Excerpt of the Day: "The Available Parent" by Dr. John Duffy

Teenagers.  Just the thought of your sweet baby becoming one of those moody, rebellious, distant creatures can be terrifying.  But it doesn’t have to be.  Dr. John Duffy’s The Available Parent shows readers how they can begin to enjoy a healthy, satisfying, exciting new kind of relationship with their teenagers.

Take a look:

They look so different, don’t they, than they did when they were younger? Many of those soft, gentle, rounded features of childhood have been replaced with angles, edges, muscle, height, and hair. As preteens and teenagers, they seem pointier somehow. The face that for years wore a perpetual smile now carries something heavier in the brow, something more thoughtful or sullen. You fear loneliness or depression has befallen them. And the way they look, that’s just a part of it, isn’t it? They act differently, more self-conscious, moody, unpredictable, and concerned. Definitely less joyful. And then there’s the way they relate to you. What happened there? Your life together to date has been nearly blissful in comparison, filled with fun and laughter, learning and sharing.

That sharing part, that really seems missing today. They really don’t seem to want to talk with you or share with you at all. They seem distant and avoidant. Their bedroom is a vault, filled with secrets and answers you no longer feel privy to. You find yourself in the paradoxical position of grieving the loss of someone very much alive, someone you hear snoring, talking on the phone, or tromping to the bathroom upstairs. You feel evermore powerless and afraid. All their lives, you have heard and read about the horrors of adolescence, but always felt that your family would somehow get a pass. But here you are. Yet you know, deep in your heart, that it doesn’t have to be this way.

You are right.

If any of this resonates with you, you are right. Even if it has been this way for years, even if the same dynamic played out in your relationships with your parents, and their relationships with their parents, you are right. It does not have to be this way. I am writing this book because I have seen families change. I have been fortunate in my work to witness teenagers and parents reconnecting, doing so in healthy ways, ways that set the stage for growth all around. Yes, parenting an adolescent can be difficult at times, but

I know that with the right tools, and a dramatically different way of perceiving these years, you can recapture your bearings and find the joy again.

Now, I’m not sure why we as a culture feel the need to hold tight to the dread of adolescence. Perhaps we find some comfort in the idea that everybody feels this way about teenagers, so it must be true. Maybe it provides us with an excuse when things go wrong—“Well, like the books say, she’s crazy. What can I do?” Either way, I think a change in point of view, in which we see our teenagers as the extraordinary individuals that they are, will make parenting them far less daunting and far more enjoyable. For everybody.

Heart-Healing Advice Can Help You Live "Happily Even After"

Heart-Healing Advice June 2012 Carol Brody Fleet has helped thousands of people across the country in her work with Widows Wear Stilettos by providing tools, wisdom, and even a friendly shoulder to cry on, teaching people how to deal and how to heal. Now, millions have the opportunity to see and hear her wisdom as she hits the airwaves, featured on Great Day St. Louis and a live web chat on Widowed Village. She will also appear on Conscious Discussion Radio on July 10th, and The Cindy Laverty Show on July 20th. Come see Carole in person atWarwick's in La Jolla on June 28th and at Camp Widow West Coast in San Diego on August 10th. Happily Even After  A Guide to Getting Through (and Beyond) the Grief of Widowhood by Carole Fleet "What a comfort to know that while no one wants to 'need' it, there is a book that will help widows in a unique, compassionate and con- temporary way. Encouraging a smile while tackling tough subjects and providing necessary support and education, this book will be in- valuable to those so badly in need." —Lee Woodruff, Family Contributor, ABC News' Good Morning America; New York Times #1 bestselling author, In an Instant… and Perfectly Imperfect More · Buy Carole Brody Fleet  "Carole has written what I consider the widows' bible. She shows us the way to 'good grief,' and I will be recommending this book for years to come." —Linda Hawes Clever, author of The Fatigue Prescription

Viva Editions, an imprint of Cleis Press, 2246 Sixth St., Berkeley, CA 94710

Excerpt of the Day: "The Fatigue Prescription" by Linda Hawes Clever, MD

It’s a Monday.  You’re tired, stressed, working on autopilot with fantasies of your warm bed filling your head.  There’s a pile of tasks at work and a pile of chores at home.  You know you should get started on them but you’re just so tired.  That exhaustion (not to mention abandoned work) carries on to Tuesday, carries on to Wednesday, carries on to Thursday, and even carries on to the ever-fabulous and promising Friday.  You live in a constant haze of energy drinks, coffee, energy bars, and energy shots and suffer the caffeine crashes that follow.

