I personally find it challenging to separate western spirituality and wellness from American consumerism. I imagine the old-school vending machine in the basement of my old apartment building, complete with silver coils and whining fluorescent light. But instead of chips, soda, and candy bars, there are self-help books, passes to fix-all retreats, and coffee mugs sporting motivational platitudes. I imagine it rotates like one of those hot dog broilers, showing product after product—but never returning to the start, and never showing the same thing twice. In theory, someone could spend eternity with their face pressed against that glass, eyes glazing over at Goop products and body wraps as the carousel whirs mechanically before them. 

With the world resembling more and more a testament to apocalypse, I can see the draw toward even this cynical and somewhat melodramatic take on wellness. Coping temporarily is better than not coping at all. What feels difficult, to me, is that deeper sense of peace—the silt settling to the bottom of the pond, the wound scabbing over and turning to scar tissue, the ability to take in your surroundings and say in full earnest: “If this isn’t nice, what is?”

How do we move beyond fast-fashion happiness and hopeless despair in the modern world? This is precisely what L. L. Kirchner explores in Blissful Thinking: A Memoir of Overcoming the Wellness Revolution. In it, she catalogs her journey through this tangled mess of wellness and capitalism—and her own trauma—in an attempt to derive something, anything, resembling healing.

Following a brutal divorce, Kirchner fights off a relapse into alcohol abuse. This journey takes her around the world, walking with her friend and AA sponsor, Willy, in New York City; sitting stiff and irritated in meditation at a yoga teacher training in Goa, India; and, eventually, to a tantric sex “cult,” complete with monochrome robes, cooperative healing family constellations, and dry humping. She bunks with strangers, friends, and lovers, exploring various avenues to “healing” (often with tentative and reluctant buy-in). Refreshingly candid in voice and motivation, Kirchner hacks and slashes through the thick undergrowth home to herself, coming to terms with (and eventually letting go of) the self-rejection that ultimately holds her back.

Kirchner shines in her unapologetic representation of addiction, illness, and deep pain. The reflections on her past self, spanning from 2006 to 2015, range from intimate and humorous to immensely frustrating. As I read, I found myself chuckling under my breath as often as I groaned at her stubborn proclivity for self-sabotage—distracting herself with sex and dating, or attending a strict, no-distraction, silent meditation retreat only to huddle in a bathroom stall to scribble notes (relatable). I cringed as Kirchner’s accounts held a mirror to the times in my life I was flailing and drowning in shallow water, yet to realize I could save myself by simply standing up.

But Kirchner’s sense of humor is a welcome salve and one of the narrator's most favored forms of avoidance (again, relatable). I personally enjoyed a scene with AA sponsor Willy where the two of them work together to create a dating profile for casual sex. Lacking experience in this arena, Kirchner drafts several profiles, fielding Willy’s suggestions to include sexier photos and a preferred penis size—the latter of which she rejects, laughing. “You’re the size queen, not me!” Willy is my favorite character, hands down. His response perfectly demonstrates why:

“Why not ask for exactly what you want?”

Listen: When I first read this scene, it didn’t stick the way it has now that I’ve finished the book. These humorous and innocuous moments are where you see Kirchner demonstrate the depth of her resistance to healing. One of my friends once had a dog that, when given a command, would turn her nose to the sky and look away, pretending to not see or hear you. Like that dog, the narrator is constantly looking away from her own self-sabotage. Willy’s response is a form of an answer key: You can get what you want. You just need to ask for it. After this question, Kirchner pivots the conversation and moves on to something else. Reading through that section a second time to write this review, I felt goosebumps crawl across my body. You may not know this, but voicing your desires allows for the possibility of rejection, or worse—acceptance. Actualization. Success.

The terror.

Time and time again, healing has to disguise itself—as a friend, a roommate, a party—to get anywhere near her. She tells her therapist, for example: “‘Of course I can breathe into it,’ I said, not pausing to take that breath. ‘I am a goddamn yoga teacher.’”

