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Mandorla Books is pleased to announce two new
Nautilus Award-winning titles in the 2023 competition!
Two authors won silver medals in the 2022 competition
Melinda Rothouse and Charlotte Gullick, Silver Medal Winners in the "Creativity and Innovation" Category
Three authors won gold medals in the 2020 competition
NEWEST TITLE
We stand at the crossroads of two remarkable eras: the golden age of memoir and the golden age of publishing. This is an exciting time for memoir readers. However, for memoir writers, it presents a formidable challenge. In a saturated market brimming with competition, how do you captivate the hearts of readers and the discerning eyes of publishers?
Cheryl Strayed, the celebrated author of the wildly successful memoir Wild, reveals a crucial secret: “The most powerful strand in memoir is . . . tapping into your universality.” You mine “your” story for “our” story, the universal inside of the unique, the archetypal inside of the personal—that’s where the gold lies. While many books on memoir writing acknowledge this, none are dedicated to showing you precisely how to and where to tap into the universal. Until now. In Deep Memoir, author and popular memoir teacher Jennifer Leigh Selig distills decades of experience in writing, teaching, and research into nine chapters focused on the archetypes essential to memoir writing: the storyteller, structure, the journey, character, truth, meaning, image, transformation, and community. |
Deep Memoir is not just a book; it's an odyssey into the heart of memoir writing. Enriched with examples from over 140 memoirs and the stories of their creators, and enhanced by cutting-edge neuroscience about our brain's affinity and affection for archetypal patterns, this book is an indispensable companion for all memoir writers seeking to enrich their storytelling and expand their reach.
BOOKS IN PRINT
Part of the adventure of traveling is the anticipation and all the planning that goes into embarking on a journey. There was a time in years past when we might have purchased a map or a guidebook, checked out travel videos from the library, and talked to people who had already visited where we wanted to go. It’s hard to find the right map you can trust for your final journey, and no one can tell you exactly what to expect. But Aging and Beyond aims to be a helpful guidebook for your journey through the last stage of your life (the aging) and into your eventual death (the beyond).
At 73 years old, Geoffrey Buckley, a psychotherapist with 40 years of experience, generously shares stories of how he and some of his clients are approaching their final journey. He advocates for the values he sees as important to living a good life, such as creativity, kindness, beauty, wonder, dignity, and gratitude. He offers practical suggestions on retirement, planning your memorial service, and dealing with the depression, isolation, and sorrow that often accompany aging. With his exceptionally approachable voice peppered with good humor and humility, readers are in good hands with Buckley as their salt-of-the-earth guide through what can be one of the most challenging times of our lives. |
Doing anything of value requires effort and skill. Creating a loving and life-giving marriage is the most valuable of all. We have been given God’s heart to carry into the world. We carry it to our friends and family and, if we’re married, we carry it to our beloved. It’s a wonderful thing to carry God’s heart, but it’s not an easy task. The challenge, of course, is that we’re human. We’re frail and fallible, often forgetting what we should remember and remembering what we should forget. We frequently need to forgive and be forgiven. The tile of this book, The Practically Divine Marriage, highlights two essential goals for marriage: putting God at the center of your marriage, and learning and practicing the skills necessary to carry His heart to the one you love. |
FROM THE INTRODUCTION, BY DENNIS PATRICK SLATTERY
“In all the articles, books, talks, courses, and interviews I have created, each expected something from me. My own growing awareness of the universal stories clinging to my partial, sometimes tattered plot, has dismantled barriers between myself and others. Reading and writing become generous acts of liberation from my own narrow-gauged desires and needs. In such liberation we are put in touch with a story’s meaning for us now, yet always susceptible to editing to deepen an initial insight.” FROM THE FOREWORD, BY ROGER C. BARNES “Still, I know Dennis, and I’ve learned from him. The reader of this volume will come to know and learn from him as well. What you will learn is the mystery of exploration, the exploration of an interior world of the human spirit. One will learn this world through stories and myth. Dennis is the master storyteller, and it is through stories that the myths that shape and guide us are revealed.” |
Medial women are highly intuitive and perceive what most do not. They gain insight from the unconscious through irrational channels such as visions, voices, dreams, images, and bodily perceptions. The medial tends to live between worlds: between the unconscious and the conscious; between the past, the present, and the future; between the spiritual and material realms; and between life and death. Her knowing is universal rather than personal, and her task is to translate the messages she hears and knows to the larger community.