Not anymore.

Renew your energy, health, and life with The Fatigue Prescription.  Linda Hawes Clever, MD, Clinical Professor of Medicine at UCSF and founder of RENEW, provides a straight-forward guide to taking care of your whole self.  Filled with easy self-assessments, informational charts, and sound advice from a physician who healed herself, this book will help you avoid illness, reset priorities, and most importantly, regain your health and happiness.

Convinced? Not yet?  Well, here’s an excerpt for your sleepy eyes:

No wonder you’re tired! You have wants and needs. You want to get a lot done and you want to do it well. Your family and friends need and expect your attention. So does your checkbook. You also have plenty of shoulds and ought tos. You should be an informed voter. You ought to get some exercise. And for goodness sake, you want to see a good movie sometime soon! In your rare quiet times, you realize that you want to be better than busy. You want some time to think and plan. You want some peace and quiet without feeling guilty and selfish.

This book puts your closest buddy—you—into the driver’s seat, moving out of the rat race and into fatigue-free good health.

How?

In medicine, we try to determine the cause of the symptoms— the diagnosis—and then we can design the appropriate treatment: the remedy. That is what I hope this book does for you.

In this chapter, you and I will sort out the whys and wherefores—some of the reasons you have accumulated so many demands and commitments, what these relentless responsibilities are, and what they may be doing to you. You’ll give your energy bucket the onceover and come up with a couple of favors you can do for yourself. After discussing two important qualities—courage and pride—the chapter wraps up with a preview of the Fatigue Prescription and its four steps.

Later in Part One, since this is the diagnosis section, you’ll do your own checkup and see the Prescription’s benefits. Soon you’ll be well positioned to launch into the remedy. Part Two, The Renewing Remedy, uses the Prescription’s four steps to help you reconnect with your values and discover what you really want and how to get it. You’ll see how others have renewed their bodies, spirits, and energy. You will get some quick tips and ideas for long-term maintenance.

Why all this emphasis on you? Because you are important! And it is not selfish to take care of yourself. It is self-preservation so you can do what you want to do or must do. You are the one who can best take care of yourself. No one else can do it as well, and no one else cares about you as much.

By way of example, and to help you start understanding the challenges you may face and the way you may approach them—and why—let me tell you about a young musician. She was trying to make a living by patching together jobs as a church choir director, a high-school rehearsal accompanist, a greeting card designer, and a piano teacher—all while she was thinking about a new career, hunting for a full-time job, dealing with family demands, and dating an interesting guy. One day she came home to find her low-rent apartment flooded with sewage. The manager said he would fix the drainage system, but when the apartment flooded for a second time, her spirits hit bottom. She was angry, and she felt betrayed. She caught a cold, snapped at her friends and students, and cried. Anybody would! She was stuck, however, with no money, a tight schedule, and lots of distractions. She was determined to fix the problem but didn’t want to add a disruptive move to her situation. So she enlisted her father’s help. He checked the plumbing and made firm recommendations to the manager. She persuaded the manager to pay for the cleanup so she wouldn’t have to call the health department. When the dust and goo settled, she had an after-the-flood-get-together. Her grit and network got her through.

Where do you get your grit, and how do you develop your network? What about your drive, even your tastes and preferences? How did you get so much on your plate that you got exhausted and, perhaps worse, stale? Nature, nurture, combinations, circumstances? All of these, most likely.

Excerpt of the Day: "Crazy Little Thing" by Liz Langley

Plenty of books offer advice about how to find or keep love.  But Crazy Little Thing unveils the science behind the insane things we do for love and lust.  Don’t be fooled, this isn’t your grade school science book.  Liz Langley offers a hilarious, confounding, too-strange-to-be-anything-but-true look at the control our chemicals have over us.

Have a look:

You Are Here: The Layout of the Brain

Why you’re reading this book is your business, but chances are you liked the cover, identified with the subject matter, and decided to investigate further.

