November 13, 2024
Finding Your Perfect Pitch
How to Ride Life’s Current to Liberate Your Soul
Donna Howald
Aviva (2024)
ISBN: 978-1-63618-315-2
Unique New Book Celebrates Uniqueness as Path to Freedom
Donna Howald’s new book Finding Your Perfect Pitch: How to Ride Life’s Current to Liberate Your Soul is one of the most unique personal development books you will ever read. Donna has seen plenty of ups and downs in her life and she shares them in these pages to help readers learn how she overcame her obstacles and found serenity and purpose. Other personal development authors have shared similar stories, but none have tackled the process by writing their books in verse.
While the book’s introduction and conclusion are in prose, the main chapters are all written in rhyming couplets. The reader can then enjoy watching Donna turn a phrase, giving the book a light-hearted tone that helps to emphasize her message that we can succeed no matter what life throws at us.
And life has thrown a lot at Donna—from teen pregnancy and being a single mother to a controlling father who passed his behavior on to her, a mother who experienced both alcoholism and severe illness and needed Donna’s support, and the silent treatment from her adult children. But life has given her many blessings also, including a man to stand by her, children and grandchildren, and discovering various modalities that could help her physically, mentally, and financially, and perhaps most of all, finding the tools to ride life’s current with success.
Each chapter starts with a short introductory poem and then the longer chapter is in couplets and broken into subcategories. The chapters end with exercises to help the reader think about how Donna’s experiences relate to their own experiences and what changes they can make to improve their lives.
At the book’s core is Donna’s belief that what happens to us actually happens for us. As difficult as it is to see at times, we ultimately benefit from our experiences, whether they initially appear good or bad. Donna discovered that when we learn to maneuver our experiences differently, we can find a different path to go down, one with the end in mind. As she states, “More than likely, your life is not a problem; it’s your existence without a plan.” Donna helps us to create that plan. She’s already helped numerous others as a transformational life coach, teacher, and practitioner, who is certified in Pilates, Franklin Method, MELT Method, and NeuroMovement. Now she’s written this book to help you heal physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
Throughout Finding Your Perfect Pitch, Donna shares the important questions she has asked herself and that she encourages us to ask. One of those, in couplet form, is:
“Have you ever given a thought to how you might be remembered or known?
In considering this, your conduct and composure may have a different tone.”
She then shares how she discovered this question, discovered how to ask herself what she would want her eulogy to say, and the tools she used to become that person. By starting with the end in mind, knowing what she wanted, she figured out how to become available to receive it.
But achieving our dreams isn’t easy. As Donna knows, it takes “unfamiliar movement, which can be uncomfortable.” However, by listening to our longings and discontent, we can figure out what we want and don’t want. Donna even asks hard questions like in what ways is our discontent benefiting us.
One of Donna’s biggest personal struggles was her control issues. She’d learned to be controlling from her father, but she grew to realize it did not help her relationships with her children; in fact, it had “a toxic effect.” Then Donna had “an aha moment: Control is not a virtue; it’s a vice learned while being raised.” By being a parent, she learned what she thought were her virtues were her biggest flaws, and in time, she learned to do better.
Today, Donna celebrates the “hero’s journey” that brought her to where she is now. For Donna, being a hero means taking responsibility. Even when she had no control over something, she’s learned to take responsibility for it because she always has a choice how to react. By being responsible, she controls the key to her experiences. Rather than giving up or giving in when things are rough, she states that “Standing firm while your world is shaking teaches you that life can be a whirlwind, but if you find balance at dead center, it will lift you to heights you could never imagine. So, keep doing what you can, with what you have, from where you are.”
Even her mother’s health scare could not defeat Donna or her mother. The doctors told her mom she had five years to live, but she lived nineteen more. This situation led Donna to write what was one of the most mind-blowing statements in the book for me:
“Once I heard, ‘Statistics only apply to groups; they don’t apply to an individual.’
Now when I hear a statistic, I apply that embodied residual.”
She goes on to advise:
“You never know what’s ahead of you, so don’t give up the fight.
Because reality is only known when it’s revealed in hindsight.”
Donna is also a believer in what is commonly called the Law of Attraction. She reveals how she has had her attention on what she didn’t want, only to manifest more of it. She states that our awareness is a major factor in our ability to change our patterns and also our reactions. She shares examples from her relationships with her son and daughter to clarify how a shift in her awareness improved matters. She also advocates for the value of relationships and not waiting to resolve differences. She states:
“You never know how many years you will have, but you know you have now.
Now is the time to make a change. Don’t let victimhood become your sacred cow.
No problem is too big for your Higher Power and you to resolve.
Once you’re in harmony with what you desire, difficulty will simply dissolve.”
Finding Your Perfect Pitch may be a short book, but it packs a wallop. Other topics include physical health, mindfulness, mindful movement, and how rather than compete with others, we should strive to compete with ourselves to become a better version of ourselves.
I think in reading this book you will be amazed that Donna could even write practically an entire book in verse. More importantly, you’ll be impressed by the effective ways she’s changed her life and you will be inspired to apply her wisdom to your own life. By doing so, you will find your perfect pitch.
For more information about Donna Howald and Finding Your Perfect Pitch, visit www.DonnaHowald.com.
— Tyler R. Tichelaar, PhD and award-winning author of Odin’s Eye and Spirit of the North
