‘Luminous and tender, full of nuance and possibility, it is a series of personal reflections on each of the 22 cards in the major arcana … she merges memoir with instruction, historical insights with everyday observation, consideration of the cards’ universal major themes with the specificity of her own circumstances, as well as wider reading into art, culture, spirituality, wellness, and shifting social attitudes around the cards. It’s a lucid reminder of the “ongoingness” of history, stories, and the self — a meditation on the everyday magic of life and an argument for the enduring legacy of the tarot.’
Mel Fulton, Books+Publishing
‘Enlightening … Blending historical insights with her own warm, vulnerable perspectives, Friedmann’s book will influence how each of us — novice or expert — reads and interprets the Tarot.’
Holly Mortlock, Readings
Praise for Things That Helped:
‘[A]n extraordinary account of extreme postnatal depression, as seen from the eye of the storm.’
Viv Groskop, The Guardian
Praise for Things That Helped:
‘Things That Helped is a beautiful book — heartfelt, fiercely intelligent, and urgent. It is a powerful affirmation of friendship, family, art, and love, and how these things might shape a life, and give it strength.’
Fiona Wright, author of Small Acts of Disappearance
Praise for Things That Helped:
‘Jessica Friedmann has left safety behind and walked into something vast — a self, a world, on the verge of unravelling yet exhilarating and full of love. This book runs deep and wide. It’s alive with arresting images, with thoughts too big, sometimes too dangerous, to pin down.’
Maria Tumarkin, author of Axiomatic
Praise for Things That Helped:
‘Her transportive writing will break you open and fill you anew.’
Anna Spargo-Ryan, author of The Paper House
Praise for Things That Helped:
‘While the occasion for this book is Friedmann’s experience of post-partum depression, Things That Helped points to the larger question of becoming a writer-mother, and the ways a traumatic splitting of the self might relate to a creative one, and how, in consciously reintegrating aspects of self, a powerful, self-aware, and writerly subjectivity might emerge … There is an analogic intelligence at work, a sense of metaphor pushing behind each piece of the book, finding connections that weave each part of with others … There are skeins here, not a single narrative strand, and it is in their braiding that hopes of making and loving are recovered.’
Sydney Review of Books
