I Promise Myself: Making a Commitment to Yourself and Your Dreams

The book was well written with anecdotes and stories of women making vows to themselves and ceremonies. As women we are used to making promises to everyone except ourselves. This book gives permission to make a commitment to yourself.

I met at Patricia Reilly, the author of "I Promise Myself," at a recent booksigning in Salt Lake City. "I Promise Myself" is an amazing book and I made all of my high school friends read it. They all agreed that we girls need to affirm, appreciate, and love ourselves before anyone else. This in itself is a wonderful idea. But in a society such as ours, where we are told that pleasing others is our first priority, where we are taught that beauty is more important than comfort and love, and where we are ashamed of our sexuality and womanhood, this notion of self-affirmation isn't just wonderful...it's painfully needed. Patricia and her book are a wonderful example to me and to every one else.

I Promise Myself is a book to sit with and thumb through and read ten thousand times or more. Reilly shows us, through a vow composition process, how to truly know ourselves and find the inner strength needed to live in this hectic and often externally-focused world. The book is especially helpful to women who, as PLR describes it, tend to get caught up in the 'swirls' of others... ever the caretaker, ever the giver, ever the one who depends on others for strength. It has helped me through times of crisis by allowing me to define the natural center of my self to which I can always return.