Synopses & Reviews
Chapter One It's a Timing Thing Do you feel confused, uprooted, at a loss -- almost depressed, but not quite? Instead of turning with the world naturally and effortlessly as it rotates, is the world spinning around you? Do you feel like it sometimes "turns on you? Is everything you depended on backing off, fading away? Then, about the time you get your bearings, the world starts turning around "and on you again?Are you a little uncertain about what you believe and know to be true, about what life means, how life works, and where your place is in it? I's that fine line between illusion and truth, fiction and nonfiction, fantasy and reality fading-getting fainter and finer each day?At the risk of using a cliché, "join the crowd. On second thought, let's regroup. Join the masses."I don't know what's been going on in the world and my world for the past few years," says a forty-three-year-old woman, a successful Mid western therapist who has worked intensely on her own life and has helped many others. "But most of the time it feels like I'm being pulled through a knothole-backwards.""For several years now, it feels like I've been plodding through a long, dark tunnel; ' says a fifty-two-year-old West Coast man, a police officer turned screenplay writer. This man has worked on his spiritual and emotional growth for years. "Sometimes it feels like I'm depressed, but I'm not really depressed. I don't understand what's going on."I can't see ahead clearly anymore'" says one woman. "Things have been in such a whirl I can barely trust what's going on now. I don't get it. It looks like things are going, in one direction, then my course twists and I get slammed into a wall. Remember the oldsong 'Twist and Shout'? Well, that's my theme song lately. Life takes an ugly twist, and I stand thereshouting about it. "The twists and turns life takes lately are enormous, unfathomable, and unpredictable. The only predictable element is the twist of unpredictability lurking right around the bend.A young East Coast woman, a New Yorker, agrees. "You can get whiplash without ever getting into a car. I don't fall asleep at the end of each day," she adds. "I pass out. From stress and obsession, ""I'm going to start making St. John's Wort cookies," chimes in another friend, a man in his thirties. (St. John's Wort is a natural herbal supplement some people claim acts as an antidepressant, the holistic communitys response to Prozac.) "No, I'm serious" he says. "I'm going to do it. I've heard that people used to make hashish brownies. There's no reason it can't be done with St. John's Wort."Someone beat him to the punch. The health food stores are now selling St. John's Wort Tortilla Chips.The words people use to describe their reactions vary from one locale to another, but the stories I've heard and collected around the globe are similar in content. When I tell people what others are saying, they listen intently, nod their heads in agreement, and respond with one word: "exactly. Regardless of the language spoken, when I ask what on earth is going on, what sense they make of it, or where it's all leading, they shake their heads, shrug their shoulders, and say, "I don't know.In late 1997 1 took -a research trip through the remnants of the terrorist massacres in Algiers and into the heart of the protest demonstrations in Istanbul, Turkey. While I was sitting in a Swiss airport trying to decidewhether to proceed to Bosnia, a television newscast caught my attention. The reporter was standing on the shores of the Pacific along the Malibu coast in California, dose to the place I've come to call "home in the past few years. He was presenting a report on El Nino, the climactic condition named some two hundred years ago for the Christ child. (El Nino usually arrives around Christmas and is a period of unusual global weather patterns resulting from exceptionally warm temperatures in the deep Pacific waters.)The reporter was interviewing a weather expert, asking what people could expect from this El Nino -- more hurricanes, rainstorms, flooding, and consequent mud slides? He tried to nail down an "exact prediction of what the future held.The forecaster listened to the interviewer's frantic and insistent request, then calmly replied that he thought we'd get about the same weather we usually got, only El Nino would make everything that already existed more intense.I'm not a weather expert, but that would be an accurate prophecy for the emotional and spiritual climate around our globe.Things are becoming intense.In an unpredictable time of twists and turns, when Kodak moments have turned into Prozac moments and the two favorite catch phrases are "exactly and "I don't know, another phrase has worked its way into the consciousness."Going home."I'm tired of all the...junk," says one woman. "I'm tired of the hustle, not fitting in, not finding my place, and being slightly miserable all the time. I know there's a place on this planet where I can be happy, raise my baby, live by the ocean, and do my art. I just want to find it and move there. I want to go home.""I've been lying, manipulating,forcing myself into a corporate mold that I don't belong in, and drinking to mask all my motions for a year now," another woman comments. "I've moved from house to house and city to city, but what I've really been doing is running from myself. Enough is enough. It's time to stop running. I miss myself. I want to get comfortable in my own skin. I want my soul back. I want to go home."
