Tag: parenthood

7 books about motherhood from our Literacy and Learning Collection

- Beth Leave a comment

The Literacy and Learning Collection features a wide range of topics to help you navigate family life with infants through teens and beyond. Here are seven books that focus specifically on the experience of being a mom. (Descriptions from the publishers.)

The 30-minute money plan for moms : how to maximize your family budget in minimal time by Catey Hill – Catey Hill has created smart, simple strategies to help you maximize your money in minimal time. Drawing on extensive research on the actual cost of raising a child at each age, she’ll show you how to save in every area of your life, from lowering your grocery bill (without coupons!), to saving on education and childcare, to dealing with high-interest credit card debt, and more. And she’ll show you how to do all that in less than half an hour.

Being happy, raising happy : the empowered mom’s guide to helping her spirited child bloom by Maureen Lake – Being a mom is a lot of work. Being a mom of a spirited child can be exceptionally challenging. Moms who want to change their stress and anxiety levels and make a difference in the lives of their children and family need to take steps towards wellness. Being happy, raising happy is for loving and caring moms who somehow forgot about their own needs, desires, and the impact they want to make in the world and want to start their journey towards revitalizing the mind, body, and spirit.

The Better Mom : growing in grace between perfection and the mess by Ruth Schwenk – Mothering is messy. Our joy and hope in raising children doesn’t change the reality that being a mom can be frustrating, stressful, and tiring. But just as God is using us to shape our children, God is using our children and motherhood to shape us. In The Better Mom, author Ruth Schwenk, herself a mother of four children, says there is more to being a mom than the extremes of striving for perfection or simply embracing the mess. We don’t need to settle for surviving our kids’ childhood. We can grow through it.

Brave new mom : a survival guide for mindfully navigating postpartum motherhood by Jessie Everts – Brave New Mom brings a mindfulness-based approach to new parenthood that encourages self-exploration, self-compassion, self-care, and connection. It incorporates findings from research on postpartum mental health, practices for feeling your best after having a baby, and a warm and compassionate voice for new mothers everywhere. This book gives new moms permission to see, feel, and celebrate their amazing abilities and to gather the support they need.

Help, I’m failing as a mom : the survival guide to raising a child with a mood disorder by Tanya Trevett – Written for parents who want to learn how to live with their child’s mood disorder in a healthier way, author Tanya Trevett shares what she has learned in her fifteen-year journey. Among lessons learned: The secret to letting go of guilt so they can be a better (and happier) parent; Understanding the complexities of mood disorders and why it takes a village; Methods and activities for hope and healing; Rediscovering the joy, pride, and the unconditional love moms have for their children.

The Little Book of Support for New Moms – Doula Beccy Hands and midwife Alexis Stickland know what a challenge it can be to balance self-care with motherhood. In The Little Book of Support for New Moms, they bring together decades of experience to share invaluable tips and tricks to boost confidence and calm frazzled nerves-plus answers to all those questions new moms may be too embarrassed to ask. Tackle the fourth trimester with easy recipes to nourish your postpartum body and five-minute fixes to restore your sense of humor.

Mom Babble : the messy truth about motherhood by Mary Katherine Backstrom – In Mom Babble, Mary Katherine (MK) Backstrom offers up hope, humor, and spiritual inspiration to families in the trenches of parenthood. With laughter, crying, and eye-rolls MK’s, oh so, real essays about raising littles will delight all the not perfect, not always holy, not completely normal, messy, honest and wonderful moms that read them. MK’s conversational approach connects with readers like dear friends cozied up on a coffee date.

 

For Small Creatures Such As We by Sasha Sagan

- Callen Leave a comment

We all deserve holidays, celebrations, and traditions. We all need to mark time. We all need community. We all need to bid hello and goodbye to our loved ones… All our best rituals are a kind of performance about what we need or want most.

Sasha Sagan is the daughter of renowned cosmologist Carl Sagan and writer Ann Druyan, which gave her a uniquely scientific upbringing. Her parents focused on teaching her the wonders of the universe and the powers of critical thinking and the scientific method. When she became a parent, Sagan and her partner had to decide what philosophies and beliefs they wanted to teach their own child, and the result of that decision is her book For Small Creatures Such As We.

Sasha Sagan is presenting a secular worldview,  but is not hostile to religious perspectives. She expresses a warm curiosity and appreciation for the history of religious traditions around the world, and seeks to capture the spirit of religious rituals and festivals in her own life. Accordingly, she focuses each chapter on an aspect of life which has given rise to rituals in different religions: birth, coming-of-age, the changing of seasons, marriage, death, and more. She outlines how different traditions have celebrated these events, and offers meditations on their meaning alongside potential adaptations for secular or personal rituals. At its core, though, Sagan is urging us to really feel and celebrate the magic of being alive, however it works for us as individuals.

I enjoyed this book for the poetic descriptions of what living is, and I was moved by how honestly she talked about loving, losing, and grieving her father. I also thought she gave meaningful perspective on a lot of traditions and rituals that run through our lives. I came away feeling enlightened about the traditions that have shaped my life, and empowered to craft rituals that would add meaning to my own marking of time.

No matter your belief system, I think if you’re looking for a meditative read on how the sacred meets the everyday, there’s something in this book for you.