Yet the medial archetype is neither understood nor honored in mainstream culture, and many women today unknowingly have made choices that have not served their medial nature. In this groundbreaking and engaging work, Roberta Bassett Corson invites medial women out of the shadows and into a deeper understanding and appreciation of their essence, and inspires medial women who may have been bruised by a cultural wariness of the irrational and mysterious to name and claim their giftedness. |
At age sixty-two, Marsha Pincus finds the container of “wife-mother-teacher,” which held her life together for the past thirty years, breaking into pieces. She begins a practice of composing one haiku a day and sharing them on Facebook, attracting hundreds of followers who comment and write their own haiku in response.
The haiku become a way for Pincus—empty nester, retired educator, and restless wife—to capture and rearrange the fragments of her shattered identity. In Finding Beauty in a Broken World, nature writer and memoirist Terry Tempest Williams writes, “A mosaic is a conversation between what is broken.” Pincus, a collage and mosaic artist, breaks her life into shards of seventeen syllables, allowing them to re-member themselves in new and surprising ways. Part divination, part creative inspiration, part spiritual journey, Holding Up the Moon invites readers to engage the slivers of Pincus’ story and use the haiku for bibliomancy, writing prompts, or inspiration for their own self-discovery and creative expression. |
FROM THE AUTHOR’S NOTE:
Being among [these stories and poems] now gathered, it is as though I am taking a late afternoon walk in the neighborhood after a long day. Each house I see along the way is beginning to be lit from within as those who live there settle in to their evenings. The lives behind each window are as familiar to me as if I too can hear, smell and move within the flow of being gratefully home at last. Darkening blue light suffuses the sky and I share the humanness of being held within these warm rooms. I feel I am one of the family as I pass by even though we are all so very different now – each to each a mystery like the darkness rising from the shadows of the earth. _____________________________________ "Poetry and lyrical essays are so much about rhythm. Evening Light is a stately gait with some lovely quick staccato moments . . . it's beautiful. A major achievement and a wonderful piece of art." ~ Dana Swain, Ph.D, author of When the Light Breaks Through: Understanding Kundalini Experiences Through Psychology, Body and Story |
In this volume of selected and new poems, Donohue’s trifocal vision of poetry, aging and language itself, comes into sharp focus. The title looks at the tracks of a poet’s journey over the course of decades, as evidenced in selections from three previous volumes and more than 75 new poems. There’s a wide variety of poems here. But consistently, as his memory—like a “hole in the wind”—begins to find fault with itself, his imagination redoubles and expands into poetry. Poems worth revisiting. Poems you’ll remember.
_____________________________________ "Timothy Donohue’s poems sizzle with insights and vibrate with recognitions and second-guesses. He knows how to make them interrogate their own medium, language, with gratifying results. This collection, spanning years, gives us a gift to treasure and explore, a book of remarkable strength and discipline." ~David Young, author of Field of Light and Shadow: Selected and New Poems (Newly Expanded Paperback Edition) |
Becoming: Poems for Awakening the Soul is Amanda L. Bohmont’s debut collection of poetry.
