3 out of 4 stars
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Acquiesce to Love Peace Gratitude by Fabiola Piedad María Alicia Reynales de Berry is a memoir in which the author helps to tell the story of her friend, Susana. By telling her story, Susana hopes to help people who are affected by anxiety, stress, and anger. After 32 years of marriage, she comes to the conclusion that her husband never loved her. He always blamed her and the rest of the world when things didn't go well for him. He never showed her love and affection. He envied her career success and spoke ill of her to his friends. He even admitted to loving her only because of her intelligence and organizational skills. Life in her marriage became more challenging when her husband was diagnosed with dementia. She tries to make the marriage work, but she fails. This leads to feelings of anger, anxiety, stress, panic attacks, and occasionally, suicide. How can Susana escape these feelings to become truly happy again?
I was a bit hesitant when I was choosing this book to read, as I couldn't see how a book of this length would contain enough in-depth knowledge to help someone with anxiety. After reading the book, I can confidently say that it was not a wrong choice. My expectations of books like Acquiesce to Love Peace Gratitude are that they should be easy to understand, easy to connect with, contain references to methods used, and of course, free of grammatical errors. This book fulfilled most of these expectations.
Most of the methods used by Susana to combat anxiety were gotten from self-help books. I really liked that the books she read were mentioned, as she told us about how she implemented her lessons from them. I also liked that she talked about the extent to which each of the books helped her. If a book didn't really help, she tried to explain why she felt it didn't help at some points. She showed that healing from anxiety or anger was a gradual process for her. She also talks about positive thinking and how the universe sends you what you think about. She usually spent time thinking about what she didn't want. The universe obliged and sent her husband to her, which was even worse than what she didn't want. I found this part of the book very interesting, and I feel it's an important message everyone can pick up from this book.
In addition, I liked where she opened up about her childhood and how it affected her anxiety. Acquiesce to Love Peace Gratitude is a breath of fresh air with respect to editing compared to books I've read recently. The only issue I have with this book is how bad she made her husband look. She slated him on almost every single page, and this made me feel like her methods didn't really help her manage her issues with him.
Overall, I enjoyed reading this book. It has a great concept and it is well written. Susana's story is also very easy to relate to. I would recommend this book to people who are dealing with anger, anxiety, and depression. I rate this book 3 out of 4 stars. The level of Susana's hate towards her husband reduced my trust for her methods a bit. This affects the purpose of the book in a way and takes out 1 star from me.
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Acquiesce to love peace gratitude
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