Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsLeast impactful (for me) Gabby book
Reviewed in the United States on February 28, 2022
This is a complicated review to write. There is so much about this book that I admire, and I even relate to a lot of Gabby's struggles, but I'm just not getting as much out of it as I typically do from her books. Before I begin, I do want to say that I find it really commendable that Gabby is so open in this book about her trauma, and the chapter on taking medication for depression was very resonant to me. I even appreciated how she mentioned that in the past she sometimes had a tendency to be inadvertently dismissive when it came to mental illness.
With that being said, I just didn't find a lot of new, helpful material in this book. In the synopsis it mentions "transformational, yet untapped, techniques" but I hardly find journaling or Power Posing or inner child work untapped. Gabby usually puts in the effort to make her spiritual and self-help tools unique, but this book just read like any other book on trauma. While her story felt deeply personal, I didn't get that same sense from any of the practices she was offering up. To me, the whole point of self-help is that you're supposed to get tools out of it to use right away in your own life. But it seems like to truly get to living your own "Happy Days" you'd need EMDR therapy, Somatic Healing, Emotional Freedom Technique, and Internal Family Systems therapy.
I think sharing her story was very brave, but this book might have worked better as a straight memoir or as a guide to trauma therapy. As a self-development/spiritual book, it didn't hit the mark.
