‘tara schuster’s ‘buy yourself the fucking lilies’ is equal parts memoir and self-help book.
this is a combo that i usually enjoy very much. in life, things don’t always work out the way we want them to, and i find it refreshing to hear stories from people who’ve been there (to quote the book’s second subtitle).
sometimes, i even find these reads inspiring because maybe some of the things that worked for them might also work for me, right?
this is where the book’s biggest strength comes in.
schuster recounts her life one chapter at a time, with each chapter dedicated to a different self-care practice. she calls them rituals to fix your life (a quote from the book’s first subtitle). each ritual is laid out over 10-20 pages, with a succinct explanation of the practice and a real-life illustration of its benefits, all wrapped up in the narrative of her life story.
however, i believe this is also the book’s biggest weakness.
because over the course of more or less a decade, schuster identifies more than 30 rituals. this was too much. even for me. and i am a self-help aficionado who already knows and practises some of these.
i think the point was to showcase the abundance of different things each of us can incorporate into our daily lives to make them better and fuller. like some kind of self-care buffet where you pick and choose what works for you.
the impression that stayed with me, however, was one of pressure. pressure from an ever-growing to-do list of things i could, should, and (maybe?) even want to do. at some point, i found it overwhelming.
but then again, self-care takes time. and practice. and deliberate action. you have to do it for it to have benefits. even if it takes more or less a decade and you have to try many, many, many things.
in conclusion, my advice for reading this book would be the following: enjoy the memoir, but don’t let the self-care buffet stress you out.
