HOLDING ON LOOSELY
Helicopter parents. Control freaks.
Perfectionists. Intolerants. Over-consumers. Social media junkies. We all fit
in there somewhere. Read one woman’s stories of clinging, turning loose, and
becoming free.
We are overly busy helicopter parents, control freaks, perfectionists, intolerants, over-consumers and social media junkies--who worry, fear, laugh less, and always want more. In the midst of it, we wonder what it would feel like to open our hands and turn loose of all of it.
In HOLDING ON LOOSELY: Opening My Hands, Lightening My Load, and Seeing Something Else, author Dana Knox Wright tells stories of one who is hardwired to cling. To her children when they asked for a blessing to go. To someone else’s ideas, when she didn’t trust her own. She held on to prejudice when she would tell you she didn’t. She shut down for days while clinging to fear. She clung to youthfulness as if what would come next couldn’t be her life’s cherry on top.
In a particular season of her life, she recognized her bent to possess, to keep, to hold tightly, and to control was completely contrary to Jesus’ example. This is one woman’s history of holding on and her stories of turning loose--stories of the gentle and firm, humorous and heartbreaking ways God led her to turn loose. It is living minimally from the inside out.
Dana Knox Wright’s Inspiration Scrapbook
I’m a very visual person and when I’m writing, I’m also photographing. I don’t do it intentionally, but it always happens this way for me. I think photographs help me find the words I need. They call out an emotional response in me and it is from that place I write the story. These photos, to most everyone I’m guessing, appear to be the run-of-the-mill sort. When I see them, though, I see the “turning loose” that was happening just beneath the apparent in every one of them. That, in a nutshell, is my book.
“I’m hardwired to cling… sometimes I held more tightly to
things I had than the faith I had.”
“Mothering is a hard habit to break.”
“I was sad because they didn’t seem quite as sad as I was.”
"The Comfort Zone was never meant to be my permanent
place; it was meant to be my charging station."
“My best day is someone else’s worst day.”
Dana Knox Wright's HOLDING ON LOOSELY wins for best quotables; I filled a page with them! From the author's childhood adoration of Donny Osmond to her mother turning to tend a garden (when she couldn't 'mother' any more) to the realization that the only reason you're invited to dinner with your young adult kids may be to pick up the tab, I found myself nodding in agreement from page one.
Those of us who've seen a few decades come and go and have raised a few kids will relate to all the observations and stories of parenting, but there are plenty of other chapters and stories to love -- and every single one of them will force some introspection and reflection.
Wright opens herself almost completely to readers -- but not completely -- and I think that's good. It's not a tell-all, but it's a tell-a-whole-lot that is real and relatable. I listened to the audio book, and the author does an amazing job with nary a glitch or hiccup. Pacing was great, and it felt intimate hearing her tell her own stories. I enjoyed that I could just listen to a chapter and let it sink in before continuing. I plan on buying it in print so I can tab my favorite chapters (Edith and her flamingoes & old people kissing, to name two), and then buying a couple more for gifting. My guess is that most who read it will feel it's timely and eerily similar to parts of their own lives.
Highly recommend.
