Hello dearest Steemians!

My first post is a question and a proposal.

Why do we read self-help books or blogs? I think the concept of self-help literature is an utterly condescending one that reduces a potentially life changing piece of writing to something very one-dimensional. With a self-help book, the reader is the pathetic one, haplessly trying to save him/herself through the revelations of others.

I don't know about you, but my personal definition for self-help is to help myself to another cookie.

We need to think of another collective term as an alternative. Then on the other side of the ‘words that don’t do justice to the meaning’ you get a word like ‘perforated’, which sounds lofty and important, but mostly describes the small holes along which you tear your toilet paper. Language is so unfair.

Back to the topic of reading people’s stories and why we are so fascinated by what they have experienced, conquered and learned. We want to be enthused. We want to be convinced that there is more to life for us too. We desperately want to be able to relate to ordinary people who have risen from the ashes into greatness and lived to tell the tale. We want to look up to someone. We want to believe in magic. We long to be inspired to reach our own set of great heights and overcome the sludge and slurry of our own banal lives. We need tools, skills and knowledge to help us navigate ourselves through adversity, ordinary life and the pursuit of our dreams.

We want a sage, we want a champion...we want a unicorn.

I would like to offer a different angle. What about more help-me books? Books written in the trenches, not reflecting to wounds that have already healed and then only been given the right to boldly brag with the impressive battle scars? We love wearing our past failures like badges of honor, and there is nothing wrong with that either, but what about books bravely exposing the honesty of distress, worries, fears and pain? There are so many of us hiding in the shadows, cowering in corners, kept captive by fears and weakness, battling it out quietly and waiting for the day we can stand in victory before showing the world what we have to offer. Artists encrypt their vulnerability into songs, poems, artworks and novels, purging their aching by pouring their hearts into symbolic anthems and monuments, but what about the rest of us?

What I would like to offer, is an honest, unadorned journal. A collection of anecdotes and musings from someone that doesn’t have all her ducks in a row, let alone in one courtyard. Someone whose ducks are stuck in trees or meandering through the kitchen with muddy feet and obnoxiously loud quacks.

The lady without her ducks in a row becomes a friend. We all need the friend that offers you a glass of wine in the cleanest of her dirty glasses and sits next to you on the porch. That friend tells her story and you tell her yours, you talk about anything and nothing for hours and with the ordinariness of the exchange, you feel safe and you breathe easy.

I sure need a friend like that, and I would love to be that friend to you.