Book Corner: The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse
Hello again friends! Welcome to the Harper Therapy’s Book Corner for the end of January and beginning of February. We have a great recommendation for the upcoming month. A book that is special in many ways. It is a book that is hand illustrated and hand written by the author. It is as if you have been given the opportunity to glimpse into the author’s personal journal/sketch book…and what a wonderful opportunity it is! A book that is so easy to read, yet will leave you thinking all the profound thoughts that help our lives improve.
A book you will want to buy for yourself, keep one on the coffee table, and get as gifts for the teens celebrating Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, Quinceañeros, Sweet Sixteens, the young adults celebrating graduations, and the adults celebrating birthdays, weddings, the welcoming of a child or are going through the end of a relationship in the next few months. We would like to share with you The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charles MacKesy.
This piece of literature won the Book of the Year Award for 2019. And although at first we were hesitant on what parameters decide what becomes “the book of the year”, we soon found out that this book is a gem. As we end January and are more or less staying true to our resolutions and new habits, February lends itself for going a step further, a step deeper and nourishing relationships, not only romantic, but also family relationships, friendships, work relationships, and the most important, the relationship with ourselves.
The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse is a book of encouragement in the direction of appreciating our lives and our connections with others as a foundation in a life lived fully. It urges us to live courageously and states that kindness to ourselves is important and it can start at any time…including right now…who knew, right?! It is the beautiful conversation between the child in all of us with the three representations of our hidden soul (the Mole), our alert being (the Fox) and the self we share with the world (the Horse). By the way, this interpretation of the characters is solely ours…the author does not offer them and you can arrive to your own interpretation.
We are prompted to understand that asking for help does not mean giving up, that comparison thwarts our joy, that we may not be able to control what happens around us, and that “our greatest freedom is how we react to things” (MacKesy, 2019). MacKesy takes us in a journey of these four seemingly unlikely friends while they discuss forgiveness, what home means to each of us, and how strength is actually measured. It invites us in the conversation by inspiring us to think about the illusion of perfection and giving value to honesty in our process of emotional growth.
This book, my friends, will bring to life the message that gratitude is key in our journey, that we are ENOUGH in this world and that home is not just a place. It invites us to assess how our relationship with ourselves is going, and if it is going a bit rough… fell off the January resolutions bandwagon?! Then how to love ourselves through the fall and while we rise. It will embolden us to look deeper into all our connections in life in order to make sure that we are giving, grateful and growing.
We hope you enjoy the book The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse as much as we have. If you are thinking of starting therapy and you want to see how this book can be included in your therapeutic process, feel free to call us at 813-434-3639 to set up appointments. Let us, at Harper Therapy, be your home for Hope, Growth and Healing. Until next time, happy reading!
