as a Classics student, these imperfect, passionate gods always appealed to me far more than the perfect God of so many other religions). And her advice about work, and speaking out, and leadership are good messages that women cannot hear often enough.

While most of the book I liked, there was one part that did not sit well with me. She talks about the overmedicating of America with mood altering drugs as stemming from our fearfulness. I agree that there are many uninformed GPs out there with a trigger happy prescription writing hand, but as someone who relies of Zoloft to make up for a chemical imbalance in my brain, I felt that certain statements like "Squashing our true selves is a major cause of fear, anxiety and depression" and "Sure there are plenty of medications, but can anyone doubt that part of the reason for their popularity is that women need a way to shut down and get some respite for our constant fears and anxieties." This kind of thinking is a holdover from the old 'valium kept the 60s housewives compliant' argument (a not invalid point at the time) but is not a particularly helpful one today.

I think that Huffington's key point within the book is true: that women learn early in life to be fearful. We judge ourselves (and each other) on just about everything. We are told by magazines and television to be afraid for our selves, our safety, our kids, our planet. The fact that we are stil not paid equally to men makes those of us in the paid workforce feel that we need to work twice as hard to earn our rightful place. Many of us do not enter the political realm, fearing the personal mudslinging that ofen ensues. All of these fears are holding us back instead of inspiring us to change things. And while Huffington's presription for fearless living works best, I suspect, for Arianna Huffington, within her book there are lots of very useful suggestions. As a self help book, it is generally a successful one, and left me feeling fired up and ready to tackle, perhaps not the world, but my day.

And these days, that is a very big deal.

Comments

[susan]

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[Haley-O]

Very interesting argument she has. I believe, too, that we learn to fear from our mothers' examples. Women have "learn[ed]...to be fearful" (as you put it) for generations and generations. We have a lot of work to do to get past these fears, and fearlessly tackle the world -- I know it, too, Jen! Oh, don't I know it! I'll have to check out that book. :)

But, I will have to bite my tongue when she talks about "the overmedicating" of women. There are medications that stifle a person's personality, and silence their true feelings. But, the new SSRI's aren't that way. The new SSRI's in combination with good cognitive therapy (hard work) are great tools for helping women live through and conquer their fears. Way to make women fear even these fear-easing meds....Not good on the author's part, no.