This book was recommended to me by a clerk in a bookstore. I think it is his go-to suggestion for that thirty-something Mommy he believes is looking for a little more…Unfortunately, although I fit the type – not it.
I liked the first third of the book fine and then her father also got sick – and that is where she lost me. I immediately stopped liking her. Absolutely I had compassion from her desperate place, but I (like her family too) was unbelievably annoyed and frustrated by her behavior.
Yes, I understand, she is sick and it is much easier to worry/obsess about someone else then to deal with her own fears, but that is my problem. Where are her discovered coping skills? Where does she face her own fears about illness? What has she learned except she is still happily in the middle place?
There was no awakening in this book – just the facts, sometimes presented with humor, but no lessons learned about why, how or what if? It reminds me a little of Eat, Pray, Love – the central female voice is put in these sympathetic situations yet instead of shining through with grace, the dregs of ego break through with selfish fits and accusations. Both women do what all of us do when faced with crisis – we become children. We get mad, throw fits, become irritable, make accusations, blame others…and after awhile, maybe five minutes to never, our adult self steps in. Where is Ms. Corrigan’s adult self?
When I finished the final page, my first thought was, What the hell was that? What is she imparting except cancer just happens and gratitude for her wonderful father to still be alive so she can stay in the middle place of being a parent yet still being parented to by parents…Do yourself a favor and skip it.
Did you like this? Share it:
Tags: book review, cancer, family, Kelly Corrigan, relationship, The Middle Place
This entry was posted
on
Wednesday, March 25th, 2009 at
10:56 am and is filed under
Movies & Books .
You can follow any responses to this entry through the
RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Subscribe to Kelly Ballard's Blog (Using Google Reader)
February 3rd, 2010 at 2:51 pm
I really liked reading your post!. Quallity content. With such a valuable blog i believe you deserve to be ranking even higher in the search engines
. Check out the link in my name. That links to a tool that really helped me rank high in google. This way even more people can enjoy your posts and nothing beats a big audiance 
February 3rd, 2010 at 6:18 pm
Thats dope…
February 3rd, 2010 at 8:20 pm
good post. i think you have put lot of effort to write this post and interesting post.
February 4th, 2010 at 3:49 am
@Markus I get your drift on where you were going there. I often think of my past and use it as a means to analyze where I am and where I want to get to. Where I struggel is balancing it all out. How do you guys balance things out?
February 6th, 2010 at 11:54 pm
Great post, thanks. I’ve enjoyed your blog for quite awhile and I should probably comment more. It’s alway a great read.
February 11th, 2010 at 8:00 am
You know this made me think of a quote. It’s something like: “All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
February 11th, 2010 at 8:55 am
Beautiful quote – thank you!