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    Comfort and Joy: Simple Ways to Care for Ourselves and Others
    Comfort and Joy: Simple Ways to Care for Ourselves and Others
    Comfort and Joy: Simple Ways to Care for Ourselves and Others
    Ebook85 pages1 hour

    Comfort and Joy: Simple Ways to Care for Ourselves and Others

    By Colette Lafia

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    About this ebook

    Comfort and Joy is a small book that can engender big and welcomed changes in our lives and our attitude. It's a book to keep handy, to turn to again and again. Lafia offers forty-five vignettes-small stories, pictures of comfort as simple and grand as a plush pillow, a warm cup of tea. Simply reading them is comforting and more than likely to inspire the reader to follow the suggestions in "Cultivating Comfort," which follows each passage. And because she knows that comfort taken and comfort shared make the world a very much better place, in a section called "Applied Comfort," Lafia gives us inspiring ways to take comfort and pass it on.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherInspiration Fountain Press
    Release dateNov 5, 2014
    ISBN9781611879209
    Comfort and Joy: Simple Ways to Care for Ourselves and Others
    Author

    Colette Lafia

    Colette Lafia is a San Francisco-based writer, spiritual director, and retreat leader. A graduate of the Spiritual Directors’ Institute at Mercy Center in Burlingame, California, Colette recently completed the Living School program in the Christian contemplative and mystical traditions guided by Fr. Richard Rohr, Rev. Cynthia Bourgeault, and Dr. James Finley. Colette has a passion for helping people connect more deeply with the presence of the sacred in daily life. She designs and facilitates workshops and retreats for an international audience, has an active practice as a spiritual director, and is an adjunct faculty member at Mercy Center. Colette Lafia is the author of Comfort and Joy: Simple Ways to Care for Ourselves and Others (Conari Press, 2008), named one of the best spiritual books of the year, and Seeking Surrender: How My Friendship with a Trappist Monk Taught Me to Trust and Embrace Life (Sorin Books/Ave Maria Press, 2015). Please visit www.colettelafia.com.

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      Book preview

      Comfort and Joy - Colette Lafia

      Author

      Comfort & Joy: Simple Ways to Care for Ourselves and Others

      By Colette Lafia

      Copyright 2014 by Colette Lafia

      Previously published in print, 2008.

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher or author, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages embodied in critical articles or in a review. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the Publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

      Acknowledgments

      I am deeply grateful to my family, friends, spiritual companions, and teachers who encouraged and supported me on the journey of writing this book. Your comfort, love, and support are at the heart of this project. Thank you.

      I would like to thank Leslie Kirk Campbell, who worked with me on shaping the raw material of this book. A heartfelt thank-you goes to Angeles Arrien for believing in my dreams and helping me to realize them. I would also like to thank Joanna Cotler, for her insight and creative attention to this project, and to Christine Cariati, who provided the wonderful illustrations for this book.

      A special thank-you to Caroline Pincus, my angel, editor, and mentor, who was instrumental in bringing this book to life and providing me with much needed support and guidance. I would also like to thank Jan Johnson, publisher, for her belief in this project and her commitment to bringing meaningful books into people’s lives. I extend a warm thank-you to everyone else at Red Wheel/Weiser and Conari for making this book possible. And a special thanks to Jordan Overby and Maija Tollefson for their attention and work on the design and production of this book.

      And a big thanks to Julie Issac, at http://www.writingspirit.com for inspiring me to bring this book forward as an e-book.

      Introduction: My Comfort Journey

      Cinnamon toast, holding hands, the warmth of sand on bare feet, comfortable shoes, reading in bed, praying, drinking tea every morning, listening to a favorite song. These are some of the simple ways I found comfort during a difficult time in my life.

      When I entered my thirties, I thought my life was on track. I was building a career in education, happily married and intending to have children, and writing fiction with the hope of finding a publisher. From the outside, my life looked rather routine and orderly.

      But the order during those years was only on the surface. By my mid-thirties, my life began to exhibit cracks and chips, the way a clay bowl or cup does over time from use. I felt detached from my job, unfulfilled with my creative projects, and drained from years of struggling to conceive. During this time, my sister, who was only three years older than I, had been diagnosed with breast cancer. In addition to the struggles with my own life, I was faced with the confusion and grief I felt from the intimate and daily involvement with my sister’s struggle and pain.

      By the time I turned thirty-six, my sister had died, and the fragile bowl that held my spirit fell off the shelf and broke into tiny pieces. About six months later, I was sitting in my manager’s office discussing my schedule for the new year when something in me snapped. I can’t do this anymore; I need to resign, I blurted out. She was startled, but not surprised, since my dis- engagement from my job had become apparent. I was relieved to be leaving a job I had outgrown, but the departure was symbolic for me. I was walking out the doors of a place I had entered with so many aspirations, and I was leaving empty-handed, no sister

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