Customer Reviews

A Weekend to Change Your Life: Find Your Authentic Self After a Lifetime of Being All Things to All People

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Joan Anderson shares beautifully in this book how to take stock of your feelings, your role with the people in your life, and how you feel concerning your entire life.

Her honest sharing and comforting remedies to restore yourself back to who you are underneath it all, while peeling away the masks, tasks and the ways we learned to appease others while sacrificing ourselves, is revealing, healing and truly beneficial.

I found great comfort in this beautiful book, and could relate to so many things discussed. Once you learn how to face it all, then you can learn how to turn it all around.

If you have "been all things to all people" and would like to finally learn how to be there for you, this book will greatly help you!

This is such a profound and important book that will certainly bring great awareness to you.

If you enjoyed, or are interested in this book, I'd like to recommend another life changing book -"Know Yourself: A Woman's Guide to Wholeness, Radiance, & Supreme Confidence" by Barbara Rose. I feel these two books are profound, & provide the information to help you learn, grow and flourish the way you deserve to.

I'm not a big fan of self-help books and am pretty cautious in my response to readings like this. A Weekend to Change Your Life, however is one of the true exceptions I've had the pleasure to read. The author is not preaching or in any way a know-it-all but she challenges very basic feelings and emotions in each and every person, whether we admit to them or not. And in going thru her exercises we are drawn into trying her suggestions and digging deep into our souls to see why we do so many of the things we do. The author has deep, deep respect for the uniqueness and value of every emotion and individual. She doesn't judge or ever try to criticize or downgrade. She teaches us acceptance and deeper understanding of whatever is causing our innermost private thoughts and feelings. It's truly a treasure and one that I highly recommend for every woman, no matter how old. I readily admit that one of the feelings I deal with most often is that "I'm too old; I'm 73 years old; I'd like to do this or that, but I don't have enough time left to start now, etc." Nonsense! Joan Anderson has prompted me to try, even at this ripe old age to at the very least try and to live each day left to maximum fullillment and satisfaction. !

If you are standing at your own edges, sometimes desperate--sometimes numbed, please get this book. And if you can, get A YEAR BY THE SEA first and then A WEEKEND TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE.

Joan Anderson is a way-shower -- one who flung herself over her edge and found her breath, her self and her way to her spark, her spirit AND her marriage. No one's story or path will unfold the same but Anderson's certainly spoke to me in a time I dearly needed to know I wasn't alone and her experience expanded my own breath and options.

Her follow-up book, "A Weekend...", offers us tools to tweak and use our unique way. It's just great to know that someone HAS gone down the path and she left the light on for those of us stumbling and rolling behind her.

I found the second half of the book more charged than the first half but that could have been me. It is a book to be highlighted, notes taken and posted, dog-eared and re-visited. Consider it a fabulous class!

It is a sad reality that so many people have their identities molded by the wants and needs of others. And I think that few would dispute that this is more likely to happen to women. There are powerful social and perhaps biological reasons why this might be. But the important point is that there are millions of people who are not fulfilling their potential. And there are many men who are stuck in the same bind.

We are all combinations not just of male and female biology but also of a set of identities that together form our sense of self. There is very good evidence that the female sense of self is closely related to her relationships, while the male sense of self is usually more closely linked to achievement. Though there are clearly personal and cultural variations, the implication is that most men and most women will likely find different techniques of healing and integration to be effective for each of them.

This is a terrific book in which Joan Anderson shares some of the exercises and activities that she has developed to encourage change and growth. One of her models is based on the work of the German-born psychoanalyst Erik Erikson, who delineated eight stages of life from infancy to old age. Joan suggests listing the gains and losses from each phase in order to help us identify our personal strengths. This is a fine example of drawing strength from the natural reversals that we all experience and using them to develop resilience. She also guides us to other exercises and techniques that make very good sense, and some of which I've found very useful, despite having a Y-chromosome!

So while designed to help women, this is also a book for men who want or need to learn more about their feminine nature, and who care about the women in their lives.

This is a book that is practical, wise and compassionate.

Highly recommended.


Richard G. Petty, MD, author of Healing, Meaning and Purpose: The Magical Power of the Emerging Laws of Life

Joan Anderson shares her wealth of experiences to gain a different lifestyle for one's self.
The book provides many useful stages to work through that sets your life into a pathway that pleases yourself and breaking away from being a people pleaser & forgetting what one's own dreams are.
The book does this in a pleasing gentle way & it is also where many woman are after family have grown & one's life's work seems to be over but we ask what now ...
Loved A Year by The Sea by the same author.

Joan Anderson, the gifted author of "A year by the sea" and "A walk on the beach" has written yet another book that speaks to the heart and soul of every woman who has reached a crossroads in her life.

This book is an outline of her weekend retreats at Cape Cod. In it she shares not only her program and thoughts, but also the experiences of participants and exercises that the reader can do at home. The exercises are more than thought provoking (never ending crossroads), revealing (the calendar exercise), and renewing (The self and others circle). They are indeed the road map back to your true and authentic self.

If you have gone through a divorce, death, loss of job, empty nest, or are just wondering 'what next?' this book is an invaluable compass to aid you in seeing options and new directions. To quote her dear friend Joan Erickson, "We do not receive wisdom - we discover it for ourselves after a journey through the wilderness."

Joan Anderson does not seek to give you the answers, but to help you discover the questions within yourself. Her writing is encouraging, honest and perhaps most important, heartfelt. You can't go wrong buying this book for yourself or as a gift for a friend.

We all get to a certain point in our life when we wish we could just walk away to find ourselves. Joan teaches us that we are important and that we should take the time to find out who we really are. I love her books and have them all.

This little book has indeed changed my life, at least it started me on a new journey... it has so many toughts in it that nearly anyone, woman or man, can apply to their marriage and relationships. Although I have not gone away for "A WEEKEND" yet. . . it is already making a difference. Enjoy!

Many women reach middle age and look around for their life only to find it missing. We've given it over to children, jobs, partners, friends, social causes and many more outside influences. Always serving someone else, we get caught up in it and years go by where we've hardly even considered if this is how we want to spend our lives.

If you find yourself wondering where you really are, read this book. It can help you get reaquainted with yourself and find much more joy and satisfaction in living the life you want.

Don't waste your money. This woman has the luxury of going off and leaving her husband for a year to find herself. Most of us find ourselves in the loving of others. This poor soul is one lost soul and does not have any wisdom to give. She got a lot from her friend she met at the beach, but she is a pretty shallow, ungrateful person. I feel sorry for the poor husband as she rushes off to give her seminars and women are lining up to fill up the emptiness. My husband died, and I loved every day with him. I only wish I could still have his love and companionship. He helped me to be the person I am. Maybe this woman married for the wrong reason. Love heals, deep love nourishes. I feel she is self centered.
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