The Mother's Guide to Self-Renewal

My mother-in-law bought me The Mother's Guide to Self-Renewal for Christmas and I've been gradually working through it for the last couple of months. I finished it at the end of July, but haven't had time to post about it really until now. When I got this book, I made a commitment to myself that I was really going to DO the book, instead of just reading it, tossing it aside, and gobbling down the next one on my stack. So, I did. It took me about 4 months or so to work through it. It is actually laid out in a 12-month format. The subtitle is "How to Reclaim, Rejuvenate, and Re-Balance Your Life," which is just what I felt like I needed! As a funny little side note, when I first started reading the book, I had a lovely little leather bound fancy notebook to do the journaling/reflective exercises in. I discovered I was never doing them--it never felt like the right time. Then, I bought a Pirates of the Caribbean notebook at Wal-Mart featuring a large photo of Orlando Bloom on the cover and lo and behold, I started doing the journaling exercises in it and finished the book right up! I had to laugh at myself--Hark! I have found thee, my muse, and thy name is Orlando Bloom (especially in rakish, unbuttoned-pirate-shirt attire!)

The author of this book also has a blog that I enjoy reading.

Working through this book coupled with then working through another book I hope to post about soon (The Life Organizer), did actually help me to make some hard decisions about the various roles in my life. I have this long standing tendency to read really great self-help books, nodding along in agreement the whole time and thinking, "this book changed my life!", but then, as I noted earlier, immediately hopping along to the next book without necessarily integrating the wisdom, ideas, or approach of the prior "life changing" book. So...I decided in January after reading Practically Perfect in Every Way (a book I STILL have not yet managed to blog about even though I finished in in JANUARY, because I have a lot to say about it--I took pages and pages of notes for a blog post, but have never transcribed them...), to read less self-help books, but also to use more of what I read in them when I read them. I have lots of reflections on this subject, but they are languishing with good old Orlando at the moment, waiting for me to type them all up!

On a separate note, my best friend welcomed her family's sixth child into the family last weekend! It sounds like it was a beautiful unassisted birth and I'm so happy for their beautiful family! The weekend he was born, I was sorting through some folders of papers and came across a poem I'd copied from Mothering magazine that brought a tear to my eye. It is called "Take Pictures" and is a poignant look at how fast it all goes. Here is a link to it on the Mothering site, conveniently. The end gets me in my heart every time I read it,

"Holding tight to my neck, my son
trusts - he knows no other way - my touch lightly
dries his tears. I am his queen, his goddess, handily
his slave. Blink, it's a photo again, a trick of the eye,

a frozen captive of time, paper, light and silver: my son
is a grown man: he drinks from his own hand. Reader, I
urge you, spin slowly, take pictures, remember to laugh."(emphasis mine).

Anyway, reading this poem felt like a tribute of sorts to the birth of this fresh, new little guy. I think I'm going to post it somewhere where I can see it regularly.