A Review of Didn’t See That Coming

Meant to post earlier, obviously, but I was sleeping, so. I’m over at CRI this morning. And here is my podcast with Melanie. Enjoy!

“Better is a handful of quietness than two hands full of toil and a striving after wind.” This was the line that resounded in the back of my mind as I came to the final page of Rachel Hollis’ new book, Didn’t See That Coming: Putting Life Back Together When Your World Falls Apart.

“Don’t waste this opportunity,” she concludes. “This life you’re living is a wildly precious gift that most people take for granted. Don’t take it for granted. Live into every inch of it. Live it boldly and with courage. Live it hopefully and with kindness. Live it as yourself. Live it for yourself. Live it for those who can’t. Live it for those who walk beside you.” Thus culminates a book-length plea that, no matter what bad thing has befallen you — the reader — you must never give up, you must never let go of your dreams and ambitions, no matter how ephemeral they appear to be. Though bad things have overtaken you, you must pick yourself up and keep going.

How the Book Came to Be. The first thing I did when COVID-19 struck the world was to see how all my favorite motivational experts were coping. The Rachel Hollis YouTube channel was already replete with clips, and so I watched Rachel and her kids build a compost bin, watched her and Dave work out, and watched her launch a 90-day challenge to become an overall better and more functional person. Through March, April, and May, Hollis posted peppy, adorable photos of her and Dave, chatted about writing a book in the middle of all the chaos, and pivoted her brand at lightning speed.

However, according to this timeline, Hollis told her husband she was leaving him as early as March 30, only a day before launching the 90-day challenge. In a podcast⁴ in June talking about the divorce, Hollis explained that the book was going forward, with extensive revisions, and, indeed, it was released on September 29, 2020, as announced. The cover, in keeping with Girl, Wash Your Face (Thomas Nelson, 2018) and Girl, Stop Apologizing (HarperCollins, 2019), features Hollis herself, this time in blue, smiling broadly as always.

I Couldn’t Agree More. The genius of Hollis — especially in terms of branding — is that she is never completely wrong. A good portion of what she says is true. In Girl, Wash Your Face, she poked the beast of victim culture. It’s possible, she said, to get your life together, to make changes, to master your mind, emotions, and decisions. That this truth is more accessible to those in certain demographic and economic situations than others never interrupted her cheerful, can-do flood of advice. In Girl, Stop Apologizing Hollis burnished the truism that it’s ok to be ambitious — never mind the bigger, brighter truth looming in the distance, unacknowledged by her, that there are lots more things to apologize for, like sin, and that eventually those eclipse the smaller experiences of guilt that keep us from realizing all our dreams. In this latest effort, Hollis acknowledges the fact of suffering and the ultimate reality of death itself. “If you want to move forward,” she writes, “be honest about what’s going on even if it’s only to yourself” — and I couldn’t agree more, as far as it goes.

Didn’t See That Coming articulates two basically true ideals. First, Hollis’ fighting stance against victimhood and helplessness, an increasingly isolated message in a culture where being in pain is a mark of not only of status, but of virtue, is always refreshing. “I believe,” she says, “that the obstacles we’ve overcome in our past don’t make us weaker, I believe those trials make us warriors,” providing, of course, that you get back up “every time.” This point is substantiated with a mixture of the trademark Hollis cheerleading and “What Worked for Me” sections. She doesn’t shy away from bringing up the difficult practical considerations of financial security, admitting that things will never be the same, and showing up for your children. Life is difficult. The only way to cope is to acknowledge that reality and deal with it.

Second, her reiteration of the importance of habit building is prescient. If COVID-19 has taught the western world anything, it is that actions have consequences. If you decide to eat healthy food, exercise every day, and keep a gratitude journal, you will build precious mettle. “I’m not obsessed with great-habit creation,” she writes, “because those habits make the good days better (though that’s an incredible added bonus). I’m obsessed with great-habit creation because they make the bad days bearable.”

No matter your religious convictions, this is an unassailable reality. If you haven’t been reading your Bible, praying, or going to church, it will be impossible to start when you most require those anchoring disciplines. Indeed, building proper and functional habits is the chief way of not falling a victim to circumstances, of not being overcome by pain, of mastering the mind and emotions when something unexpectedly terrible happens. The two — not giving way to grief and building good habits — work together and are a good way to order life.

Nevertheless, there were elements of Hollis’ advice for getting through a crisis that I found troubling. These included her admonishments about never showing your weakness to your children, her breathless rush over the theological questions that arose for her out of losing her brother, and the idea that the key way of dealing with the bad things of life is to double down on finding your identity.

Don’t Be Fake with Your Children. One of the great weaknesses of Hollis’s brand is that her own choices are her lodestar, and she seems to expect that they will be yours too. Read the rest here!