We: A Manifesto for Women Everywhere Hardcover – March 7, 2017

I've followed Gillian Anderson for years, and most recently on her social media handles. Seeing her posts regarding social issues, I found that I generally agreed with her stances, and so I was excited to read the book, "We," writen by her and Jennifer Nadel.Lets get this out of the way right off the bat - if you're a Scully/Bedelia/Stella/Media/etc fan, and you're hoping for some sort of weird intersect between a feminine manifesto and the X-Files, you're going to end up disappointed. "We" has nothing to do with any of Gillian's screen or stage work other than a few anecdotes from her life during those times. The only place you'll see any of the titles of her work mentioned by name is in the credits/about pages.I'm not much for self-help books, which this tome most certainly is. I'm generally a pretty sarcastic person and when forced to read books like "7 Highly effective habits," I usually can't help but laugh while reading many of the passages and suggested exercises. "We" calls you out on this mindset right off the bat. Many of the centering exercises that the book has you go through say in no uncertain terms, "You might feel silly doing this, but do it anyway."If you're entrenched in your sarcastic mindset like I am, many of the exercises in "We" will be trying and feel almost silly. It will push you out of your comfort zone. I don't consider myself an overly emotional person so I found that the affirmation and speaking exercises to be harder than the soul-searching types. "We" suggests that you go through all of the exercises as you read the book - which is what I tried initially - but the completionist in me really wanted to read through the entire volume first to get an idea of where it was headed. I'm also a pretty linear thinker so the act of stopping my reading, breaking out a notepad, writing some items down, then picking the book back up to continue felt incredibly disjointed to me. After finishing the book, I really don't think you'll be impacted by whether or not you know and understand the 9 principles before you start the first exercises."We" is broken up into chapters based on four "Essential Practices" - exercises which the book suggests you do on a regular basis - and nine "Principles." The Practices are things which help put you in the proper mindset of "We" and are relatively simple things like feeling gratitude towards people and providing positive feedback to yourself, from yourself. The Principles make up the true bulk of the book and are like a general set of guidelines to use in every day life. Sprinkled throughout the book are small personal anecdotes from both Jennifer Nadel and Gillian Anderson, touching on the impact of the particular principle in their life.An example of a practice would be imaging taking care of a good friend during a tough time, writing down the things you would do for them to make them feel better. Now, do these things for yourself. An example of a principle would be Peace - taking time to really listen to your inner thoughts through things like meditation, and remembering to stop and pause to really take in your surroundings on a regular basis.For me personally, the book did start to lose me when it started talking about spirituality and the divine. One of the major principles in the book is that of Joy, and the book relates it directly to spiritualism. "If you keep an open mind and seek out joy, you will start to have a spiritual experience." It also says things like, "Many atheists experience the divine but call it awe and wonder," - to me, neither awe nor wonder are equated to anything divine and honestly the entire section felt like a religious person's attempt to shoehorn their beliefs on something (atheism) that they didn't quite understand. Joy also goes a bit sideways for me when it starts saying things such as, "You'll become aware of coincidences and opportunities that are increasingly difficult to dismiss as happenstance. You'll notice that the trust you once found hard to practice has crystallized into a faith that you are being taken care of." I liked the general theme of the Principle, I just sort of mentally fuzzed out and ignored that whole bit on the divine and spiritual.Towards the end of the book after the nine principles takes a more activist stance at life. One of the major beliefs put forward in "We" is the thought that women acting as a whole can create a huge and impactful influence the world. This includes becoming more active in social outreach or political issues. The last bit touches on women's issues such as paid maternity leave, the glass ceiling, wage equality, and so forth. It urges women to become interested and active in women's rights issues. The appendix includes quite a few resources and suggestions on starting a "We-based" community.All-in-all, "We" is an interesting manifesto and I plan on working through the suggested exercises for a prolonged time period. I did definitely see some of my negative habits mentioned in this book and there are absolutely areas I feel I could improve on for myself. I also plan on sharing this book with a few female friends of mine to see if they want to follow along with me and compare notes. After reading books like these, I often wish I could speak directly to the writers and pick their brains - I always feel like many of these books would come across more poignantly if they were more personalized. Perhaps one of the stops on their book tour will wander close to Texas.

