Warrior
A Memoir
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- 16,99 €
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- 16,99 €
Descrizione dell’editore
In this inspiring memoir, a former female Marine platoon leader recalls the wars she has fought—on the playing field, the battlefield, and inside her own soul—revealing how overcoming the harrowing circumstances in her life helped her ultimately redefine what it means to be strong and what “perfect” really is.
Theresa Larson has lived multiple lives. At ten she was a caregiver to her dying mother. As an adolescent, an All-Star high school, college, and professional softball player. As a young adult, a fitness competition winner, beauty pageant contestant, and model. And as a grown woman, a high-achieving Lieutenant in the Marines, in charge of an entire platoon while deployed in Iraq.
Meanwhile, Theresa was battling bulimia nervosa, an internal struggle which ultimately cut short her military service when she was voluntarily evacuated from combat. Theresa’s journey to wellness required the bravery to ask for help, to take care of herself first, and abandon the idea of “perfect.” In Warrior, she lays bare all of these lives in intimate and vivid detail, examining extremely personal and sometime painful moments and how, by finally accepting the help of others, she learned to make herself whole. From growing up in a log cabin outside Seattle to facing down the enemy in Iraq, Theresa’s journey demonstrates that good health and happiness is a daily, intentional act that requires persistence and commitment.
Theresa hopes that through sharing her story, she will help inspire others to empower themselves, embrace their inner warrior and re-define strength. Startling and funny, terrifying and triumphant, heartbreaking and inspirational, Warrior is at heart a story of perseverance and success—of a determined woman who is model for everyone struggling to conquer their own demons. Theresa shows that asking for help can be an act of courage, and that we are stronger than we think when faced with seemingly impossible odds.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This uneven memoir ties a woman's demons, manifested as bulimia, to her high achievement. Larson, writing with Eisenstock (Ten on Sunday: The Secret Life of Men), was a college softball champion, a fitness model, and a platoon leader in Iraq. The scenes set among her fellow Marines zing: she is hazed into putting a rabbit eyeball in her mouth, shocks a bunch of 19-year-old guys by beating them all in a foot race up Heart Attack Hill, and delivers an eloquently profane dressing-down to male soldiers who called her an ugly name. Unfortunately, Larson's narrative gets gummed up with the vague reassurances of self-help: to manage her bulimia, she learns that some things are beyond her control, that she doesn't have to be perfect, and that things will be better if she eliminates the toxic influences from her life. It's the rare memoirist who can convey the experience of a psychological illness and its impact on a person's everyday decisions in words that resonate with those who haven't experienced that particular form of suffering. Larson never quite manages it.