The Me, Without
A Year Exploring Habit, Healing, and Happiness
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- $21.99
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- $21.99
Publisher Description
A Main Selection of the One Spirit Book Club!
"Raposo's engaging report on stripping life down will inspire readers looking for manageable tweaks to hectic living." — Publishers Weekly
At the age of thirty-four, journalist Jacqueline Raposo finds herself sick, single, broke, and wandering in a fog. Despite decades of discipline, her chronic illness is getting worse. Despite hosting a radio show about dating, she hasn't been in love in years. And despite a successful writing career, she's deeply in debt. Weary of trying to solve her problems by adding things to her life, she attempts the opposite and subtracts some of her most constant habits — social media, shopping, sugar, and negative thoughts — for periods of thirty to ninety days over the course of one year.
In this intimately curated search for self-improvement (a quest that readers can easily personalize for themselves), Raposo confesses to the sometimes violent and profound shifts in her social interactions, physical health, and sense of self-worth. With the input of doctors, psychologists, STEM experts, and other professionals, she offers fascinating insights into how and why our brains and bodies react as they do to our habits. She also sheds light on the impact of our everyday choices on our mental state. Part memoir, part case study, this book offers you an inspiring example of how to forge your own journey, expose your wounds, and help yourself heal.
"No cheesy self-help here, The Me, Without is sharply written and massively relatable. Raposo packs a powerful message into an emotional and entertaining read." — Kaia Roman, author of The Joy Plan
"Jacqueline is able to make me chuckle with one sentence and then have a deep introspective moment in the next. Her openness and honesty is truly amazing. If you have been looking to examine your relationship with the world, this is the book for you!" — Travis McElroy, host of the podcasts My Brother, My Brother, and Me and The Adventure Zone
"So many of us live in terror of deprivation, whether it's tangible, edible, social, physical, financial, or emotional, because we are terrified of what we'll see when we're stripped bare. In Jacqueline Raposo's brave, rigorous, and vulnerable exploration of what it means to live without, the author uses periods of deliberate abstinence from habits to find new ways to engage with the world, determine what's been pinning her in place, and reveal the person she truly can be when she's freed of it all. It's essential reading for anyone on the cusp of making a major life change — or even a minor one." — Kat Kinsman, author of Hi, Anxiety
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Raposo, cohost of the podcast Love Bites, opens up about her need to disengage in her eloquent debut, a memoir and meditation on living with less. After contracting Lyme disease and become very sick, Raposo realizes she isn't handling her own problems well enough to be giving advice to listeners and starts looking into her own unhealthy habits. She wondered whether her lifestyle of cycling between excess (eating, drinking, and socializing) and introversion was worsening her Lyme disease, stalling her career as a food writer, and making her less lovable. So she dropped one habit per month in an attempt at self-betterment. She cut out, among other things, social media, shopping, and sugar. She spent Christmas with her family without giving or receiving gifts and attempted to slash all negative thinking. These changes were not easy, and she didn't always succeed (TV was particularly hard for her to give up). Along with her experiences, Raposo presents research and her own interviews with relevant experts, among them Andrea Sanders, director of Be Zero, who speaks of the merits of recycling, and science journalist Gary Taubes, who alleviated some of Raposo's concerns about sugar. By the end, Raposo writes that eliminating bad habits helped her find happiness by realizing "I am enough the way I am." She concludes with suggestions for readers to explore doing without for themselves. Raposo's engaging report on stripping life down will inspire readers looking for manageable tweaks to hectic living.
