Conversations With the Past: How to Let Go of the Past, Redefine Your Present, and Create a Positive Future is a work of non-fiction in the self-help, memoir, and advice and guidance sub-genres, and was penned by author Aura Imbarus, Ph.D. As the title suggests, this concise and thoughtful work explores the idea of emotional, physical, and spiritual breakthroughs in our lives, and what they can teach us about our true nature and purpose. Utilizing examples from her own life, Dr. Imbarus shows readers the control that we can have over our own life path if we can be more receptive to the experiences and influences around us. What results is an eye-opening and inspiring work.

Aura Imbarus has created a really interesting self-help book that takes us through one of the most complex elements of transformation, which is to develop our openness to experience and allow ourselves to change. The narrative quality of the work makes for some beautiful reading as Dr. Imbarus writes with smooth and intimate prose about her own experiences. This honesty and clarity are both refreshing and inspiring for the reader, laying out a road map for them to follow in order to personalize and critique their own experiences for change to begin. The book progresses with a solid organizational structure to explore every facet of the journey, from the psychological through to the physical and spiritual sides of our lives. Overall, I would certainly recommend Conversations With the Past as an inspiring, reflective read that we have much to learn from.

Conversations with the Past by Dr. Aura Imbarus is the inspirational non-fiction memoir that chronicles the most poignant moments of a life that is now being very well lived, despite the challenges that Imbarus had to overcome along the way. Her journey serves as an offering of reflective benchmarks, each one not just shared for the purpose of telling a story, but instead to afford a reader time to use Imbarus' own experiences as an opportunity to think on their own. It was a near-death experience that gave Imbarus a new lease on life; a car accident that was almost as violent as her childhood in pre-revolution socialist Romania. Instead of falling apart, Imbarus raised herself up, and in doing so she created a roadmap for all of us to follow through a heartening memoir that is also a self-help guide.

Any writer who is willing to share their story is putting themselves on the line. Aside from the standard literary pitfalls that might swallow an author up, there is also the tricky balancing act of acknowledging the work without belittling the personal experiences of the author's life. Thankfully, Conversations with the Past is so well executed that Dr. Aura Imbarus makes the experience easy for us. As a twelve-year-old girl who watched the hour-long trial of the Ceaușescus on television from California, where Imbarus eventually moved, it felt like a bit of kismet that this book should land in my lap. Even though my favorite parts were the reflective questions at the end of each chapter, it was Imbarus' use of anecdotes plucked from her past that put me in a position to be honest in how I answered them. This is an excellent book written by an extraordinary woman and I am so happy to have read it.