It reads almost like fiction, but it is a memoir: Lori Gottlieb writes about her own life, her work as a therapist in Los Angeles, and the sessions with her patients that reveal how human, messy, and connected we all are.

Below are some of the quotes that will stay with us:

When someone shares a problem, comparing their suffering to someone else’s rarely helps.

“I lost my job.” - says your friend.
“At least you’re married. When I lost my job last year, I had no one to share the rent with.” - you might answer.

Sometimes this is disguised as optimism:

“Look at the cup half full.”
“It could be worse.”

But pain does not need to be minimized to be survived.

Sometimes the best thing to offer is silence.
Sometimes the most helpful response is a question.

Instead of:

“Let me know if you ever need anything.”

Try:

“Would it be helpful if I brought dinner tomorrow?”
“Would it help if I came with you?”
“Would it be useful if I took care of this one thing?”

Support becomes easier to accept when it is specific.

Communication in general is hard.
Communication in relationships is harder.

Wanting to be noticed is human.
Wanting someone to understand that something is wrong is human.

But expecting another person to know exactly what is needed, without saying it, can turn hurt into distance.

We spend so much time masking our feelings that, when something finally slips, the person in front of you may know something is wrong, but not what caused it.

Was it something said today?
Something forgotten yesterday?
Something that happened months ago?

What helps: shortening the time between frustration and conversation.

Sleeping on it can be useful when it creates space to think about how to approach the situation.

Sleeping on it for weeks, while silently rehearsing the hurt, usually makes the conversation harder.

A kinder place to start:

“I see that you’re upset. Is it because of what happened earlier?”

“I might be wrong, but I want to understand.”

“Can we talk about what felt hurtful?”

This is a reminder worth returning to.

Many people living abroad know this feeling well: choosing to leave a lot behind in order to pursue the life they wanted to build.

But this also happens on a smaller scale, every day.

Wanting to be fit may mean giving up midnight Netflix binges, so the next morning has enough energy for exercise.

Wanting to learn a new skill may mean stepping out of the comfort zone (or missing a few hangouts) to stay home and study.

Wanting a different life requires making space for it.

Because when nothing is allowed to go, everything gets squeezed in.

And often, the first things sacrificed are the ones that are essential: meals, sleep, rest, movement.

Change asks for more than desire.
It asks for trade-offs.

So when the path starts to feel hard because something familiar is being missed, it may help to remember where the path is leading.

The shopping cart left unchecked.
The food choice that supported a goal.
The evening spent studying instead of going out.

They may feel like losses in the moment.

But from the perspective of a healthier, wealthier, more fluent future self, they become part of the shift that made that future possible.

-
One more thought from the book:

People are rarely only what they show on the surface.

Behind anger, there may be fear.
Behind control, there may be grief.
Behind silence, there may be shame.
Behind humor, there may be pain.

Therapy, in the book, is not presented as a magical fix.

It is presented as a place where people slowly become honest enough to see themselves more clearly.

And sometimes, being seen clearly is where change begins.

I hope you know how welcomed you are at our book club meetings.
You can see all dates and RSVP at gatherpause.com

Women are taught that investing in themselves means getting a haircut.

A new shade of blonde, a facial, maybe a reformer pilates membership if we’re feeling particularly self-destructive with our finances. And somehow, between the dry shampoo and the overpriced supplements, no one sat us down and said: here is how money actually works. Here is how to make it work for you.

The personal finance world has historically been written by men, for men — full of jargon that feels deliberately alienating, as if the stock market were a private club with a dress code we were never told about. The books below are different. They were written with us in mind. Not in a patronising, pink-washed way — but in a way that meets you where you are, even if where you are is anxiously checking your account balance at 11pm.

You don’t need to be wealthy to start.
You need to start to become wealthy.
Here is where to begin.

Girls Just Wanna Have Funds — Camilla Falkenberg, Emma Due Bitz & Anna-Sophie Fæste Three Scandinavian women who built their own financial independence and then wrote the manual they wish they’d had. Straightforward, warm, and practical — this is the book to hand to a friend who says she doesn’t understand investing. She will, after this.

Friends That Invest — Simran Kaur & Sonya Gupthan If the word “portfolio” makes your eyes glaze over, this is your entry point. Written like a conversation between two friends who figured it out and couldn’t keep it to themselves. Accessible without being condescending — a rare combination in financial literature.

Girls Just Wanna Have Impact Funds — Camilla Falkenberg & Emma Due Bitz The follow-up to the first entry on this list, and arguably the more important one. This one goes beyond personal finance into ethical investing — how to grow your money in a way that aligns with what you actually believe in. For anyone who has ever wondered whether their savings are quietly funding things they’d rather not think about.

Girls That Invest — Simran Kaur A deeper dive from one of the authors of Friends That Invest. If the first book sparked your interest, this one builds the fire. Kaur covers everything from index funds to real estate with the same clear, no-nonsense voice that made her podcast a global phenomenon.

Nice Girls Don’t Get Rich — Lois P. Frankel The title is provocative for a reason. Frankel, a career coach with decades of experience, argues that many of the behaviours women are socialised into — being agreeable, avoiding negotiation, prioritising others — are the exact behaviours keeping us from financial freedom. Uncomfortable in the best possible way.

Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office — Lois P. Frankel Technically about career, but inseparable from money — because how we show up at work determines what we earn, and what we earn determines everything else. Frankel identifies over 130 unconscious behaviors that undermine women professionally. Read it with a highlighter. Then read it again.