How you’re reading this book is a much more difficult proposition. The brain is incredibly complicated. There are a lot of things you’ve found murky in your life, like algebra and David Lynch movies, but these are simple compared to the three pounds of material that has enabled you to pick up, open, and read what you’re reading.

Yep, that’s all that keeps you going: three pounds of neurons, synapses, glia, and various other squishy oddments housed in a protective skull. A gallon of milk weighs more than everything that enabled Handel to write Messiah.

And I’m sure I’m not the first person to observe that the only thing the brain can’t seem to figure out is itself; hence the inevitable “What was I thinking?” when it comes to love and other endeavors.

One of the people helping to figure out why we do the things we do is Dr. Joseph Shrand, an instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and medical director of CASTLE (Clean and Sober Teens Living Empowered) at the High Point Treatment Center in Brockton, Massachusetts. I originally wanted to interview Dr. Shrand about the adolescent brain, but he took the time to describe the basic layout of this intricate organ in plain terms, which was pretty beneficial for a tourist like myself. Like the old announcements that told people where they were arriving on the elevator (“Fourth Floor: women’s apparel, camping gear, pets”), Dr. Shrand explained the brain to me from the bottom up.

“The brain is a very clunky organ that has evolved over hundreds of millions of years—and humans, we never threw anything away. We just built one chunk of brain on top of another,” he says. I can’t help thinking of Hoarders and my brain insisting, “No! I’m keeping my prehistoric ability to kill a rabbit with a rock. It’s perfectly good and I might need it one day!”

The first level of the brain is the brain stem, which is, Dr. Shrand says, “the most ancient part of the brain, responsible for heart rate and breathing and sweating and all those things that happen automatically that we’re not aware of. The brain stem really has to be ready to go at birth.”

The brain is made up of neurons, which have long offshoots called axons, and the insulation around these axons is called myelin—Dr. Shrand compares it to the insulation around an electrical wire. The reason babies don’t walk but “squiggle around” is because the motor part of their brain is not fully myelinated, “so even though parts of the brain are functioning, they may not be functioning at a fully mature level.” The brain develops with us.

In fact, check out this beautiful finding from Pilyoung Kim of the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland: The brains of new mothers grow, not greatly but significantly, in the areas responsible for “motivation, reward behavior, and emotion regulation,” reports Emily Sohn on Discovery News. The brain is reconfiguring itself to respond to its new role, and on top of that, the mothers who are the most gooey and gushy about their babies have the biggest growth. “These are the areas that motivate a mother to take care of her baby, feel rewarded when the baby smiles at her, and fill her with positive emotions from simple interactions with her infant.”

Excerpt of the Day: "The Power of WOW" by Lori Bryant-Woolridge

Looking to get your sexy back, to feel good in your own body in the place you stand today?  Welcome to Stiletto University!  With Lori Bryant-Woolridge as your instructor, you’re sure to find your sexy and become more confident in yourself.  The user-friendly, nine-week program in her book The Power of WOW breaks down that elusive WOW factor — and then gives you proven techniques to elevate your esteem and maximize your sensuality.  And isn’t that what we all want?

**stilettos not required

Here’s a look at The Power of WOW:

“I want to be less self-conscious and more comfortable in my own skin.”

“After finding out about his affair, my self-esteem has been shattered. I want my sexy back, not for him, but for me.”

“I wish I could be more aggressive when it comes to sex, but I don’t want to seem loose.”

“At forty-two, I want to truly enjoy sex with my mate.”

“Between kids and work, I don’t have the time or energy to be sexy.”

“I want to feel sexy and confident in all aspects of my life, not just the bedroom.”

“I seem to be projecting the wrong something, because I’m still manless.”

“I’m tired of being alone.”

Sound all too familiar? Kind of like the conversations you and your girlfriends have been having for years? Since you’re reading this, I’m guessing you’re feeling somewhat lacking in the sensuality/sex/romance departments of your life and you’re looking for a remedy.

Well, happily, you’re in the right place. And kudos to you for even picking up this book, because admitting to yourself that you’re not on top of your game in the womanly wiles department takes courage. I’m mean, we’re supposed to know all this stuff, right? How to be sensual and alluring and dynamite in and out of bed.

Like her.