I've never read a book like it, but I found it very engaging. It's set up to be read in sections, which is how I ended up reading it. I'd take it with me to work and at lunch read a section, or do it when I got home. There are interactive parts to it, some of which I had to skip for later because of the whole work thing. In general, reading it made me calmer (one of the reasons I kept taking it too work) and put my brain into a different mind set that was otherwise hard to do. I'm not going to say everything in it was an immediate yes for me, for example I have been trying to do meditation for months now and my brain just will not shut up, but weirdly when I stopped doing it, I found that I missed something about it.This book helps keep me conscious of my workaholic tendencies and when I do have down time my minds search for 'what should I be doing now, the fact that I'm not doing something means I must have forgotten what I need to be doing.'It helped remind me that me and my goals were just as important or more important. Which if that's all you take away from this, is something pretty important to be reminded of, and to in a way have two very amazing women in your corner backing you up.I bought it for my mom and she flew through it! I talked a lot of it over with my sister too. It's a book by women for women today, it covers issues women of all ages face to varying degrees. It's one of those books I believe that if you read it again at different points in your life even though nothing in it has changed there will still be universal truths that hit you.

Already planning to start a Meetup.com group focused around this book, applying the Essentials and Principles discussed. What this could mean for so many of us women who have been struggling through the obstacles in our paths: the addictions, depression, self-criticisms, alienation, politics, relationships that don't support us, and the effect this has on our daughters, sons, significant others, the world at large. We, most of us, know deep inside what feels virtuous, healthy, 'right'...but so many of us lack support networks, self-validation, adequate resources to achieve a good quality of life. This well written and thoughtful book is like a drink of cool, clean water to a thirsty woman and arrives in the nick of time. We can empower ourselves and one another, and what we get from this book will be based upon our own work, diligence, commitment, and individual willingness to step into our power and step out of the shadows our experiences may have built to darken our inner brilliance. This isn't a quick fix, guaranteed results, easy answer, positive thinking, magical solution to our problems that makes false feel-good claims. This is a get down to work, dip your toes in the river of life book filled with encouragement, examples, suggestions, and encourages readers to seek outside professional guidance to deal with whatever issues may require such guidance, warns readers it could be a bit dangerous to undertake what's necessary to wake up to yourself. Addictions, abuse, mental health issues, physical illnesses are some of the actual circumstances requiring outside help. The authors want us to be safe, to seek healthy support, to heal, and to grow. The guidance offered in this book works if you work it, and the results will be different for each reader but so worth the journey.

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Es un libro con el cual puedes aprender a sentirte libre de presiones de la sociedad, a sentirte bien contigo y brindar lo mejor hacia los demás.

I’ve suffered from depression and anxiety since I was 12 years old and it’s really impacted on every element of my life. That along with some traumatic life experiences really caused me to struggle with even the simplest aspects of my every day life.This book literally tore me apart and helped me to learn to put myself back together again. Of course there’s still a lot of difficulties but I’m learning to experience and deal with them in new ways and find things to smile and be grateful about even on the bad days.Gillian Anderson and Jennifer Nadal are truly amazing people and I’ll always be grateful to them for writing this book.

So when I bought the book, It sounded like a book that would talk about gender issues and give a vision of supporting each other.What I got was a self help book that sort of claimed it wasn't a self help book.If you accept it with a self help/betterment mindset - Its actually quite good.I would recommend it as a guide to self care - REAL self care, eating ice cream and impulse shopping.A lot of the concepts in the Nine Principles actually come from CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy).I think the book would have felt more credible if it acknowledged this.The book could have been done as a workbook, since a huge part of the book is exercises, usually involving a lot of introspection and writing things down. Gillian and Jennifer to add their own segments where they talk about their own personal experiences. I liked hearing this, it felt like they were being very honest and vulnerable.I listened to the Audiobook in part - and I found their voices to be very soothing.

I have already taken so much from this book and in the week I have read it, have already changed behaviours, thoughts and am on a new journey.The book provides simple and realistic changes that are easy to implement.Inspiring and informative. THANK YOU.