Book Review: A Book of New Beginnings: Some Words for Living – Edited and with an introduction by Jerry Pinto (Speaking Tiger, 2022)
2 min read
Namrata reviews A Book of New Beginnings: Some Words for Living – Edited and with an introduction by Jerry Pinto (Speaking Tiger, January 2022) and calls it perfect food-for-thought.
Long after I was done reading this book, I kept thinking about the one story I had read long ago in the Chicken Soup for the Soul series which had changed the way I think drastically.
I come from a dysfunctional family, where abuse in any form is normalized. I grew up believing that to be the way the world functioned. There was no reason for me to think otherwise as everyone I was surrounded with had a similar story to narrate. The ways of abuse changed, but the abuse was the common thread that bound us all, I felt.
Coming to the story from Chicken Soup for the Soul- I do not remember the author’s name or the complete story verbatim but I remember the basic crux which I will share with you. It was written by someone who was a prominent name at that time (in the UK if I am not wrong) and credited his mom for making him what he is today. He shared an incident from his childhood to emphasize this – As a young kid, he once broke a bottle of milk while trying to pick it up. Instead of the usual anger or shouting, his mother had a very unique approach to this accident. She asked him if he would like to play in that spillage, to which he nodded a yes.