You know who I’m talking about. Ms. Thing. You’re sitting in a bar minding your own business, thinking you’re looking cute and hoping someone else is going to think so too. And then here she comes. She sashays confidently into the room oblivious to the fact that all eyes, including yours, are on her. She’s wearing the perfect little black dress (the one you’ve been searching for but always see on some other woman) and strutting over to the bar in a way that makes every body part sway with come-hither appeal. It’s a walk that brings men to her side and sends women into private places to practice. You feel both jealousy and admiration toward this diva. Talk about paling by comparison. Suddenly, you don’t feel so cute. And of course, she sits down right next to you and instead of ordering the cocktail du jour like every other girl in the room asks for some drink you’ve never heard of.

On closer inspection, you see that she’s more striking than beautiful. More sensuous than sexy. Of course, within minutes, some Chris Rock-looking guy is elbowing you out of the way to get to her. You watch her handle the admirer, graciously accepting his compliments with a “you’re-so-sweet- but-this-is-never-going-to-happen” smile and sending him back to his friends thinking he’s Denzel Washington. You realize then that the key to her irresistible charm is confidence. This is a woman who is totally at ease with herself. A woman to study and emulate, not envy.

She has the power. That indefinable “wow” that seems to inhabit a lucky few and evade the rest of us. But you want it too. But where did she get it? And where do you start?

Excerpt of the Day: "The Lazy Gourmet" by Robin Donovan and Juliana Gallin

Let's face it, cooking can be intimidating.  We don't all have Thomas Keller's talent (not here), Martha Stewart's ingenuity (who does?), Gandhi's patience (nope), and Charles Manson's free time (yeah right).  But thanks to Robin Donovan and Juliana Gallin and their book The Lazy Gourmet, you don't need to be a classically trained chef to make creative and sophisticated meals.  With all these tips, tricks, and recipes, you're sure to please anybody.

Have a taste:

From the day the two of us met—as college students moving into a big drafty Victorian in Santa Cruz, California—we bonded over food. There were seven women living in the house, including science majors, banjo players, artists, and athletes. We were all very different, but the one thing we agreed on was food. We each contributed a set amount of cash to the food fund each week, and we took turns shopping and cooking dinner. Of course, we were barely out of our teens, and on student budgets, so the food was anything but fancy, but it was good enough to bring the seven of us—and a nightly assortment of friends, boyfriends, classmates, and random hangers-on—together around the dining room table most nights. There were, of course, plenty of frozen gnocchi and burritos, but there was also “homemade” calzone using store-bought pizza dough; a legendary rich, cream-based corn and tomato soup adapted from a recipe in the Moosewood cookbook; and one July evening, when turkeys were inexplicably on sale for an irresistible price, an entire Thanksgiving feast, complete with bread stuffing, green bean casserole, and pumpkin pie. At best, there were homemade pierogies from someone’s grandmother’s recipe. At worst there was a terribly misguided sauté of nopales (Mexican cactus) that, to our dismay, even half a bottle of soy sauce couldn’t save.

While we shared food costs and cooking duties—and a love of eating—our culinary knowledge was anything but equal, with Robin and Juliana toting opposite ends of the line. Robin, on the one hand, grew up in a food-obsessed family where the primary topic of dinner table conversation was where and what the next meal would be. Having grown up watching (and helping) her mother, a professional restaurant critic and accomplished cook, prepare dinner each night, cooking came naturally to her; she was simply comfortable in the kitchen, not intimidated by complicated recipes or exotic ingredients.

While Robin inherited her mother’s kitchen prowess, Juliana, in contrast, cruised through childhood blissfully delighted when meals magically appeared in front of her. While she did master the Toll House cookie at a tender young age, she was generally more interested in eating than cooking. Pringles, candy bars, and four-star meals were all welcomed with equal enthusiasm. Frankly, she never gave cooking much thought until early adulthood, when she was ready to start preparing meals for herself and others. She was beginning to develop an appreciation for good food, but chalked the gourmet cooking abilities of others up to innate magical powers that she simply wasn’t lucky enough to possess. She watched with bemusement as friends like Robin took seemingly random piles of meat and produce, mysterious powders and liquids and transformed them into feasts that caused awestruck guests to burst into spontaneous applause. She wanted to be able to impress friends with dinner party spreads they would still be talking about months later, but she was resigned in the belief that she wasn’t cut out to be a cooking whiz.

