New book teaches how to gain strength in life’s toughest times
Your Life Shoes is a fun, fascinating and thoughtful look at the life of Mary McMichael, complete with the lessons she learned and guidance and exercises for applying those lessons to our own lives. They say you can never understand someone until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes, but the truth is that we all wear different shoes at different times in our lives. As a shoe lover herself, Mary decided to take the metaphor one step further, comparing various life problems to different types of shoes and then exploring how those situations can make us stronger.
Mary begins by using the shoe metaphor for people, stating: “People are like shoes. We wander through our lives just looking around and people grab our attention. We like the way some people look, the the way they sound and the way they present themselves. We explore them a little more in conversation and are intrigued by them. We like them and decide to invest in them. We spend more time with them and build relationships with them. As we spend more time with them, we start to notice their idiosyncrasies, those ‘our feet hurt’. We keep them around anyway, because they look good, they make us look good or they make us feel good”.
This discussion prepares us for the many relationships Mary has experienced in her life, including three husbands, but also relationships with children, siblings, parents, and friends. Some of these relationships went well, others were little short of disasters, but all were opportunities to learn more about herself. And we cannot forget the multiple relationships that she has had with dogs, dogs that have been her greatest comfort at various times.
Magic flows throughout the stories, though Mary might call it the Law of Attraction or just faith. She several times tells us how incredible and frustrating situations turned around when she decided to change her thoughts or surrender her power to God. Her dog, who had been missing for months, came back into her life in thirty minutes once she let him go and let God take care of the situation.
Mary has learned many lessons from her dogs and any dog lover will be able to relate to her love for them. One of my favorite passages in the book has to do with what dogs are capable of teaching us: “I have heard that dogs live short lives because they are already perfect. They love unconditionally and completely and are loyal through their own fault. We humans, on the other hand, live longer because we need more time to learn to love like this, our personalities, mistakes, phobias and fears get in the way of that learning process, so it takes us longer to get it right. , it just comes naturally and without determination.”
Magic also exists when we surrender to accept that there are things that we cannot understand or explain in this life. Mary has experienced the supernatural more than once, and I think that’s largely because she’s open to it. She has not only lived in a haunted house, she has lost loved ones who have come back and communicated with her. I don’t want to give too much away, but one of my favorite passages in the book is when she was at her friend’s deathbed and warned her friend, “Hey, when you cross over, don’t fuck with my kitchen.” cabinet doors, okay? No opening and closing my kitchen cabinet doors.” Well, you can guess what happened.
However, what I have appreciated most in this book is that Mary does not shy away from revealing her mistakes. She has done some that we might consider great, including marrying the wrong men and having a child when she was young and single, whom she gave up for adoption. It takes a lot of courage to go public with these things in a book, but Mary does it because she knows that her experiences made her stronger and she wants her readers to know that there is life after mistakes and that everything will work out in the end. right. the best.
Whatever mistakes Mary has made, she has her head on straight when it comes to what’s important in life. She repeatedly talks about the importance of spending time with parents, friends, and family. She shares enduring stories of her relationships with her parents. The story of how she lost her brother is heartbreaking and yet beautifully written and reads like a Hollywood movie. Before her brother died, a beautiful moment of healing happened in her life, and that only happened because Maria was there to make sure it happened.
I don’t want to say too much more and spoil all the fun, laughter and tears this book will bring you. I’m sure you’ve read a lot of books that didn’t fit as well as you wanted, but I think this book is like a comfortable, down-to-earth pair of shoes, nothing very fancy. but the ones that will endure in the long run. Try on the shoes of your life. I promise you won’t be disappointed and your journey through life might even be a little easier once you’ve let Mary travel with you. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if you find yourself thinking, the next time you’re stuck in a dilemma, “What would Mary do? What shoe would she wear in this situation?”