The Journey to Love is our first step toward learning to accept love from others and to love those around us. Finding love in our everyday lives and relationships can be difficult. In this collection of 40 short, story-driven readings, Matt Mikalatos helps us open ourselves to love in the world around us and to set aside control and embrace the wild, untamed vulnerability of loving and being loved. This is an easy book to read over 40 days—or finish in a couple of hours. Each entry includes questions and exercises to help with reflection, transformation, or discussion with friends or a book club. The goal is to find ourselves more loving and able to receive more love. Are you ready to join the Journey to Love?
A love story and an inspirational tale of recovery and self-discovery, Marie Tillman opens up for the first time about her marriage to ex-NFL star Pat Tillman, and her journey to rebuild her life after his death. In 2003, Pat Tillman, serving in the US Army, hastily wrote a "just in case" letter to his wife, Marie. When he returned on leave before his departure to Afghanistan, he placed the letter on top of their bedroom dresser. For months it sat there, sealed and ever-present, like a black hole through which Marie knew her stable life would be pulled if she ever had reason to open it. Then, in April 2004, Marie's worst nightmare came true. In the days following his death, it was Pat's letter that kept her going and, more than that, it was his words that would help her learn to navigate a world she could no longer share with her husband. In The Letter, Marie's talks for the first time about her journey to remake her life after Pat's death. In it, she recalls meeting and falling in love with Pat when they were kids, his harrowing decision to join the army after 9/11, and the devastating day when she learned he'd been killed. She describes how she withdrew from the public spotlight to grieve, learning along the way the value of solitude, self-awareness and integrity in the healing process. And, finally, Marie recounts her work to rebuild her life, including founding The Pat Tillman Foundation, an organization established to carry forth Pat's legacy of leadership, and her decision to step back into the public eye in order to inspire people to live with meaning and purpose. Filled with the lessons Marie learned and the wisdom she gained since Pat's death, The Letter is both a heartrending love story and an inspiring tale for anyone, young or old, whose life has taken an unexpected hard turn -- and who struggles to get back on the right path.
Often our natural vitality and expansiveness are blocked by patterns of which we are not even fully aware. This book shows how to identify these patterns and take practical steps to stop constraining our lives. In this adventure, the authors bring lessons from work with thousands of people in different cultures, revealing how to go beyond the "negative love" syndrome and find our own power, wisdom and voice.
Joe Vigil has written a beautiful book of poetry that will inspire and move you. This book is an honest look at life and what is important. He covers many topics with an enlightened sensitivity that is sure to touch your heart and engage your mind. Dive deep with Joe and let this book encourage you to look at your own emotions and experiences. This book will make an impression on your heart, your mind and your spirit.
How can a modern relationship possibly survive? By looking to the past, for the age-old mythic traditions of the world provide all the advice we need about love, according to Michael Gurian. And the wisdom they offer is strikingly similar across cultures: a relationship must ultimately look beyond itself and be consciously accepted as a spiritual path. Gurian has drawn on a range of spiritual and mythic traditions to create the new model for relationship that he presents in his popular workshops. This model, called the "Lover's Journey," consists of four distinct "seasons": 1. The Season of Enchantment: the springtime of falling in love 2. The Season of Awakening: the summertime, when the euphoria of romance is past and we learn independent co-existence 3. The Season of Partnership: the autumn of maturity, when the fruits of our joint efforts can be enjoyed 4. The Season of Nonattachment: the winter of companionship, quietude, and the letting-go of old age
From the world’s foremost neuroscientist of romantic love comes a personal story of connection and heartbreak that brings new understanding to an old truth: better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. At thirty-seven, Dr. Stephanie Cacioppo was content to be single. She was fulfilled by her work on the neuroscience of romantic love—how finding and growing with a partner literally reshapes our brains. That was, until she met the foremost neuroscientist of loneliness. A whirlwind romance led to marriage and to sharing an office at the University of Chicago. After seven years of being inseparable at work and at home, Stephanie lost her beloved husband, John, following his intense battle with cancer. In Wired for Love, Stephanie tells not just a science story but also a love story. She shares revelatory insights into how and why we fall in love, what makes love last, and how we process love lost—all grounded in cutting-edge findings in brain chemistry and behavioral science. Woven through it all is her moving personal story, from astonishment to unbreakable bond to grief and healing. Her experience and her work enrich each other, creating a singular blend of science and lyricism that’s essential reading for anyone looking for connection.
In this “page-turning memoir of decadence and faith” (Publishers Weekly, starred review), Jill Dodd writes movingly and evocatively about her journey from Paris model to Saudi billionaire’s harem wife to multi-million-dollar business entrepreneur. In the 1980s, Jill Dodd determined that her ticket out of an abusive home was to make it as a top model in Paris. Armed with only her desire for freedom and independence, she embarks on an epic journey that takes her to uncharted territory—the Parisian fashion industry with all its beautiful glamour and its ugly underbelly of sex, drugs, and excess. From there, Jill begins an eye-opening roller-coaster adventure that includes trips to Monte Carlo, sexual exploitation, and falling in love with one of the richest men in the world, soon becoming one of his many wives—until she ultimately finds the courage to walk away from it all and rebuild her dreams. In The Currency of Love, she “writes earnestly and refreshingly about learning many of life’s more difficult lessons the hard way” (Kirkus Reviews) with page-turning accounts of her struggles and triumphs as she paved her path through a dangerous and seductive world, before ultimately coming into her own as the founder and creator of global fashion line, ROXY. This “raw and inspiring story” (PopSugar) with a feminist fairy tale twist reveals how one woman chose to live her life without forfeiting her independence, ambition, creative expression, and free spirit, all while learning one invaluable lesson: nothing is worth the sacrifice of her integrity, inner peace, and spirit.
The marriage of words and images creates a multidimensional experience for the reader, both physical and emotional. As you connect with the visual three dimensional form, you simultaneously align with the feelings that will carry you to a place of being one with the letters and words. A place where there is no separation between poet, artist and you. What you experience through this book is meant to be repeated and appreciated many times. The intent is to provide you a holistic, ongoing moment that will touch on all levels, from the heart of the authors to your heart. The thoughts, emotions and feelings expressed in the words and in the art are there for you to savor and enjoy and share with someone you love, especially yourself. May this book lead you to explore your heart and the depth of your soul, as you let love be the magic that opens the unknown.
Nearing his final days, a beloved Unitarian minister meditates on life, love, and death: “The goal is to live in such a way that our lives will prove worth dying for.” On a February day in 2008, Forrest Church sent a letter to the members of his congregation, informing them that he had terminal cancer; his life would now be measured in months, not years. He went on to promise that he would sum up his thoughts on the topics that had been so pervasive in his work—love and death—in a final book. Church has been justly celebrated as a writer of American history, but his works of spiritual guidance have been especially valued for their insight and inspiration. As a minister, Church defined religion as "our human response to the dual reality of being alive and having to die." The goal of life, he tells us "is to live in such a way that our lives will prove worth dying for." Love & Death is imbued with ideas and exemplars for achieving that goal, and the stories he offers—all drawn from his own experiences and from the lives of his friends, family, and parishioners—are both engrossing and enlightening. Forrest Church's final work may be his most lasting gift to his readers.
