Welcome to Litsy!

“Could it be that beauty is about seeing, and not being seen?”

“...whether we are sailing into the New Age or heading toward Armageddon, our work is exactly the same: to quiet the drums of fear, speak from a soft heart, and act from our shared humanity.”

“Finally we have to fall on the sword of knowing what we know and stop pretending that we don‘t know it.”

“I learned that when I feel hurt or angry, it is always because one of my top three tunes is playing in the background of my mind: I‘m a victim, I‘m unworthy, and there‘s never enough.”

“Finally I understood that if I truly longed for peace and lightness, clarity and joy, I didn‘t have to wait; I could have them now. If I wanted to feel like I was allowed to take up space here on earth, I could occupy the space I already had. And if I wanted to know who I was on the deepest level,I could keep bringing my attention back to the blaze of life force before my attention constellated around a thought or a story.”

“Before you became what you needed to be to be loved, you knew the holiness of trees and water and rocks. You knew adults were a bit mad, but you loved them anyway. You had no doubt, not one, about who you were; you had wings, and now you have them again.”

“Disengaging from this voice requires a willingness to consider that we‘ve spent our lives hoodwinked by suffering, and that it‘s possible to be free...Being free takes first realizing we are in prison, and questioning what imprisons us. Peace takes naming what keeps us unruffled. Joy takes realizing what separates us from it and challenging our familiar stories.”

“There are many ways of truth-telling, but the best way I know is to ask questions and be relentlessly honest in answering them.”

“A breath, when you are noticing it, takes eons to fill your chest and leave it....you can‘t help being aware of the life force that expresses itself through this fragile body...when you fully drop into what you see or feel in your body, time falls away because it has no relevance. You cannot help but open to what gives it radiance: eternity itself—4.6 billion years of stardust. And we have it because we are it.”

“How we get there is who we will be when we arrive there.”

“Fear isn‘t a monster; it‘s a feeling. And like any feeling, it passes. Fear can be felt, held, dissolved by naming it, feeling its location in our bodies. Instead of avoiding fear we can do what is counterintuitive: welcome it and notice that the part that allows fear is much bigger than the fear itself.”

“The heart of any addiction—drugs, alcohol, sex, money,food— is the avoidance of pain coupled with the unwillingness to acknowledge that the behavior and it‘s consequences serve us even as they destroy our lives. They keep us distracted from the original pain by creating another, possibly life-threatening situation.”

“...the second we name what we are doing, the second we pay attention to it, we are no longer merged with it.”

Saturday night reading 🎉🥰📖

This book is a bit of a mixed bag for me. It started off well but loses its way. There are some good insights such as the issues people (especially women) have with personal boundaries, & the tendency to self-sabotage, but then it becomes confusing.

The message seems (to me anyway) “Love and accept yourself......but you should really lose some weight”. I was expecting something more radical than this. 3⭐️

Truth!

I LOVED this book! I am a big Geneen Roth fan, and This Messy Magnificent Life did not disappoint. She has such amazing insights on food, self confidence, forgiveness, presence, love, and womanhood. Seriously, I would recommend this book to anyone!

I‘ve never read anything by this author. Anne Lamott recommended her & that‘s why I grabbed the book. Her pearls of wisdom apparently fell before swine because I can‘t say I got much out of it. In fact, it produced a great deal of envy, which I think is the opposite of what she was going for. Hearing of all the spiritual retreats she attended in spectacular places made me particularly jealous. Photo is from a garden tour I attended this weekend.

😳🤔😂😂😂

I really enjoy Roth's self-help views (especially that our eating habits are so intertwined with how we feel about ourselves). However, I felt like this was pretty much the same book as "Women, Food, and God." There didn't seem to be any really groundbreaking insights that she hasn't already covered. It was an interesting read, but kinda the same old same old. #arc ⭐️⭐️⭐️

As always, her wisdom is vast and what I really needed to hear. ❤️
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Me, me, me, me—SO me #selfhelp

So much of my reading is dictated by “what‘s available?” So I was going to read the new Maisie and get it back in circulation at the library but THEN I got an email that “Dark Matter” was ready at Libby but THEN my hold for “Little Fires Everywhere” arrived in my work mailbox and THEN I spotted the new Geneen Roth and an #ARC is in the mail 😱

I have a Messy Magnificent Reading Life. #librariansoflitsy

A bit repetitive if you‘ve read her other books but still a lovely reminder of some basic principles of mindfulness and mindful eating.

⭐️⭐️⭐️

#mindfulness #audiobook #audiobooklove

1. Playing with Fire by Lawrence O‘Donnell was my last five-star read. It‘s about the 1968 elections and, although heavy and dense reading, it was fascinating.
2. Apparently I don‘t give one-star reviews—I couldn‘t find one. 😜 So the tagged book was my last two-star rating.
3. Stepmonster—-just kidding—we‘re a very happy family. It would probably be She Had Magic Hands because that‘s what my massage clients tell me.
4. All my newer followers!

Roth‘s advice is great, and the world needs her perspective. But for me, the four hours of listening was succinctly summed up in the fifteen minute epilogue. Just a so-so audiobook for me.

My not-so-reviewy review is at www.TheBibliophage.com

#thebibliophage2018

Starting a new audiobook today. Geneen Roth is one of my favorite self-help authors. I think I‘ve given away more copies of her books than any other nonfiction.

To say I am excited about reading this is an understatement. I have read all her books and adore every word she writes. Truth, wisdom, love, grace, forgiveness... such goodness all in one place. #amreading #soexcited