Women and Healing

"A period of healing from childhood wounds frequently occurs for women in their mid-thirties and early forties as the profound changes leading to menopause begin.   I call this seven year period in the feminine life cycle "turning straw into gold".   Therapists often notice that old memories of emotional and physical abuse surface during this period preceding midlife.   It is a miracle of feminine biology that we undergo mental housecleaning in preparation."   Joan Borysenko

Religion vs. Spirituality

"Religions have words to describe themselves, but spirituality has none that do it justice.   It is an experience of deep belonging in which all traces of fear, judgment, guilt separation and doubt disappear just as the darkness is dispelled by the sunrise.   Religion has forms, precepts, rituals, rules and stories that sometimes deliver us to a place of unspeakable sweetness, wholeness and belonging, but it is only the vehicle to get us there.   We have to jump off at the destination, while the train continues to make it's rounds.   If we mistake the train for the destination, we are liable to keep riding around in circles.   For while we don't necessarily need religion to be spiritual, religion can block spiritual experience if we find ourselves hanging on to the train, hijacking the train or trying to blow up the tracks."   Joan Borysenko

Authenticity

"What was most nourishing and authentic for us as children holds a clue to those things that can still sustain our souls as adults."  Joan Boryshennko

Individual Sprituality

"I grew up and healed through a crisis of faith.   Rather than developing more certainty about God, my renewed faith has made me more comfortable with less certainty and more mystery.   God is ineffable and knowable only through the love we share on the journey."  Joan Boryshenko

Women's Friendships

"Women who love God as Father, those who love God as Mother and others who couldn't give a hoot about God's theoretical gender or existence, find themselves sisters on the journey.   Beyond religion or lack thereof, beyond warm fuzzies or cold scars that ideas about God have planted in our minds, the unmistakable perfume of divine belonging envelopes us as we come together as friends."   Joan Borysenko