Review
“Beattie has a gift for mixing traditional 12-step thinking with subtle wisdom from her own life to inspire readers to think beyond mainstream consciousness.” Library Journal
Review
“Melody Beattie gives you the tools to discover the magnificence and splendor of your being.” Deepak Chopra, author of JESUS and BUDDHA
Review
“Beattie understands being overboard, which helps her throw bestselling lifelines to those still adrift.” Time magazine
Synopsis
"Melody Beattie gives you the tools to discover the magnificence and splendor of your being." -- Deepak Chopra, author of Jesus and Buddha
"Beattie understands being overboard, which helps her throw bestselling lifelines to those still adrift." -- Time magazine
From the New York Times bestselling author of Codependent No More, The Language of Letting Go, Journey to the Heart, Choices, and Stop Being Mean to Yourself, comes Finding Your Way Home a soul-searching book, with true stories and take-action exercises, designed to help foster a sense of "home" and personal spirituality.
Synopsis
How to Find Your Soul's True Purpose, from the Author of the Landmark Bestseller "Codependent No More"
Melody Beattie returns in classic form to a subject that will engage and inspire everyone seeking their soul's purpose, their home. Too often in life, people settle for security rather than genuine fulfillment'it is the easier path'but the sense that something is "missing" or "incomplete" never fades from our daily lives. So what does it mean to feel at "home, " truly present with ourselves, comfortable with our choices, and alive to the possibilities of conscious change? How can we develop inner balance and connection, keeping our boundaries clear while opening our hearts to those we love? With practical wisdom and insight, Melody Beattie addresses these questions, encouraging us to reach a higher level of living and loving, and showing us how to be at home with ourselves wherever we are in the world, at whatever stage of life.
Through true stories and take-action exercises, including journaling, visualizations, affirmations, meditations, and prayers, Beattie provides the essential tools to help us discover our own sense of home. Accessible and illuminating, "Finding Your Way Home" is a soul-searching look at how not to be victimized by ourselves'or other people. Beattie urges us to discover new levels of integrity, to break through barriers that have blocked us for too long. This is a powerful and challenging book about buying back our souls and learning to live a life guided by spirit.
Synopsis
What does it mean to feel at home, truly present with our selves, comfortable with our choices, and alive to the possibilities of conscious change? How can we develop inner balance and connection, keeping our boundaries clear while opening our hearts to those we love? With warmth and intuitive understanding, Melody Beattie addresses these questions, guiding us to a higher level of living and loving, and showing us how to be at home with ourselves wherever we are in the world.Through positive, true stories and take-action exercises including journaling, visualizations, affirmations, meditations and prayers, Beattie provides practical tools to help us discover our own sense of home. Reassuring, comforting, and gently challenging, she shows us how to release ourselves from self-defeating attitudes and encourage the growth of our self-acceptance and compassion. This empowering book makes a companionable guide for anyone on a path to healthier living.
Synopsis
What does it mean to feel at home, truly present with ourselves, comfortable with our choices, and alive to the possibilities of conscious change? How can we develop inner balance and connection, keeping our boundaries clear while opening our hearts to those we love? With practical wisdom and insight, Melody Beattie addresses these questions, encouraging us to reach a higher level of living and loving, and showing us how to be at home with ourselves wherever we are in the world, at whatever stage of life.
Through true stories and take-action exercises, including journaling, visualizations, affirmations, meditations, and prayers, Beattie provides the essential tools to help us discover our own sense of home. Accessible and illuminating, Finding Your Way Home is a soul-searching look at how not to be victimized by ourselves′or other people. Beattie urges us to discover new levels of integrity, to break through barriers that have blocked us for too long. This is a powerful and challenging book about buying back our souls and learning to live a life guided by spirit.
Synopsis
How to Find Your Soul's True Purpose,
from the Author of the Landmark Bestseller Codependent No More
Melody Beattie returns in classic form to a subject that will engage and inspire everyone seeking their soul's purpose, their home. Too often in life, people settle for security rather than genuine fulfillment -- it is the easier path -- but the sense that something is "missing" or "incomplete" never fades from our daily lives. So what does it mean to feel at home, truly present with ourselves, comfortable with our choices, and alive to the possibilities of conscious change? How can we develop inner balance and connection, keeping our boundaries clear while opening our hearts to those we love? With practical wisdom and insight, Melody Beattie addresses these questions, encouraging us to reach a higher level of living and loving, and showing us how to be at home with ourselves wherever we are in the world, at whatever stage of life.
Through true stories and take-action exercises, including journaling, visualizations, affirmations, meditations, and prayers, Beattie provides the essential tools to help us discover our own sense of home. Accessible and illuminating, Finding Your Way Home is a soul-searching look at how not to be victimized by ourselves -- or other people. Beattie urges us to discover new levels of integrity, to break through barriers that have blocked us for too long. This is a powerful and challenging book about buying back our souls and learning to live a life guided by spirit.
About the Author
Melody BEeattie, one of the seminal figures in the recovery movement, is the author of the international bestseller
Codependent No More. She is an expert on codependency, and lectures worldwide.