Motherhood Unstressed: Meditations on Self-Care, Motherhood, and the Art of Living a Life You Love by Liz Carlile is a brilliant nonfiction book rich with meditations, poetic musings and journaling opportunities - all elegantly exploring ways the natural world and our own still small voice inside tries to teach us, over and over, to breathe, get quiet, and tap into the deep well of inner knowing and strength within. Carlile draws lessons from nature, faith, philosophy, and literature, woven with her own charming and unexpectedly fortifying life stories. Her personal take on motherhood and the greater lessons it teaches about the meaning of life is one any mother or mother-to-be can draw strength from and use as a daily source of inspiration and comfort. In light of the past year, there may be no better balm to our collective consciousness.
A guide for parents to help children of all ages process the onslaught of unfiltered information in the digital age. Education is not solely about acquiring information and skills across subject areas, but also about understanding how and why we believe what we do. At a time when online media has created a virtual firehose of information and opinions, parents and teachers worry how students will interpret what they read and see. Amid the noise, it has become increasingly important to examine different perspectives with both curiosity and discernment. But how do parents teach these skills to their children? Drawing on more than twenty years’ experience homeschooling and developing curricula, Julie Bogart offers practical tools to help children at every stage of development to grow in their ability to explore the world around them, examine how their loyalties and biases affect their beliefs, and generate fresh insight rather than simply recycling what they’ve been taught. Full of accessible stories and activities for children of all ages, Raising Critical Thinkers helps parents to nurture passionate learners with thoughtful minds and empathetic hearts.
Do you feel like you're a "pushover"? Do you let other people make all the plans--letting them pick the movie, the restaurant, or the vacation destination? Does self-care feel selfish to you? And do you find yourself feeling resentful toward others because they don't seem to take your needs into consideration? Can you relate? If the answer is yes, this is the book for you! In this book, master coach, speaker, and author Nancy Levin will help you establish clear and healthy boundaries. This isn't easy; many of us don't want to "rock the boat." We assume setting boundaries will lead to conflict. And, unfortunately, by avoiding conflict and not setting limits, we tend to choose long-term unhappiness instead of short-term discomfort. This book includes exercises and practical tools to help even the most conflict-averse, people-pleasing readers learn new habits. You'll learn how to recognize and take inventory of your boundaries, view your boundaries differently by creating a Boundary Pyramid, learn how to say "no" effectively, and set your Bottom-Line Boundary. As your supportive guide, Nancy will show you how to gather the courage to live a life of "boundary badassery." "This work was life-changing for me, and if you're someone who has avoided boundaries for years, it can change your life, too." -- Nancy Levin
Sprouted Kitchen food blogger Sara Forte showcases 100 tempting recipes that take advantage of fresh produce, whole grains, lean proteins, and natural sweeteners—with vivid flavors and seasonal simplicity at the forefront. Sara Forte is a food-loving, wellness-craving veggie enthusiast who relishes sharing a wholesome meal with friends and family. The Sprouted Kitchen features 100 of her most mouthwatering recipes. Richly illustrated by her photographer husband, Hugh Forte, this bright, vivid book celebrates the simple beauty of seasonal foods with original recipes—plus a few favorites from her popular Sprouted Kitchen food blog tossed in for good measure. The collection features tasty snacks on the go like Granola Protein Bars, gluten-free brunch options like Cornmeal Cakes with Cherry Compote, dinner party dishes like Seared Scallops on Black Quinoa with Pomegranate Gastrique, “meaty” vegetarian meals like Beer Bean– and Cotija-Stuffed Poblanos, and sweet treats like Cocoa Hazelnut Cupcakes. From breakfast to dinner, snack time to happy hour, The Sprouted Kitchen will help you sneak a bit of delicious indulgence in among the vegetables.
This inclusive guide to how every family begins is an honest, cheerful tool for conversations between parents and their young ones. To make a baby you need one egg, one sperm, and one womb. But every family starts in its own special way. This book answers the "Where did I come from?" question no matter who the reader is and how their life began. From all different kinds of conception through pregnancy to the birth itself, this candid and cozy guide is just right for the first conversations that parents will have with their children about how babies are made.
Now in paperback, the provocative book that has ignited fiery debate and created a dialogue among women about the state of motherhood today. In THE MOMMY MYTH, Susan Douglas and Meredith Michaels turn their 'sharp, funny, and fed-up prose' (San Diego Union Tribune) toward the cult of the new momism, a trend in Western culture that suggests that women can only achieve contentment through the perfection of mothering. Even so, the standards of this ideal remain out of reach, no matter how hard women try to 'have it all'. THE MOMMY MYTH skilfully maps the distance travelled from the days when THE FEMININE MYSTIQUE demanded more for women than keeping house and raising children, to today's not-so-subtle pressure to reverse this trend. A must-read for every woman.
Shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize Finalist for the Forward Prize for Best Collection The extraordinary new poetry collection by Tracy K. Smith, the Poet Laureate of the United States Even the men in black armor, the ones Jangling handcuffs and keys, what else Are they so buffered against, if not love’s blade Sizing up the heart’s familiar meat? We watch and grieve. We sleep, stir, eat. Love: the heart sliced open, gutted, clean. Love: naked almost in the everlasting street, Skirt lifted by a different kind of breeze. —from “Unrest in Baton Rouge” In Wade in the Water, Tracy K. Smith boldly ties America’s contemporary moment both to our nation’s fraught founding history and to a sense of the spirit, the everlasting. These are poems of sliding scale: some capture a flicker of song or memory; some collage an array of documents and voices; and some push past the known world into the haunted, the holy. Smith’s signature voice—inquisitive, lyrical, and wry—turns over what it means to be a citizen, a mother, and an artist in a culture arbitrated by wealth, men, and violence. Here, private utterance becomes part of a larger choral arrangement as the collection widens to include erasures of The Declaration of Independence and the correspondence between slave owners, a found poem comprised of evidence of corporate pollution and accounts of near-death experiences, a sequence of letters written by African Americans enlisted in the Civil War, and the survivors’ reports of recent immigrants and refugees. Wade in the Water is a potent and luminous book by one of America’s essential poets.
"These notes are about the process of design: the process of inventing things which display new physical order, organization, form, in response to function." This book, opening with these words, presents an entirely new theory of the process of design. In the first part of the book, Christopher Alexander discusses the process by which a form is adapted to the context of human needs and demands that has called it into being. He shows that such an adaptive process will be successful only if it proceeds piecemeal instead of all at once. It is for this reason that forms from traditional un-self-conscious cultures, molded not by designers but by the slow pattern of changes within tradition, are so beautifully organized and adapted. When the designer, in our own self-conscious culture, is called on to create a form that is adapted to its context he is unsuccessful, because the preconceived categories out of which he builds his picture of the problem do not correspond to the inherent components of the problem, and therefore lead only to the arbitrariness, willfulness, and lack of understanding which plague the design of modern buildings and modern cities. In the second part, Mr. Alexander presents a method by which the designer may bring his full creative imagination into play, and yet avoid the traps of irrelevant preconception. He shows that, whenever a problem is stated, it is possible to ignore existing concepts and to create new concepts, out of the structure of the problem itself, which do correspond correctly to what he calls the subsystems of the adaptive process. By treating each of these subsystems as a separate subproblem, the designer can translate the new concepts into form. The form, because of the process, will be well-adapted to its context, non-arbitrary, and correct. The mathematics underlying this method, based mainly on set theory, is fully developed in a long appendix. Another appendix demonstrates the application of the method to the design of an Indian village.
By all standards of success, James Templeton seemed to have it all. He was a highly successful businessman, had a beautiful wife and daughter, and, only in his early thirties, had his whole life in front of him. To avoid the same fate as his father and grandfather, who both died of heart attacks at a young age, James became an avid runner—a passion that he believed helped him stay fit and healthy. Imagine his shock when, during a routine physical, his doctor noticed a mole on his body that turned out to be a melanoma—a dangerous form of skin cancer. The mole was removed immediately and James, who was diligent in his follow-up exams, appeared to be cancer-free—but only for a short while. When the cancer reappeared and had spread, on the advice of his doctor, James followed the conventional medical protocol, which included surgery and chemotherapy. He was also involved in a clinical trial. When he learned that the treatments weren’t working, James was obviously devastated. He had reached a new low point in his life, and as he lay in the hospital bed, he prayed fervently for help. As if by some miracle, help came to James in the form of three different visitors who would change the course of his life—and help direct him on a path back to health. I Used to Have Cancer is James Templeton’s memoir—an inspiring look back at his unique journey in overcoming stage 4 melanoma. James takes you with him on a trip crisscrossing America, during which he shares the various natural approaches he followed to battle his cancer—from diet and supplements to meditation and lifestyle adjustments. As his journey continued, you will see first-hand how James’ definition of success changed from making money to seeing the next sunrise. And how he continues finding success by reaching out to others to share the lessons he has learned. While this book largely focuses on the various methods James used to overcome his own cancer, it is also an inspiring story of not giving up when all other avenues of conventional medicine fail. It is about taking control of your life and finding a way back from the brink of death. It is about being able to tell your friends, “I used to have cancer.”