After the traumatic death of her infant son, Amanda found herself isolated in her grief. As she journeyed through the depths of pain and into the sacred stillness deep within, she discovered her soul awakening as she remembered her Divine Light and Truth. Poetry began to pour through her, teaching her lessons about surrender, freedom, wholeness, and healing. Now Amanda shares these poems with her readers, offering them with gentleness, compassion, love, and the wisdom that can only come from a soul who has been purified by pain, who has been rarified by suffering, and whose purpose has been revealed. _____________________________________ "Becoming arrives as much more than a collection of poetry. It greets the world with an essential invitation inwards. It beckons us towards the mystical life, a life guided and broken open by the complex dialogue between human existence and soul realization." ~Deborah Anne Quibell, author of Soul Bird: Poems for Flying |
In the preamble of the Constitution of the United States it says, “We the People, in order to form a more perfect union.” This is the ideal, and something we all desire, to live in a more perfect union. But somewhere, somehow, we have gotten far off-track.
COVID-19 exposed the flaws in the system, but the reality is that the flaws have been there for a long time: an economic system based on greed, lust, avarice, and psychopathy, one that rewards bad behavior, bad ethics, and twisted ideologies, and can shower perpetrators with untold billions or trillions of dollars, lies at the root. But there is a way forward to a more positive future. Toward a More Perfect Union: From Scarcity to Abundance For All shows this path. It’s a political, economic, psychological, and spiritual exploration of where we are as a society and world, the defects in the system, and how we can create a more positive future, one that’s just, compassionate, sustainable, regenerative, and wise. To read more about the book and to get involved, visit the author's website at https://moreperfectunion.solutions/. |
Mellara Gold offers herself as both a spiritual companion and mentor as she shares her deep understanding of the human experience in Living in Awareness. This book is full of insights into how to better connect with the underlying spiritual rhythms required for a life of freedom and peace. Mellara’s warmth, compassion, and humility shine throughout her writing as she courageously shares her own personal struggles for the benefit of others. She provides examples of how a holistic way of living, including practices like prayer, ritual, and meditation, has helped her heal and transform, and how you can too. In our world today, which relies too heavily on the intellect, Mellara presents a beautiful invitation to learn to live with a more open heart, full of love and grace. Living in Awareness teaches how to live a more embodied life, and how to learn to listen to the messages from the body, emotions, and heart, while also integrating the powers of the mind. This book is a practical guide for recognizing and connecting with the tools we all have within in order to live a deeply satisfying and peaceful life. |
Raised on Australia’s Gold Coast, Mellara Gold moved to Hollywood to become an actress. After a few film and TV roles, two failed marriages, a thankfully failed suicide attempt, and an incapacitating back injury, she healed herself through yoga, meditation, and living in awareness. Now a highly respected Bay Area yoga teacher and a regular contributor to Elephant Journal and other publications, Mellara shares teachings, insights, and heartfelt stories of her journey to wholeness and a life worth living.
“A Life Worth Living is a book worth reading. Not only could I relate to many of the author’s struggles, but also experienced a deep curiosity growing in me as I followed the stages of her transformational spiritual journey. Where would she take me next? This is not a book written with objectivity. It is the exact opposite. A Life Worth Living is written with a passion and fierceness that is the perfect antidote to any cool, above-it-all preaching about what happens when we commit ourselves to the path of yoga. I will gratefully carry the words of this Warrior-Princess-Seeker with me as I continue my own spiritual journey, feeling a little less lonely, a little less afraid, and a lot more inspired. Join us.” — Judith Hanson Lasater, PhD, PT, has taught yoga around the world since 1971 and is the author of 11 books, most recently Teaching Yoga with Intention: The Essential Guide to Skillful Hands-on Assists and Verbal Communication. |
Consider this book your ally as you move deeper into the adventure of creativity. Syncreate is about the synergy of co-creation; it embodies the spirit of collaboration. Think of it as an approach to creative project management that can be used by anyone from students to artists and individuals to organizational teams. The Syncreate approach distills the creative process into three main components: Play, Plan, and Produce. These stages can help us to achieve our macro-level, big picture goals as well as our daily, micro-level activities.
