What?! Book 2 is done already! How is this happening? For the past few years I’ve struggled to find the time to read… but with this new goal to read a book a month – it’s really helping me get some much desired reading in. (Real Talk – It also has helped that I’ve started reading in the bathroom instead of playing on my phone. And if you know how my medicine makes me feel…. I’m in the bathroom quite a bit sometimes. TMI – I know.)

So book 2 – “If You Feel Too Much” by Jamie Tworkowski. I ordered this book last year when I bought a couple of T-shirts I loved from TWLOHA.com. If you don’t know what TWLOHA is, let me give you a little background on them first. TWLOHA stands for To Write Love on Her Arms, and it is a non-profit movement dedicated to presenting hope and finding help for people struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury, and suicide.  Everything they sell on their site goes towards providing encouragement, information, inspiration, and also gets invested directly into treatment and recovery for those in need. Mental health is an issue close to my heart so I was happy to support them and excited when my t-shirts and book arrived!

After far too long, I finally found the time to read this book this last month. It was an interesting read. It wasn’t necessarily a book that flowed… what I mean by that is that each chapter was kind of it’s own little story. They didn’t necessarily go from one event fluidly into the next. It felt like it could have been a series of blog posts or journal entries compiled together into book form. BUT – each chapter was engaging and impactful and easy to read. In fact – I have a slew of pages in the book dog-earred because of specific snippets I loved! For example:

I don’t know a lot, but I’ve come to believe the following:
The world is broken. Our bodies break eventually. Our minds and hearts can break as well. We lose things in this life. We lose relationships. We lose people. And so a lot of folks live with a lot of pain. Much is mystery but God asks us to love, not just when it’s easy and not just when a certain Scripture fits. What does it look like to love someone who lives in a place you’ve never been? When there are no words? Or what about allowing someone to love you when you feel completely, alone, like no one can relate?

Beyond that, maybe it’s better not to fake it, not to offer something cheap. For the rest of us still here, with air in our lungs and tears in our eyes, perhaps we are meant to simply meet one another in the questions. Though the price will be the heartache of loss – for we can’t control when or how and ending comes – what a privilege that God allows us to connect with other people in this life, to be known and to be loved so we do not walk alone. Perhaps friendship – the deep kind, the best kind – perhaps it’s a miracle.

Isn’t that beautiful? And the book is full of beautiful stories about other people and honest thoughts from a man who feels deeply. There is the TWLOHA origin story. There are stories of those he has met in his travels speaking. There are real moments between friends and honest thoughts on relationships. I think for me it is always nice to find others who “feel too much.” The sensitive folks.  The ones who think deeply about things because it’s the only way we can process and hope to understand.

Though this wasn’t the typical book I enjoy to read – I did love this book. I found myself intrigued by each following chapter and many of the chapters were not super long so it was easy to start and stop throughout the day. I love the sincerity. I think it’s definitely a worthwhile read and one I would recommend to anyone who enjoys reading the thoughts of others, especially those who might not see the world the same way you do.