After college, Robin worked at a series of day jobs in the book publishing industry, and devoted the majority of her spare time to indulging her foodie urges. She devoured food magazines and television cooking shows, took cooking classes, and mastered complicated techniques. Both zealous and disciplined, she became known for her willingness to spend an entire week before a dinner party infusing oils, brining meats, and scouring markets throughout the greater San Francisco Bay Area in search of just the right ingredients. Eventually, she justified this devotion (read: obsession) by becoming a professional food writer, finally getting paid to ferret out delightfully minute culinary details for magazine and newspaper articles and develop recipes for her own cookbooks.

Juliana became a graphic designer and continued to passively enjoy the stellar culinary offerings of the San Francisco Bay Area. While part of her always coveted her friends’ cooking know-how, she couldn’t imagine putting in the time, energy, and training she thought would be required for her to learn to cook great food. Eventually, though, it began to dawn on her that some of the most elegant, beautiful, and memorable meals she encountered—those that made foodies swoon, squeal, and beg for recipes—were also some of simplest. A surprising combination of unlikely ingredients, the use of fresh herbs, or a dash of a special vinegar or infused oil were often the things that elevated a meal from decent to stunning. After years of befuddlement and self-doubt, Juliana had finally discovered a startling concept that changed the way she approached the kitchen: cooking great food can be really easy.

Over the years, the two of us frequently crammed ourselves into one or the other of our tiny, ill-equipped San Francisco apartment kitchens to cook and eat. As our lives became increasingly complicated and busy, more and more we both found ourselves looking for kitchen shortcuts that wouldn’t force us to skimp on flavor. We’d make excited phone calls or send urgent late-night emails to share new recipes for super delicious dishes, recipes that were “so easy!” Some of those recipes became legendary for us, like the ridiculously simple balsamic syrup that could transform the most mundane ingredients into culinary nirvana on a plate, or the egg and asparagus sandwich that earned one of us such a reputation at her workplace that we now refer to it as “THE sandwich.”

Excerpt of the Day: "The Gratitude Power Workbook" by Nina Lesowitz and Mary Beth Sammons

Building upon the best-selling Living Life as a Thank You, authors Nina Lesowitz and Mary Beth Sammons have developed a workbook to take readers through a process of self-transformation and personal growth.  Filled with life-changing practices and encouraging advice, The Gratitude Power Workbook provides readers with tried and true thank you techniques and practices but also allows them to take part in creating their own.

Take a peak:

Are you tired of walking around with a hole in your heart? Do you need more inspiration? Studies show—and experts counsel—that gratitude is a key component of our own happiness. People who are grateful about events and experiences from the past, who celebrate the triumphs instead of focusing on the losses or disappointments, tend to be more satisfied in the present. In her popular book The Secret, Rhonda Byrne writes, “With all that I have read and all that I have experienced in my own life using The Secret, the power of gratitude stands above everything else. If you do only one thing with the knowledge of the book, use gratitude until it becomes your way of life.”

The recent buzz surrounding the power of gratitude is overwhelmingly

positive. Jeffrey Zaslow, a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, recently wrote that there may be a positive by-product of the troubled economic times that followed the 2008 stock market dive: a decrease in the urge to complain. “People who still have jobs are finding reasons to be appreciative. It feels unseemly to complain about not getting a raise when your neighbor is unemployed,” he wrote. “Homeowners are unhappy that home values have fallen, but it’s a relief to avoid foreclosure.”

Indeed, in these times of economic woe, gratitude is popping up everywhere. Turn on the TV. We listened as a career coach on The Today Show advised job seekers to put the words “Thank you” in their job search tool kits, declaring that the key to distinguishing oneself from the masses is to send a thank-you note. Click onto Facebook and check out the gratitude groups, where hundreds of people log on each day to give thanks for everything from the sun rising that morning to their neighborhood dog parks. Cathy, of Greenville, South Carolina, wrote, “I am grateful for a bark park to take my dog-children to, so I picked up extra poop and trash this morning.” Mary from Philadelphia wrote, “I am so grateful for the beautiful snow outside.”

