Is it too early to declare I have found one of my favorite books of 2021? Cuz I’m throwing it out there. Move On Motherf*cker by Jodie Eckleberry-Hunt is the non-fiction, self-care book of your dreams. Legit advice from a clinical practitioner, step-by-step questions to help you work through your crazy as a bag-o-cats baggage pile and saltiness for brevity. Move On Motherf*cker is how not to be a MOFO. And we all need that now and then.
My reading to date (and the zillions of books in my tbr list on Amazon) include mostly fiction. Sprinkle in historical fiction and historical biographies (I cannot stop with Harriet Tubman) and you kinda got me pegged. But. I love a self-care book. Like, LOVE. Like, I have about two dozen in my bookshelves that I need to read but always (and I mean alllllways) select something else first. Makes no sense? Cuz these self-care books make you think. About some of your hard stuff. And gahd, why do that when a gal can sink into someone else’s fake life and issues?
Would I benefit from these self-care books? Clearly. But c’mon. Easy over hard any day, amirite?
If the title doesn’t suck in you in immediately, I don’t know what would. And you’re likely put off by my salty language too. (I try every year to be better, but progress hasn’t been made. Yet.)
The Premise
Real life means hardship and things not going according to our plans and sad things and so on. Eckleberry-Hunt shares we have a part in junk situations. Yes, hard things will bubble up in life even if we do everything right and plan and try to control, control, control. But often it is US that’s making a bad situation worse. We are the ones making ourselves nuts (not all the time, but certainly part of it).
Move On Motherf*cker helps the reader set boundaries, cuts the crap and helps us say ‘enough already.’
Feeling guilt over working, not working, not working enough, working too much (insert whatever variable)? This is your friendly punch in the arm to help you get outta your own head.
Having a hard time moving forward after you got let go from that job even though you hated it and the people were soul-suckers? This is your tap on the butt to ‘get back out there, cowgirl.’
Running circles trying to do it all, make it right, put on the ‘it’s fine, we’re fine, everything is fine’ face? This is your flick in the forehead to cut the crap and get a reality check.
Because the author is a practitioner, she’s asked clients to use a variety of methods for their difficulties. She found a combo of Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), mindfulness and saltiness add up to an incredible strategy to stop the self-attacking, self-blaming, belittling thoughts and to find ownership in our internal dialogues in hard situations. She goes on to help readers identify how to change that self-talk into more productive boundaries, more forward-thinking words that ultimately allow the desire to please, to blame, to feel guilt, to not let go, to take on too much, (the list goes on and on, right?!).
Topics
The book shares insight into a bevy of areas in life where you might find some trickiness. Where there is trickiness, there is the opportunity to be a MOFO. Help in how not to be a MOFO are:
- Control Freak
- Love Life
- Kids
- Body
- Bad Habits
- Painful Past
So I dare you to read that list and tell me there nothing you can’t work on. Double dog dare ya.
Something I extra-love about this book is the ‘recommended reading’ list in the back. So if you’re a book junkie like me, you’ve already pushed ‘add to list’ in Amazon for approx a dozen books.
Something I extra-extra-love is that the author shares where something might be so big where you might not be able to say ‘move on, motherf*cker’ because it’s just too big (ie sexual abuse, death of child, severe mental health needs, etc.) and instead she calls that ‘living with.’ You live with the heaviness of losing that child; you don’t move on. She gives readers very practical, usable ways to live with something that big, that emotional, that life-altering.
(I read an article years ago about living with the grief of losing someone instead of ‘getting over it.’ It made so much sense. You’re never going to get over that loss, but there are ways to walk with it throughout your life. Not my theory, but I’m sure subscribing to it!)
So don’t mince my words in that I believe swearing and shutting my brain off from nonsense will take care of the harrrrrrrd wounds. But from this book, I sure found where I was making those wounds stay fresh and oozy. Just my experience. Might not be yours. But read this book and tell me she didn’t help.
MOFO Mic Drop
I cannot wait to see what else this author writes. Her insta is really amazing, too, if you’re looking for bite-sized tidbits. Another good one is here.
Find all my reads on my insta here!