Books on my nightstand for January 2020

Jan 6

Back to reading time!

Apparently, I never posted about the books that were on my nightstand for November or December. Well, sometimes life blows in some changes and whirlwinds so I chose to step away usual activities in order to absorb life. I did, however, create a draft of November books so I will include some that impacted me at the end.

My January lineup includes some books I’m using in class this semester. Instead of discussing them in order I want to group them since I notice I have three categories that I’m starting off with (and really more like continuing from the end of last year)…

CREATIVITY IS HOW I WANT TO LIVE MY LIFE

The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron

I am wrapping up week 12 of 12 now. I have only amazing things to say about this book and all the points and tasks she offered. I recommend it to everyone. And will do it again in the future. I’m even considering facilitating a small group through it next spring if people are interested. I’ll have to do a separate blog on it to even try to do justice to the book and what I learned about myself through it.

Creatrix: She Who Makes by Lucy H. Pearce

This book is my continuation of creativity work once the Artist’s Way wraps up. Just peeking at it, I’m really excited as she incorporates doodling, reflection questions, and tasks as she moves through having relationship with the Creatrix Archetype. I’ve been doing a lot of Jungian archetypal work lately with day and night dreams and psychological aspects of life coaching so working with the concept of womxn who bring forth or produce. In reading the intro, I loved this quote as it sums up my approach to my own self-work and that with others:
Trauma creates change you don’t choose,
Healing is about creating change you do choose.
Her point is that in both of them there is the word: CREATE.

MY TAKE AWAY: I create in order to live a life worth living and loving for myself. In creating (words, blogs, painting, pottery, music, laughter, dance, love, whatever) I reclaim my power in choosing to live my life rather than being a victim to it.

RECONNECTING TO NATURE

Our Wild Calling: How Connecting with Animals Can Transform our Lives – and Save Theirs by Richard Louv

Only started this a few days ago. Did you know that a group of lizards is called a lounge?! I know, right, how amazing! While I’m not far in, Louv’s message is that animals communicate and engage, not only with each other, but also with us, if we are open to observing and listening. He talks about the use of scientific knowledge paired with, what I’ll call, intuition and open-minded/soul-ness (these are my words, if we rely solely on our mind, we won’t connect at all as animals).

I’m excited to see what he offers as this resonates for me. It also is part of a larger continuing conversation from some of the work I started in my life coaching program with Martha Beck in her Finding Your Way in a Wild New World and am continuing under another teacher this year.

MY TAKE AWAY: The premise is not new, just forgotten – we are all connected and one with and within the universe– by we, I mean, humxns, plants, animals, cosmos, whatever you want to call it all – what hurts one of us ends up hurting all of us and when we heal ourselves, we can heal others.

The 13 Original Clan Mothers by Jamie Sams

This book is read one chapter a month based on the moon cycles through the year. Sams shared stories learned from her Kiowa tribe grandmothers, Seneca teachings, and her own healing journeys with womxn’s medicine through indigenous traditions.

The first moon cycle of January starts with Talks with Relations which is about learning truth and finding kinship with all life. The color is orange to represent the Eternal Flame of Love that exists in all parts of Creation. Sams tells a beautiful story of Talks with Relations who come down in humxn form to learn the rhythm of every life form on Mother Earth and what lesson each has to offer (a medicine to teach). My favorite parts in the story are about trees: Trees teach through our hearts not ears and are the balance between Mother Earth and Father Sky. Pine tree medicine is inner peace – I had heard this before and now have a citation for what I know to be true.

MY TAKE AWAY: It’s the feminine indigenous version to what I think Louv is getting at in the previous book. It’s a journey through the year of reflection and introspection combined with connection to the moon cycles so it is patient commitment rather than quick fixes.

FEMINISM IS IN MY BLOOD

All of these books are used in my spring graduate seminar course: Womxn and Non-Binary in Higher Education so of course I would recommend them all to everyone. They are accessible even though they say theory.

feminism is for everybody: passionate politics by bell hooks

New to the topic of feminism– start here! This is a classic for me and I’ve taught from this book for years and years. I’m a huge bell hooks fan especially more recently with her books on radical love as part of the feminist and justice movements. Why I continue to use this book is because hooks highlights briefly most of the major issues impacting womxn: consciousness-raising, sisterhood, reproductive rights, work, racism, violence, parenting, relationships, as well as, men and toxic masculinity.

