THE Book Every Woman Needs to Read Right Now
One of our biggest shared hobbies is reading. That’s right- we geek out hard for books. You might call us bookworms, or, less affectionately, book nerds. Either way, we don’t care. We will own it. We love them- particularly anything fiction. We aren’t ashamed to say we love young adult fiction either. Give it all to us. Now, Ashley gets wild and loves to read thrillers and mysteries; Jesse can’t hang with all that though. Can you say chicken?
So the Ginger and Blonde are in a book club. It’s our first time to be a part of something like this, surprisingly enough. We weren’t sure what to expect, but really we love it! What’s not to love about getting together with other book aficionados (we learned that big word from a BOOK), having wine and cheese, and chit-chatting about all the wordy goodness? It’s also been really good for us in the sense that it forces us outside our reading comfort zones and encourages us to read things we might never even give a second glance. We have read some really awesome books in the last few months (some bad ones too), and it’s helped open our eyes to some authors we would have otherwise overlooked. Cool. Real cool. Obviously, we love reading and we want people to nerd out with us. So for your viewing and reading pleasure, we plan to do regular “Riveting Reading Adventures” posts about all of the fantastic books we’re reading, the ones we’re struggling to get through, and we’d also love any recommendations from our followers! Let’s get NERDY together! BUT the book we want to talk about today needs a dedicated post. I mean it is THE book every woman needs to read right now.
We are talking about Girl, Wash Your Face by Rachel Hollis. This was our latest book club read and we are obsessed. It’s about the LIES that women have spent their entire lives believing and why it’s important that we see through them. We love how real this author is and how genuine the stories are. This book has gotten quite a bit of criticism for not being “Christian” enough. However, we say that unless you’ve also written a collection of your own books, MAYBE just be nice and supportive of a female who wrote a kick-ass, encouraging book for other women! We are not professional book critics- we are just a couple of your average gals that love to get our read on. There are so many great chapters that are going to apply and ring true to so many aspects of your life, like (Chapter 3) The Lie: I’m Not Good Enough, (Chapter 8) The Lie: I Don’t Know How to Be a Mom, or (Chapter 10) The Lie: I Should Be Further Along by Now; but we thought we’d share our personal favs.
Jesse: It is sooo tough to pick one favorite. I absolutely loved (Chapter 5) The Lie: Loving Him is Enough for Me, (Chapter 12) The Lie: I Need to Make Myself Smaller, and (Chapter 17) The Lie: I Am Defined by My Weight. These all spoke to my heart and I felt like I was reading my life in these chapters. But I suppose if I have to pick just one, I have to go with The Lie: I Need to Make Myself Smaller.
We downsize ourselves for fear of what others will think of our “true” selves. We are wildly different and our dreams are different, but all big in their own way. But so often we only share part of those dreams, or a small version of our accomplishments and progress, because we don’t want others to criticize or judge something so personal. Well, this is me to a “T”. My husband has told me for years that I cannot take a compliment. Literally every time someone says something nice to me, instead of simply saying “thank you”, I come back with a passively mean comment about myself. Anytime someone asks what I do, and I say “I’m a school counselor”, I follow it up with “It’s not a big deal” or “It’s not that hard”. SAY WHAT?! Gurl, please. When people ask if I can sing, I respond with “I try”. Get. It. Together. Jesse. We (myself TOTALLY included) need to own who we are and what we are about. It is okay to feel proud of every accomplishment. It doesn’t mean we gloat, but it does mean it is perfectly acceptable to feel solid in all that we have done and who we are.
I also tend to feel guilty about my choices- sometimes so concerned with how others will view me and my decisions that I keep quiet or, unfortunately, make a choice that I think will appease the masses instead of myself.
“I believe that you are not a mistake- and feeling guilt about who you are (working, staying at home, overweight, underweight, overeducated, uneducated, emotional, bookish, street-smart, or whatever) does a disservice to yourself and the Creator who made you. You-the real you-is not an accident.”
So this is just a reminder that you ARE NOT small. We are grown women-and special; totally unique. We can live our life as we choose and become exactly what we’ve been called to be! Haters gon’ hate. Let ‘em. We were not made to be small!
Ashley: Confession: I read this book in ONE day. I know you’re probably thinking it must be a fantastic book (and it is)- however, I am also a freakishly fast reader (don’t be jealous-- I know it’s a super cool talent that was DEFINITELY not learned while spending many nights alone in my High School days with all of my friends being fictional characters). To be fair, I don’t REALLY read, but I skim and I skim quickly. I’ve been known to read the same book a few times and learn something new every time. During my first read of a book I probably retain like .003% of all the goodness within it. I just can’t wait to get to the end of a book. The same goes with movies. You can find me in the theater, on my phone (GASP) spoiler alerting the movie I’m watching. I do not like not knowing what is going to happen. SO I read this book in one day and I’m currently re-reading it and learning new tid-bits of information.
While every chapter really was fantastic and relatable, one of my favorite chapters is (Chapter 2) The Lie: I’ll Start Tomorrow. I swear when I was reading this I wondered if my life was like that movie, The Truman Show, and the world had been watching me and Rachel wrote this chapter specifically for me. I am the queen of “I’ll start tomorrow.” Trying to eat healthier? I can’t start on a Wednesday- I’ll wait until Monday. If I want to wake up earlier and blow it day one- I’ll start over again the next week- and guess what happens? Same story, different week. When I read this on page 14 I felt a little shamed, but also like she was speaking to the deepest part of my lazy, procrastinating soul:
“When you really want something, you will find a way. When you don’t really want something, you’ll find an excuse. How does your subconscious know the difference between what you want and what you only pretend to want? It looks at a history of how you tackled similar things in the past.”
I had trained myself up to this point to make excuses and it wasn’t until that very moment I realized why- I am absolutely terrified of failure. For me, it is easier to quit or put it off until later than to face the music and HANDLE IT! BUT-- NO MO!
I’m infamous for starting workouts and quitting them. However- if you’ve been following our adventures you’ll know Jesse and I have been training for a 10k. I am not a runner. Never have been, but this 10k training has been one of the only things that I have really, truly stuck to in a VERY long time. Why? Mainly because I don’t want to look stupid in front of my friends when I cramp at mile one- or end up puking in a bush because I gave up on training, BUT ALSO because I want to retrain my brain- I can accomplish what I want WHEN I make time for it. YOU CAN TOO! SO stop saying you’ll start tomorrow. Do it today and tell your excuses to shove it! Life is too short to keep putting things off. What can you start TODAY that you’ve been putting off? You’ve got this!
We would assume we’ve convinced you to go check this book out, and if not, well hopefully you find something else that helps you find this kind of clarity in your life. Every one of us deserves it! Otherwise, click here to go buy this thing!
P.S. Visit our Instagram Page for more deets on how to enter to win your own free copy of Girl, Wash Your Face: https://www.instagram.com/adventuresofagingerandablonde/?hl=en
We are also linking our GoodReads book list below. We figure if you like to read then this might interest you. Otherwise, it could just bore you to death. Sorry, not sorry.
Ashley and Jesse’s GoodReads Read List
Happy reading, friends!
