Imagine a woman who is interested in her own life. A woman whose life is her teacher, healer, and challenge. Who is grateful for the ordinary moments of beauty and grace. Imagine yourself as this woman.

I first learned about gratitude as a potential response to life in Alanon, back in the day. When GA, my recovering alcoholic husband, announced that he wanted a divorce and I discovered that he was involved with a woman he met in AA, I ran to my Alanon sponsor for support. She challenged me to resist the temptation to live in fear of that day 18 months ahead when we would be divorced.

Ginny encouraged me the stay present during every moment of the experience and to maintain a daily gratitude practice of acknowledging the goodness of life even as the world around, and within, me was falling apart. She promised me that if I stayed present, that I would be ready for that far-off day when the “no-fault” divorce would be finalized.

By the time GA and I met at the courthouse to finalize the divorce, I was studying at Princeton Theological Seminary and in love with my new life of study, exploration, and writing. As we embraced after the divorce proceedings, I offered him the blessing of gratitude, “I’m grateful for the gift you gave me. Yes, my world crashed when you left, but it needed to crash. The life I live today is more authentic, joyful, and real. Thank you, and peace be with you.”

I have continued that almost-daily gratitude practice for 20 years and explored the important role gratitude plays in our happiness, healthy adjustment to life’s twists and turns, and physical well-being. I have come to believe that it is a cost-effective way to manage our anxiety and add to our wellness routines!

According to Dr. Robert Emmons and Dr. Michael McCollough, who edited the first scholarly volume devoted to a fundamental human quality of gratitude, there are many emotions and personality traits important to well-being, but a large body of evidence suggests that gratitude is uniquely important.

In their volume, The Psychology of Gratitude (Oxford University Press, 2004), they brought together the work of scholars from a diversity of fields. Their research suggests that grateful people have higher levels of well-being. These are some of the specific manifestations of well-being inspired by gratitude, gleaned from the Emmons-McCollough research and my own experience:

1. Grateful people are happier and more satisfied with their lives and social relationships.

2. They have higher levels of self-acceptance and greater authority and control of their circumstances, their personal growth, and the purposeful use of their capacities.

3. They have more positive ways of coping with life’s difficulties because they are more likely to seek support from others and grow from the experience.

4. They have fewer negative coping strategies because they are less likely to avoid or deny the problem, blame others for the problem, or cope through substance use.

5. They have fewer experiences of bitterness, resentment, irritation, and envy. Although they may experience these negative reactions initially, grateful people pivot/shift from these more readily and turn toward gratitude as their primary response.

6. They cope better during life transitions. Because they are more grateful before the transition, they are less stressed and depressed during the transition, and more satisfied with their lives after the transition.

7. They sleep better because the quality of their lives is more peaceful.

For the next two weeks, consider ending each day with your own Gratitude Practice. In your journal, list your gratitudes, write a gratitude poem, compose a song expressing your gratitude, or create a collage inspired by each day’s gratitudes.

Email your lists and written gratitudes to us, post them here, or post them at our IAW International Facebook fan page. We’ll gather your writings into our gratitude collages through December 1.

Patricia Lynn Reilly is the founder of Imagine a Woman International and BAB Coaching and Publication Services. If you’re inspired to take the next step with your book project, visit www.birthabook.com. If you’re ready to author your own life, business, ministry, or self-understanding, visit www.imagineawoman.com for inspiration, opportunities, and support.

In the last BAB blog, I shared the dramatic cover stories of my first two books: A God Who Looks Like Me and Be Full of Yourself. Today I’ll share the less dramatic stories of my three other books. All is not what it seems!

Imagine a Woman in Love with Herself: Embracing Your Wisdom and Wholeness

Because I did not want stock photos of airbrushed women on this cover, I sent a file to Conari Press’ design team filled with photos from “Imagine a Woman” retreats through the years. I asked them to choose photos from the file to grace the cover. I also found rose photographs by Deborah Schenk and asked if the design team would create a collage of sorts with the roses and images of three women of their choice from the file, representing three phases of a woman’s life: mother, maiden, crone.

