Lessons in Simply Being

Book excerpt: Lessons in Simply Beingis the memoir of a recovering control addict who finds meaning in life after the collapse of all she had clung to. Plunged into despair, she calls upon the skills honed in her thirty-four years as a behavioral scientist and professor at Duke University. She searches for order, change, and meaning as she walks through much of what she most feared (divorce, aloneness, physical disability, her mother’s dementia and dying, and her children’s struggles with cancer). She discovers a mysterious loving presence that permeates her world, even its darkest corners. As she moves deeper into this unknown faith territory and lives what she had never imagined possible, love trumps fear. A troubled mother-daughter relationship transforms into one of mutual mothering. She moves toward understanding, forgiveness, and intimacy with the man whose actions triggered her despair. Her dives into tumult awaken her to the peace within and to a single new lesson to live by: simply be. She is discovering her place within the flow of Spirit that permeates all of life. ,