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Proof of Life: Let Go, Let Love, and Stop Looking for Permission to Live Your Life

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An urgent rallying cry to stop holding back and start living life on your terms.

Having finally achieved professional and financial success, Jen Pastiloff should have been content. She repeatedly told herself that her life was fine and that fine was enough. Mostly though, what she told herself was Who am I to think that I get to leave fine? Until one day, the muted voice saying that something was missing started screaming. She realized she’d been listening too long to the voice of Should. Enough was enough.

This book is Pastiloff’s account of how she radically changed her own life—leaving her marriage, taking risks professionally, and stepping out of her safe bubble when safety was all she’d ever wanted, after losing her beloved father when she was eight—while imparting her courage and wisdom to inspire readers to do the same. She shows us it is never too late to change the stories we think define us. The ones that deprive us of accepting greater love, fulfillment, and joy. Stories I don’t deserve this, I’m a bad daughter, No one will ever love me, I’m too old to change, to name a few.

Through this book, you learn how to quiet your Inner Asshole, participate in the cathartic process of Shame Loss, recognize your I Got You People, ignore the Imaginary Time Gods, use creativity as a portal into healing, and become your own Permission Slip. Complete with takeaways in Jen’s signature writing style, writing prompts, and poetry, Proof of Life is funny, inspiring, and full of love. It’s about showing up for yourself and for those around you, and remembering that change might hurt but it won’t kill you, and that you don’t have to provide any proof to show that you are worthy or deserving You are your own proof of life.

336 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 8, 2025

100 people are currently reading
4480 people want to read

About the author

Jennifer Pastiloff

5 books130 followers
Jen Pastiloff travels the world with her unique workshop “On Being Human,” a hybrid of yoga related movement, writing, sharing out loud, letting the snot fly, and the occasional dance party. Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild, calls Jen “a conduit of awakenings.” Jen has been featured on Good Morning America, New York Magazine, Health Magazine, CBS News and more for her unique style of teaching, which she has taught to thousands of women in sold-out workshops all over the world. Bring a journal, and open heart and the willingness to grow open and stronger for her workshops.

She is also the founder of the online magazine The Manifest-Station. Jen leads annual retreats to Italy and France and she is the guest speaker at Canyon Ranch and Miraval Resorts a couple times each year. She also leads Writing and The Body workshops with author Lidia Yuknavitch. Jen also offers scholarships to a woman who has lost a child through The Aleksander Fund. Read about it here.

When she is not traveling she is based in Los Angeles with her husband and son and a cup of coffee. Her memoir On Being Human will be published by Dutton books in June 2019 and is now available for pre-order here. She has created a massive online following from her personal essays and teachings. Follow Jen on instagram or Facebook. She is also the creator of @nobullshitmotherhood and @gPowerYouAreEnough on instagram. Her motto to live by is Don’t Be An Asshole. She evens owns the URL. Listen as Jen talks, Love Forward Talks: Inspiration To Love And Be Loved More Than Ever. *Register for Jen’s on-line classes at Yoga Girl.

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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
Profile Image for Sarah Jensen.
2,092 reviews189 followers
June 21, 2025
Book Review: Proof of Life: Let Go, Let Love, and Stop Looking for Permission to Live Your Life by Jennifer Pastiloff
Perspective: Female Sociologist & Public Health Professional

Rating: 4/5

Reactions & Emotional Resonance
Reading Proof of Life felt like witnessing a radical act of self-reclamation—one that oscillates between therapeutic catharsis and sociological provocation. Pastiloff’s raw vulnerability about trauma (e.g., childhood grief, self-worth struggles) resonated deeply, particularly her critique of societal narratives that equate suffering with virtue (“I don’t deserve to be happy”). As a public health professional, I appreciated her emphasis on embodied healing—a concept often marginalized in clinical settings—yet I found myself interrogating the book’s individualistic framework. While her journey from self-abnegation to empowerment is inspiring, it inadvertently highlights a systemic gap: Why must individuals become their own permission slips in a society that should structurally support well-being?

Strengths
-Trauma-Informed Empowerment: Pastiloff’s integration of creative expression (poetry, prompts) aligns with public health research on arts-based healing modalities for mental health. Her Shame Loss exercises mirror therapeutic interventions for internalized stigma.
-Structural Subtext: Though not explicit, her anecdotes about workplace burnout and gendered self-doubt critique neoliberal demands for relentless productivity—a theme sociologists will recognize from studies on emotional capitalism.
-Accessible Scholarship: The book’s conversational tone democratizes complex psychological concepts (e.g., Inner Asshole as internalized oppression), making it valuable for audiences beyond academia.