When I was given the cover to review, I was ecstatic! Finally a cover that honored the author’s suggestions and represented the range of ages, colors, and lives of the women in our circles. And to my surprise, there I was in the upper right hand corner, dancing on a California beach. Because the design work was done virtually, the design team did not know what I looked like, so their choice was pure!

In the lower left hand corner is Erin Louise Stewart who co-founded Berkeley’s Circle of Life Women’s Center with me in the 1990s. Erin is now a spiritual teacher and life coach in the LA area. And in the lower right hand corner is the photo of a radiant and beautiful crone, Marcelline Niemann, whose poem “Death and Resurrection” was featured at the IAW International Facebook Fan Page during Poetry Month.

I Promise Myself: Making a Commitment to Your Life and Your Dreams

I Promise Myself features the “vow of faithfulness” composition process and “self-commitment ceremony” design process that have become hallmarks of IAW International’s work around the world.

The journey from self-loathing to self-love, from self-criticism to self-celebration transforms our inner landscape and reframes our relationship to the world around us. To deepen these fundamental shifts in self-understanding within women’s hearts, minds, and bodies, I re-fashioned the wedding vow and wedding ceremony into transformational resources for making a life-long commitment to ourselves.

I chose the calla lily as the logo for the “vow of faithfulness” process and requested that it be the centerpiece of the book’s cover. In a time when the divine was imagined as woman, the lily represented the Goddess’ self-fertilization powers. The solitary calla lily stands self-possessed and powerful, full of beauty and grace, supporting us to return home to ourselves, to grow in knowledge and love of ourselves, and to vow faithfulness to our natural resources and capacities. The Conari Press designers chose the most beautiful plum color to frame the graceful, elegant calla lily!

Words Made Flesh

I spent six years of childhood in a children’s shelter and Catholic orphanage. I returned to St. Joseph’s Village as an adult and photographed the mile-long orphanage corridor featured on the cover of Words Made Flesh. I love the view down the corridor toward infinity! The corridor-scene reaches beyond the actual events to a purposefulness beyond what we see, beyond the stories we tell.

Throughout childhood I desperately longed for an open window, a breath of fresh air, a reminder of the world beyond the four-walls of the orphanage. The windows forming the outside walls of the corridor provide a glimpse of life beyond the confines of the orphanage, beyond the confines of our experience. The girl-child in her communion finest is me—in the scene, yet transcending it.

The splash of red on the cover represents the natural life-giving blood women spill each month, the blood of violence that touches so many of our lives, and the intense passion that rises again and again within us, fueling the resiliency of our resurrections.

After graduating from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1987, I named my creative agency “Open Window Creations.” Nothing is lost or forgotten. In the round about way life works, all is re-membered, re-surrected, re-constituted, and redemptively re-enacted.

Your Cover Story

If you have your own cover story, or question, share it here or on BAB’s Facebook fan page. If you’re ready to step onto the path of publication culminating in a published book with a cover of your choice, book a Strategy Session with me at the website for our Summer special of $50.

Patricia Lynn Reilly is the founder of Imagine a Woman International and BAB Publishing Services. In her role as publishing coach, she reminds her clients that they are individualized expressions of creative intelligence, idea-generators fueled by the creative powers of the universe. Supported by the BAB Team, her clients take their tenacious ideas, propelled by their own strong YES, to the publishing finish line! Visit www.birthAbook.com for more inspiration and support to take the next step with your tenacious idea. Visit www.imagineAwoman.com to be inspired to author your own life!

Every book cover has a story, the behind the scenes, trying to stay true to your vision, hoping not to alienate your publisher kind of story. Sometimes, the story has a happy ending.

Sometimes the story turns into a drama, a collision, a disappointment, especially when working with traditional publishers whose marketing concerns often take precedence over authenticity.

