A Review of Claire Cook’s new book, Life Glows On: Reconnecting With Your Creativity to Make the Rest of Your Life the Best of Your Life

 

This past year has been so strange for all of us, and Claire Cook’s new book, Life Glows On: Reconnecting With Your Creativity to Make the Rest of Your Life the Best of Your Life perfectly captures the feelings we all felt as we struggled to navigate through our strange new normal.

 

I have been a fan of Claire Cook’s books for many years, and this is exactly the book I needed right now. 

 

Claire’s focus on rediscovering your creativity is designed specially for midlife women, or the ‘forty to forever’ group as she describes it. Her authentic and candid conversation about Covid, and its affect on all of us is refreshing and so relatable.  Reading books by Claire Cook often feels like grabbing a cup of tea and chatting with a good girlfriend, and this book is no exception. Her humor and honesty shine through the pages. 

 

Like so many of us, Cook’s life was impacted by the Covid pandemic, but in true Claire Cook fashion she searched for the brighter side and used the time to focus on re-discovering her creativity and she takes all her readers along for the ride. 

 

This book is not only inspirational, but Cook address the practical challenges that all of us face when we explore our creative side, and she offers her own life experience to help us navigate our own creative journeys.  

 

As she describes, “The staggering stress of this time can make us all feel like we’re floating, wingless and untethered and spiraling downward.” Her advice on finding our own creativity is simple and practical, with just the right amount of whimsy. One of her suggestions is to “Write BE CREATIVE TODAY in red lipstick on your bathroom mirror so you look at that first thing in the morning instead of obsessing about that new wrinkle that appeared overnight”.

 

As Claire Cook says, “Sometimes the creative goal or project is secondary to the creative journey it takes us on.”

 

For so many of us this past year has been an opportunity for self-reflection.  Reading this book helped me to focus on what’s important in my life. It is so valuable to see the vulnerability she shares with her readers.  When I hear her say “I’m proud of the woman I’ve become and how hard I’ve worked to get here and how many bumps in the road I’ve managed to survive along the way” it resonates so much.  

 

She challenges her readers to really go for it. In one chapter she asks, “What would you do if you weren’t afraid to be embarrassingly bad at it?”

This book is full of quotes and helpful tidbits to address self-sabotage, procrastination and so many of the other struggles that we encounter along the way

 

Her genuine love for others shines through as she tells readers “My purpose in writing this book is to share everything I’ve learned on my own creative path that might help other forty-to-forever women (and those few good men!) in theirs.”

 

Claire Cook explains that she wrote this book “To process my Covid-19 pandemic and post-pandemic experience as I dig my way out from it”.  There is no doubt that we all benefit from her experience. 

 

This book was full of motivation, ideas, and the push we all need to explore our own creative side. 

 

And she leaves us with some final words of advice, “so let’s get back out there, reconnect with our creativity, and make the rest of our lives the best of our lives” 

Grab your copy today

 

 

Holocaust Remembrance Day

 

The United Nations General Assembly designated January 27—the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau—as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

This year will mark the 76^th Anniversary of the day that the notorious Auschwitz Concentration Camp was liberated by the Red Army.  

 

Auschwitz is about 40 miles west of Krakow, Poland. Over 1.1 million people were murdered at Auschwitz, most of whom were Jewish.  When the Soviet Red Army arrived most of the prisoners had already been evacuated from the camp by the Germans, led on the now infamous death marches.  According to historians, only around 7,000 of the weakest prisoners remained.  Soviet soldiers were shocked at what they found. 

 

Last year, for the 75^th anniversary, more than 200 survivors gathered at the camp, with each passing year we lose more survivors.  It is so important to remember the events of the Holocaust and honor the survivors.

 

Before the Covid-19 pandemic I was fortunate enough to do some travelling, and in the fall of 2019, I had the opportunity to visit the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. It was an amazing trip, and the entire time I was there I wondered about my family’s history. I had always known that my relatives were from Poland, although at the time they lived there it was still part of Russia, but I knew little else. As my tour bus rolled through the forests and fields, I couldn’t help but wonder how many of my family members had hidden in just those woods? How many had escaped, and how many had been killed at one of the many concentration camps? 

 

On that trip I was able to visit both the Auschwitz and the Auschwitz-Birkenau camps.  The iconic images of the entrance sign, with ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ and the train tracks leading into Auschwitz-Birkenau were as powerful as you would imagine.

Walking around the grounds was surreal, it was a beautiful day, and the sun was shining, but the well-preserved fences and barbed wire were a constant reminder of what had occurred there.

In carefully preserved rooms lay the evidence of all of those who died at the camp. Piles of discarded luggage and shoes were a visceral reminder of the people who perished. 

 

Visiting one of the remaining crematoriums highlighted the true horrors of that place. 

 

My visit was so powerful. I felt profound sadness and I felt angry, so very angry about what had happened there. In those moments I have never felt closer to the Jewish side of my family.  

 

This past year I discovered some of my family history, thanks to my daughter and some research on Ancestry.com.  I learned that my great grandmother was born in a town called Oświęcim, Poland. Oświęcim is also known in German as Auschwitz, yup – my great grandmother was born in the town that would become known for the most infamous concentration camp of the war. 

 

My great grandmother emigrated to the United States in the early 1900’s but there is no doubt that had she stayed, she and her whole family would likely have perished in the very town she was born in. 

 

The realization that I had been there, in the town where my Great-Grandmother was born, and where one of the worst horrors in history had occurred was incredible. 

 

The Baltic countries are beautiful, and once it is finally safe to travel again, I highly recommend this trip to everyone, but for me this trip was also incredibly emotional. The reality of the Holocaust was apparent everywhere we went. 

 

In Lithuania I learned that before war over 40 percent of population was Jewish with over 100 synagogues.  During the war Lithuania lost 90 percent of its Jewish community. Only one synagogue remains.

 

Jewish Ghetto in Riga Latvia

Prior to the war over 93,000 Jews lived in Latvia, but only 14,000 members of the Latvian Jewish community survived. 

 

In Poland the numbers were truly staggering. Jews had been living in Poland as early as the 11^th Century.  

 

There were over 350,000 Jews in Warsaw before the war. Mostly in the north district. This became the infamous Warsaw ghetto. Today there are only about 7000 Jews left in Warsaw.  There were 68,000 Jews living in Kraków before the war. Today there are around 700. There are similar numbers all over Poland.

 

There are only about 35,000 Jews living in Poland today, there were over 3,000,000 Jews in Poland before the war.  

 

On Holocaust Remembrance Day we all must take the time to remember what happened, to remember the lives lost, to remember the horrors that occurred, because if we fail to remember these events, we will be in danger of allowing them to happen again.