Weekly Reader: We've Got To Stop Meeting Like This: A Memoir of Missed Connections by Donna Y. Farris; Heart Breaking and Inspirational Memoir About Second Acts in Life, Career, and Love

 

Weekly Reader: We've Got To Stop Meeting Like This: A Memoir of Missed Connections by Donna Y. Farris; Heart Breaking and Inspirational Memoir About Second Acts in Life, Career, and Love

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: F. Scott Fitzgerald was certainly wrong. There are second acts in American lives. 

Donna Y. Farris' book, We've Got To Stop Meeting Like This: A Memoir of Missed Connections is all about those second acts when a person rediscovers themselves after much disappointment in work and love. They find happiness in a new life filled with a fulfilling career, and devoted love.

Farris' book begins after her elder daughter, Sienna left for college. This transition caused Farris to feel loss and depression. She was left with Sylvie, a daughter that she loved but couldn't always communicate with. She also felt that her relationship with her husband, Jim, was growing stale and the two barely tolerated each other. While she had a talent for sales, the only positive thing that she found about her job with a finance company was that the commute was shorter than the previous one.

 To cheer herself up, Farris accompanied a friend to a Kripalu Yoga Retreat. The poses, meditative techniques, and the spiritual connection gave Farris  a new perspective. She became inspired to become a yoga instructor.

After her announcement, Jim's worst behaviors came to light. His partying with friends and condescending nature towards Farris' yoga studies were bad enough. The final straw occurred when Farris discovered that he sent flowers to and had an affair with another woman. Time to file for divorce.

After going through the loss and stress of ending her marriage, Farris took her yoga teacher training course seriously. She also began writing articles for The Elephant Journal. 

After some reluctance, she tried online dating. After a few early attempts, she clicked with Mario, a single father. They went through the usual dating conflicts and the childrens' struggles before a real romance and partnership developed.

Now in most books, usually novels, this would be the end of the book. Farris has a career that she genuinely loves and finds herself in a good relationship with a loving, understanding, and supportive man. The final page says, "The End." Credits roll and light comes up. Unfortunately, in real life endings are not so tidy. They only end with the author deciding that it is over. 

In fact, Farris' career change and close relationship with Marco occurs in the middle of the book. So there is a lot of pain, stress, and anguish left to go for Farris to reveal.

Even Farris' career change is written realistically. During her first visit, Farris isn't even sure that she likes Yoga. Her minivan with its "MINIDVA" license plate clashes with Priuses and Subarus and their "Kindness Counts" and "Coexist" bumper stickers. She remembers the old Sesame Street sketch, "One of These Things is Not Like the Others." 

She also felt uncomfortable doing poses. She muttered sarcastic comments under her breath and dreamt of walking out. But then she got past the initial discomfort, and began to use many of the practices such as writing about her issues in her daily life. She remembered how much she loved writing. An instructor also told her that "how we are on the mat is how we are in life…If we want to make change in our lives, the mat is the place to practice. It is where transformation begins."

Yoga however is not a quick fix or a bandaid for Farris' life. Her blog title 12 Months to Zen(nish) says it all. Farris still had to deal with depression, anger at her ex, bad dates, and the stress of single motherhood. An hour on a mat isn't going to change that. However, yoga gave Farris the capability to move forward in her professional and personal life. 

Farris also has to deal with stresses with her family and romantic relationships. She learned some surprises about her parents that caused her to rethink how she viewed them, particularly her distant mother. It also caused her to rethink how she raised her daughters. The realization that her parents and by extension herself are human and are more than they thought allowed her to become closer to Sienna and Sylvie.

Farris's relationship with her daughters and Yoga practice helped strengthen her in one of her biggest challenges. This also proves that life, unlike literature, can throw things at us even when we think that the plot ends on a high note. No sooner did Farris, Marco, and their blended family come together, wedding bells were on the horizon, then they were hit with a health scare that shook them into another troubling crisis. This health scare also changes the tone of the book. It started out as a seriocomic memoir about a divorced woman starting over but becomes a tearjerker about facing hardship and illness just when you least expect it.

Sometimes with memoirs and autobiographies, the book can't always end with a happy finale. Sometimes the end of a life is the end of the book. Sometimes, the only lesson that we can learn is to find the courage and strength to move on.