by Linda N. Edelstein (1999)
The subject of midlife has been dominated by the woes of aging - menopause, divorce, hormone replacement therapies, aging parents, and fleeing children. Now this broad-ranging new work by clinical psychologist Linda N. Edelstein, Ph.D., describes the freedom and authenticity that can be made a cornerstone of the middle years. She describes three healthy and predictable phases. First, women relinquish old ways, untying themselves from the past and mourning the losses of youth and its illusions. By placing less emphasis on the needs of others, women can live more creatively and enjoy the present. The women Dr. Edelstein studied have been able to move to the next step, in which they reconnect to themselves. They regain their authentic voices, simplify life, and allow long-buried aspects of themselves to emerge. Finally, women refocus their futures. With courage, they embrace new people, ideas, activities, and work - and pursue adult dreams regardless of external rewards.
Alice Miller
"How do our first experiences of pain and love affect our future? ... [The author] shows us people who have suffered great loneliness in childhood and who now, in adulthood, despite their yearnings for contact and communication, are still trapped in inner isolation"--Jacket.
Tina Sloan
After twenty-six years starring as nurse Lillian Raines on the hit soap opera Guiding Light, Tina Sloan knows a thing or two about surviving the pitfalls of growing older in front of the world. From depleted storylines, to transitioning from sizzling screen diva to a mature grandmother Changing Shoes shows that even TV grandmothers can have style and flair. Drawing from the lessons she has learned in her own life, Tina candidly shares her endearing, sensitive, and often funny, story of crossing into her next phase of her life. And, in doing so, she offers important tips on how to embrace womanhood with ease.
George E. Vaillant
In our current era of holy terror, passionate faith has come to seem like a present danger. Writers such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens have been happy to throw the baby out with the bathwater and declare that the danger is in religion itself. God, Hitchens writes, is not great.But man, according to George E. Vaillant, M.D., is great. In Spiritual Evolution, Dr. Vaillant lays out a brilliant defense not of organized religion but of man's inherent spirituality. Our spirituality, he shows, resides in our uniquely human brain design and in our innate capacity for emotions like love, hope, joy, forgiveness, and compassion, which are selected for by evolution and located in a different part of the brain than dogmatic religious belief. Evolution has made us spiritual creatures over time, he argues, and we are destined to become even more so. Spiritual Evolution makes the scientific case for spirituality as a positive force in human evolution, and he predicts for our species an even more loving future.Vaillant traces this positive force in three different kinds of "evolution": the natural selection of genes over millennia, of course, but also the cultural evolution within recorded history of ideas about the value of human life, and the development of spirituality within the lifetime of each individual. For thirty-five years, Dr. Vaillant directed Harvard's famous longitudinal study of adult development, which has followed hundreds of men over seven decades of life. The study has yielded important insights into human spirituality, and Dr. Vaillant has drawn on these and on a range of psychological research, behavioral studies, and neuroscience, and on history, anecdote, and quotation to produce a book that is at once a work of scientific argument and a lyrical meditation on what it means to be human. Spiritual Evolution is a life's work, and it will restore our belief in faith as an essential human striving.
Craig English, James Rapson
Do you (or does someone you know)...--Apologize frequently or for things you are not responsible for?--Get preoccupied with what other people think of you?--Become unhappy when your partner isn't happy?--Feel worried or fretful so often it seems normal?--Often not know what you want?--Constantly second-guess yourself? Chronic Niceness affects multitudes, causing severe anxiety and depression, crippling self-esteem, and undermining and destroying relationshipsAnxious to Please reveals the primary psychological cause of Chronic Niceness--Anxious Attachment. Anxious Attachment drives the Nice Person to accommodate, acquiesce and avoid conflict. Nice People take what they're given rather than asking for what they want, often sacrificing relationship, careers and their own integrity.Anxious to Please presents seven powerful practices designed to bring about: resilient self-esteem; a happier and calmer emotional life; a reality-based optimism for the future; fulfilling sex; and satisfying relationships.