Developing better right-brain functionality can be incredibly difficult without some kind of easy-to-follow process. Enter Syncreate, a simple but sophisticated twelve-chapter guide for individuals, teams and communities who want to more successfully steer their creative journey." —Hugh Forrest, South by Southwest (SXSW), Chief Programming Officer |
In his 30th published volume, The Way of Myth: Stories’ Subtle Wisdom, Dennis Patrick Slattery reaches back in “Part I: Mining the Myths Anew,” to some earlier essays on classic films and works of literature. He also includes extended meditations on the thought of mythologist Joseph Campbell; on creativity’s hungers; on beliefs as mythic constructs; and on the joys of painting. Many of the essays explore the act of reading and the importance of stories as they relate to one’s personal myth.
In “Part II: The Social Fabric of Stories,” Slattery includes a series of 19 short op-ed essays on a range of topics: the classroom as sacred space; uncertainty; the fact of myth; compassion; moral injury; peace; the gifts of conversation; gall-bladder surgery; the 'pan'-demic; and the poetics of myth, among others. Reflections on several of Joseph Campbell’s volumes are also included in this section. The author’s reflective interests are trans-disciplinary, analogical and depth-psychological. These essays stretch out over many years of writing. Now, in this volume they are gathered so they can speak and engage one another to reveal the subtle wisdom of stories. |
Kundalini is a spiritual, energetic force inherent in every human being and is well known in Eastern philosophies and religions. But for Westerners experiencing this force without cultural context or knowledge, it can be disconcerting or even frightening. When the Light Breaks Through offers a contemporary and practical look at kundalini, combining historical, academic, and scientific research to help readers better understand kundalini. Dana Swain addresses a wide range of perspectives—from the biological to the psychological to the spiritual. Interweaving depth psychology with real-life stories of Westerners sharing their kundalini experiences, including those of Swain herself, you’ll get a down-to-earth look at the challenges and possibilities that arise as kundalini itself arises. Each storyteller dialogued with the author not just by reporting their stories, but also by spontaneous art-making, creative writing, and accessing the wisdom of the body. You’ll follow along in the evolution of each participant’s understanding of how kundalini impacted their life in meaningful ways. |
What makes for a good death? In Mortally Wounded, a best-seller in Ireland where it was first published, Dr. Michael Kearney reflects upon his experiences working with the dying and shows us that it is possible to learn to die well, overcoming our fears and soul pain and accepting death as an integral part of life.Believing that the root of the pain we face when dying is often a persona and cultural disconnection from soul, Dr. Kearney advocates a personal quest inward—and downward—the re-engage with this deepest part of our being. He shows how psychological techniques, such as dream analysis and visualization exercises, combined with mythological insights, can help us on this journey. He finds in the Greek myth of the wounded centaur, Chiron, a metaphor for this process—it is only after descending to the underworld for nine days and nights that Chiron finds relief from his pain and suffering and discovers a path that reaches to the heavens.Careful attention to our spiritual health, Kearney urges, is an essential complement to physical or outer care. Inner or “depth” work can, he believes, enables us to find our “own way through the prison of soul pain to a place of greater wholeness, a new depth of living, and a falling away from fear.
