The Emotionally Exhausted Woman

As someone who grew up in a culture that really impressed upon girls and women the need to create and nurture life, I thought this book would be a fitting note to start the year on. Only problem is, I hate self-help books. And I am correct.

There were some good kernels. Namely:

• The idea that being assertive or simply voicing your needs detracts from femininity. That because our ideas of femininity hinge on accommodating others, when we don't do that, others may react to our speaking up as unattractive, undesirable, and unfeminine.

• How you don't have to wait to accept yourself until you've achieved some imaginary metric you insist is a prerequisite. It's okay to take care of yourself as is, instead of withholding grace in perpetuity because you struggle to meet the unattainable standards you set for yourself.

• The self-care industry (I'm referring to band-aid solutions like sheet masks and bath bombs) doesn't get at the root of exhaustion and burnout, and in fact contributes to it. If you are overwhelmed by life, and are told that you need to make time to take more bubble baths, that's just one more thing on your plate (plus it often involves paying a company money). Instead of looking at how your workload is unattainable, self-care can put even more pressure on you to find the time, funds, and energy to fix feeling stretched thin.

Now for my qualms:

• As the title may suggest, this is a pretty binary book. Now, don't get me wrong; I understand girls and women are socialized in specific ways, as are boys and men. And to Colier's credit, she does mention how cultural attitudes about gender identity are shifting, and there is an anecdote about a woman dating a woman. But the book is pretty much all “THIS IS HOW IT IS FOR WOMEN.” It doesn't feel untrue or exclusionary, per se, but it is limited in scope.

• Speaking of limited, and I don't really know how to explain this well, but this is a white lady book if ever I read one. There are very brief mentions of race and class, but a lot of it feels like “This middle-aged marathon running JD mom of three feels exhausted! But she is the perfect modern woman, the picture of success. What gives?” This segues right into the next qualm, which is—

• Individual focus instead of awareness of systemic forces. This is an issue I have with the self-help genre as a whole. It's always about being courageous enough to finally make a change. The facade of this is empowering, but it's divorced from a lived reality for many people confined by discrimination and circumstances that are impossible to opt out of and rise above. At one point Colier lists how some are born into advantages, but steers away from how our identities factor into the quality of our education, food, healthcare, housing, etc. I just find analysis that doesn't level with broader institutional inequities boring and superficial.

• I liked that the book was short, but I kept waiting for the actual advice to start. And then it ended. It was basically a string of anecdotes (so many; those were the bulk of the text) all ending with “But you have to actually voice what you need.” Okay, so how do I do that? You can't just say “get curious about who you are” and expect everything else to fall into place.

It could have been worse, but it also could have been better, but also, maybe it is just bad to me because of who I am, but also, Nancy told me to accept myself as I am so this review is valid.