Lelia
Jane Austen, Joan Didion & Self-respect
Don’t you think Persuasion the best Jane Austen novel ever? It’s by far my favorite. That’s kind of a joke because most characters in...
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Lelia
Dec 29, 20212 min read
Light and Dark: Awakening in Life's Shadows
I’m trying to reread John O'Donohu's Anam Cara, and can’t stomach the pollyanna sunshine spiritual message. O’Donohue writes, “Light is...
Lelia
Dec 26, 20211 min read
Your Soul's Original Instructions
In Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer writes about Indigenous Americans’ Original Instructions. “These are not ‘instructions’ like...
Lelia
Dec 24, 20212 min read
Mars as Imaginary Friend and Creative Muse
In an interview in The Guardian, Maxine Hong Kingston describes a male alter ego from her memoir I Love a Broad Margin to My Life....
Lelia
Dec 20, 20213 min read
Eudora Welty + Aries + Guilt
In One Writer’s Beginnings, Eudora Welty says her short story"Livvie" is “about youth and old age: the death of an old, proud, possessive...
Lelia
Dec 8, 20213 min read
Memoir and the Moon
I used to pay a lot of attention to the first lines in books. I had a notebook where I wrote them down and classified them according to...
Lelia
Sep 15, 20212 min read
Feeling Adrift in an Empty Nest
My nest is empty and I’m grasping like a drowning person at anything that will tether me to a sense of stability and meaningful purpose....
Lelia
Sep 14, 20213 min read
Arbitray Stupid Goal and Attracting Perfect Customers
Artbitrary Stupid Goal is excellent. I bought it having seen that it's one of Austin Kleon's book club picks and I devoured it, both...
Lelia
Sep 9, 20215 min read
Self-Reclamation: Sy Montgomery, Danielle Henderson and Edith Wharton
My reading is taking on an unintentional theme. Several of the books I’ve recently picked up are by women or about women who’ve had to...
Lelia
Sep 7, 20213 min read
Wandering with Jean Shinoda Bolen, Charlie Warzel and Edith Wharton
As I read through Crones Don’t Whine by Jean Shinoda Bolen, I found myself dismissing it as fluff. It seemed to be just a collection of...
Lelia
Aug 26, 20214 min read
MFK Fisher, Aging and Poetry
Last House by MFK Fisher is good and sad. In many of the later essays, she’s angry at the aging process which for her was exacerbated by...
Lelia
Aug 22, 20214 min read
Books, Empty Nest and Gemini Rising
“They are busy and thinking of ways to be busier because such a space of nothing pressing to do would knock them down. No fields of...
Lelia
Aug 17, 20213 min read
Keri Smith, Play and Antidotes to the Wasteland
I’ve been thinking about Keri Smith’s Wreck This Journal as a way to pay attention and engage with my imaginarium but it occurred to me...
Lelia
Aug 16, 20214 min read
Diane Keaton, Ruth Reichl, Mothers, Self-Exploration and Story
I just finished Then Again by Diane Keaton and loved it. One of my favorite parts is Keaton’s assessment of some of the documentary films...
Lelia
Aug 12, 20212 min read
Dominique Christina, the 4th House and Toni Morrison
I loved Dominique Christina’s This is Woman’s Work. It’s not a scholarly work on archetypes, it’s her lived experience of these...
Lelia
Aug 11, 20213 min read
Creativity, Motherhood and Self-Remembering
I'm inspired by the boundaries women set to protect their creativity and how often women persevere in being creative even if they only...
Lelia
Aug 7, 20214 min read
Mystics, Creativity and the Spiritual Path
I’ve been trying to read Carol Lee Flinders’ book Enduring Grace and am having to confront my repugnance for asceticism. The first female...
Lelia
Aug 5, 20212 min read
Scrapjournaling and Soul Exploration
Keri Smith has a great exercise in Living Out Loud in which you get a box and start a clipping file of anything that interests you. After...
Lelia
Aug 4, 20214 min read
Caretaking, Meaningful Service and Skateistan
Mark Nepo writes in The One Life We’re Given of finding grace and wonder in the act of spoon feeding his invalid father. It’s a...
Lelia
Aug 3, 20212 min read
Paul D and Dubh Ruis: The Healing Path of Scorpio's Compassionate Insight
In If Women Rose Rooted, Sharon Blackie recounts the myth of Mis, who goes wild with grief at her father’s death, becoming crazed and...
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