MSI Press Blog

  The following note/post came from Julia Aziz, author of  Lessons of Labor: One Woman's Self-Discovery through Birth , in response to Mother's Day. Every May I think to myself, "I want to send something out for Mother's Day," but there's two reasons I usually don't: (1) In my own home life, this time of year tends to feel like a parenting marathon, without much room for extra writing. And (2) I am sensitive to the reality that many of my readers are grieving on this day, whether that be for their mothers or for children they've lost or didn't have. A simple "Happy Mother's Day" message never feels right. But I gave it more space and decided to send something this year because I think we could all use some deeper acknowledgement. If you're a mom having a hard time staying centered, perhaps without enough room for true self-care,  please see my most recent  blog post with free gifts for moms.  There you'll find links to a recor...

  Book Excerpt: Nurturing Contentment What makes us happy? I just made a list, and on it, I placed such items as “writing on the beach,” “cooking something interesting,” and “having lunch with Karen.” There are 20 such items—I could certainly come up with more. Plunging a little deeper into my memory, I could add “making love with my husband, Jack” (the last time was in 2010, the year before he died on January 2, 2011.), “vacation in the Keys” (2009), and “camping in upstate New York” (2002). If I think about these things and why they made me happy, I can see that all of them concerned getting in touch with a certain radiance or connection to love, and not just a personal love, although I certainly felt that for my late husband (and still do). I feel love for my friend Karen, and for the beach, cooking, the Keys, and the land in South Kortright, New York, where Jack and I used to camp. (I confess the last few times were in a trailer, not a tent!) But the love I am speaking of...

  Book excerpt: Self-Nurturing or Entertainment We all like to be entertained. The trouble is, sometimes entertainment isn’t as satisfying as we think it should be. The reason for this is because, instead of nurturing us in some way, the entertainment drains us, even makes us feel bad about ourselves. What kind of entertainment does this, and how can we avoid it? A little bit of forethought will usually do the trick. Take movies for example: perhaps we are assiduous in our efforts to avoid violence in films—we just don’t like it. But many of the movies out today contain violence, whether we like it or not. (This was explained clearly on the PBS special “Makers”: most movies, it seems are geared for men, and men, according to this special, like to see something being blown up or somebody getting shot.) So suppose you’re going to a movie with a man—husband, brother, male friend—and he is gravitating toward a really violent flick, while you’d like to see something like “The 100 Fo...