How Should a Body Be? - A Guide to Self-Acceptance and Body Positivity | Perfect for Personal Growth and Wellness Journeys

Bethany Meloche's compelling memoir, "How Should A Body Be," is the story of her diagnosis with CMT at the young age of twelve, its implications as it interferes with what had been her normal childhood, and her anticipation of a future filled with normal parameters that allow abundant space for discovery, wanderlust, and a life full of love for her parents and her devoted husband, Josh. Acknowledging that a healthy future is uncertain, Meloche reminds readers that nobody can "know when we are doing something for the last time."The author wisely chose the memoir as a means to allow her to select the most telling anecdotes to illustrate her arduous journey and range of emotions, all without getting bogged down in the lengthy histories and mind numbing dates of some autobiographies. She touches on the science behind CMT just enough to educate but not overwhelm, thereby broadening her audience beyond the CMT community. While she has endured pain, disappointment, fear, and frustration, her voice elicits not pity but rather well wishes from those without chronic disease and empathy from those with it. Her sense of humor is a tool used to great advantage. She writes, for example, that one of her first doctors "handed out diagnoses the way people hand out brochures on the street that no one wants or asked for." Suspecting at the age of seven that her body would fail her at the playground, she stayed away from the big slide, "which was bright orange and curled around, taller than three fathers stacked on top of one another." She tells her story with clear transparency, sparing nobody's imperfect responses. She reveals her vulnerable and fragile self, her stoic side, and her determined and confident qualities. She wonders whether she can have a normal life, even as she goes about building that very normal life, which includes going on a dating site at the age of eighteen and walking in half-marathons to raise funds in order to run some day. She has an unusually keen memory of past experiences and emotions, with one exception. The day she got her braces "is a blank space in my timeline. It has been erased."Her style is fluid, direct, and conversational, which keeps the reader comfortably engaged. She inherited and developed keen intelligence and mature self-awareness at a young age. She notes that "when I was a child the divide between me and other children--healthy children--had already begun to form." She describes the conflicting desires between wanting to remain invisible and yet wanting to be seen and heard, as she joyfully realizes when she sings in front of high school classmates. She refers to "a feeling of being trapped in my body" just before getting up to read a paper to her college peers: the subject is her fear of crossing the street and the response she gets surprises, inspires, and encourages her--and her readers.The young author paints images woven throughout her book to unforgettable effect. One of these is her childhood ability to craft tiny clay food items, which she longingly remembers as her manual dexterity is compromised. She takes us along with her as she goes back to her frequent vision of her dear grandmother taking off clunky sneakers and heavy braces at night. And no reader will quickly forget the author watching a reflection in a glass window of a slow-moving older woman trying to propel herself forward and upward, only to discover that it's herself she sees. "I didn't know," the author writes, "how anyone could possibly live with an identity wrapped up in illness and disease." She has surpassed that place. Her book is an exploration of living life well--at the moment with her husband in London, where Meloche recently walked over cobblestones and past buildings that made her feel like she'd "been transported to a Dickens novel."