MY TAKE AWAY: I’d call it an easy reader for a good broad overview, without too much jargon or theory talk.

Feminism is Queer: The Intimate Connection between Queer and Feminist Theory by Mimi Marinucci

For a while I’ve journaled about wanting to create a paradigm (this just means the model or way of thinking about something, such as life) shift that reshapes my life: in how I problem-solve, think, lead, teach, parent, and be. I haven’t always been clear on what that means though. Enter the notion of queering as an alternative paradigm. Just as I see creativity as an alternative paradigm, queering can be applied outside of sex and sexuality and in our ways of gendering everything in life. How we socially construct gender impacts most everything; therefore, we can add a queer perspective to those as well as a feminist one.

Queer theory addresses the prevailing paradigm of logic of domination (the belief in society that everything is in structured hierarchies with associated levels of power and thereby the oppression of others). Queer theory offers views outside of the binary (black/white, male/female, this/that, either/or). It suggests that yes, categories of things may be helpful and they lack definition or meaning for every individual. Things are recreated, restructured, renegotiated.

MY TAKE AWAY: Queering then is to problematize the assumed beliefs in binaries and hierarchies. It is to envision a world more fluid and inclusive.

Living a Feminist Life by Sara Ahmed

New to my course this year and meant to expand feminism for students who are already familiar with bell hooks above. I have not yet read it but have enjoyed Ahmed’s other online readings. Her purpose for this book is to talk about living a life of feminism defined as “how we pick each other up” as feminism is about a way of thinking about how to live. I specifically love that the conclusion is in two parts: A Killjoy Survival Kit and A Killjoy Manifesto. I have been called many names because of the seemingly bizarre notion that I believe that womxn are equal people in the world and not to be oppressed or have choice taken away from them. I’m a feminist Killjoy.

MY TAKE AWAY: It is my purpose in this life to educate and empower. Can’t wait to read and discuss this in class.

BOOKS FROM PREVIOUS MONTHS

Adult Children of Alcoholics by Janet Geringer Woititz

Seems fairly obvious what this is about. ACoA behaviors show up so much in overachievers and therefore academics and higher ed people. More on this as I unravel. The book is good at detailing out the shared characteristics that ACoA’s exhibit in their behaviors with self and others but also she offers how to break patterns and cycles moving forward.

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed by Lori Gottlieb

I devoured it in a weekend! I laughed. By midpoint of the book, I cried. I laughed some more. I took notes on good psychology points - even sharing pictures of pages with friends.

It’s a beautiful look into the psyche of the author as a therapist who realizes she needs a therapist and the journeys of 4 of her clients. I felt really invested in their stories and progress (and lack of at times) which is a tribute to Gottlieb’s writing style and ability to see the inner workings of humxns.

A nugget that hit me deep and connected with my other work.:
“So many of our destructive behaviors take root in an emotional void, an emptiness that calls out for something to fill it.” (p. 135).
Well, yea, I fill voids with destructive behaviors all the time, just check out my other post of the list of all the things that distract me from the work I want to be doing.

The True Deceiver by Tove Jansson

I’ve been fascinated by Tove (tu’ve) Jansson since spending some months in Finland a few years ago during sabbatical. She’s most known for creating the Moomin characters and books (google it and no, they’re not hippos). But I am mostly in awe of the creative focus she choose to live her life and of her later years embracing raw nature living on an uninhabited island in the gulf of Finland with her partner, who was also an artist.

I imagine her a Finnish counterpart to Mary Oliver in these years. This book is about “the lies we tell ourselves and the lies we tell others [...] solitude and community, art and life, love and hate.” So much of that weaves in and out of the other work I am doing on loving and creating community. But also resonates to something Gottlieb quotes from Carl Jung - that secrets are psyche poison. And so much of humxn life is unraveling the truth within ourselves (the secrets we keep from our own selves) to live truthfully moving forward.

What are you reading in the new year of 2020?

What would you add to my themes of creativity, feminism, and nature’s connection?

Happy reading and happy new year!