Buy Yourself the F*cking Lilies: And other rituals to fix your life, from someone who's been there

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As a current VP at Comedy Central, I think I would have been much more interested in a job-related book from her - one that explains her career steps in-depth, because I feel like that sort of information would have been much more valuable, and I probably would have taken that more seriously.

Tara Schuster

I identified with a lot of what Tara had to say. The tumultuous childhood she had was nuts. The most nutty thing were the unimaginably cruel voice mails her estranged mother would leave her after her parents separated and the mother took the younger sister, leaving Tara with her dad. So, even though I’ve had ups and downs with my own mom, it made me appreciate that we do have a good, if not always easy, relationship. A bracingly honest, funny read...like Wild meets You Are a Badass." (Adam Grant, number one New York Times best-selling author of Give and Take, Originals, and Option B) But the title is *also* emblematic of what ultimately repelled me as a reader. I really wanted to love this — and there were moments of clarity AND hilarity. So much so that any personal “improvements” really are — at the end of the day — self interested, fragile and (I strongly suspect) superficial.As previously noted, you can't trust someone who idolizes Coco Chanel, but the biggest problem here is that this is self-help from a person who 1. does not actually seem helped, and 2. does not in any way know how they want to deliver it. This is badly written memoir with a skin of journal prompts by a person who thinks three drinks multiple nights a week is "healthy," but repeatedly talks about a pint of ice cream like it's a demon lurking in the freezer, who buys into the, "You and Beyoncé have the same number of hours in a day," school of motivational thinking, who calls Cleopatra a "lady boss," with zero apparent irony. I began to realize that I did indeed have a lot to be grateful for. That didn't mean I didn't also have trauma in my life. It certainly didn't mean that I had worked out all of my issues from childhood and now everything was “perf, thanks, byeee .” The trauma and the gratitude were able to live in the same space, together. Little by little, I pulled the golden thread of gratitude out from the blanket of pain I usually wrapped myself in. It’s also good to remember to live in an attitude of gratitude for what you do have instead of always wanting what you don’t have. However, Tara ultimately winds up promoting an inherently self-centred world. In that world, the “individual” seems required to “win” against any wider social and cultural imperative.

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This is essentially a self-help book by way of memoir. There’s a lot of good stuff in here. It’s always helpful to have a reminder to stop the negative thoughts about yourself—like that you’re a failure because you don’t have a boyfriend/the job you want/you aren’t working out or eating well enough and so on. For some of us, giving ourselves pep talks is not our natural state, but Tara reminds us: If your friend were in a similar situation, would you talk to her that way? Keep a budget, but get regular pedicures for self care - if you don’t, it’s definitely because you have a poor relationship with your monstrous mother.”I wrote my book with the singular goal of making other people feel less lonely. As a kid, the books of David Sedaris made me feel like I was not alone in having a "different" family and my prayer-hope-please-oh-please-wish is that my book gives you some comfort. Or at least a few laughs. I'll take either tbh. A lot of the book comes off a bit elitist, to be honest. When someone says they went to a really nice private school, followed by Brown University, and then flippantly states how "poor" they were, it irks me to no end. There are moments when the author realizes her privilege, but most of the time, I think the things she has to say come off as incredibly tone deaf. The author, Tara Schuster, after years of therapy, spent a good amount of time working on trying to reparent herself, trying different methods. In this book, she shares different methods she suggests, along with her sense of humor throughout. I found it to be a kind of self help book with lots of ideas of things to try for changing the negative voice in your head, and just getting more positive about your life. I enjoy the honesty and that the book covered a wholistic approach to the mind, body and relationships, which are the most important to develop a healthy and happy life. This is a regurgitation of the most overworked lessons from late 80s Oprah from the whiniest, least circumspect voice one could possibly imagine. “Write thank you notes! Keep a gratitude journal! Ever heard of exercise? Turns out it’s great!