“I think books are like people, in the sense that they’ll turn up in your life when you most need them. After my father died, the book that sort of saved my life was Gabriel García Márquez’s novel One Hundred Years of Solitude. Because of that experience, I firmly believe there are books whose greatness actually enables you to live, to do something. And sometimes, human beings need story and narrative more than they need nourishment and food.”— Emma Thompson in @oprah’s O Magazine.

I have a whole book I want to write about this phenomenon. Books and messages show up when you most need them. It is a real thing.

I want to write a book that is an homage to the many self-help geniuses who emerged in the middle of my life as I was facing different challenges. I was a single parent of two babies. Their father turned out to be financially and emotionally inadequate. My family had utterly let me down and abandoned me.

But my book coaches tell me I am not yet well-enough known to succeed at that type of “healing anthology.” Success in their view, understandably, means how many books will fly off the shelf. More sales, more profit. Duh.

I am really glad I am out from behind the paywall. I get to write whatever I want within the realms of good taste and what I hope is, readability. I don’t much give a care about that really. I mean, it is impossible to know what will strike other people’s fancy. I am mostly here to develop my own writing voice and to find out what I really think and feel about things.

So I have had the exact same relationship with books that Emma Thompson refers to. At the very moment guidance is needed, a book popped up in my life to comfort me or provide insight or help me find a resolution. For a girl that felt pretty odd and alone for much of her life, those books were nothing short of lifesavers.

I remember with fondness and some amusement the book The Dance of Anger by Dr. Harriet Lerner. Her book nailed and accurately described problem-solving in troubled families. Instead of tackling and working on issues to resolve them together, raising issues in many families just causes resistance and more turmoil.

The book jacket blurb puts it this way: “Anger is a signal and one worth listening to,” writes Dr. Harriet Lerner. While anger deserves our attention and respect, women still learn to silence their anger, deny it entirely, or vent it in a way that leaves them feeling helpless and powerless. In this engaging and eminently wise book, Dr. Lerner teaches both women and men to identify the true sources of anger and to use it as a powerful vehicle for creating lasting change.”

Did that ever speak to me. People bring up a difficult topic. Feelings get hurt. People hurl insults and blame at each other. The conversation you wanted to have escalates and before you know it, slam. Someone has headed out the door in a swath of anger. The issue – whatever it was – gets left on the floor abandoned and is ignored yet again. Nothing changes. The issue continues to fester.

When I first read Lerner’s book, I fairly danced with excitement. She gets it! Here is a way out of this horrible pattern! This will bring us all closer to each other! I rushed out to the local bookstore and immediately bought three more copies. One for my mother and one for each of my sisters.

Gathered around my kitchen table that evening, I gave my elevator pitch on the book. Why it was helpful to me. How it could help us.”If we all read it,” I reasoned, naively, “We could work at making our relationships better.”

My youngest sister picked up her copy. Glancing at the back cover, she curled her lip in disdain and threw the book down on the table: “You and your psychobabble.”

Yes, well, okay. That did not work. No one will likely be surprised that I have been estranged from her for decades and the relationship is unlikely to right itself in this lifetime.

Author Jeff Brown (https://www.jeffbrown.co) recently posted about a likely reality we need to accept if we have chosen a healing path. Not everyone feels the need to heal. Not everyone has the capacity to face up to their pain and demons. There is wisdom in the German saying made famous in the movie, Cabaret. “Leben und leben lassen.” “Live and let live.”

The choice to stay where you are and not grow is a choice everyone can make. What we don’t have to do is stay there with them or engage with them any longer. That single decision has made my life a much more peaceful and pleasant place to live. Considerably less drama and accumulated emotional clutter.