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Living Grief: A Mother/s Odyssey of Surrender, Renewal, and Mad Joy is Angelina Avedano’s raw, heartbreaking account of seeing her adult son for the first time in six years and coming to terms with the reality of his advanced schizoaffective disorder. Using myths and stories, she finds a way to make sense of the senselessness of grief, and undergoes a personal metamorphosis. Her Mother/s Odyssey becomes a lesson in letting go of her dreams for her son’s future, their relationship as she imagined it would be, and her identity as a mother. Living Grief is not only one mother’s story, it demonstrates how loss—no matter how great or small—becomes a catalyst for transformation. |
Conducting Chaos is the ultimate guidebook for teaching improv to children! It’s filled with practical tips, easy-to-follow templates, and down-to-earth wisdom from author Jessica Arjet’s 15 years of experience developing and running improv classes for kids from kindergarten through high school as the Youth Programs Director at the Hideout Theatre in Austin, Texas, one of the largest youth programs in the nation. This book is an excellent resource for teachers of drama and improv, and everyone who works with kids and wants to add a little fun into their teaching and creativity into their classroom! |
In the spring of 2020, America and the world were overwhelmed by the Covid-19 pandemic and the global racial justice protests. This inspired the co-authors Ashok Bedi, a psychiatrist and a Jungian psychoanalyst, and Robert BJ Jakala, a psychologist, a Jungian therapist, and an avid photographer, to compose a daily blog for 100 days to chronicle their soul response to staying centered in the eye of this storm. The authors’ method captures the archetypal response of the personal and collective psyche. BJ would choose a photograph daily with his initial response to the collective crisis. Ashok would amplify the symbolic meaning of this image from an archetypal lens. Together, they strung a talismanic necklace to guide us into the center of the storm. Join them in celebrating the power of the unconscious to help us survive and master the storm. |
From the Foreword, by Dennis Patrick Slattery As I read Beth Boardman’s insightful meditative poems in this new volume, I could not help but think of the relation between poetry and prayer. All of the poems she includes carry a prayerful tone and depth. Clearly, prayer, akin to poetry, is a deeply imagined experience that can move us to the edge of mystery and to the ineffable by allowing us a glimpse of a deeper, more fully dimensional view of reality. Prayer, like poetry, is an act of imagination; the former contains or harbors a form of poiesis, a Greek word that suggests a making or forming or shaping something into a coherent form. One cannot help but sense Beth’s struggles and achievements as she negotiates that narrow gap between poetry and prayer, if indeed there is a gap at all. |
Lessons from the Garden is a memoir, a glimpse of the rhythm and rhyme of Kate Dahlstedt's life through time. Some of the poems go back 40 years, from courtship to becoming a wife, stepmother and mother. Others evolved from her Hospice social work with dying patients as well as her work with military veterans. Mostly, they are reflections on the everyday, ordinary events of life, in a way that gives them greater meaning. "Reading Kate Dahlstadt's poetry collection, Lessons From the Garden, resembles a secret glimpse into the room where Penelope wove the tapestry that saved her life. In these poems are revealed the threads that created an alternately beautiful and painful pattern in the poet's life: love, motherhood, time, war, loss, mourning, nature, the divine. No wonder one of the ancient symbols for soul is thread. ~Phil Cousineau, author of The Art of Pilgrimage and The Blue Museum: New Poems |
In the author's words:
A myth, I hope these essays reveal, is a manner and even a style of being present to the world’s matter as well as to interior ideas and images. Behaving like a fulcrum balancing two realities—the external one I meet daily and the inner psychic world that has its own objective nature to develop and then fade as its life energy diminishes—myths are organically alive. My own personal myth is present in the chrysalis of each of these essays. Something in the subject matter of each of them sparked my curiosity and my attraction to them, rendering them complete only when I was able to give them sufficient form to breathe on their own. Each of the thirty chapters brought me to wonder about them, to turn them around and upside-down, to see them from several perspectives, perhaps revealing their paradoxes and their ultimate purposes. The presence of myth, the energy they carry, attract my wondering about them. Seeing anew is one of the main intentions of myth; a deepened consciousness is its richest end result. |
Once upon a time, the princess slept in a castle or in a woodland bower, innocent and untouched until the brave prince defeated the evil witch to win his way to her side and awaken her with a kiss. They got married . . . and there the story ends.
Today’s princesses run away from the castle, seek out the witch for training, and solve their own problems. Today’s princesses earn their queendoms through their own actions and lead their people in new directions. We have been witness to an evolution of agency–the taking on of personal power–in the heroines of science fiction and fantasy movies and television over the last 90 years. Female characters have been moving into greater and greater arenas of action, stepping up to becoming not just heroines but superheroines–and in the 21st century, goddesses. In The Princess Powers Up: Watching the Sleeping Beauties Become Warrior Goddesses, Jody Gentian Bower traces this evolution with examples from Disney princess movies, the Marvel and D.C. universes, the Star Trek and Star Wars franchises, and many others. Dr. Bower discusses how our changing culture has changed the landscape of film, allowing for new depictions of not just women but people of color, the nonbinary-gendered, and the differently abled, and shows how we are already shifting into new paradigms of heroism that are far more inclusive and diverse. |
MANDORLA BOOKS WAS SELECTED BY RELIGIOUS AND MYTHOLOGICAL STUDIES SCHOLAR DR. CHRISTINE DOWNING TO RE-RELEASE FOUR OF HER OUT OF PRINT TITLES
This work is an exploration of the ongoing significance of sister relationships throughout our lives, bringing together personal narrative with the illuminations provided by myth, fairy tale, and the depth psychological reflections of Freud, Jung, and their followers.
