Reviews for No Time for Tears

The average rating for No Time for Tears based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-09-08 00:00:00 Chris Toovey "We all share similar journeys.We live through childhoods filled with ups and downs. We share houses with people who both love us and make us miserable. We pass developmental milestones,build identities and see them change. We fail miserably and we accomplish important goals. We make the best of it.We take turns being the afflicted and the comforter. We experience a crises and realize our old ways are not working. We stumble around lost and unhappy,only to see the light,find our own path and move forward. This is our universal human story....Every one of us possess what we need to flourish. None of are doomed." p232 These are the most important conclusions that MP has to share with the world after over 30 years as a therapist and keen observer of people. Instead of a how-to fix-it book,she has courageously chosen instead to write her autobiography,offering it in the chance that her story will be useful for others. Inspiring it is,interesting,and yes,for me,useful in an immediate way;for this modest woman was born in the same era and grew up making the same shift in conciousness."I really did want to be a good girl,but I realized that it wasn't easy." she notices on p86 That she herself lacked confidence and underwent what she calls a complete meltdown when she acheived popular aclaim,let me have compassion instead of envy in her lucky life. With quiet humor and newly awakened compassion for herself,she gives her suggestions,the things that helped her soothe herself when it felt like she could not contain it all. "What I had viewed as my pathology,I realize now is simply human experience." she realized at last. p235" "I am better able to sort out the difference between "that's life" and "that's nuts." Her definition of Religion is equally optimistic:Religions,she claims,are "metaphorical systems that give us bigger containers in which to hold our lives." Her discovery of Buddhism in particular is an encouragement for everyone who has ever struggled with a meditation cushion.Her prescription for the fragmented soul: mindfullness,attention to the moment, so that we can step however briefly out of the limits of Kronos,or chronilogical time,to enter kairos,sacred time. "There is a sense in which many of us are fighting for our lives. We are struggling to be present for our own experiences....If we are lucky,occasionally we experience a sparkling moment when we break out of our trance of self and are fully present." p212 It is the number of these moments that we experience that makes us rich or poor,she has discovered, and "we are what we pay attention to" p217

Review # 2 was written on 2010-06-17 00:00:00 Larry Negrones This memoir is ostensibly about Mary Pipher's experience of achieving success as an author (with her book Reviving Ophelia), but finding she couldn't handle it and having a meltdown, and then reaching a kind of peace through Buddhist practice (hence the title). Unfortunately, the majority of the book is not about that at all. Instead, we find out all about her family: the full story of her parents' lives up until Pipher is born (and after), as well as descriptions of Pipher's grandparents and all of her many aunts and uncles. Then we get into Pipher's childhood. From there it apparently continues on through all of Pipher's life, and we don't hear anything about the meltdown, the peace-seeking, and the Buddhism until over 150 pages into this 250-page book. I say "apparently" because I gave up on page 70 after I looked ahead and saw what I was in store for. Don't get me wrong, I understand that some background is important to understanding who Pipher is today and why she couldn't handle the success of Reviving Ophelia. But there shouldn't be so much background that the ostensible point of the book becomes an afterthought. This book was, quite simply, not what it claimed to be. This might have been OK if the stuff about Pipher's life and her family was written in an interesting way, but it isn't. It's plodding and repetitive. A disappointment all around. When I first put this book aside, I refrained from giving it a rating. I thought I might go back and try again one day. However, the further I get from the book, the less I can imagine going back to it. So I'm changing my rating to one star, the grade I give to all books I cannot imagine finishing.