Being Selfish: My Journey from Escort to Monk to Grandmother is a memoir by Sarah Marshank about her incredibly interesting life. It starts with an unplanned pregnancy and Sarah’s decision process. She’s already had one abortion and isn’t sure she can handle the psychological pressures of a second abortion. But she doesn’t want to resent her child for becoming trapped in a life she didn’t envision for herself. She looks to her upbringing for guidance, but finds no answers in her Jewish, liberal, or middle class upbringing. So she sets off on an adventure to find her own answers to life’s mysteries of sex and religion with the goal of becoming one with her own spirit. Her adventure takes her from California to remote Oregon and beyond, until she experiences so much in her life that she feels compelled to share it in this one of a kind memoir.

Being Selfish is an incredibly honest memoir that really spoke to me. It is a story about choices and searching for answers, and is a subject that I personally find very interesting and I believe a lot of other readers will enjoy it too. Marshank does an excellent job of framing the memoir to read as an enjoyable story, and yet we know the story is true. Because it is about her life, her adventures become all the more engaging imagining that this actually happened to someone. I found this memoir thoroughly captivating and fascinating. I was drawn in from the very first page and I laughed, cried, and soul searched with the author as she took me on this incredible journey.

Being Selfish: My Journey from Escort to Monk to Grandmother is a touching memoir by Sarah Marshank about the incredible adventure she calls life. Sarah was happy with the direction of her life when she found out she was pregnant. She’d already had one abortion and wasn’t sure she was mentally or emotionally prepared for another. She’d grown up in a conservative Jewish family, but had never felt a close connection with God. She wanted to connect with a spiritual presence, so she set out on a journey to find answers to her life’s questions. Questions about sex drove her into learning about the escort business. Questions about religion led her to spend time with a monk in the rural landscape of Oregon. Her memoir is a detailed account of those questions, her experiences, and the answers she discovered along the way.

Sarah Marshank wrote a beautiful memoir in Being Selfish that many people should read! I enjoyed this memoir so much. Sometimes I forgot it wasn’t a fiction story, because it was so captivating and interesting. But the fact that it was a person’s true life story made it that much more interesting. Marshank did an excellent job of keeping the story stimulating. Although there is a lot of deep subject matter in this memoir (especially when covering sex and religion), Being Selfish never felt like a deep or difficult read. Readers with all reading levels and abilities will be able to enjoy this book! Anyone looking for answers about life’s mysteries or wanting a journey of their own should check out Marshank’s excellently crafted memoir.

Being Selfish: My Journey from Escort to Monk to Grandmother is Sarah Marshank’s memoir about her life. She starts on a journey to discover herself, and ends up living an incredible adventure, experiencing things that most people could never dream about. She questions the religious background that she grew up in, wondering what is the point of life? How can she make important decisions or discern right from wrong if she doesn’t understand the overall purpose of life? A spiritual guidance in her life talks to her about giving up spiritually, and he explains his take on Buddhism and karma. From his teachings, Marshank begins a spiritual journey that takes her on many twists and turns, and she reveals everything she learned along the way in this remarkable memoir. It is a story that inspires, investigates, and challenges readers to think outside the box when it comes to almost everything they think they know about life, and to let go and just enjoy the ride.

Being Selfish is a fantastic and wonderful book! I so enjoyed reading Marshank’s story. I really felt like I was reading a journal or a personal diary because the story felt so real and authentic to me. I think that is some of the charm of this book. Marshank is never pretentious or self-righteous. She doesn’t preach or try to convert or talk down to her audience. She just tells her story the way it happened to her, sharing her thoughts, fears, doubts, and insecurities. I think other readers will really relate to her questions and anxieties, and will love the answers and creative solutions she found for dealing with them in her unique and interesting life.

Being Selfish: My Journey from Escort to Monk to Grandmother by Sarah Marshank is a riveting memoir told with humility, boldness, and sincerity, a tale of a woman’s search for herself and meaning in her life. At twenty-two, Sarah gets pregnant and is thrust back into a solitude she hadn’t bargained for. No one seems to understand the depth of her plight, not her conservative family and not the people around her. Her journey towards self-discovery and meaning plunges her into an unbridled sex life, a frenetic search for God and self. But when she meets Sam, it seems like her life will finally have meaning. Leaving everything behind, she follows him into an adventure that will surprise her and her readers.

