Showing results by author "Anne Lamott" in Relationships, Parenting & Personal Development

We all suffer from unhealthy dependencies that we continually return to in hopes of having a better life. But after yet another TV show is streamed or another drink is swallowed, we find we once again feel worse, not better, than we did before. Where is the hope for that fully awakened life we long to live?

Despair and uncertainty surround us - in the news, in our families and in ourselves. But even when life is at its bleakest, Anne Lamott shows how we can rediscover the hope and wisdom that are buried within us, and that can make life sweeter than we ever imagined. Divided into short chapters that explore life's essential truths, Almost Everything pinpoints these moments of insight and, with warmth and humour, offers a path forward.

In each chapter of Somehow: Thoughts on Love, Lamott refracts all the colours of the spectrum. She explores the unexpected love for a partner later in life. The bruised (and bruising) love for a child who disappoints, even frightens. Drawing from her own life and experience to delineate the intimate and elemental ways that love buttresses us in the face of despair, as it galvanises us to believe that tomorrow will be better than today. The lessons she underscores are that love enlightens as it educates, comforts as it energises and sustains as it surprises.

It’s not like she’s the only woman to ever have a baby. At 35. On her own. But Anne Lamott makes it all fresh in her now-classic account of how she and her son and numerous friends and neighbors and some strangers survived and thrived in that all-important first year. From finding out her baby is a boy (and getting used to the idea) to finding out her best friend and greatest supporter, Pam, will die of cancer (and not getting used to that idea), with a generous amount of wit and faith (but little piousness), Lamott narrates the great and small events making up a woman’s life.

Stories tether us to what matters most: our families, our friends, our hearts, our planet, the wondrous mystery of life itself. Yet the stories we've been telling ourselves as a civilization are killing us: Fear is wisdom. Vanity is virtuous. Violence is peace. In Between the Listening and the Telling, author and activist Mark Yaconelli leads listeners into an enchanting meditation on the power of storytelling in our individual and collective lives. We tell stories to remember who we are. We tell stories to savor the pleasure of living.

All Janine Urbaniak Reid ever wanted was for everyone she loved to be okay so she might relax and maybe be happy. Her life strategy was simple: do everything right. This included trying to be the perfect mother to her three kids so they would never experience the kind of pain she pretended not to feel growing up. What she didn’t expect was the chaos of an out-of-control life that begins when her young son’s hand begins to shake.

Some of the most common human experiences are self-criticism, self-doubt, and self-recrimination. We often are far harsher on ourselves than on others, and many of us suffer constantly for it. Research shows that when we truly accept ourselves, it changes everything. We become less reactive and more resilient. Our physical health improves. We are capable of deeper and more satisfying relationships. In The Self-Acceptance Summit: Volume Three, you’ll find a collection of insights, encouraging voices, and on-the-spot tools to help you transform your relationship with yourself.

Anne Lamott explores the tough questions that many of us grapple with. How can we recapture the confidence we once had as we stumble through the dark times that seem increasingly bleak? As bad newspiles up - from climate crises to daily assaults on civility - how can we cope? Where, she asks, 'do we start to our world and joy and hope and our faith in life itself back...with our sore feet, hearing loss, stiff fingers, poor digestion, stunned minds, broken hearts?' We begin, Lamott says, by accepting our flaws and embracing our humanity.