Originally intended to simply focus on book reviews, over time, KaliDesautelsReads has morphed into its own entity.
I write about issues that are near to my heart, be they political, feminist, motherhood, mental health, or, as the title holds, books.
A thirty-something Canadian woman in my mid-thirties, I have been “super married” to my high school sweetheart since 2006, and together we have two crazy, clever, kind, hilarious, wonderful kids.
My first book – How Not To Blog: Finding Myself, One Post at a Time is available on Amazon (in eBook formats for you clever tech readers, and paperback for those of us who love that new book smell!)
I have tried a podcast – it’s still on Apple and Google Podcasts – but writing is where my heart is.
My life changed dramatically when my husband was diagnosed with Stage 3 cancer in 2018, and I am now a writer for a leading Canadian Cancer Non-Profit.
I am lucky enough to have a family that loves me and pushes me to be my best, even if it is outside of my cushiony comfort zone. I have a village of friends that nourish me, mentally, and spiritually.
Welcome to my thoughts. Sit down. Stay a while. Enjoy a cup of coffee!
In the November/December 2018 issue, the back-page “Potpourri for the Pen” column featured a matching game in which readers had to match the first lines of famous books to their titles. Find the activity here, followed by an answer key.
🤩Happy Monday friends!!! Wishing you a week full of WONDERFUL xoxo 😘 #powerofpositivity #lawofattraction #positivethinking #focusonthepositive #femaleentrepreneur #momboss #liveyourbestlifeunapologetically
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I like to get things done. I like to try a little harder. I like to push myself a bit more. I have fibromyalgia, which means that some days I feel good and some days I feel awful. Some days I am fighting with my body and trying to pretend that the migraine pulsating behind my left eye is just a headache and eventually the coffee and ibuprofen and naproxen will beat it into submission and I will be able to function. Some days I wake up with little to no pain and feel like I need to get as much accomplished as possible on that day because I know what is coming next. …….
The problem with throwing myself at things on the good days is that I am asking for a bad day to be worse and sooner than if I could manage my days to keep them all around the middle. It is something that I am working on, but it is innately against my personality – my natural state of being is to want to do 50 things at once, and to be as flipping fast as I possibly can at all of them.
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Over the past few months, I have been hustling hard – at work, at home, here – trying to achieve a life of great things that I can be proud of. I have been developing content, engaging in webinars, preparing courses to interest all of you, meeting new people, working on Virtual Book Club (which is tonight, btw), volunteering with Women’s March, Lean In Canada, guiding my daughter through her autoimmune attack… All the things, in addition to my regularly scheduled life, and an additional job at work. A couple of days ago my body started to warn me that it was ready to flare and that I needed to slow down. I listened, but not enough.
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So, my body took over. My fibromyalgia said – nope. Stop. Sleep. So yesterday, I wound up in excruciating pain, and other than the mama things that cannot be put on hold, I crashed hard. Yesterday and today are cancelled as I let my body rejuvenate and take care of myself. Because there are only so many spoons. …..
My brother messaged this to me last week, and I have been holding on to it until I can think of something to say that was clever to go along with it. …
I give up. 🤣 Reading is my thing 😉 Check out tonight’s Virtual Book Club with @rfempower and I to discuss Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic!! … #rfempower #kalidesautelsreads #book #bookstagram #bookclub #books #reading #online #bigmagic #eatpraylove #newyorktimesbestseller #women #personalgrowth #personaldevelopment #discussion #join #collab #coffee #wine #read #reader #instagood #follow #followers #followforlike #followforfollowback #dm #like #love #bigmagic
Repost @snoopygrams with @get_repost
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Love to read 📚
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Out of my mind: Sarah Perry on writing under the influence of drugs | Books | The Guardian
T he poet Mary Robinson was, said Coleridge, a woman of undoubted Genius. She published her first book while a child bride in a debtors’ prison; she was a political radical who took the future George IV as a lover; in portraits her eyes are serious and her mouth is not. But sickness being no respecter of even the most fascinating people, she acquired an infection at the age of 26, and afterwards lived with paralysis and pain. One night in Bath, finding her suffering intolerable, she dosed herself with 80 drops of a tincture of alcohol and opium, and drowsily composed a poem called “The Maniac”, “like a person talking in her sleep”. Inspired by the memory of a vagrant, it is not a work on which to pin a reputation, but has a place in the history of letters as the first of the English Romantic opium poems. In my Puritan youth I held the cult of the drug-addled artist in contempt. Thomas De Quincey in his voluminous sleeves? A sap, I thought, of doubtful moral fibre. William S Burroughs? What did I want with a man who shot his wife? Besides, Naked Lunch was nothing like as nasty as it thought it was. If marijuana had caused Jack Kerouac ’s sentences to be as affectless as the rap of a fork on a Formica table, it was a pity he hadn’t confined himself to tobacco. Susan Sontag wrote on speed: this I admired, since it indicated a solid work ethic. I adored Coleridge, but flinched from the thought of him in the arms of Morpheus as I’d flinch from seeing my father naked. Secretly I admired Middlemarch ’s Casaubon, whose ascetic and studious life was directed towards “thoroughness, justice of comparison, and effectiveness of arrangement”.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sarah Perry. Photograph: Graeme Robertson
Much later – my youth behind me; my Puritan strain softened but still present – I began to write my third novel. It was inspired by Charles Robert Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer , and in it a guilt-stricken woman encounters the myth of a cursed being wandering the world bearing witness
TODAY IS THE DAY!!!! LINK IN MY BIO!!! C’mon and join us!!! Ready for Virtual Book Club???
Our next book will be “Big Magic” by Elizabeth Gilbert.
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Double tap if Eat, Pray, Love was your jam! 🙋🏻♀️
Well, the incomparable Liz Gilbert has knocked another book out of the park. Siobhan and I are sooooo excited to get together with you on Sept 30 for the next meeting!! If you have yet to join, DM us and we will add you to the Facebook Group! Let us know if you have anything you would like to cover in the discussion, and also, LET US KNOW if you are having trouble getting ahold of this deliciously beautiful book! We CAN and WILL help!! …
Hey you guys!! So today let’s talk about mamas and tween daughters. How do you navigate the tricky world of emotions and independence while still needing your mama? How much do you allow for freedom vs. Attachment? Is there a way to mommy kids that helps them grow?
Check out the video and give me your advice!!
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My brother messaged this to me last week, and I have been holding on to it until I can think of something to say that was clever to go along with it. …
Kali J Desautels 