Gratitude floats our boats and moves us to do all kinds of things inspired by joy. Gratitude can help us transform our fears into courage, our anger into forgiveness, our isolation into belonging and another’s pain into healing. Saying “Thank you” every day will create feelings of love, compassion, and hope. But the fact is, the art of living—for that is what we speak about when we speak of gratitude—isn’t something that comes naturally to most people. Most of us need to work intentionally to increase the intensity, duration, and frequency of positive, grateful feelings— a daunting challenge indeed. But fear not, this workbook is here to help! Inside we have provided you with mindful meditations, hands-on exercises, profound practices, inspiring quotations, space for writing, thought-provoking questions, and even positive “power tools” that will help you build a more grateful life.

Excerpt of the Day: "The Inspired Life" by Susyn Reeve and Joan Breiner

In need of an inspiration pick-me-up?  Look no further!  Susyn Reeve and Joan Breiner’s The Inspired Life is filled with definitions, quotes, life stories, exercises, and meditations meant to open your mind to the creative potential in every moment of daily life.

Here’s an excerpt:

“Our Invitation to You”

There have been many names for and descriptions of the times we are living in. Some consider this to be a New Age, others the Age of Aquarius. To some it is the End Times with doomsday quickly approaching. Some believe the end of the Mayan calendar is simply an astronomical occurrence while others define it as the end of civilization as we know it; still others say while it marks an end, it is a gateway to a new beginning of peace and cooperation among all peoples.

Charles Dickens’s words from his classic novel continue to ring true today.

The worst of times: When watching and listening to news reports it becomes clear that there is currently much strife and cruelty in the world: war, genocide, ethnic cleansing, the stoning of women, which always amazes me since the ones hurling the stones were birthed through the bodies of women—their mothers. Economic conditions throughout the world are worse than they have been in decades. The divide between the rich and the poor widens daily as the middle class disappears. Children are starving throughout the world while the military budgets of nations get larger and larger. In the United States partisan politics is so focused on who is “right” and who is “wrong” that it seems that issues—even the role and purpose of government itself—get lost in the desire to win elections. Corporate greed and government scandals fill the airwaves and leaders are not trusted. News pundits weave stories of fear and terror as their nightly offering. Natural disasters seem to be rapidly increasing. Is the current recurrence of bedbugs a plague in our midst? Hate crimes based on gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation abound. Not only is there hatred among racial and ethnic groups throughout the world, families can’t even get along.

The best of times: Since the first photograph, the famous “Blue Marble,” in which Earth is in full view was taken on December 7, 1972, as the Apollo 17 crew left Earth’s orbit, there is no doubt that we are One—one humanity on one planet. Since that time, our inter-connectedness and inter-dependence has been made more and more evident through the Internet via Twitter, Facebook, and blogs, which offer instant access to social networks and worldwide communities (and playing a significant role in the call for democracy in the Middle East); the global economy and the resources and support that are readily offered, not only by governments, but also by people throughout the world within hours of reports of disasters. Advances in research have provided life-saving procedures and remedies. Educational opportunities abound. There is a global movement afoot honoring Mother Earth, our true home. Green industries are becoming mainstream. At the same time the evolution of consciousness continues with more and more people committing to live Gandhi’s words, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” Individuals and groups are reaching across borders and boundaries in the name of peace. Women throughout the world are stepping forward committed to peace and our voices are growing and the fruits of these labors are being felt.

Katherine Woodward Thomas and Claire Zammit lead “Calling in the One” and “Feminine Power Mastery” tele-classes with thousands of participants representing more than fifty countries worldwide. In these programs, women and men in a community of support declare their commitment to live their inspired life visions, to be love made manifest in their relationships with themselves, their families, and their local and global communities.

Whatever you may believe, isn’t now the time to enrich your life by affirming and committing to your inspired life vision? At the very least, living your vision offers you the possibility of greater joy, fulfillment, and happiness. And, at best, as you put your stake in the ground for living a more peaceful and loving life, your consciousness generating your actions contributes to the collective consciousness of the Greater Field of Life, and love grows and peace expands for all.

Excerpt of the Day: "Lemons and Lavender" by Billee Sharp

Looking to save money and remain eco-friendly?  Meet Billee Sharp and her fabulous book Lemons and Lavender!  Packed with tips, recipes, and advice, this handy how-to will help you save the planet and your pocketbook.

