Book club.
I’ve been drowning in books lately. It’s a good problem to have, really.
As I’m finishing up my coaching certification, I’ve been plowing through them for the three papers I need to turn in before I can apply for graduation. Revisiting old favorites by Brené Brown (while anxiously awaiting my copy of her newest Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience to arrive) plus checking out everything the library has to offer on creativity, courage, authenticity, and vulnerability. I’ve read a fascinating walk through on having creative courage by the former Executive Creative Director of Creations at Cirque du Soleil and I’ve thought about what it means to throw away our “shoulds” and open ourselves up to possibility.
In short: I’ve been immersing myself in trying to figure out what, exactly, it takes to show up as our fullest, most perfectly imperfect selves.
Anyone who knows me well knows that this latest deep dive is really just a continuation of “the work” I’ve been at for quite a while. (First as I reckoned with childhood trauma and later as I reckoned with a dysfunctional, addictive relationships with alcohol and paycheck work.) But lately it’s been feeling like all the puzzle pieces are coming together to make a picture of what the next chapter might look like for me. And that feels so good.
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I was thinking about all of this as I got ready for book club yesterday.
Have I remembered to mention that I started a women’s book club here at post? I realized shortly after arriving that there weren’t many social activities on the calendar and even less that appealed to me as things that might fill me up. And since I grew up as a clergy kid who saw firsthand what it looks like when communities decide that one person should do it all, I asked our Community Liaison Office for their support as I took the initiative to get things off the ground.
Looking back to the moment that I decided this was something I wanted to and could do to help build community here, I’m realizing just how ballsy it was. It seems like women’s book clubs have often become synonymous with wine-filled nights where a book that may or may not have been read is maybe or maybe not discussed. And here I was — a sober woman who had once had a long and torrid love affair with wine — wanting to kick one off.
Starting it didn’t go without some hiccups. (I had to take a pause when somebody asked if this was “more of a reading book club or a wine-drinking book club?”) But I held to my vision of what the group could be and invited the other “founding members” to contribute their own desires and dreams. And it’s become one of the things I look most forward to each month. We’re selecting books from women authors around the globe and everybody makes a best effort to finish the book but nobody is guilted when they can’t. The discussions are deep and rich and exactly what I had hoped they might be.
But more than that, I realized last night that this group is giving me a sense of belonging here. And I mean that in the most Brené Brown sense of the word:
“Fitting in is about assessing a situation and becoming who you need to be to be accepted. Belonging, on the other hand, doesn't require us to change who we are; it requires us to be who we are.” — Brené Brown [emphasis mine]
In this book club that I started but which is now ours, I get to show up just as I am: the woman who loves a good book but stays away from the wine and who asks for a BYOB get-together when I host at my house or happily brings homemade zero-proof cocktail mixings when somebody else is hosting.
It’s a pretty radical thing to be able to do, not only in our current American culture but especially in the at-times stifling Foreign Service culture where there can be more than just a little bit of pressure to fit in.
Book club hasn’t solved all my loneliness here at post but making connections with other smart, passionate women who are interesting and interested in the world around them has been chipping away at it little by little.
And for that, this morning, I am feeling profoundly grateful.
The books we’ve read so far and those coming up:
State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
Dominicana by Angie Cruz
How Much Of These Hills Is Gold by C Pam Zhang
Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
Have one we should consider? Drop a comment below!
