I’ve always thought I had this book at home and, thinking so, I’ve always believed it was one of my mom’s novels, those about a little bit emarginated women who, in the end, find their way and their life.

Oh how I was wrong. I bought it this summer and it took me several days to read it through, because it is pretty thick, because, not being a novel, it’s not so easy (though it’s really well written, you don’t get stuck), but most of all because there were times where reading three lines required half an hour of thinking.

This book is dense, not only with pages. Going through it all requires time and assimilation. When I first started it I found myself talking about it to a colleaque, and I ended up telling her (very very badly) that it was an essay trying to refresh tales and stories to help women feel better (to my defense: talking about such a book, when you’ve just started it, when you have five minutes and you’re walking into traffic, it’s really not the best way to present it).

Oh how I was wrong (part two). The tales and the stories told in the book are just a way, a medium. Describing you this book with accuracy would be longer than the book itself. I can’t help myself but thinking that everyone should read this book… possibly everyone-man too (men would find easier, after reading, to understand why moods shift, what’s that kind of bore/annoyance that sometimes comes up, without reducing everything to “she’s in her period”).

To say it simply, since this post it’s already too long, tales are but a map of a path we all go through (with different times, steps, intensities and ways), what I loved most of this book was finally receiving something I’ve waited for so long: some sort of a pat in the back from some sort of an elder sister telling me “Don’t worry, everything’s fine, all these strange and absurd things are perfectly normal, you’re perfectly normal in all these strange and absurd things, we all went through them and a solution is possible. You’re not crazy, you’re not ready for a clinical study and you don’t need medical assistance, you just need care for yourself, it means you should love and cherish who you are, just the way you are”.

Everything’s going fine, we all passed throuhg it.

This blog is here partly because years ago I had already noticed that too often people go through something but they don’t tell, they don’t share (maybe because they’re afraid to feel alone), leaving other to wander alone…
In this sense this book really helped me.

The chapter about “clear waters” is the one that gave me most (kind) metaphorical hits in the head, but to be honest every single chapter had something that made me think. This book tells you that if you get angry you’re doing fine, that if you get offended it’s your right, if you don’t feel like that’s ok, that your sixth sense is right, your intuition was accurate, that your feelings are important, that your body is fine the way it isa and that the sum of all these things is your personal power, your very talent, and you have plenty and you shouldn’t waste it… Anyway, wherever you are, do not reject what has been because it brought you here and most of all, nothing matters, you can always heal yourself.

I know I always say that the solution is not into or at the end of a book, I still believe it, at the beginning I was opposing to this book, it seemed fake and pretentious… but I’ve managed to get rid of that skepticism, the one that wants things to stay always the same and never change, so I could listen to the tales

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