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This intensely personal account of the little written-about sacred dimension of menopause combines religious studies with psychology to "understand menopause as soul-event regarding its symptoms as symbols" and provides insight into what this transition can be like for those women who choose to embrace it as a meaningful part of their lives.
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In Women's Mysteries, Christine Downing celebrates the gains and achievements of women, psychologically speaking, as they have been recovered, reclaimed, and repossessed by women over the past several decades. Her title is itself a conscious appropriation, in homage, of a book Esther Harding wrote fifty years ago and an extension of her own much celebrated book The Goddess.
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In a remarkable series of books Christine Downing has given us "perfected" as well as ambivalent images of the great goddesses of classical antiquity. In her latest book she turns to the "gods in our midst," the gods as they appear to women, and she shows how these energies and epiphanies embodied in male gods help us to see who we are and what we might become.
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More Titles in Print
From War to Wonder, Dennis Slattery’s new book, not only explicates the beauty and power of the Odyssey, Homer’s twenty-seven-hundred-year-old marvel-filled epic, it also offers a marvelous way to interact with it on a daily basis. Those who do so will be amply rewarded by finding access to the poem's myriad meanings, as well as their capacity for forging their own personal myths. -Phil Cousineau, author of Once and Future Myths and editor of The Hero’s Journey: Joseph Campbell on his Life and Work Great visions deserve great guides. Dennis Slattery is one—a master mentor, teacher, interpreter and servant of the soul, bringing Homer’s ancient vision into our modern world desperately in need of renewed spirit. Use From War to Wonder, his wise and penetrating guidebook, to follow Homer and Prof. Slattery on your soul’s journey to your true inward home, mythos and destiny. -Edward Tick, Ph.D., author of The Practice of Dream Healing, War and the Soul, and Warrior’s Return |
Depth psychotherapist Sandra Rogers articulates what many women intuitively know—that the archetypal configuration of Maiden, Mother, and Crone is missing something. She offers us the archetype of the Queen, a stage in midlife between the Mother and the Crone. Through rich examples of real-life women, Sandra brings the Queen to life, and then, shows us how to fully embody her energies through the chakra system, including suggestions for journaling, meditation, visualization, and instructions for conducting a self-coronation ritual.
"This book could not be more relevant or timely! Sandra Rogers has written a book that embodies the last 60 years of women’s efforts to achieve both deeper psychological realization and broader efficacy in the world. Sandra’s book, Inviting the Queen, is written for women (and for men who love women) who are searching for a practical guidebook to wholeness: she asks you to welcome the Queen, a symbol of inner empowerment, into your life via simple exercises, engaging stories, and an important new way of understanding the chakras. This book is a 'crowning' achievement!" ~Patricia Ariadne, Ph.D., LMFT, Associate Professor of Psychology and Licensed Psychotherapist |
In 2015, self-professed “Wander Woman” Corey Hale arrived in Puna, Hawaii, and knew she found her forever home. She spent all of her money to buy a piece of property, and set about trying to tame the jungle and manifest her 30-year-old dream of opening her own retreat center. While living in the rainforest was a struggle, from the relentless rain to the lack of basic amenities to the constant visitations from both welcome and unwelcome creatures, Corey fell in love with the place, the people, and the lifestyle.
