Book Review: Where To? How I Shed My Baggage and Learned To Live Free by Jennifer B. Monahan #reviews @spiritevol

 

 

 

Title: WHERE TO? HOW I SHED MY BAGGAGE AND LEARNED TO LIVE FREE
Author: Jennifer B. Monahan
Publisher: Spirit Evolution
Pages: 234
Genre: Memoir

BOOK BLURB:

When Jennifer Monahan announced her intention to leave her well-established career as a business strategy consultant and give up her rent-controlled apartment in San Francisco to do a global walkabout for an undetermined amount of time, her friends and family thought she was insane. But Jennifer was excited about taking the time to truly explore and immerse herself in a variety of cultures, so their skepticism didn’t faze her; plus she was used to traveling alone as a woman with only one carry-on bag. What she didn’t count on was discovering all the excess baggage she had been carrying with her from her past.

WHERE TO? chronicles one year of Monahan’s life, primarily in the Guatemalan jungle, but also in Japan, Cambodia and Thailand. Living in a thatched-roof hut in a tiny village, Monahan connected with local shamans and participated in their ancient rituals, became fully integrated into the daily life of a local family, and ultimately faced down some of the greatest losses and long-buried pain she had experienced. WHERE TO? shares the six steps she took to heal and courageously create the life of her dreams and includes a workbook for readers to do the same.

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I simply love memoirs, but Where To? How I Shed My Baggage and Learned To Live Free by Jennifer B. Monahan is one of the best I have read in a long, long time. I think perhaps because Jennifer is a shaman; that's what really drew me towards reading this book.

It starts out with ditching her consulting job to find herself. In her words, "I had taken a big leap into the unknown by quitting my well-paying consulting job to focus all of my time on my shamanic and coaching business, Spirit Evolution, knowing that if I didn't at least try to live my life purpose work I would always regret it." Whoa. Let me tell you something - this woman has chutzpah. I was particularly fascinated in how she relates to animals - they are more like guides in her life giving her advice in different ways. I've never tried to do that. I consider myself to be quite spiritual - always looking for more to this life we live - but she opened up my eyes to the animal world more than I ever imagined.

Monahan's journeys take her to places you and I probably have never been, but they were part of her journey to get to know herself and to help deal with her pain and loss. Coming face to face with her 'baggage' wasn't probably in the cards so she thought, but that's what happened.

Reminds me of a trip my daughter took to Hawaii. Flew all by herself from Virginia to visit her first cousin. She had so much going on and confronted her own 'baggage' on the way and while there, but it opened up her eyes to what really was going on in her life that she was struggling with.

Sometimes we have to take a trip out of ourselves to find out what's inside our own selves. If it takes ditching the familiar and embarking into the unfamiliar, maybe that's what we all need - to get out of our comfort zone in order to learn more about ourselves.

Compelling and gut-wrenching...Where To? How I Shed My Baggage and Learned to Live Free is an informative and eye-opening read. I have to give it 5 stars!