Constructive Criticism
-Limited Intersectional Lens: Pastiloff’s narrative centers on relatively privileged struggles (career pivots, creative blocks). A deeper engagement with how race, class, or disability intersect with self-permission would broaden its relevance.
-Systemic Solutions Absent: Her focus on personal transformation risks obscuring the need for policy-level changes (e.g., mental health care access, workplace reforms). Public health practitioners may crave this pivot.
-Romanticization of Resilience: The “pull yourself up” ethos, while uplifting, could inadvertently alienate readers facing structural barriers (e.g., poverty, discrimination).

Final Thoughts
Proof of Life is a potent antidote to self-help tropes that commodify happiness, offering instead a messy, joyful blueprint for self-acceptance. Its greatest contribution lies in challenging the notion that worthiness requires proof—a radical claim in a meritocracy-obsessed culture. Yet, its silences about systemic inequities remind us that personal healing cannot replace collective action.

Thank you to the publisher and Edelweiss for the review copy. This book is indeed balm to a burnt-out reader, though its healing potential could be amplified by addressing the societal burns that necessitate such balm in the first place.

Rating: 4/5 (A transformative read with untapped critical depth.)
Profile Image for Lyon.Brit.andthebookshelf.
882 reviews42 followers
Read
July 10, 2025
Book Report: Proof of Life
At First Glance: Look at this bright cheerful cover. It totally matches the voice inside.

The Jist: An urgent rallying cry to stop holding back and start living life on your terms.

My Thoughts: This reads very much like a memoir, with inspiration and poetry weaved throughout. What I gravitated towards was Jennifer’s story about her letting go and reclaiming her life. Her story is one that isn’t unique but relatable. I think many will find comfort in her path she shares. Though you may not see yourself in her story an overall theme is reinvention. Honest and straight to the point Jennifer is an I Got You Person, Heartsight and all!

Notable:
There’s a lot, I’ll just share a few

“Love can be so many things.”

“Ordinary things are the most beautiful things; we just miss them a lot of the time. We're too busy searching for the extraordinary.”

“There are always so many ways our stories can go because they are not over yet.”

“It's that we can't change the past and what has occurred. We can only change the stories we've attached to what's occurred. We always get to change our minds about what we are going to do and who we want to be moving forward.”

“Sometimes we can’t show up the way someone needs us to. Sometimes we have to choose ourselves.”

My question for Jennifer: What’s on your current “proof of life” playlist…any song that feels especially you right now?

Thank you Dutton for this refreshing title!

Follow me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/Lyon.brit.A...
Profile Image for Brandi.
396 reviews20 followers
August 13, 2025
I picked this book up not knowing who the author was, and probably my bad for that.

I was looking at this book as a self-help book… but I felt like I got more of the authors story, rather than tips that would help me. Yes, she tied life advice to her story but… I did not resonate. The writing was also a bit messy for me.

Thank you Penguin & Net Galley for an advanced copy of this book.
Profile Image for Jenna.
24 reviews5 followers
July 15, 2025
It’s clear after reading this book that Jen is a beautiful poet. Not *just* because she includes some of her incredible poems throughout the book, but because her writing throughout has that same lyrical flow — carrying you along the ebbs and flows of her story, while also leaving room for you to interpret meaning for yourself and align your own story with her prose. I related to so much of Jen’s story, and feel forever grateful to her — and all of the women who share the sometimes hard, often freeing truth of their experience. It frees me too.
Profile Image for Allegra Wermuth.
143 reviews5 followers
July 14, 2025
Sadly, I did not enjoy this. I absolutely raved about her first book, On Being Human. It is still one of my most favorite books to date. So I had very high expectations. This newest one did not live up to them. I felt it was all over the place and there were too many catchy sayings. The format just didn’t work for me. Still think she’s amazing though.
785 reviews6 followers
July 25, 2025
I’m sure if I was a fan of Jennifer I would have enjoyed all the minutiae of her life
The last few chapters redeemed the 10 plus hours it took to get there
Profile Image for Michele Dawson Haber.
45 reviews3 followers
September 25, 2025
I knew only the vaguest of details about Jen: she was the founder of The Manifest Station, an online literary magazine that began as her personal blog; she ran empowerment retreats where it seemed like a ton of laughing, dancing, and self-awakening occurred; and she has profound hearing loss. It all made me want to know more, so when the opportunity to interview her arose, I didn’t hesitate. And since I’m a researcher who always wants to know where things begin, I decided I had to read her first book too. But I had a problem: I was training for a long-distance bike ride and couldn’t sit around reading all day. And so, while putting in the distance on my bike, I listened to Jen read both her books.

