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Peace Pirates: Conquering the Beliefs and Behaviors that Steal Your Treasure in Motherhood by Ashley Willis Book Review



In Peace Pirates, Ashley Willis explored the confessions from a mother on raising children, four peace pirates that steal our joy, and the treasure we can discover in Biblical mothers. She begins every chapter by revealing key principles and a personal story from a mother. She ends each chapter with a prayer for mothers. Ashley has a total of four boys and explains throughout the book the joys and struggles she has gone through in parenting. She goes into detail about how she feels like a pirate and some days she feels like she is being toss around in the sea. She explains that the weapons are harsh words, eye rolls, frustration, and acting out events. She admits that sometimes she feels guilty in not being the perfect mother and she is transparent about comparing herself to other mothers. In the second part of the book, she tackled four peace pirates that steal our time and our joy. One of these included, comparison and she looks at different types of mothers that influenced her positively to try and become a better mother. Some of these included, “the planner, free-spirit, all-natural, creative, handy, fit, and much more. She does this to show mothers that all mothers have something unique to bring to parenting their kids and we all have a collection of strengths. We don’t have to waste time comparing ourselves to others. 




One of my favorite stories, she opened up about was a story about her third son, Chandler and how he is a screamer and is a loud person. One day, the teacher was very vocal about how frustrated she was with him and how he wasn’t doing well in school. He was acting out making noises in class. Eventually, she decided to observe him and that same day he got in trouble for being too rough, not painting in the lines, and how he got angry about not being called on to answer questions. She talked to her son later and he shared how he never got any good stars and how he felt his teacher never saw him doing good things. Ashley finally found some help when she took him to an occupational therapist and he was taught how to behave in different setting and this immensely helped him. The teacher still didn’t give him any stars and he was still feeling discouraged. Ashley revealed how she struggled with having peace in this and she felt like a failure for not helping to change the teachers perceptive of him. She explained how she felt the teacher couldn’t see past his past and how she struggled with how to take his personality. She shared how she had to surrender her hurts and give it to God and release things she couldn’t control. 




I would recommend this awesome book to any mother that is feeling overwhelmed, struggling with comparison, losing their peace, and feeling they aren’t being a good enough mother. I especially like how open Ashley was in the book and how she shared personal stories that mothers could relate to. Parenting isn’t easy and there are always opportunities for us to lose our peace when our kids are acting out. I truly believe this book contains the tools to help mothers to learn how to become better moms and it will help navigate the rough raging waters of parenting. I also appreciated how she looked at Mary’s life of motherhood and the treasures we can learn from her life. I immensely believe this book would be an incredible blessing to mother’s on Mother’s Day. 



"I received this book free from the publisher, Faithwords for my honest review.” 



If you would like to purchase a copy of Peace Pirates, check it out on Amazon.com:



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