Review of “Deserts to Mountain Tops” by Jessica Buchanan et al.

Score: 95+/100 (9.5+ out of 10)

Deserts to Mountain Tops is a deep, compelling, and emotionally-charged collection of personal stories by Jessica Buchanan and a plethora of talented, successful, and inspirational contributors! They champion the idea of self-love and self-acceptance.

Despite common, overlapping themes and subject matters, every single one of these personal stories is powerful, painful, beautiful, brilliant, and unique in its own way—just like the writers themselves.

Now, we have to get this out of the way real quick: this book is full of potentially triggering content. However, we are so glad that this book chose to cover certain subjects that don't get talked about enough.

Most of all, we are so glad that there is a book out there that discusses the painful, taboo, yet awfully common plague of eating and body-image disorders. So many of us have struggled with this, personally, at one time or another. There are thousands or even millions of people still struggling with it, bombarded with images of perfect people on Instagram, TikTok, and TV. It doesn't help that there's a fast food restaurant or convenience store on every corner and a diet book for every Benjamin in your bank account. We are surrounded by temptations, and the greatest temptation in the middle of all of this is the temptation to hate yourself and your body.

Yet... it's almost as if no one wants to talk about or even acknowledge it. It's like an elephant in the room.

Well, you can't solve a problem if you ignore it and never acknowledge it. You can't acknowledge the problem if it's buried, secret, kept hidden, and shrouded in mystery and darkness.

Well, the writers in Deserts to Mountain Tops are courageous and brave enough to pull the curtains back and acknowledge the elephant in the room. They're willing to talk about their own personal struggles—their battles, their wars. Not only is that commendable and admirable, but it's also fascinating and inspirational.

Jessica Buchanan introduces us to the figurative “desert of disordered eating” and the dark cloud of self-hate/self-abandonment that reverberate in stories throughout the book.

Contributor Michelle Ihry discusses her struggles with a mysterious illness that turns out to be Lyme disease. Similar to Growth by Karen DeBonis, this is a story about how our inflictions—as big, scary, and mysterious as they may be—often have explanations and solutions. We just have to keep seeking answers and never taking no for an answer. Don't sit in complacency and denial if you know something is wrong. Seek help! Seek out experts! Don't suffer in solitude and silence. Talk and listen to others who've been where you've been and have suffered as you've suffered.

Emily Cartwright tells the haunting story of her obsession with excessively exercising to burn the most calories and lose the most weight. Similar to Dr. Mimi Zieman from Tap Dancing on Everest, it could be argued that Cartwright suffered from exercise bulimia, a form of bulimia in which the sufferer excessively exercises rather than purges to compensate for overeating.

One of the best parts of this book is when Cartwright's feet were heavily blistered and even injured from excessive running, and rather than being concerned for the health of her feet, she was more upset that she didn't reach her goal of running at least 17 miles that day. She was literally destroying and punishing herself. We can't help but feel like we've been in her shoes: we've been there and done that. It's a frighteningly familiar feeling.

Tracy Interlandi gave us one of the most interesting of all the stories as it really put into perspective how people can minimize us and focus on one thing that we've done or that happened to us, forgetting that we're a complex, diverse, dynamic, and multi-layered person. In this story, Interlandi was the tragic victim of a savage assault by multiple people. Despite being an accomplished and passionate dancer, the assault became all that anyone knew or remembered her for—“Tracy The Dancer was replaced with The Waitress Who Was Attacked.” She longs to be defined by more than her one bad day. This story says a lot about how we're more than the sum of our problems. We're not defined by our problems. We are so much more.

Angelique Velez, who seems to describe a body-image disorder (or, at the very least, an insecurity about how she looked), describes the beauty that came out of that struggle. Velez was able to capitalize on her previous obsession to look good, gaining a passion for cosmetics (makeup), even founding a successful cosmetics business that we presume thrives to this day!

Delia Sullivan, similar to Sandy Evenson in The Woo Woo Way, discusses the concept of chakras, specifically what Sullivan calls the “heart chakra.” To put this into familiar terms, a house is only as strong as its foundation, and the heart chakra is the figurative foundation of a person. If you hate yourself, refuse to love yourself, and neglect your emotional well-being, how do you expect your body and mind to function?

There are some beautiful lines in this section:

“The ink flowed effortlessly, like gentle whispers to my younger self”

“Live with the broken pieces, and the unbroken will grow bigger and softer with more vigor"

Stacia Bissell discusses something that's very familiar to one of us: a traumatic brain injury suffered from a cycling accident. This TBI gave her a number of difficulties including stuttering, dyslexic-like symptoms, extreme noise & light sensitivities, ringing of the ears, and other cognitive challenges. However, she was able to overcome these issues, refusing to accept that she would only be defined by them and that her life's path would be dictated by them.
Bissell also gives us one of the book's most beautiful passages:

“...to be the roaring campfire I am meant to be rather than the flickering candle flame I was becoming. The fragments of glass will be colorful, and shimmer brightly. They will be reflective of the collective light that represents the interesting twists and turns to my life that have made me who I am. My brain is still injured, and I’ll always have to manage it wisely, but there’s nothing wrong with my heart.”

Julie Larkin's story was arguably the most interesting and fun to read, despite the fact that it was probably the most abrasive. Larkin's story concerns how living only to please people can cost us our selves. It also demonstrates how disgustingly superficial the world is. When we're perceived to be beautiful, fit, skinny, and perfect, people treat us differently. It can be humorous and comical at first, but it goes to show how skin-deep society's perceptions of us can be. And society's perceptions are fickle: they change. The same people who were cheering for us and kissing our butts yesterday could be stabbing us in the back and throwing us under the bus the next day.

The other thing we liked about this particular story is how we could relate to Larkin's experience with loose and saggy skin (and possibly stretch marks). These are things that people who lose a lot of weight have to deal with, and almost no one talks about or acknowledges it. It can be very discouraging to lose a lot of weight and still be left with literal scars of it. Larkin calls this “sagging secrets of shame.”

Another amazing part of this story is that we get two sides of Larkin's conscience: “Shitty Julie” and “Sacred Julie.” Shitty Julie is always telling her how she has failed because she has eaten too much or gained weight. Sacred Julie reminds her that she should be proud of who she is and to love herself.

Courtney Whitelock, a twin, gives us this beautiful passage that seems to bring this book full-circle:

“I had no idea that naming my daughter Grace would be as significant as it is. I will forever look into her eyes and see a desert, a mountain, and the courage to conquer them both, now and forevermore.”

Check it out on Amazon!