The Emotionally Healthy Woman

"Quitters are never winners."

I bet you have heard that before!  And generically speaking, it is the truth.  However, Geri Scazzero would have us think a little differently about "quitting".

Geri is a popular conference speaker, trainer, and coach for church leaders, women's groups, and married couples, both in North America and internationally.  Geri has served on staff of New Life Fellowship Church in New York City for the last 25 years and is the co-founder, along with her husband, Pete, of Emotionally Healthy Spirituality (www.emotionallyhealthy.org) - a groundbreaking ministry that equips pastors and leaders with a new leadership paradigm that integrates emotional health and contemplative spirituality.  She is the coauthor of Emotionally Healthy Skills 2.0 and The Emotionally Healthy Spirituality Workbook. 

Geri can be reached on her Facebook page by going HERE.

I was drawn to the opportunity to review this book for two reasons:
1.  The title.  In today's society, women are often portrayed as big mushy bags of emotion, so therefore, they need one more book about how to be "emotionally healthy".
2.  I was interested as a pastor's wife in hearing what a sister pastor's wife had to say; especially one who had told her husband she was "quitting the church".

In this most recent book, The Emotionally Healthy Woman:  Eight Things You Have To Quit To Change Your Life (previously titled I Quit), Geri targets eight things women need to "quit" in order to be emotionally healthy:

• Quit being afraid of what others think.
• Quit lying.
• Quit dying to the wrong things.
• Quit denying anger, sadness, and fear.
• Quit blaming.
• Quit overfunctioning.
• Quit faulty thinking.
• Quit living someone else's life.

While there were some things in the book, such as Geri and her husband's regular use of The Prayer of Examen (something with which I was unfamiliar), their use of the Enneagram personality test, and the emphasis on being contemplative, that I am still not exactly sure about, there is much that Geri shares that is good in helping one to order their life well.   

I appreciated that the Scazzeros wrote about their personal experiences; this helps the reader understand where they are coming from in some of their ideas.  While there is much good to take away from the book, I feel that much of what we have here is an attempt to "Christianize" your run of the mill self help idea about "living a life you love".  Read the book, but do so with your Bible in hand and a hearty prayer asking God for discernment as you do.  Keep the fish and spit out the bones.

Thank you Mr. Roberson with B&B Media for the complimentary copy of the book for the purpose of this review.

Blessings,
Jennifer