In this video, JoyGenea, International Neurodiversity Coach, shares her thoughts on Tara Westover’s memoir, Educated. While not specifically about neurodiversity, this compelling story resonates deeply with those who crave knowledge and personal growth.
🌟 What You’ll Learn:
• Key takeaways from Educated and why it’s worth reading.
• How Tara Westover’s website exemplifies strong personal boundaries.
• The concepts of negative liberty and positive liberty and their relevance to growth and coaching.
• Tips on embracing your own journey as a neurodiverse thinker.
⚠️ Note: The book includes some graphic and potentially disturbing scenarios.
Transcription:
Hello, my fabulous different thinkers—neurodiverse people, ADHD, dyslexia, autism—you know who you are!
This week, in case you didn’t know, I quite often read a variety of books, I’m going to start actually sharing with you the books that I read. This week, what I’m talking about is Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover. (Yes, I did say “Terry Westover” earlier, but it’s Tara Westover!)
In that memoir, it is not a book about neurodiversity— I’ll make that really clear. She in no way says or points out that she is a different thinker. However, it is a great and interesting story about what people will do to reach education and to have education. That is something I do believe different thinkers and people with neurodiversities can relate to and understand. That is definitely something I related to.
What levels will we go to because we crave the knowledge we crave understanding something so much? She definitely does that and is a very good writer who wrote a really good and interesting story. So, if you’ve wondered about that book, I will tell you that it does have some graphic and disturbing scenarios that happen to young people and others. If that is not healthy for you, this might not be the right book or the right time for it. However, if you’re comfortable with those types of things, I would definitely recommend it. It’s a really interesting read and hard to put down once you get started on it.
There’s one other thing I wanted to point out that was really amazing. She wrote a great book! I also want to share that I like to send a short little email to authors when I’ve really related to a book, just to support them. Sometimes, you do those things and nobody says anything back. So, I went to her website. She has incredible boundaries on her contact page!
She explains that you know what, if you have comments about the book, please send them to this email. She says, “I’m not really replying to these, but I’d love to hear from you. I’d love that you share.” She says it in such great words, in such a nice way. It is such a good example—if you can’t tell, such a good example—of boundaries.
So often, I find amongst my clients that boundaries are sometimes hard to set, hard to understand, or hard to recognize from other people. This was a really great example of that. I even put that in my article. If you ever want to check that out, I highly recommend it over on my website anytime.
She also brought to my attention something called negative liberty and positive liberty. If you haven’t ever looked that up, I’ve got a little task for you: go check it out! That concept comes from Isaiah Berlin. There are two concepts, and it goes like this:
1. Negative liberty is the freedom from external obstacles or constraints. An individual is free in this sense if they are not physically prevented from taking action.
2. Positive liberty is self-mastery—the rule of self by self. To have positive liberty, as he explained, is to take control of one’s own mind and to be liberated from irrational fears, beliefs, addictions, superstitions, and other forms of self-coercion.
That, in such a nice way, explains what coaching is and what growth is. When people are on a journey with a variety of different tools, this is one of the things I definitely see in the journey for a lot of people with neurodiversities, they are on a quest for both negative liberty and positive liberty. Having both of those available is important, and everybody deserves that.
It was really interesting to have that in the book and to see the author talking about it. I thought that was a really great thing. So, if you’re thinking about reading Educated, like I said, I highly recommend it. It is definitely well worth your time.
If you want to check out her website and her contact page, go for it! You can read her very well-crafted boundary. And remember, your self-mastery and your self-care are also very valuable and important. I’m always going to encourage you about that.
I’m JoyGenea, International Neurodiversity Coach. Thank you for stopping by and checking out what I’m up to. Bye now!