And then, the lava came. And kept coming. And coming. Corey lost everything. For a while, she even lost heart. But in the end, nothing can keep a good Wander Woman down. This memoir covers the trajectory of Corey’s “Punatic” years, from the moment when she first set foot on her land, to the months upon months where she worked relentless toward her dream of Hale Ōhana Honua, to the sudden eruption of Kilauea, to her year of living in a parking lot— unsure what had happened to her home, unable to let go—and to her eventual departure from the island. It’s a story of both great love and great loss, set in the Wild West of Puna under Pele’s shadow and inside her chaos. With with her unflinching honesty, Corey lays bare the emotional landscape of post-traumatic stress disorder, from sadness to anger to betrayal to peace, to acceptance, and always, to love. |
Here the world is turned upside down to meet our eyes staring downward instead of upward, and outward. Here poems meet you where you are, and return your vision to a world loaded with wonders and laughter, if you’ll just take a few moments to look and listen and breathe it all in. That’s one way of explaining the joys, surprises, and detours that you’ll find in Eve and Other Acts of Defiant Gratitude. In Donohue’s new work of poems and prose poems, all personal history and all life itself is seen as a continuum of elliptical conjunctions. The past and the present, magic and loss, creation and cremation coexist. Shakespeare and Texas Cafeterias, Michael Cohen and John Donne, Joni Mitchell and conversations stored in a giant freezer. In these pages, people and events are all conjoined because in Donohue’s retelling, and reconfiguring of The Garden of Eden story, Eve be-comes the way to all creation in this world, the progenitor of love and art. Her decision isn’t just consequential, it’s courageous, and wondrous and liberating. While Adam was content to laze about and name the animals in The Garden, Eve wanted to taste creation itself. Because of Eve, we know "that in the syntax of the soul, there is no handwriting that misspells our desire to share ourselves with another, to become love." In this book, even when life has defied our expectations, we see how we can defy it back with an act of discovery and a sense of gratitude. |
Sallie Stratton thought she knew what she was getting into when she married a military man--a life of following him wherever he would go. What she hadn’t counted on was that the day would come that she would not only be unable to follow him, she wouldn’t even be able to find him--he had gone missing in Vietnam. It would be 7 years before his presumptive death was made, 28 years before his remains were recovered and another 2 years before she brought him home. In those years when Sallie lost Chuck, she found herself, coming into her own, from a mother and homemaker to an activist, a student, a career woman and an adventurer.
"After her husband's plane crashed in Laos during the Vietnam War, Sallie Stratton was convinced he was still alive and a prisoner of war. As years went by, she struggled with how she and her three young sons, living in Dallas, could move forward without leaving Chuck behind. As emotionally powerful a story ever written about the families of the missing and unaccounted-for in Vietnam, Sallie's journey ultimately takes her on a path of her own choosing: A way forward without forgetting her past." -Dave Tarrant, Enterprise Writer for the Dallas Morning News |
Dog-catchers seldom get their due, and they do more than catch dogs. “Animal Control Officer” doesn’t quite catch the full meaning of the job either. Other animals besides dogs can be involved—pigeons, ferrets, goats, cats, monkeys, snakes, squirrels, rats, and the occasional Bighorn Sheep. More than a few surprises happen in the course of a normal workday or night. At least they did in the 1980s when Linda Mack, Animal Control Officer Two, patrolled the streets of Seattle.
