Returning to My Mother's House : Taking Back the Wisdom of the Feminine

by Straub, Gail

• ISBN13: 9780963032751
• ISBN10: 0963032755
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-10-15
• Publisher: High Point

Summary

Gail Straub, a leader in the human potential field, had helped thousands around the world find meaning and purpose in their lives, all the while sensing that something fundamental within her was missing. Many years after the premature death of her mother, she undertook a period of soul searching and came to believe that, like her mother and so many women of our time, she had overcorrected in the direction of the masculine, her ¿successful¿ life of outer accomplishment and committed social activism having come at the expense of a rich and satisfying inner life. Her search took her around the globe¿to Africa, Bali, Russia, China, and Ireland- where she encountered this longing to retrieve sacred female wisdom among women everywhere. Finding her way back to her innate female wisdom restored a sense of balance between external and internal, activism and contemplation, public and private, and gave her a sense of equanimity that had eluded her for decades. Gail¿s poetic and heartfelt story is for anyone who has ever struggled to build and sustain an interior life in our driven and fast-paced society--and for mothers and daughters everywhere.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. ix
Prologue	p. xiii
Living in My Mother's House: The Imprint of the Feminine	p. 1
My Mother the Bohemian: Unbounded Flame	p. 3
When Imagination Reigned: Brecks Lane and the Bubble and Squeak	p. 8
St. Joseph's and the Wilmington Dry Goods	p. 19
Pop and the Tower Hill School	p. 25
Mom Leaves Her Own House	p. 30
Inhabiting My Mother's Unlived Life	p. 41
Leaving My Mother's House: The Gradual Loss of the Feminine	p. 49
The Final Years	p. 51
Mother Africa	p. 58
Crossing the Sahara: Closing My Heart	p. 69
The Death of My Family	p. 75
The Pumpkin House: Second Childhood	p. 79
Growing Up and Finding the Love of My Life	p. 84
Sun and Moon: Becoming the Empowerment Couple	p. 91
Workaholism: Subversive Enemy of the Interior	p. 102
Choosing Not to Have Children	p. 109
The Death of My Father: The Rebirth of My Feminine	p. 116
Returning to My Mother's House: Taking Back My Wisdom	p. 123
Healing Time: Finding My Open Emptiness	p. 125
Coming Home: Landscape as the Tabernacle of Memory	p. 133
Bali: Searching for the Wisdom of the Deep Feminine	p. 139
Russia and the Flying Women	p. 149
China: Black Birds Against a White Sky	p. 157
Pilgrimage to Ireland: Shape Shifting	p. 172
Honoring Maud	p. 184
In the House of the Great Mother: Passing My Wisdom to Others	p. 191
Becoming a Spiritual Mother: Protecting the Lineage of the Feminine	p. 193
When the Heart Cradles the Irrational	p. 199
Honoring the Great Mother by Embracing the Other	p. 207
Completing the Circle: Death as Holy Advisor	p. 222
Acknowledgments	p. 234
Credits	p. 236
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