The Woman's Field Guide to Exceptional Living

Reviewed by Sarah Benoit

Paperback: 179 pages

• Publisher: Morgan James Publishing (April 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 160037395X
• ISBN-13: 978-1600373954
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 5 x 0.8 inches

In today’s modern world reading has become a luxury for many of us. Radios, TV’s, computers, iPods and DVD’s demand so much of our time and attention. For me reading has to be done quickly and with my busy work schedule in mind. The content must be valuable and useful to my every day life, but also thought provoking and heartfelt. This is what I uncovered when I picked up The Woman’s Field Guide to Exceptional Living-Practical Steps for Living a Big, Bold, Beautiful Life, the first in a series of books from Corrie Woods.

Corrie Woods, is an author, motivational speaker, retreat leader and self-care coach specializing in work with women. Her experience in these roles is what fuels her first book’s inspirational power and broad appeal. Whether you have walked an intentional journey of self-discovery for years or are just starting out The Woman’s Field Guide to Exceptional Living offers easily executed ideas for shifting out of old patterns and bad habits into a healthier, more joyful experience.

One of the best things about The Woman’s Field Guide is its perfect size. Large enough to write notes and thoughts in, but small enough to effortlessly slip into your purse or lap top bag. Each chapter starts with a valuable quote to peek the reader’s interest. At the end of each chapter one finds blank space for “Field Notes” so as you read the words and exercises Woods has carefully crafted to gently nudge you outside of your comfort zone you can record your thoughts, feelings and attitudes.

Elizabeth Barbour, a life and business coach based in Tallahassee, Florida recently wrote to me about the book after taking some time to review and use it. “I recently started a new book club and I am going to suggest to the group that the next book we read is Corrie’s,” Barbour says, “It’s filled with gems of wisdom, inspiring stories, provocative questions and tangible action steps. What I like about this book is that it gives you ideas and then creates space for you to expand on these and find what’s right for you!” “I like the size of Corrie’s book too. It’s small and compact so I can carry it with me wherever I go and if I am waiting for an appointment, I can pull it out and be inspired by one of her vignettes in less than 5 minutes,” she continues.

Woven into the questions and exercises are personal stories for Wood’s own life told honestly and poetically. Woods is able to create a deep sense of connection between herself and the reader while simultaneously holding space for the reader to continue as the main focus of the book. The connection is so well intentioned and articulated by Woods, you feel both nurtured and accepted for who you are while still being held accountable for your choices and challenged to imagine all the possibilities of who you can be. This is what Woods refers to as “Setting Your Inner Compass to Yes” and “Trailblazing the Experience”.

Speaker, writer, teacher and founder of Clarity Works, Inc. Peggy Tabor Millin calls Woods, “someone who gives priority to walking her talk and who does the inner work necessary to follow her vision.” “Corrie's quiet loving presence holds the space for those around her to learn and heal,” Millin continues, “The Woman's Field Guide to Exceptional Living is a reflection of Corrie's style, inviting us into a supportive environment and trusting us to take responsibility for creating our own exceptional and meaningful lives.”

All in all The Woman’s Field Guide to Exceptional Living is an excellent tool for women of any age or background as long as they are interested in growing, changing and becoming the very best, authentic version of themselves. It walks you through the importance of loving yourself, experiencing passion, expressing gratitude, healing the past, being fully present every day of your life and living life without regret. In conjunction with the release of this first book Woods also provides online resources such as inspirational articles, motivational videos, The Woman’s Field Guide to Exceptional Living blog and of course information on her special self care and personal growth retreats. For more information visit www.WomansFieldGuide.com or contact Corrie directly at corrie@womansfieldguide.com.

Merchant, Carolyn. The Death of Nature : Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution. New York: Harper & Row, 1989.

Reviewed by J. Lee Lehman

Given the interests of Sheville, how could we not stop an acknowledge one of the books that made a difference - a work which has become a modern classic? Originally published in 1980, Merchant's book has recently been the subject of "where are we now" articles, which speaks also to its influence.

