Her Rites

Book excerpt: A daring invitation to discover and claim your identity and purpose, and to embrace the freedom to thrive right where you are “A wise, gentle, and compelling vision of what needs to be consecrated in a woman’s life—the deaths and the births of hope.”—Dan B. Allender, PhD, founding president of the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology Every woman wants wholeness—to be at home in her body, in her relationships, in her life. But women too often feel that they don’t belong to themselves. The path to wholeness, to a woman belonging to herself, is formidable, and women know they can’t travel it alone. Author, teacher, and therapist Dr. Christy Angelle Bauman has dedicated her life to guiding women on this path to meaning and profound joy. In Her Rites, Dr. Bauman takes you into her office and through six transformative exercises: a deep dive into the most common rites of passage in every woman’s life, when she sometimes loses hold of herself but also has a unique opportunity to reclaim herself. • Birth: claiming how and why you came into the world • Initiation: coming of age • Exile: finding yourself • Creation: bringing something new into the world • Intuition: acquiring embodied wisdom that comes later in life • Legacy: living with emotional and spiritual readiness for one’s own death These rites help women to find wholeness and self-knowledge. Included in Her Rites are ritual templates and exercises that Dr. Bauman employs with her clients, which will help any woman incorporate the principles of self-reclamation into her daily life. Dr. Bauman has seen again and again that by learning to pause and to reflect on these key moments, we can come home to ourselves and receive the gift of flourishing.