There are so many profound moments in Proof of Life. Sometimes my eyes would well up and I’d sit at a stop light through a couple of changes just to think things through. I laughed at her jokes and obvious love of expletives (another thing we have in common), and sometimes I’d answer her questions to the reader aloud (usually, “oh yeah!” — if anyone noticed, they surely must have wondered). And often I’d stop my bike, pull out my phone, and write down what impressed me as especially powerful and resonant.

An extraordinary listen/read in its simplicity and its depth, Proof of Life imparts meaning simultaneously obvious and revelatory. I’m not normally a reader of self-help books, but I’m very glad to have experienced this one. As Jen would say: “this may be eye-rolly but — ” Proof of Life made me want to be a better person for others and also for myself.
Profile Image for Tammera Richards.
2 reviews
August 18, 2025
This is Jennifer Pastiloff's second book following her national bestselling book, "On Being Human." Jen has an uncanny ability to put into words the things many of us feel, wonder, and question, while framing these universalities in unique and insightful ways. She delivers her message with humor, connection with the reader, and in such a way that the reader feels like she is sitting beside them whispering in their ear that she's "got them." Jen's first book changed the way I view the world so profoundly, that I have continued to participate in her workshop and retreat offerings, and have benefited on a visceral level from the way she topples old stories (I am worthless. I am not enough. I am too much. I don't deserve...) and rebuilds rooms to encompass other possibilities for how things are. This book, "Proof of Life," has continued to build on these ideas while addressing other complex issues such as depression, divorce, and the willingness to develop an approach to life that assumes we are enough, we do deserve good things, and that we don't need permission from anyone but ourselves to embrace abundance and love. I found myself nodding and answering out loud some of the questions and scenarios Jen describes in this book as if she had plucked them out of my brain. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to see another way to life besides acceptance of the status quo. As Jen says, "Be your own permission slip." 10/10 Recommend
Profile Image for Daria Zeoli.
91 reviews56 followers
March 31, 2025
Reading Proof of Life is like sitting down with a friend who isn’t afraid to tell you the hard stuff but also reminds you that you’re not alone. Jennifer Pastiloff lays it all out: grief, divorce, love, regret, reinvention, with the kind of honesty that makes you feel like she’s talking directly to you. She’s not here to sugarcoat; she’s just telling her story, and in doing so, she makes space for yours too.

One of my favorite takeaways? You don’t have to “get back” to some old version of yourself. As she says:

“There is no resurrection of an old version of ourselves, no getting it back. What is it we think we want to get back anyway?”

This book isn’t a step-by-step guide to figuring out life, and that’s what makes it work. It’s messy, real, and full of moments that made me pause and highlight. If you liked On Being Human or you just need a reminder that it’s never too late to start over, this one’s worth picking up. Pastiloff hopes we all have our “I got you” people, and I think that’s something worth hoping.

*Thank you to the publisher and to NetGalley for providing an advanced copy for review.*
Profile Image for Zibby Owens.
Author 8 books24.5k followers
July 27, 2025
Proof of Life is a personal memoir that explores the process of shedding the layers of shame, fear, and expectations that keep us stuck in the past. The author writes with honesty about walking away from the life she thought she was supposed to live and embracing a more authentic existence. This book is a collection of stories, insights, and moments that reveal what it truly means to live fully, even in the most challenging times. It is structured as a series of essays, journal entries, and love letters to life.

The author shares stories from her life, including leaving a "perfect" marriage, becoming a mother after experiencing infertility, coping with hearing loss, and caring for her mother with Alzheimer’s. She weaves these personal experiences into universal reflections on fear, failure, joy, creativity, shame, and love. This book is for women in transition, creatives experiencing doubt, caretakers facing burnout, and dreamers who have lost touch with their aspirations.

