Straight from the Heart: Letters of Hope and Inspiration from Survivors of Breast Cancer Book

This is an interesting memoir. At times, it's often quite funny. At times, it's often quite sad. It's about one man's experience with coming to terms with and trying to overcome his rage, anxiety, tension, and violent outbursts. At least he recognized his problems and tried, right?

Brian grew up in a Long Island Jewish family where his mother had MS and was one angry, pissed off, horrible bitch of a human being who practically tortured his father for life and made life miserable for him and his siblings. They never ate dinner together, except for once a year. They only ate fast food. When Brian went to college, he didn't know how to use utensils and ate, quite quickly, with his fingers and hands and thought all the stares were admiring stares of appreciation for his appetite. He literally ate everything as quickly as possible and with his hands. In fact, he was always in a hurry, always impatient, and blew up at anyone who got in his way or who let him down, especially as he was excessively punctual. He took up body building -- he was rather OCD -- and built his body so greatly that he won competitions. Then he took to eating ice cream competitions. And so it continued.

One thing I didn't like about the book is that somewhere there's a break in the book -- and his life -- where he apparently graduates from college, moves to Los Angeles, marries a girl named Nancy, and becomes a writer -- and he doesn't mention any of this in his own memoir. Um, okay. Yeah. Rather stupid, if you ask me.

The remaining chapters are about Brian's attempts to get his life under control. He finally finds out he's "abnormal" when he goes to a dermatologist who tells him he's the most tense human he's ever seen and proscribes Zoloft for him. He's stunned. Of course, he knew he was guilty of tremendous road rage, but then, wasn't everyone? So, he turns to other areas that might help him -- yoga, tai chi, Ayurveda, cranial-sacral therapy, etc. Each chapter is on one of these and more. He learns something about himself and of value for his search for betterment in each chapter, no matter how ridiculous the scene or how badly he's getting ripped off. Finally, he and Nancy get a dog near the end of the book and it's a very calm dog. And it helps calm him, along with his stringent diet, yoga (which initially almost destroyed his hip), etc. Towards the end of the book, a sister calls him to let him know his mother is having serious medical problems and his father has thrown his back out and needs help caring for her, so Brian and Nancy take off for the East coast to help out, where he is immediately taken back to the anger and hatred of his youth. But he survives and moves on, wishing his mother could too. He leaves the reader with his status as a work in progress. It's really an unfinished book. I wondered why he chose to write this particular book at this particular time in his life. I don't know the reason and will probably never find out. Whatever the case, it's a good read, if for no other reason then it's very, very funny. Recommended.