In the perfect situation, the choice of cover image, design, and style, is a co-creative, inspiring process. Here at BAB, the process is always a co-creative. Our authors love looking at their books!

Over the next month, I’ll share the process of cover-selection for my first two books. One process felt like a drama of mythic proportions, and to this day I’m ambivalent when looking at the cover. The other process was a delight, and I smile whenever I view that cover.

A God Who Looks Like Me: Discovering a Woman-Affirming Spirituality (Ballantine Books, 1995)

The first cover image chosen by my Ballantine editor was not appropriate at all. It didn’t match the content and intention of the book. It was more of an art history cover reflecting the dark, formal religions of the past. At some point in the preparation process, the sales and marketing team had its say about the cover. They agreed with me that they couldn’t sell my book to the bookstores “wearing” that art-history-esque regressive cover.

My editor then chose a Rossetti image of a young white woman. I was livid, ready to break my contract with them. The book invites women to sort through the names and images of the divine that fill their spiritual landscape and to imagine the divine in their image and likeness. The book doesn’t suggest replacing the while male god of traditional religion with a white female version. I wanted a more inclusive image and suggested Miriam Fabbri’s “The Goddess Trinity.” They said, “No.”

The women’s spirituality circles, out of which the book was born, were made up of women of every age, color, and ethnicity. I brought the proposed Rossetti cover to the circle. The women of color encouraged me to allow the book to be published because they felt that its message was too important to be set aside based on the cover image. They invited me to trust that the women who were meant to read the book, would.

They encouraged me to dialog with the Rossetti image and in the process “she” said, “Allow me to draw women into the book. Once they open its pages, the words and reflections will lead them to love themselves as they imagine the divine in their own image and likeness. They will forget about my image, and encounter themselves.”

I’ve received notes through the years from women of color, sharing the challenge they faced, being both drawn to the title and put off by the image. Most of them felt a stronger pull toward the book than away from it, and allowed its words to support and inspire them to design a woman-affirming spirituality for themselves. See the cover here: http://www.imagineawoman.com/home/a-god-who-looks-like-me-discovering-a-woman-affirming-spirituality

Be Full of Yourself: The Journey from Self-Criticism to Self-Celebration  (Conari Press, 1999)

Inspired by Eve and the courageous community of women who have gone before us, Be Full of Yourself invites us to journey from self-criticism to self-celebration by assuming intellectual, theological, and personal equality with the traditions that have shaped our self-critical attitudes. To take our place in the noble line of self-possessed and free-thinking women by committing the forbidden act of designing a personal and communal spirituality based on our experience, wisdom, and authority as women.

For over a thousand years, women have been biting into the Genesis texts and reinterpreting them from a woman’s perspective. Beginning with the unnamed women of the heretical Montanist sect who claimed Eve as their champion, women have recognized that their destinies were inextricably bound to Eve’s story, and that to reclaim themselves, they must reclaim her. These women laid the groundwork for us. Their rebellious spirits inspire our forbidden acts.

Because my business Open Window Creations published Be Full of Yourself, the process was much simpler and authentic to the material. I knew an apple needed to be on the cover! I received a cartoon from a friend: a snake is coiled in the proverbial tree of life, attempting to convince Eve to take a bite with these words, “Take a bite – what harm can there be? It’s organic.” The Be Full of Yourself cover apple is organic. I bought a basket full of apples at a Sonoma County apple farm on the way to the cover photo shoot!