Being Selfish is a beautiful story of love, heartbreak, and healing. As a mature woman who’s learned the discipline of meditation and prayer, Sarah invites readers to look back at her life with her, to discover the workings of grace in her stark moments of loneliness, to see the communion in her solitude. The writing is simple and could be a reflection of the soul of the protagonist that has matured from a selfish woman seeking the pleasures of this world into the little child every person is called to become. Marshank’s sincerity and humility are arresting and her voice rings out with a gentleness that readers will certainly fall in love with. The writing is hugely entertaining and deeply inspiring. Marshank has the gift of enticing readers into her world and making them feel as if they have lived these moments with her.

It takes a lot of courage to put oneself out in the world this way, through a memoir that details such a vulnerable personal journey. Sarah Marshank combines that courage with a capacity for compelling story-telling and beautiful prose-crafting. Though Sarah's outer journey is quite different from my own, I related to the inner journey she so eloquently describes. A very enjoyable read!

From the very beginning of this book, I was highly engaged-- and though our paths are very different, I recognized myself and the numerous similarities of our journeys. From her woundedness, from personal pain, from the pain of the world, Sarah embarks on the path of the seeker. Through many explorations and expressions, she eventually sits still and finds what she was seeking within herself. Her journey is exquisitely articulated in this memoir, with great vulnerability and openness. When she finds her oneness with Divinity, the beauty of that space is so all-encompassing she realizes she could rest into that forever, and die there. But she chooses to bring it back into the world. She chooses to experience life from an entirely different perspective. What she brings back is a gift to everyone she encounters.Her light radiates from each page of this book, I am grateful she chose to tell her story.

This is a remarkable book in many ways. The hard-earned insights that come with spiritual work and bearing the innumerable hardships in a life with some skill and art are well described here.

At turns funny and moving and insightful I found some turns of dialogue quite moving and insightful.

If you are walking a funny path through your spiritual work and wonder if you are alone... Sarah Marshak's path will hold your hand in the dark.

When I first picked up this book I thought oh a chick book. Boy was I wrong. I have read many stories simular to this quest. But it was always a story about man's quest written by man. i.e.; Watts, Costendada, Ram-Dass, Yogananda. To my surprise I am challenged to mention one woman's quest. Well here it is. A wonderful read, I really enjoyed this story.

I began the book last night, and have just now finished. With so many books in queue, I thought I would take my time with this one. I couldn’t. I had to keep reading. The writing is so beautiful and raw and elegant as to transparently let me experience something that to my conscious knowledge, is new to me — I had some degree, some sort of strong first-person experience of living and walking the path as a female-gendered person. And simultaneously, felt so deeply met in my own gender, body, and story in ways I’m only feeling and not yet feeling articulated in words….more in waves. I’m deeply touched. You see, what seems to be the realization at the end of the book is the one I’ve been working out within myself….that emptiness isn’t everything….that coming *from* this emptiness and fully being here in life, enjoying and living without grasping….that this is the next movement I’m experiencing and learning and practicing.

So thank you…

Thank you for writing this

I read the book in two days. Couldn't put it down. Sarah's way of expressing her courageous journey pulled me in right from the start. Coming from a Jewish heritage, she could not find the answers to her questions about life, in organized religion. The search for her truth takes her into many years of living like a monk, celibacy, deep daily meditations, and seeking silence, so she could discover herself. She also explores being an escort and having sex, as an intellectual endeavor, experiencing different ways of life to find Sarah. Her courage and commitment to make sense of life, is unstoppable and fascinating. There is no other book like this....I promise. It is a must read.

This intimate journey through one woman's struggle with making sense, searching for meaning, and breathing into the paradox of life, was like an inviting paradox to me. This memoir was entertaining and easy to read, yet deeply provocative and stirring. I look forward to seeing, hearing, and feeling how it has impacted others of different genders, religions, ages, etc. Thank you Sarah for your intimate disclosure. Maybe life and spirituality are like sexuality; so full of energy, discovery, mystery, harm, healing, and deep inexplicable love?