Healing Horizons

I used to be a voracious reader. Sunlit libraries and book stores with the aroma of coffee drifting between the shelves are some of my most beloved indoor haunts. Then a year ago I went through a phase where I thought I was done. You know, if I read any more non-fiction spirituality/healing/self-help books I was going to throw up/jump off a cliff (again)/remarry. But reviewing my book list so far for this year (emerging from a breathless dive into fiction) I discovered a familiar theme:

Defy Gravity ~ Caroline Myss. Awakening spiritual grace in healing ourselves, and from there, giving grace to the world. Mind opening detail of the struggle between the ego and the soul, in the no nonsense way Caroline likes to deliver her message.


Healing ~ David Elliott. Loving yourself in all your aspects, leading to loving everyone and everything else (hello universe). In depth, insightful exercises to unearth your creativity (not for the feint of heart or lazy, which I am these days but am willing to suspend to see where this road goes). Down-to-earth and heart-opening.


Bastard Love Story ~ Linda Lou. A healer at heart using humor in the spoken word and writing to heal the world. From successful professional writer, to hospice volunteer, to teacher to stand-up comedian, she knows how to work through the bullshit with heart.


Green Smoothie Revolution ~ Victoria Boutenko. Her second book on green smoothies, which I'm pretty sure she invented, details the quickest, easiest, most delicious ways to garner your daily greens. Brimming with taste-tested recipes from readers of her first book along with her family's own, this is seriously my one way back to raw foods for crazy vibrant health.


Lined up for February: Momma Zen: Walking the Crooked Path of Motherhood ~ Karen Maezen


Love, Light, Laughter -- The New Spirituality Owen Waters



Not sure why healing is on the horizon again, and I so thought I was done with seeking spirituality (22 hardcore years as a Mormon convert can do that to you, not to mention the large group awareness training) and I'm so not looking to replace old belief sets with any other, thank you.

I have traveled the seekers path too long, even as a kid yearning for spiritual connection, and thinking it lay in the realm of religion (which I was raised without, except for the influence of my German grandmother, who wholeheartedly embraced a Jehovah's Witness program--as opposed to the witness protection program. Get it? Okay never mind). Probably the closest I got to feeling deeply connected to that part of me was in my middle teens, when I fell in love with yoga and fasting and health food (can anyone say henna? which my mother said made me look like a hooker--so, what? a hippie hooker?) which made me kind of a freak in my family (possibly still does).

I'm still not sure whether believing in something is fooling yourself to make life a little easier or whether it's the path to enlightenment, having really savored the work of Eckhart Tolle and Adyashanti and Byron Katie (still close to my heart), but I can't seem to let it go.

So these days my spiritual path winds along the switchbacks of nature, a healing heart and laughter. As Karen Maezen said on her blog,Cheerio Road, "Laugh. It's the only medicine you can afford, and it may be the only one that actually works." Well good then. I'm on the right track.