To listen to my interview with the author, go to my podcast at:
https://shows.acast.com/moms-dont-hav...
Profile Image for Angel **Book Junkie** .
1,932 reviews9 followers
January 12, 2026
Thank you to NetGalley, Jennifer Pastiloff, and Penguin Group Dutton for a copy of Proof of Life in exchange for an honest review.

This book was… okay.

I went into it knowing nothing about Jennifer Pastiloff, and I definitely feel like I know her now. The writing is personal, vulnerable, and thoughtful, and I appreciated the openness and honesty she brings to the page.

That said, I was expecting something more along the lines of self-help, and that’s not really what I got. The book promises that feeling, but for me it didn’t deliver much in the way of actual guidance, tools, or takeaways I could apply to my own life. It felt more like a memoir of experiences and reflections than something that would truly help me work through my own.

It wasn’t bad, and there were moments I connected with — but overall it just didn’t hit the way I hoped it would.

If you enjoy personal storytelling and reflective memoirs, you’ll probably get more from this than I did.
1 review
October 22, 2025
I don’t just recommend this book. I live with it. I’ve read it three times (so far), and each time feels like a new conversation with an old friend who somehow knows exactly what you need to hear. My copy is covered in highlights and notes scribbled in the margins. Proof that this book doesn’t just speak to you, it speaks through you.

Jennifer Pastiloff has a gift for holding up a mirror with compassion and humor, helping you see yourself in all your messy, beautiful truth. Proof of Life made me laugh, cry, and pause more than once to take a deep breath and think about the parts of myself I’ve neglected, silenced, or forgotten.

It’s raw, real, and profoundly human.
If you’ve ever felt lost, disconnected, or in need of a reminder that you are still here. This book is that reminder. I can’t recommend it enough.
Profile Image for Katelyn .
23 reviews
August 9, 2025
I enjoyed this one. Pastiloff does a great job of weaving levity and humor into the serious themes of loss, hopelessness, failure and discovering yourself. I liked how she challenged her readers to find their heartsight and be unapologetically there for themselves, no matter what. I finished each chapter learning more about myself, my mindsets about setting a timeline and expectations, and my spruce to self love and relationships. A good read!
Profile Image for Elizabeth Quant.
Author 1 book11 followers
July 14, 2025
I loved Jennifer Pastiloff’s first book On Being Human, and I was so happy to get her next book, Proof of Life in the mail. Jen’s words have always been a comfort to me and as much as I tried to savor this book and read slowly, I tore through it in a day. Luckily, it’s such a wonderful read that I plan to read it again very soon.
Profile Image for Rachelle.
1,374 reviews
August 8, 2025
Proof of Life... an insightful memoir laced with suggested journal topics and activities to reach deep and discover more about the author's life. I don't feel like the book is self-help. it's definitely autobiographical with a side of creative seeking. It's Interesting, it's fine, just not great.
Profile Image for Amy Gabrielle.
4 reviews1 follower
October 20, 2025
I loved Proof of Life so much! Jen Pastiloff is funny, smart, and one of the most empathetic writers I've had the pleasure of reading (and listening to). Her vulnerability and ability to share her inner life is the gift I didn't know I needed. I bought copies of Proof of Life for all my friends!
Profile Image for Amy Chan.
Author 4 books23 followers
July 10, 2025
Loving this book, it's like she's speaking to my soul. Somehow Jen Pastiloff does it again. I loved her first one too.
Profile Image for Rebecca.
147 reviews3 followers
October 18, 2025
I loved hearing this in the author's somewhat odd voice on audiobook, but there was SO MUCH repetition.
Profile Image for Wendy Wisner.
Author 6 books9 followers
June 5, 2025
I found the through line of this book compelling. It's the story of the author's divorce, and falling in love with her new partner. It's very much about believing and validating your feelings, listening to your inner voice, and reclaiming your life. That was wonderful. But I found much of the rest of the book--where the author gives the reader exercises and self-help type of advice--distracting and less interesting. It's possible that I'm not the right audience for this book, though!


Thank you to NetGalley for the advanced review copy.
Profile Image for Allison.
26 reviews2 followers
December 1, 2025
This is the 2nd book of Jen’s that I read and it was so encouraging. If you’ve ever questioned your worth or ability, you should give this book a try. I loved the honest advice along with the sharing of her own experiences.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews

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