In My Hands Today…

Strong Mothers, Strong Sons: Lessons Mothers Need to Raise Extraordinary Men – Meg Meeker

From the moment a mother holds her newborn son, his eyes tell her that she is his world. But often, as he grows up, the boy who needs her simultaneously pushes her away. Calling upon thirty years of experience as a pediatrician, Meg Meeker, M.D., a highly sought after national speaker, assistant professor of clinical medicine, and mother of four, shares the secrets that every mother needs to know in order to strengthen—or rebuild—her relationship with her son.

Boys today face unique challenges and pressures, and the burden on mothers to guide their boys through them can feel overwhelming. This empowering book offers a road map to help mothers find the strength and confidence to raise extraordinary sons by providing encouragement, education, and practical advice about

The need for mothers to exercise courage and be bolder and more confident about advising and directing their boys, the crucial role mothers play in expressing love to sons in healthy ways so they learn to respect and appreciate women as they grow up, the importance of teaching sons about the values of hard work, community service, and a well-developed inner life, the natural traps mothers of boys often fall into—and how to avoid them, the need for a mother to heal her own wounds with the men in her life so she can raise her son without baggage and limitations, and the best ways to survive the moments when the going gets tough and a mom’s natural ways of communicating—talking, analyzing, exploring—only fuel the fire.

When a mother holds her baby boy for the first time, she also instinctively knows something else: if she does her job right and raises her son with self-esteem, support, and wisdom, he will become the man she knows he was meant to be.

In My Hands Today…

The New Menopause: Navigating Your Path Through Hormonal Change with Purpose, Power, and Facts – Mary Claire Haver

Filling a gaping hole in menopause care, everything a woman needs to know to thrive during her hormonal transition and beyond, as well as the tools to help her take charge of her health at this pivotal life stage–by the bestselling author of The Galveston Diet.

Menopause is inevitable, but suffering through it is not! This is the empowering approach to self-advocacy that pioneering women’s health advocate Dr. Mary Claire Haver takes for women in the midst of hormonal change in The New Menopause. A comprehensive, authoritative book of science-backed information and lived experience, it covers every woman’s needs:

The very latest research on the benefits and side effects of hormone replacement therapy.
Arming women with the power to secure vibrant health and well-being for the rest of their lives, The New Menopause is sure to become the bible of midlife wellness for present and future generations.

From changes in your appearance and sleep patterns to neurological, musculoskeletal, psychological, and sexual issues, a comprehensive A to Z toolkit of science-backed options for coping with symptoms.

What to do to mediate the risks associated with your body’s natural drop in estrogen production, including for diabetes, dementia, Alzheimer’s, osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease, and weight gain.

How to advocate and prepare for annual midlife wellness visits, including questions for your doctor and how to insist on whole life care.

In My Hands Today…

Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout – Cal Newport

Do fewer things. Work at a natural pace. Obsess over quality.

Our current definition of “productivity” is broken. It pushes us to treat busyness as a proxy for useful effort, leading to impossibly lengthy task lists and ceaseless meetings. We’re overwhelmed by all we have to do and on the edge of burnout, left to decide between giving into soul-sapping hustle culture or rejecting ambition altogether. But are these really our only choices?

Long before the arrival of pinging inboxes and clogged schedules, history’s most creative and impactful philosophers, scientists, artists, and writers mastered the art of producing valuable work with staying power. In this timely and provocative book, Cal Newport harnesses the wisdom of these traditional knowledge workers to radically transform our modern jobs. Drawing from deep research on the habits and mindsets of a varied cast of storied thinkers—from Galileo and Isaac Newton to Jane Austen and Georgia O’Keeffe—Newport lays out the key principles of “slow productivity,” a more sustainable alternative to the aimless overwhelm that defines our current moment. Combining cultural criticism with systematic pragmatism, Newport deconstructs the absurdities inherent in standard notions of productivity and then provides step-by-step advice for workers to replace them with a slower, more humane alternative.

From the aggressive rethinking of workload management to introducing seasonal variation to shifting your performance toward long-term quality, Slow Productivity provides a roadmap for escaping overload and arriving instead at a more timeless approach to pursuing meaningful accomplishment. The world of work is due for a new revolution. Slow productivity is exactly what we need.

In My Hands Today…

Be Kind to Your Mind : A Pocket Guide to Looking After Your Mental Health – Claire Chamberlain

When our bodies aren’t on top form, we rest and take care of them – but we often don’t do the same for our minds. Whether it’s because we don’t know where to start, or because it never feels like a high enough priority, carving out time and space to care for our mental health can be hard.

But it needn’t be. With bite-sized tips and practical advice, this book makes self-care simple and achievable. From finding calm and thinking positively, to stress-busting and balancing your life, everything you need to know about taking care of you is wrapped up in this handy pocket guide, and will give you the tools to help you feel your best.

In My Hands Today…

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone – Lori Gottlieb

One day, Lori Gottlieb is a therapist who helps patients in her Los Angeles practice. The next, a crisis causes her world to come crashing down. Enter Wendell, the quirky but seasoned therapist in whose office she suddenly lands. With his balding head, cardigan, and khakis, he seems to have come straight from Therapist Central Casting. Yet he will turn out to be anything but.

As Gottlieb explores the inner chambers of her patients’ lives — a self-absorbed Hollywood producer, a young newlywed diagnosed with a terminal illness, a senior citizen threatening to end her life on her birthday if nothing gets better, and a twenty-something who can’t stop hooking up with the wrong guys — she finds that the questions they are struggling with are the very ones she is now bringing to Wendell.

With startling wisdom and humor, Gottlieb invites us into her world as both clinician and patient, examining the truths and fictions we tell ourselves and others as we teeter on the tightrope between love and desire, meaning and mortality, guilt and redemption, terror and courage, hope and change.

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone is revolutionary in its candor, offering a deeply personal yet universal tour of our hearts and minds and providing the rarest of gifts: a boldly revealing portrait of what it means to be human, and a disarmingly funny and illuminating account of our own mysterious lives and our power to transform them.