Interested?  Here’s a peek of what’s inside:

Most of us are searching for the good life. What constitutes a “good life” is obviously subjective, but our quest to find happiness directs each of our lives in unexpected ways. When I think of personal happiness, security and fulfillment immediately come to mind. We all want the means to realize our hearts’ desires, but it is perhaps these desires that need to be reexamined. As a society, we’ve recently learned the hard way that we often want more than we can afford: our overextended credit system and failed subprime mortgage market have led our economy to a near collapse.

Twenty-first-century life affords us a unique perspective on the world we live in. We are hyperconnected to the rest of the globe, and we are all too aware of the ecological and economic crises that beset contemporary life. We can see that our daily actions have very real repercussions, and what we do as individuals shapes our world both literally and figuratively. We now have an opportunity to take our vision for humanity more seriously.

Slowly, we are acknowledging that the earth does not have the capacity to meet our unrepressed appetites, and that to end the destruction of our environment and the suffering of millions, we have to want less individually. 

Our emotional well-being is connected to how much money we have; while it is wretched and distracting not to have enough money to pay the bills, there are also pressures and worries that come with having plenty.

As Duane Elgin notes in his book Promise Ahead,

For many, the American Dream has become the soul’s nightmare.

Often, the price of affluence is inner alienation and emptiness. Not

surprisingly, polls show that a growing number of Americans are

seeking lives of greater simplicity as a way to rediscover the life of

the soul.

How do we adapt our life expectations accordingly? For me, the desirability of a $7,000 designer handbag evaporates when compared to the number of people that sum could feed. The carbon offsetting system—where individuals calculate their carbon expenditure and try to lower their carbon footprint—is an initiative that shows how seriously we take our situation.  Likewise, the growing support for fair-traded goods in commercial markets is evidence that mainstream society is beginning to show more compassion for the people who make and grow our food.

Quite literally, how we see the world has changed. In 1966, with the question “Why haven’t we seen a photograph of the whole earth yet?” Stewart Brand initiated a public campaign for NASA to release the satellite image of our planet from outer space. His argument was that the image would be a powerful symbol for humanity, and he was right. Our visualization of the world was changed with our access to this image, and this parallels the dramatic reconfigurations that have transformed Western society. We now have legislation that prohibits discrimination based on color, gender, and religion. Popular opinion and our evolving global consciousness give us hope that humankind can peacefully coexist with one another and with the earth.

Excerpt of the Day: "The Elements of Expression" by Arthur Plotnik

Looking for a book on proper grammar?  The Elements of Expression isn’t it.  In a world of wikis, updated statuses, and texts, Arthur Plotnik takes language-users on a journey through expressiveness.  Humorous and witty, this book allows you—speakers, writers, and self-improvers—to take a fresh look at how you express yourself.

If that doesn’t interest you, maybe an excerpt will:

Something moves you to express your thoughts. The subject is love. Or beauty. Mortality. Some poignant experience.

You hesitate—and well you should. Launching ideas as messages is not exactly blowing kisses from a train. You are putting thoughts into words, which is more like flapping the tongue to escape gravity. We work our tongues endlessly, but liftoff is so rare it’s a miracle we don’t keel over like some NASA dud.

Yet we go on flapping rather than fall silent or simply moo at one another. We struggle with words because they separate us from the lowing beasts and tell the world who we are, what we want, and why. 

No one will dispute the need for verbal expression, because no one will sit still to listen. The need is assumed, but it is never more clearly illustrated than when Americans visit foreign lands of funny-speaking people. Even with a stock of their funny phrases we find it difficult to express our individuality. We barely distinguish ourselves from the wash jerking on the clotheslines. We feel like babies, unable to express the nuances of pleasure and discontent. And babies hate that feeling.

