Book Review: Everyone is Beautiful

Everyone is Beautiful by Katherine Center
I read the Kindle Version
Genre: Fiction
You might like this book: If you enjoy stories about motherhood, womanhood, and marriage, or if you are interested in reconsidering the idea of beauty in society today.

This book went on my list after a trusted friend and bookblogger Morninglight Mama told about her experience reading it.  I usually like what she likes so I bought it for my Kindle in like, March.  Today, in that lull after Christmas, with nothing really tangible on my to-do list, I stayed in my PJ's all day and read it. Uff. It was a gloriously interactive experience. As Morninglight Mama opined, this may be the most accurate book ever written about the day to day demands of motherhood and how women start to see themselves in terms of the people and circumstances around them. This is the story of how a woman named Lanie changes her life, but not in the way she first set out to do. Her arc is about self discovery, yes, but more importantly, she re-learns to see outside the tiny world that her children's needs have drawn around her.  I have experienced the odd kind of selfishness that somehow coexists with the utter unselfishness of motherhood. We draw into ourselves and become needy for attention, for tangible evidence of hard work. It is hard on marriages and on all the other people around us. Lanie's story teaches the importance of finding a way to take care of the core of ourselves. This story reminds me that it is okay, even important for a devoted and fully focused mother to have a piece of the world that is all her own. Woven in among that message are others, just as compelling, about the beauty of everyday people; the special comfort of marriage, even in its persistent unglamourousness; and the fact that what we have is usually way better than what we think we want.

I'm so glad I read it.  It gave me the same kind of warm feeling about my life and the state of the world as watching the beginning and end of Love, Actually. I just want to go and hug all the ordinary, beautiful people out there.