Organized as a saunter through the year, Romancing the Ordinary celebrates the spirituality of the senses, seasonally and monthly. Ban Breathnach believes that women are endowed not with five senses but with seven. In addition to rediscovering sight, sound, scent, taste, and touch, readers will come to cherish their sense of "knowing" -- a woman's intuitive sense -- and "wonder," her sense of rapture and reverence.
Writing in the style so beloved by her millions of readers, and drawing on myth, literature, film, music, and drama, Ban Breathnach encourages each woman to discover what moves her to tears, makes her blood rush to her head, her heart skip a beat, and her soul sigh. Interwoven with the text are seasonal indulgences intended to restore weary feminine souls -- recipes, rituals, decorating, fashion, and gardening hints. By encouraging her to delight in the often overlooked gifts of every day -- from the aroma of simmering homemade spaghetti sauce to the sensation of freshly laundered linen against bare skin -- Romancing the Ordinary is sure to help every woman fall in love with Life.
]]>Inspired by her own life experiences and requested by avid Ban Breathnach readers eager for another volume, Sarah helps readers to understand themselves and to use those insights to create a home that truly suits their spirits and their lives.
"We do not know how to move on," Sarah observes. "We have learned to let go, but not move on." This keen insight differentiates this book from other self-help books dealing with life changes.
Sarah helps readers cope with what she calls, "the myriad demands of uprooting one's life," and teaches them to not only move, but to finally create what she calls, "your own house of belonging."
Like the other books in Sarah's acclaimed Simple Abundance series, Moving On is what Sarah calls "part meditation, how-to-manual, and memoir."
]]>Ban Breathnach possesses a contagious playfulness that permeates the book's workshop structure. Critics call her frivolous, but fans call her inspirational. Even her resources promise a good time, including her amusing appendix on "Cinematherapy," which lists suitable movies for every chapter. (For example, chapter 3, "Romancing the Soul," could be enhanced by watching Love in the Afternoon or A Man and a Woman.)
"Consider this workbook a personal tutorial," she writes. "Just you and me.... But please let's think girls' night out instead of study group as we sift and sort. Gratefully, I've finally learned to choose fun over earnestness any day of the week, and I'm not going back. How about you?" Not a chance, Sarah. Not a chance. --Gail Hudson
]]>Segell writes the poignant introductions to the essays while Ban Breathnach inserts her personal responses at the end of particularly provocative essays. At times she sounds like an interloper in a "boy's only" tree fort club, her comments sounding out of place within these private moments of male bonding. Yet she forces readers, men and women alike, to acknowledge the feminine within the male experience, a lofty goal that we tend to resist. Contributors include Sting, who talks about the difference between thrill seeking and risk taking in "Let Your Soul Be Your Rookie." Adventure writer Tim Cahill writes about "The Bravest Thing I Ever Did"--face his panic disorder as his vomited his way through an un-aired television interview. And Thomas Moore speaks to the ecstasy of melding spirituality and sexuality. --Gail Hudson
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