These illustrations of how self-protection turns to self-sabotage? Uncanny. You might expect to have a breakthrough several hours deep in meditation, or while ceremonially bathing in the Ganges during The Maha Kumbh (a Hindu festival taking place every twelve years and attracting one hundred million people). But Kirchner’s breakthroughs find her in the more mundane moments: Riding her bike in New York City. Making space for her anger when dealing with inconsiderate roommates. In sitting with her own discomfort and in her increased willingness to let go, Kircher finds her way to a subtle resolution. This transition—from hurting and fearful to cautiously open to love—is clear as her inner dialogue shifts in tone throughout the text. Take this early excerpt at a yoga training in Goa:

“How I yearned for the steadfast happiness that didn’t depend on other people, places, or things. But such a feat sounded more fantastical than finding Oz. Life had been one long exercise of attempting to acclimate in hostile environments based on what I could observe . . . as I came to this realization, stake-like daggers dug into the underside of my thighs and buttocks . . . I looked longingly at the door behind me, just under the clock (64).”

Kirchner’s voice reflects an intense longing for escape—from her own thoughts, from her suffering, and ultimately from her emotions. The reader can see the pain she is in and even her tendency to project that pain onto others (which she proceeds to do immediately after this brief moment of self-awareness, assigning the moniker “Humorless Shrew” to a fellow silent meditator.) I was impressed at Kirchner’s ability to reflect on her rise to self-awareness and the slow, agonizing path toward changing her thinking. We see evidence of this change six years later in Bangalore, after “adequate sex” brings emotions (and tears) to the forefront:

“ . . . his comfort felt worse. I didn’t want his consolation, I wanted to get away . . . I didn’t want to be in bed with someone who didn’t know that tears weren’t part of my lovemaking repertoire. Or were they? Had I turned into someone who cried after a shag? Instead of scorching myself with self-criticism, I took the opportunity to sit with my feelings . . . Post-coital tears can’t be my new normal, I thought. Wait, am I rejecting? The thought made me laugh” (253).

Stick with me here. I can’t help but feel a callback to that dating profile scene. So much of the text is about the narrator’s longing for love and her worry of being abandoned by a partner. Willy’s urging toward “casual” sex provided the emotional boundaries to allow her to be present with her own feelings, and eventually, to see which side of the bed the rejection and abandonment was coming from: her own.

It is a rare, true, and beautiful thing to watch someone transform on the page in this way, from ruthlessly cynical, to reluctantly open, to something resembling “healed.” The nonlinear organization punctuates the driving narrative with personal history and context. The structure feels at times both disorienting and clarifying, marrying with a candid voice to become a perfect representation of the cyclical (and aggravating) nature of healing. Kirchner is skillful in demonstrating the real and messy side of that healing—the monotonous, the painful, the exasperating and time-consuming. What a refreshing contrast to the general American expectation. There is no instant gratification here, no easy purchase, no wellness vending machine.

My one, small desire is for more depth in one area. This memoir seemed to speak to a particularly white plight toward self-understanding, and a particularly American “reaching” for health and wellness. To me, these themes were woven into the text, particularly considering the amount of traveling that takes place on this road to healing. But Kircher does not speak to these issues directly in the narrative itself. Rather, she makes this note in the introduction:

“The privileges inherent in my story—that I’m white and without children and so able to travel—go largely unmentioned within the text unless related to my quest. Personally, I find it jarring when I sense attempts to ward off potential criticism within a narrative. Perhaps it’s the wiser approach, but when my heart was breaking and I thrashed in the dark, my driving concern was pain relief. To suggest otherwise feels self-serving.”

This dedication to authenticity and refusal to virtue signal is absolutely laudable. But I’ll admit to a curiosity about Kirchner’s reflections on her privilege, and the ways being a white, childless, American woman modulated this process for her. If any of that came to the forefront of her consciousness at the time (or afterwards), I would certainly be interested to read about it. I hold out hope that if it wasn’t right for this project, perhaps these insights on whiteness will be revealed in an essay-length work. Though I only personally identify with one half of its namesake, I’ve signed up for her “Ill-Behaved Women” newsletter to explore her reflections on related feminist topics.

Overall, I found Blissful Thinking to be an entertaining, frustratingly relatable, and an ultimately worthwhile read for anyone seeking relief in the modern mess of wellness. I look forward to Kirchner’s upcoming novel Florida Girls.