Katie Mcsweeney > Recent Status Updates

Step Eight - connection, nothing hugely revelatory here for me. Body scan meditation was very nice and worth trying to incorporate into a routine. Maybe at bedtime.

Pwwww… I was finding step seven (strengthen your self worth) very difficult to connect with. I was disagreeing with most of it though I don’t confidently think the author is wrong. But then I got to the poem, Your Light by Donna Ashworth and I found myself crying. So… joke’s on me, turns out I might need to read this chapter a few more times.

Inner Critic - very interesting exercise to take note of what your inner critic is saying, to challenge the commentary and to try to reframe it with kindness and compassion. I’m all for constructive criticism so I won’t be throwing the baby out with the bath water but I definitely could be nicer to myself.

A lot of the thought exercises aren’t my cup of tea but I was reading on anyway and I just had an epiphany about my inner child (she’s actually very happy and secure) it’s my inner pre-teen who needs a big hug. I’m definitely getting something good from reading this. I think I’ll take a step a day until I’m finished.

Ughh… our protagonist just said after first meeting a new junior colleague, ‘I was grateful now to be the least attractive woman on the base’… I thought she was supposed to be bighearted!?

I’m listening to this as an audiobook… it feels like a waste to only listen. I wish I had this as a hard copy to properly enjoy the writing.

It’s slowing down…

I feel like I’ll have to write a chapter from Nina’s perspective. She’s all white so maybe a distant cousin?

‘but, when history become plural, it begins to flirt with myth and legend’

Ugh slow going

Love the language. Will read more by Sara Baume.
Ummm… just spent 30mins trying to work out why I’m so wound up over the fact they aren’t working.

Wasn’t expecting anything in the first 100 pages!

Really enjoying the writing... it’s kind of prompting me to want to get writing myself.

Like the main character but find the writing a bit difficult - I think I’m going he problem not the book.

I feel like I know this woman...

Writing seems a bit juvenile... straight to all the worst stereotypes (e.g. lecherous estate agent). On first few seconds of first conversation with Tom ‘he was the first man is met who seemed not to want to immediately push any weirdness out of me’...

I have been invaded by a Trojan horse full of time

Pretty solid explanation here of the reason behind Marianne’s family’s behaviour towards her. So many reviewers on Goodreads have mentioned that it was never explained... deffo is covered here.

Why no quotation marks... and why does this upset me so much???