Being a therapist and one who seeks to understand myself and others, I’m very familiar with how difficult change is. We human beings have a tendency to beat our heads against the same old door of the boxes that contain our known world. I love self help, but didn’t want to just write a (boring) “how to support yourself through change” non-fiction book. Driving on the freeway, one wintry January day, right after my mother had died in December, I started daydreaming about how important my women friends’ support had been in getting through my mothers illness and death.
The women’s retreats my friend Linda and I had been doing for a few years popped into mind and soon words, sentences and images flooded my awareness. I grabbed whatever paper I had available in the car and wrote, wrote, wrote what evolved into The Greatest Change of All, a story of women, friendship, love, hope, healing, food and fun. I wanted this book to be a fun exploration of friendship and spirituality and to also encourage women to do their shadow work – to deal with whatever emotional baggage we’ve dragged with us that no longer serves us. Women need to justbe who we are, to be sweet, or a bitch, (proudly if at all) to make mistakes, to be real! The characters in the story are fictional, but based on women friends and family past and present, bits and pieces of this retreat participant, that friends way of expressing herself. The spiritual journey has been and continues to be my foundation -what leads me home to Self. I hope each woman who reads this book will come home to herSelf in a deeper and also lighter way.
“The Greatest Change of All is like all wonderful Chicken Soup stories, it opens the heart. And, when we open our hearts we change the world.” — Mark Victor Hanson Co-author of Chicken Soup series
Change. We fear it and resist it, yet we find ourselves living in a time of increasingly rapid, uncontrollable change. Change pushes us into the unknown when we would prefer to remain where we are, safe and comfortable. As we approach the twenty-first century, many of us are undergoing such swift change that it is becoming increasingly hard to maintain our balance and stay centered. As a result, we experience an ever accelerating loss of control which shows no sign of slowing down. We become disconnected from our True Self, stressed, confused, numb, angry and depressed. Something isn’t right, but we don’t know what it is.
This book is about a group of gutsy women who make you laugh and cry as they explore the inner territory of heart and body wisdom, spirituality, relationships and food. Linked by their desire to become all that they can be, their special bond supports them in their quest to discover the answer to the mystery of The Greatest Change of All.. Together they search for the perfect path for their lives, what will bring them joy, what connects them to their source and how to celebrate being able to love and deeply connect with others.
We are invited to travel with these women and learn from them; to discover how to trust in divine guidance; how to manage change and how to move with the mystery and flow of life. Imagine what it would be like to see change as an adventury, as an invitation to move boldly forward into a balance of mind and heart! When we stop giving away our power of choice, and when we realize that no one can make us happy except ourselves, we stop feeling guilty and afraid and begin to embrace change and regard it as a joyful adventure.