In foreign travel I often find myself, oh, about fifty thousand words short of being interesting to anyone but the local pickpockets. I remember one moody trip when, traveling alone, I dined night after night talking to my cheeses and such mistakenly ordered dishes as pickled cow’s face with hairy nostrils. One evening, a sensitive-looking young couple gestured for me to join them. We exchanged basic phrases, but what I wanted to express was an overflow of feeling, something like this:

My dear companionable saviors—For the last three weeks a shadow of melancholy has obscured my perceptions, dimming the beauty of your countryside and the conviviality of its inhabitants. Solitude, when no longer self-imposed, soon deepens into isolation and near madness.  Now, however, as your kind concern and sensitivity restore my spirit, all that I have perceived unscrolls and engulfs me in its majesty. I exalt in your land and its people.

What came out was the equivalent of “Me like here. Food good. Everything very good. You go America?”

They’d sat a three-year-old at their table.

Excerpt of the Day: "Use Your Words" by Kate Hopper

All you mommies and mommies-to-be with a passion for—or minuscule interest in—writing will love Kate Hopper’s Use Your Words.  This writing guide for mothers allows you the opportunity to grow as a writer, chapter-by-chapter, and leads you through the process of turning your motherhood story into art.

Here’s a little taste of what’s inside:

Reading about other mothers’ lives and experiences has expanded my world. To be able to walk in someone else’s shoes, whether it’s for a moment or an hour or a few days, is an incredible gift. I have gained insight into parenting and the human experience.

The stories I’ve read and listened to have ranged from light and funny to heartbreaking, and there is room for all of these stories as a part of motherhood literature.

In the introduction to their anthology Mothers: Twenty Stories of Contemporary Motherhood, Kathleen Hirsch and Katrina Kenison write, “It takes courage to write about motherhood in a culture that sets women with children on the sidelines, and it takes even greater courage to give voice to the powerful emotions and fears that swirl deep beneath the surface of our daily lives, informing and shaping our relationships with our children and the world at large.”

We all have stories to tell. Whether we tell these stories is another question. It does take courage to write about motherhood, to explore writing about our children and our roles as mothers, to “give voice to the emotions and fears that swirl deep beneath the surface” of our daily lives.

I hope this book will help give you the courage to get your mother stories down on paper. How often have you said, “Use your words!” to your children? How often have you heard other parents utter that phrase? Now it’s your turn. I designed this book to help guide you on your journey as a mother writer and help you find the most effective way to tell the stories you need to tell.

Excerpt of the Day: "Happily Even After" by Carole Brody Fleet

We’re excited to have Carole Brody Fleet visiting the office this Wednesday for our Twitter Party!  Interested in asking Carole your questions?  You can join us on Twitter between 3 and 4PM (PST), using the hashtag #happilybook.

You can also meet Carole at these Bay Area Locations!

6/6/12 11:00AM Towne Center Books, Pleasanton, CA

6/6/12 5:00-6:00PM Books Inc. Alameda, Alameda, CA

6/6/12 7:00PM A Great Good Place for Books, Oakland, CA

6/7/12 7:30PM East-West Bookshop, Mountain View, CA

Here’s an excerpt from Carole Brody Fleet’s book Happily Even After:

“Who am I?”

“What do I do now?”

As I lay on my couch the day after Mike’s funeral, in my stunningly attractive penguin-printed flannel pajamas with the feet in them, these two questions repeatedly turned over and over in my mind. They were burned into my brain; they were etched into my “soul with a hole.” Day after day, I continue to just lie there, pondering these two questions. I didn’t open the blinds. I’m not entirely sure that I ate anything. I just lay there thinking: “Who am I?” and “What do I do now?”

Not only are these understandably daunting questions, these are by far the two most frequently asked questions by widows. The funeral is over with and everyone has gone home and returned to their lives, yet for you, the reality of widowhood and the building of a new life has just begun. You are left without any sense of direction, and in many cases, without even a sense of self. You are simply left…alone.

You may be surprised to learn that the “What Now?” of widowhood isn’t limited to only those who have been recently widowed. You may have been widowed for quite awhile and feel as though you are still trapped in the “Who Am I?/What Do I Do Now?” phase of your Healing Journey, wanting oh-so-much to move forward and not having an inkling as to how to begin.

Let’s then examine the questions and concerns regarding the “beginning”—this most important part of your Healing Journey—as well as some of the ways that you can begin to slowly refocus and rebuild into a promising new life of your own. Whether your loss happened last week, last year, or last decade, let this very moment be a new start for you. It is time for your Widowtude Adjustment to begin.