Linda was not raised by wolves, but their descendants were always family. Living and working with dogs and with other animals was more enjoyable than a barrel of monkeys. Besides being fun, More Than a Dog’s Tale recognizes that animals are medicinal, and good dog medicine can’t be beat as a natural remedy for many of the bumps and maladies of real life. "More Than a Dog’s Tale is a collection of stories by the Seattle dog catcher who has a top tier IQ, and a heart that’s even bigger than her mind. Animal lovers be forewarned! You won’t be able to put this book down. You’ll fall in love with every manner of animal, and the dog catcher who saves them, and saves herself. Within these pages are true stories of rescue, of love, and of what matters in life." -Kit Kirkpatrick, Certified Memoirist |
Jaffa Frank transmutes her decades of suffering from endometriosis by engaging the mythic imagination to craft a narrative of hope and empowerment. Firmly grounded in the physical realities of the disease, she evokes its archetypal wisdom as a visitation of the Gorgon Medusa revealing healing and wisdom, even when medical cure is unavailable. Frank mythopoetically weaves together threads of endometriosis, Medusa, and Athene on the loom of her own lived experience of the disease, imaginative and embodied reflection the weft and warp of a life tapestry. By personifying endometriosis as Medusan, pathology is rendered sacred. By contemplating what it means to be human in embodied relationship with the divine, Frank provides a mythos of healing while living with chronic illness.
Eyes of the Gorgon will be of interest to anyone who has been touched by endometriosis and longs to expand the story of the disease beyond the limitations of socio-cultural taboos and the medical model. It will be illuminating reading for analytical, somatic, and depth psychologists; students of myth and mythopoesis; and medical professionals. |
From the introduction of Everyday Reverence:
"Everyday reverence is an attitude we bring to the world that seeks to see the spiritual everywhere, in all our values and activities and experiences, in all people, and in the whole of the sensual and natural worlds. To practice everyday reverence is to see all of nature as an altar, to perform any activity as worship, to hear the sensual world as a hymn, to view people as fellow pilgrims on a holy path, to seek experience rather than dogma, and make of our values a creed." After offering an introduction to each of the one hundred ways, Selig curates a selection of quotations from wildly divergent sources meant to inspire and encourage us to experience the sacred every day out in our every where world. |
Somewhere in the gap between the sacred and the profane, Deborah's poetry emerges to bring us into a more intimate relationship with the divine presence within and all around us. Her debut collection, SOUL BIRD, evokes a natural and accessible form of mysticism--each piece a poetic song of the soul, encouraging the heart of her readers (as well as her own) to awaken and take flight. This book will bring the magic of mysticism back into your everyday life, help you to rise above self-imposed limitations, and cultural conditioning, and (re)inspire a holy pursuit of love and wonder that is only yours. |
Jay Balter did not have an easy life growing up in mid-20th century Brooklyn. His father, known to his mother only as “that son of a bitch” was many things—a music publisher who gambled away the entire family fortune he made on Broadway, a philander, a gangster, a deadbeat dad—but mostly, he was absent. Jay comes of age in the Orthodox Jewish community of Crown Heights with his mentally ill twin sister, his angry older brother, and his beloved mother, an early feminist who will do anything to support her family. In 1958, at 18 years old, he enters the US Army. During his basic training in Georgia, Jay’s anger over both American racism and the European Holocaust comes to the surface, and he vows, “I was prepared to teach those rebels a lesson. I was not prepared to roll over and play dead like the Jews of Europe.” But after his medical training, he suddenly receives his deployment orders: to Nuremburg, Germany of all places. Not only that, but Jay finds himself living in the SS Kaserne, the former military barracks of Hitler’s elite Storm Troopers, sleeping in the very bed where Hitler was rumored to have slept. While there, he begins having dreams of revenging the Jews and assassinating all Nazis not convicted in the Nuremberg War Trials, and experiences an intense split between the healer and the hater within. Will Jay start WW 3, or will he keep the peace in Germany?
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Do you ever wonder why people remember shared past events differently? Have you ever been astonished by a memory that suddenly appears, with vivid detail, in your mind’s eye? Rather than accepting memories as fixed reruns of prior life experiences, Daphne Dodson suggests we open ourselves to the notion that memories are imagistic expressions of the psyche that may offer much wisdom. In this book, you will… Explore how our memories are formed and informed by our imaginations. Meet eight people who engaged with their memories imaginally and found gifts of healing and creativity. Discover how imaginal remembering may enable you to gaze upon the images of your memories with renewed wonder and receptivity. Learn the principles and processes of imaginal remembering so you can practice it on your own and/or with a friend or guide. |
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