The apple has tremendous mythic, historical, political, and personal meaning for women, reaching into our collective unconscious. As my beloved cousin Paul said, “It’s a genetic thing…that’s why women reach for the apple. They’re Eve’s daughters.” Bite into your life and the fullness of its possibility today. Do the Eve-thing!! See the cover here: http://www.imagineawoman.com/home/be-full-of-yourself-the-journey-from-self-criticism-to-self-celebration 

Your Cover Story
In the next BAB blog, I’ll share the cover stories of the next three books! If you have your own cover story, share it here or on BAB’s Facebook fan page. If you’re ready to step onto the path of publication culminating in a published book with a cover of your choice, book a Strategy Session at the website for our Summer special of $50.  www.birthAbook.com

Patricia Lynn Reilly is the founder of Imagine a Woman International and BAB Publishing Services. In her role as publishing coach, she reminds her clients that they are individualized expressions of creative intelligence, idea-generators fueled by the creative powers of the universe. Supported by the BAB Team, her clients take their tenacious ideas, propelled by their own strong YES, to the publishing finish line! Visit www.birthAbook.com for more inspiration and support to take the next step with your tenacious idea. Visit www.imagineAwoman.com to be inspired to author your own life!  

I’ve been gathering my journals into binders. Journals reaching back to the 1970s. I’m hoping to “contain” my life in 6 binders, rather than 35 separate journals! I know that my quest for a containable, manageable, clearly understandable life is doomed to failure!

Although I’ve tried to understand my life using lots of words since adolescence, there is another level of my existence which cannot be captured in words, journals, and binders. As I read through my life, I notice that my words are often an attempt of my mind and intellect to avoid feeling, manage impulse, and distract from anxiety.

Yes, sometimes journaling helps me to sort through the jumble of feelings and sensations that rise in response to encounters, relationships, and situations of life. But more often, the words artificially package the experiences of life, and distract me from the feelings and visceral truth that will always trump words in the end.

The words of others however, tend to open my heart and release visceral emotions and sensations. I surrender control when I enter into their stories, and cannot quiet the tears, tremors, and anxiety released by their words. Books have accompanied me through some very challenging seasons of my life, and given me access to the real life anxieties that I tend to manage with my own words. They allow me to feel rather than talk about feeling.

In last week’s IAW blog I shared about two challenging periods of my life—the ending of yet another relationship with a “daddy-shaped” lover and the “visceral” depression that couldn’t be managed, contained, or reshaped with my words. Three novels were my companions as I walked through that challenging year. They reached to the deep places and released more of the emotion accumulated there, and they gave me hope.

While sequestered in my studio unable to move out into life and the flow of friends and activities, I devoured three woman-centered novels. Sitting in this “virtual” circle of women, reaching across the generations, reminded me that I wasn’t alone, and of the power and necessity of listening to each other’s stories.

The Red Tent by Anita Diamant—In the biblical account of Dinah’s rape, she does not say a word. The focus is on the action of her brothers—they rape their sister. Anita wrote the book from within the experience of Dinah and the women in her tribe. She gives Dinah a voice. The visceral experience of women is palpable on each page, unlike the silence of women in the sacred texts composed by men.

The Girl with the Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier—Griet, a sixteen-year old girl working as a servant in the Vermeer household, is the protagonist and narrator in the novel. She is intelligent, perceptive, and aesthetically gifted. Rather than writing a story about Vermeer having an illicit relationship with Griet, Chevalier builds sensual tension with the depiction of their restraint. This tension felt familiar.

Sister of My Heart by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni—Anju and Sudha are sisters of the heart. Family secrets, mistrust, distance, and shame threaten to divide them but their bond is unbreakable. My sister and I shared a tumultuous childhood. The dysfunctional choices, actions, and secrets of the adults in our world splattered us with shame and anxiety, which operated beneath the surface reality of our lives. Anju and Sudha’s relationship gave voice to our deep heart connection and to the undercurrents threatening that connection.

Have you plumbed the depths of your own experience? Read through your journals this week, and listen for the visceral impulses, intuitions, emotions, and truth lingering beneath your words.

Give voice to the deepest truths in a fictional account or directly, in a memoir or anthology, using words that quiver rather than quiet, evoke rather than evade, release rather than control. Words made flesh in the experience, tears, memory, and hope of your readers.

