by Chikondi Liwewe
Still Standing, The Flip Side of Denial, Depression, and Forgiveness is a memoir by Mwangala Lethbridge that focuses on the struggles she endured as a result of a motorcycle accident that led to the amputation of her leg. The incident took place after she experienced a major blow in her political career. Her entire world was turned upside down and as you read the book, you go through the motions of the five stages of grief with the author; denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance – not even in that specific order as you see her make progress and regress and make progress again from time to time, further proving that healing is not linear.
The book is not your typical “motivational” read but more of an individual sharing her personal struggles and how she got through some of them – she still is on the journey of getting through others, with the help of her family, friends and God.
As you progress in the memoir, you find yourself relating the authors emotions to various circumstances in your personal life which may not be of the same magnitude but tumult nonetheless.
You also empathize with the author as your eyes begin to open and see the many ways in which persons with disabilities are disadvantaged by mere fact that they are an afterthought, infrastructure development is not as accommodative to persons with disabilities as it should be. And as a minority group, they are faced with various forms of discrimination like the scenario narrated in the book where a security guard doubted that the author had a disability. Remember, disability has no face, you can’t tell by simply looking.
Overall the book taught me several things but my biggest take away was to learn to not take the simple things in life for granted, there are many things we should appreciate about our lives but because we are so accustomed to them we forget that they are indeed a privilege. Reading this book taught me that I should count the mere act of opening my eyes as a blessing and I do now.
Listen to Mwangala on the LEMBA: The Africana Woman Authors Space podcast here https://afripods.com/episode/e-5-lemba-the-africana-authors-sp/26ce9f48-2f04-4029-bed9-78382be735f1
Still Standing can be found at:
Direct Author sales
Author website - https://mwangalalethbridge.co.uk/
Mwangala Lethbridge, an Entrepreneur, Architect, Family Woman, Politician in the making and Trauma Survivor. A Christian by faith and raised Catholic, her belief system rests on four pillars as the cornerstones that guide her purpose in life: taking ownership, reliability, commitment and resilience. She hopes to inspire change in the lives of those she is blessed to encounter. Mwangala resides both in the United Kingdom with her husband Adam and their three children and in Zambia with her son and lovely grandchildren. Still Standing is her first book.
Connect with Mwangala here:
Chiko is a feminist book lover whose current literary obsession is African literature. She fell in love with reading at a tender age through encouragement from her grandfather. Chiko recently delved into the space of reviewing and recommending books, she is not a picky reader and open to book suggestions with the exception of self help. She looks forward to diversifying her reading genres further and hopes to write a book of her own one day.
Chiko's Bookstagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesapphiclibrarian
PERSONAL BRAND COURSE IS ENROLLING
Nolene from Cohort 1 said, "The Personal Brand Course is far more than the term personal branding denotes on first reading, it is in fact a journey to oneself and a means of writing the story of one’s life from past to present to future. Intensive and highly thought provoking about the life one is living as opposed to just projecting. Loved it."
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