Firstly, let me start by saying I have never heard of Rachel Hollis before this book. I heard that it was powerful and uplifting and everything that a women of any age needs to read.
That could be one of the biggest understatements I have ever heard. Rachel Hollis is an amazing woman and has built her entire life building her own company and creating a lifestyle blog where she shares, creates, and helps specifically women. The thing is though, her words could be used for anyone. Just change a few pronouns here and there and boom it is more accustom to helping everyone. I don’t think that’s ever going to be one of her goals though.
The biggest thing that she stresses throughout her book is that she only wants to write about things that she knows. She feels as though she was put through these events or has these thoughts because she was meant to share them with the world and build a tribe of women that lift each other up and believe in themselves. She can’t write about what goes on in a guys mind because she has never been there! Sure she has a husband but if she wanted to share things from his head, I’m sure she would talk Dave Hollis into writing his own book about his struggles and strife of his life.
She writes about being humble and knowing her boundaries, but knowing these boundaries doesn’t mean that she wants to stay within those boundaries forever. Rachel encourages everyone to take the time to expand their horizons and learn more about things that we don’t know about and ask all of the questions that we have in our hearts. Having more knowledge makes a person more powerful, and I for one want all of the knowledge in the world just because I don’t like being out of the loop on anything. I know things about cars, plants, food, serving, pharmaceuticals, writing, and some other subjects here and there. When something sparks my interest I take the time to learn about it, even if I don’t become an expert. Rachel Hollis is the same way. When something sparks her interest she focuses on it. I’m just glad to hear that I’m not the only one that is like this.
This book is proving the lies of most women’s lives, are wrong. There was one lie that didn’t resonate with me and it had to do with parenting. Believe me though, once I have kids of my own I will be reading this book again because I will most likely need that one chapter to help get my own mind from drowning in the sea of self loathing. Sounds dramatic I know but I have no doubt in my mind that future Megan, mom of a newborn Megan is going to be losing her shit about 6/7 months in. Even though I have 15 nieces and nephews that I have taken care of quite a lot especially in infancy, I’m sure that not being able to give back said baby makes things completely different.
One of the things that I will forever take from this book is Rachel Hollis telling me that she is taking my choice to give up on my dreams/goals. I’ve had so many people tell me that becoming a writer/book publisher (I want to do both because who doesn’t want to get paid for reading and helping out other writers?) is a bad choice. When I told my grandpa about my choice to change majors he actually said, “You’ve got to be shitting me.” I was changing from pharmacy to journalism and that just didn’t sit with him right. Now my grandpa is from South Carolina and he was raised very conservative. In his mind, I’m not making a smart decision because book publishers may not always be in demand. Pharmacy technicians will be and because of that specifically, I should want to be a pharmacy technician.
Rachel Hollis, my dear woman, I love you. You believe in me and you don’t even know me. You made me feel like I am making the right choice by writing this book that a million other people have read as well. By no means was this book for me specifically, but you sure made it feel like it was. For that I can never thank you enough.
Reading In Sweats 
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