Kali J Desautels

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I first discovered Rachel Hollis through her book Girl, Wash Your Face. I had an Audible credit and when it came out, I thought that the cover was cute – her in her converse sneakers getting sprayed in the face by an exploding fire hydrant. I downloaded the book and there it sat whilst I read other books and listened to other things. About 2 weeks later, as I scrolled through before a drive to work, I decided to give it a try. I had barely listened past her initial “hey, girl, hey”, when I realized she was talking about peeing her pants. I was in love. It felt like the voice in my head had suddenly found its way I to my car’s Bluetooth for all the world to hear. I loved her voice, I loved her earnestness and I loved her thinking. She was funny and smart and living my imaginary life!! She was a book nerd who self-published her first book. She was a mama who loved her job. She had a husband named DAVE!! I mean seriously!!! I told literally every single person I spoke to, including my kids, about what an amazing book this was and that they HAD to read it… well, not my kids… they just happened to hear Chapter 5 when I picked them up from daycare one day. And if you have read the book, yes, Chapter 5 is that chapter.

I bought copies of the book for friends, for my mom, I reviewed it on my Instagram live-streams, I met a group of freaking awesome woman through her online community and I saw her documentary in theatres twice. I was seriously enamoured.

As I followed her success, I began to wonder if I too could move past my “lies that I tell myself” to move ahead in life. When her new book, Girl, Stop Apologizing was sent to me, courtesy of Harper Collins Canada, as an Advance Reader Copy, it showed up on my birthday. One month after my husband’s cancer diagnosis. I felt like the universe was reminding me not to give up on my novel or my memoir, not to give up on wanting more for my kids and my husband, and so I tried to do everything all at once – I tried to work my full time job at night, around his appointments, while taking him to the hospital during the day, taking care of my kids and trying to work through my own fears about what was going to happen to my partner of 20 years and therefore to our family.

As I read Girl, Stop Apologizing, I was struck by 1) how much of the book was happening in real time over the last year, and how frank she was about everything as it happened; and 2) the idea of embracing what you want from life without shame. For example, I have been writing a novel for 2 years and a memoir for over a year, and have been nervous about putting it in the world, because it had been done before. But my blog has been done before, my Instagram has been done before, having kids had been done before… and none of that means that I do not have something to contribute.

Rachel Hollis speaks to me. She speaks for me. She is what my head sounds like. She is the tough love that I do not remember to give myself. She sounds like my family, my friends, she sounds like my sisters (in blood and in law). She says the things that fire me up. She makes me feel like my voice matters, and that keeping things to myself because they have been done before is nonsense. When she wrote about failing spectacularly in front of the world, I understood, because I was there when it happened. Rachel Hollis is a mentor to me, and she doesn’t know me. She has taught me that engaging with my audience online, like actually answering them, and engaging with their things is the best way to gain traction. She showed me that warts and all (i.e. a story about doing our best in Gril, Stop Apologizing, in which she was putting sunscreen on her daughter and she fell over and clunked her head), the only way to be is myself. There cannot be one version of us that exist in one sphere and another in another sphere. We need to live fully as ourselves.

Girl, Stop Apologizing was the book that I needed in this season of my life, just as Girl, Wash Your Face was the book I needed in the last season. I sincerely hope that she continues to write books in this way that speak to me, and to many women in our mid-thirties who are still discovering ourselves.