That’s six books to start with.
You don’t need to read them all at once — start with whichever title made you feel the most uncomfortable when you read the description.
That discomfort is information.
Your relationship with money is telling you something.
Some links in this post are affiliate links. If you purchase a book through them, I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you — which helps keep GatherPause going. Thank you for your support.These books will help you listen.

Some links in this post are affiliate links.
If you purchase a book through them, I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you (which helps keep gatherpause going).
Thank you for your support.

Waris Dirie’s story is often summarized through the lens of survival, but that framing misses something essential.

The book is not only about what happened to her. It is about what happens to a woman’s relationship with her own body when agency is taken away early, repeatedly, and systemically.

Dirie writes about growing up in the Somali desert, about a childhood shaped by tradition, poverty, and expectations placed on the female body long before it has language to resist. Female genital mutilation is part of her story, but not its entirety. What makes the book powerful is not the event itself, but the long echo it creates. The way the body remembers. The way shame is inherited. The way silence becomes normalized.

When she eventually leaves Somalia, she moves through cities and systems where she is visible and invisible at the same time. Desired, exoticized, admired, yet rarely understood. Her body becomes something others project onto, while she is still learning how to inhabit it herself.

This tension runs through the book: between having a body that attracts attention and having a body that feels like home.

What The Desert Flower reveals, is how intimacy cannot exist without ownership of the self. Dirie’s evolution is not about success, but learning to speak for her body rather than through it.

There is a moment in the book where strength is no longer defined by endurance. Where silence stops being protection. Where the body shifts from something that carries pain to something that carries truth. That shift is subtle, but it is everything.

This is why The Desert Flower belongs in February.

Because intimacy is not romantic by default. It is political. It is cultural. It is embodied. And for many women, it begins with unlearning what they were taught to tolerate.

Reading Dirie’s story forces us to ask uncomfortable questions. Not only about violence elsewhere, but about the quieter ways women everywhere learn to disconnect from themselves. The compromises we normalize. The signals we ignore. The parts of ourselves we silence to remain acceptable.

In that sense, the book is disturbingly close.

It asks us to consider where self-perception was interrupted. Where intimacy became conditional. Where confidence was replaced with compliance.

And it reminds us that reclaiming the relationship with our own body, our own voice, our own inner authority is not indulgent work. It is foundational.

This is why the February workshop and the February reading speak to each other so directly. One through narrative, the other through experience. Both returning to the same question.

What does it mean to see yourself again, without permission, without apology, and without fear?

This month’s recommended reading for the gatherpause Book Club is The Pivot Year - a collection of daily essays. Today’s stayed with me:

“Be still. Do nothing. It is both the quiet and the noise that writes the symphony, the blank canvas and the paint that make the picture.”

Meditation and wandering

To anchor myself, I started January with a mindfulness challenge on Insight Timer.
I wanted to see what happens when I show up daily for a commitment with my mental health.

Halfway through the challenge, this is what I’ve noticed:

• I wake up with tension in my jaw and shoulders almost every morning.

• My mind rarely stops wandering.

It’s like I wake up already tired, like I want to take something from inside out.

I wonder if all people living abroad, switching summer for winter, feel the same way.

Two Januaries, two rhythms

Where I come from, January doesn’t ask you to slow down.

In Brazil, Christmas is celebrated at the beach and on NYE we jump over three ocean waves to attract luck. As the clock strikes midnight, almost immediately, the country shifts into Carnival mode. There’s even a saying that the year only truly begins in March, after the parades are over.

This rhythm contrasts deeply with German winter: NYC in Erding was freezing,minus ten degrees, as I recall. People gathered in the central square to watch the laser show, then quickly rushed back home, hands in pockets, toes burning cold.

I don’t think NYE in Germany is better or worse than NYE in Brazil.
They are just different.

German winter feels like the epitome of stillness.

A word that, as far as I can recall, doesn’t quite exist in my native language… It translates as imobilidade but I have never said that loud.

Watching others gather

Winter slows down the city, but I often fail to follow.

I still feel overexcited by the idea of a blank canvas: 365 pages waiting to be filled.
Painted. Or written on. I’m definitely a better writer than painter.

Winter also takes away my evening walks by the Weiher, the small lake we have in Erding - and I miss them deeply. They should install lights in there.

In any case, I often walk through the city instead.

Erding is never as deserted at night as you might expect from a small Bavarian town. People still gather. Panino is always packed. The burger place next to the bookshop too. Locals dressed beautifully, sitting close, sharing wine.

I walk past these places and look through the windows.

And sometimes, I feel the absence of my own people.
The friends I left behind.
The ones I would normally have a glass of wine with, without planning weeks in advance.

Watching others gather made something very clear to me: winter doesn’t necessarily isolate people. It only reveals where belonging already exists.

From observation to intention

Those walks planted a quiet thought in me.

If people can gather through winter—inside, slowly, intentionally—maybe I could help create a space where international women could do the same. A place that doesn’t demand productivity, networking, or performance. Just presence.

It was the wandering nature of my mind that gave birth to the gatherpause concept. Not as a solution, but as an invitation. To gather without rushing. To pause without guilt. To build connection where it doesn’t yet exist.

This is also why The Pivot Year feels like the right book for January.

Why The Pivot Year belongs here

Brianna Wiest doesn’t write about radical transformation in loud, dramatic terms. Her work focuses on inner pivots—the quiet ones. The kind that happen when you stop forcing movement and allow clarity to arrive on its own timeline.

January doesn’t need more pressure.
It doesn’t need urgency disguised as motivation.

It asks for patience.
For stillness.
For the humility to pause without demanding immediate results.

Winter as preparation

I’m learning that winter is not empty time.

It’s the preparatory moment.

And maybe the most important work for the year is happening right now, when it looks like nothing is happening at all.