Motherlines: Love, Longing, and Liberation

Description

* Motherlines reveals how a woman's true spiritual growth is dependent on the love of others who witness, encourage and ensure her possibility. * Motherlines is an unflinching look at how medical, educational and religious institutions can disable a woman's spiritual life. * Defines a woman's spiritual life within the context of sexual embodiement and creative expression. * Motherlines explores the mythic foundation of the mother and daughter bond. * Motherlines tracks spiritual maturity outside religious concepts. * Motherlines features an inside look at a vowed nun's relational life.

Patricia Reis is passionately interested in how creativity, depth psychology, and the natural world inform a woman's spiritual life. Along with numerous essays and reviews, Reis is the author of four books: Women's Voices (co-edited with Nancy Cater), which includes her in-depth interview with naturalist and writer Terry Tempest Williams; The Dreaming Way: Dreamwork and Art for Remembering and Recovery; Daughters of Saturn: From Father's Daughter to Creative Woman; and Through the Goddess: A Woman's Way of Healing. Reis holds a BA in English literature from the University of Wisconsin, an MFA from UCLA, and a degree in Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara. She conducts a private psychotherapy practice, primarily for female artists and writers. Currently, she divides her time between Maine and Nova Scotia. Learn more at www.patriciareis.net.

"Motherlines is a deep treasure written in the inimitable voice of a woman whose work was a lighthouse for me when I first wrote Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom. There is pure gold healing in these pages. Let it touch and heal you." -Christiane Northrup, MD, OB/GYN physician and author of the New York Times bestsellers Goddesses Never Age; Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom; and The Wisdom of Menopause "Dreams, body wisdom, sexual awakening, inspiring relationships-Patricia Reis possesses a deep capacity to hear the soul's call and the courage to follow it. A spiritual journey and a creative tour de force, this is a potent and tender love song to the motherlines that connect us all." -Tina Stromsted, PhD, Jungian analyst, dance/movement therapist, and cofounder of the Authentic Movement Institute in Berkeley, California "Looking for a book that will feed your mind and your heart? Insight waits on every page of Patricia Reis's Motherlines -as do real-life characters who will inhabit your memory and remain friends and advisors long after you close the cover." -Mary Johnson, author of An Unquenchable Thirst, named one of the Best Books of the Year by Kirkus Reviews "A maternal aunt-a nun-who, on three continents and in a series of socio-political challenges, becomes an unexpected hand for Reis to hold. Despite leading very different lives, the two women are surprisingly similar in their yearning and search for what matters most to heart, soul, and spirit." -Suzanne Strempek Shea, author of This is Paradise and the New England Book Award-winning Sundays in America "Motherlines is a riveting memoir. Patricia Reis's masterful telling of her soulful experience of being lost and found in the dark and light mysteries of midlife is a remarkable story. Motherlines is soul food for all." -Sister Karol Jackowski, author of Forever and Ever, Amen: Becoming a Nun in the Sixties "This memoir of a searching American woman and her aunt, a liberationist Franciscan nun living in Central America, tells an intertwined story. In tandem they move through layers of spiritual exploration and women's truth to arrive in a knowing sense of fulfillment." -cofounder of the US Green Party movement "Patricia Reis is a fierce and fearless writer. Motherlines is an intimate, movingly honest story about women who seek and yearn for the fullest expression and connection. Grounded and transcendent." -Kate Christensen, PEN/Faulkner award-winning author of The Great Man and Blue Plate Special