“Re-Create & Celebrate: A Review” by Barbara Leonhard

Note: This review is best read online or on the WordPress app, not the Jetpack app, which destroys the view.

Cindy Georgakas’ new book, Re-Create & Celebrate (EIF - Experiments in Fiction, 2023), definitely fits the theme. The book is a manual for the soul. I wish I had had this book when I was young. It offers the tools which I eventually discovered by trial and error and which enabled me to overcome moderate depression, a depression that I now believe was triggered by my fear of expressing my authentic self without losing others’ love and respect. 

I feel there is a drive in this culture to conform to others’ expectations, to stifle one’s voice for fear of standing out as odd. The tendency to bully those who don’t conform is prominent. Georgakas offers ways for people to nurture the courage to stand in their truth by examining their life purpose and manifesting their dreams. 

The drive to conform is particularly true in families if the parents expect their children to be exactly like them and align to their social, political, and religious ways. I come from a large family, and honestly, everyone of us is a unique soul. It’s impossible to live as someone else’s light. Still how often do we hear of parents expecting their children to put aside their true desires to fit into what the parents dream for their children?  In public, children nave to navigate social expectations to conform and fit in. How can we separate from parental and social expectations? How can we become who we want to be? And actually who we are? How can we ‘come out’ and be our own story? How can we shine our own light?

Georgakas describes seven ways we can manifest our soul truth and thus our goals.

Step 1: Finding The True You
Step 2: Finding Your Purpose
Step 3: Finding Your Want and Why
Step 4: Plan of Action— Attainable Steps
Step 5: Loving Yourself 
Step 6: Processing Feelings 
Step 7: Falling off the Wagon, Burnout & Support 

Within each step, Georgakas shares her own experience. The best teachers are the most vulnerable. Her memories reveal how she herself came into her being. It isn’t easy to reveal personal trauma in order to transform it into a new dream. If she can do this, so can we. She provides questions for self reflection in each step. If readers journal earnestly, no doubt there will be many deep discoveries. After all, one finds her voice by using it.

Each chapter is written with enthusiasm. Georgakas is a cheerleader for those who are down, shy, and retreating. She can pull them out of their doldrums quickly. Her tone is uplifting and reassuring throughout the process of self-discovery. She is with us all the way, cheering us on.

One of my favorite parts of the book is her recommendations to use affirmations, which have the best effects when spoken. Words and thoughts have vibrations. If we repeat positive thoughts as opposed to falling victim to replays of negative thinking, we will change our thinking and outlook about ourselves and life. Showing gratitude, Georgakas says, is an essential practice. I agree. Once I began a daily gratitude practice, more good things magically came into my life. New connections, new opportunities, and profound love and respect for self and others and from others in return.

And Step 5, Loving Yourself, also hit home for me because I practice Loving Kindness, which has taught me how love for myself fills my cup with love for others. I notice today how depleted we are because we give so much of ourselves without any regard for self-care. Let’s face it. This life is full of stress and trauma. Unless we can find ways to center in our authentic self, we will be tossed about by the turmoil. Self-care, Georgakas teaches, is grounding.

Georgakas is a qualified teacher. As her preface shows, she is a Health and Wellness Coach certified by Chérie Carter Scott. Georgakas is a teacher of Yoga, Qigong, and Tai Chi and has training in Therapeutic Recreation. All of these modalities played a role in her own healing, so she is dedicated to helping others to heal, center in their authentic self, and thus manifest their dreams with the skills she has mastered.

Georgakas is also a poet. The sections end with a haiku. Health and wellness research shows that poetry serves a healer. At the end of the book, this haiku helps us reflects on the strength of self-acceptance. Maybe those of us who work thorough the steps in this book can emerge as wounded healers.

Torrential downpour 
floodgates burst enabling 
healing waters flow

In these uncertain times, we could use guidance, support, a way to center in our being. This book offers readers tools to converse with our authentic self and manifest our soul’s purpose with grace and ease. This process asks us to open up to our vulnerability, as Georgakas does when she shares her life traumas and journey. Her teachings are born out of her own need to find her way and embody her authentic self. She comes to us as a wounded healer, the best teacher to have. 

Review Copyright © 2023 Barbara Harris Leonhard
All Rights Reserved

Quotes from Re-Create & Celebrate
Copyright © 2023 Cindy Georgakas 
All Rights Reserved

Barbara is the best-selling author of Three-Penny Memories: A Poetic Memoir (EIF- Experiments in Fiction, 2022). A poem from this collection was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2022. Also, on Spillwords, Barbara was voted Author of the Month of October 2021, nominated Author of the Year for 2021, and recognized as a Spillwords Socialite of the Year in 2021. In November 2022, she became Editor for MasticadoresUSA. Barbara is a Netter- Go Getter. She enjoys bringing writers together at Zoom open mics and readings.

Cindy Georgakas is a writer of words in poetry, prose and reflections of her heart. She was voted Author of the Month on Spillwords Press April. 2023 and Publication of the Month on Spillwords Oct. 2022. She is a co-author of #1 Amazon Bestseller, Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women, and is also a monthly contributor to MastecadoresUsa. She was born in San Francisco, California and lives nestled in the trees in a small community about 40 minutes south of San Francisco with her husband. She is a life health coach, and massage and craniosacral therapist who draws inspiration from her daily interactions with clients, friends, her 4 children and nature. Her website is Uniquely Fit. She can also be found on Instagram #ahamoments. Cindy’s book Re-create & Celebrate 7 Steps To Turning Your Dreams Into Reality will be released this month.

Check out Cindy Goergakas’ blog, Uniquely Fit Blog, for more reviews and book details.

https://uniquelyfitblog.com/2023/05/03/cover-reveal-of-re-create-celebrate/

Unique Times with Cindy

Editor: Barbara Harris Leonhard

@BarbaraLeonhar4

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Amazon Best-Selling Author, Three-Penny Memories: A Poetic Memoir (Experiments in Fiction, 2022); Pushcart Nominee

Twitter: @BarbaraLeonhar4; Facebook: Barbara Harris Leonhard /barbara.leonhard; Instagram: @meelosmom123