Are you ready to write your novel, children’s book, anthology, or non-fiction best seller? The BAB Team provides continuity of support and accountability so you won’t lose your way in the forest of options and opportunities. We’ll keep you on course, managing your unique mindset issues and moving your project forward toward your publishing goal. Book your one-hour strategy session with Patricia Lynn Reilly at the website.

My father, the bookie, took me to the racetrack
during spring break from Princeton
on my first visit back to Los Angeles
since my mother packed us up
when I was five and hightailed out of town,
out of state, 3,000 miles across the country
to escape the harrowing challenges
of living with a violent alcoholic.

At some point my father put down the bottle
and chose gambling as his primary preoccupation.
How exactly the daughter of an alcoholic-turned-bookie
ended up at Princeton Seminary studying god
is another story for another time.
Suffice to say, my classmates were the children
of your run-of-the-mill middle-class professional folks:
clergy, lawyers, MDs, MBAs, and the like.
I was the only one in my class whose father was a bookie!
Bookie, short for bookmaker:
one who determines odds, receives and pays off bets.

So there we are, father and daughter, at Hollywood Racetrack, guide-sheet in hand, my father teaching me about the art and science of handicapping, describing the various measures and tools used to pick a winner, outlining the history of horse racing, a sport dating back 4,000 years, peppering the technicalities with wisdom gleaned from his bookie life:
“Winning and losing are seasonal.”
“Addicts are in it for the quick win,
professionals are in it for the long haul.”
“You’ve got to do your research:
know the facts, mix them with your intuition;
facts and gut work together to create a successful career.”
My father, grooming me for the family business.

Why are you wasting your time at Princeton?, he asks.
You’d make lots more money following in my footsteps:
the streets are ready for a smart young woman like you!
“There’s this thing about god I have to work out
before I can make any long-term decisions, Daddy.”
Well how about a late night TV show about god—
those television evangelists make lots of money, he advised.
“I’m doing the research, Daddy. I’ll keep you posted.”

My next visit to LA was two years later. We were informed of my father’s death by his lawyer, a character right out of a seedy detective novel, who got Daddy out of big trouble at some point. “Your father owed me one,” he said. “That’s how I ended up executor of his estate.”

We found our way to Daddy’s Inglewood apartment from the airport. It was sparsely furnished with rented furniture and no glimpses of beauty. “Low-key was your father’s MO so the cops wouldn’t become suspicious,” the lawyer informed us.“You know, he was the most successful bookie in LA county,” he added on his way out the door.

Now alone in the apartment, my sister and I sorted through my father’s possessions. I found a stack of letters on the mantel, tied with a ribbon. He’d saved every letter I’d written him since age five. After an hour of sorting, I discovered a stack of files and gasped as they revealed just how successful a bookmaker my father had been.

For all those years my father, the bookie, had been assembling blue-chip stock portfolios for each of his daughters, nurtured from his successful, albeit checkered, life as a gambler. Clearly he didn’t trust the income-producing capacities of my god-oriented vocational choices and decided early on to take my financial well-being into his own hands.

As a souvenir, I gathered the sheets of 8 1/2- X -11 scrap paper my father would cut into tiny pieces on which to write the infamous numbers and bets that turned into our pot of gold. Upon returning to Princeton, I wrote the draft of my graduate thesis on his paper. A fitting re-appropriation of the tools of Daddy’s trade, the thesis led me to graduation, and eventually, to a self-supporting career as a bookmaker in my own right.

Thank you, Daddy!

“The Family Business” is featured in Patricia Lynn Reilly’s anthology Words Made Flesh. Do you have a strong desire to share the writings and reflections you’ve written through the years? The BAB Anthology Team will support you to organize your writings into a compelling anthology template; design your text and cover; format your book to be available to Kindle, Nook, iPad, and print-on-demand readers, and take your anthology to the publishing finish line. Book a strategy session with Patricia to discuss the details. www.birthAbook.com