The subtitle of the work is "Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution." In fact, the work is far more about the history of attitudes about the environment than about women. The crucial linchpin was Merchant's realization that there was a fundamental disconnect when men adopted a mechanistic world view that simultaneously disempowered nature and women.

The bulk of Merchant's work details the conversion to a mechanistic world view as a result of the triumph of the so-called scientific revolution. Along the way, she discussed the philosophical changes of viewpoint, secularization, and how these attitudes allowed for a shift in the view of both women and nature toward being a disorder: with the development of the witch trials and the decline of midwifery along the way.

In retrospect, how incisive was her analysis of the period? Her work appeared during a period where there was a fundamental revolution going on in the history of science itself. This revolution occurred through the realization that the Renaissance was not so much the "rebirth" it had been named for, as a nexus of a whole series of societal changes, and not just a "steep slope up" in the line of intellectual progress. In fact, the concept of continuous societal progress itself doesn't occur until the 18th century.

Part of this nexus has been over the understanding of how "modern science" developed at all. Prior to the 1970's, the myth among historians of science was that the Renaissance represented a time when the superstitions of the Middle Ages were overturned: whether of Church or of magic or astrology. Within this myth, the witch trials were the last gasp of the Church, and the magi of the period like John Dee and Robert Fludd (not to mention the medicine of Galen) were left behind in the dust of this bolder, secular modernism.

But not so fast. Merchant and many other historians began to realize that this myth could not be sustained by an examination of the evidence - as well as the chronology of when various pieces happened. For one thing, as Merchant correctly enumerated (although she didn't emphasize this point), the witch trials occurred in the Renaissance and later - they are not so much a function of the Middle Ages as the later period. Merchant contextualized this through her observation that, in the breakdown of the Old World Order as the New World Order of mechanistic materialism was occurring, there was a primal fear of disorder and chaos - and it was within this realm that the witchcraft trials can be understood. Merchant quite correctly asserted that the witch trials have to be seen as coming from the same intellectual spring as the pieces of intellectual history from this period that we moderns tend to "like" - a shadow side, or tragic cost, to the changes that produced the scientific revolution.

The past few decades have produced some major changes in the historical study of the witchcraft trials. First, there was the attention of feminists, who publicized the terrible gender discrepancy of the executions, when even contemporaries listed the ratio as 50:1 or 20:1. Gradually, the estimations of the total number of people (primarily women) executed has declined somewhat as quantitative studies have suggested that the phenomenon was much spottier that prior assumptions had been. Many additional ideas have come into play, including some evidence that the advent of this interest by church authorities in witchcraft came at a time of church reform, and must be viewed within the light of this process. But now every theory proposed has to address the gender ratio seriously - and it is harder and harder to see a study of this period which ignores this very unsettling chapter completely.

However, it may be said that in Merchant's eagerness to show how the position of women declined in the very period where it has been typical to tout the genesis of the modern concept of human freedom, she seemed to have missed some key components of Medieval European culture. While women may have been more typically involved in the economies of their families in the "workplace," we cannot forget that it was not considered a civil offense for a man to kill his wife - he was held to have power of even life over her.

What is perhaps most shining in her work, however, was her anticipation of the development of the concept of the sacred in several modern strands of modern environmental philosophy. When Nature is cast aside as something inanimate, merely an object to be exploited, not only do you end up with an environmental mess as tools become adequate for successful raping of the land, but you end up with a spiritual mess as well. This re-sacralization of nature has become a high priority of depth ecology - and Merchant quite rightly called attention to the way that women and nature have been so profoundly linked in our psyches.

The Bridge at the Edge of the World

Speth, James Gustave. The Bridge at the Edge of the World : Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008.

Reviewed by J. Lee Lehman

We are happy to inaugurate our reading list with a work on the environment. Speth doesn't pull any punches about the current state of the environment. He begins by outlining how it is that the environmental movement has had so many successes: and yet, through the same period, the environment has become much more degraded. Ultimately, Speth believes that only change to our capitalistic system can create the level of systemic change needed to move us beyond the degradation.

In the process, he manages a delicate balance. This book could easily have been a post-mortem on the environmental movement. It has, as he points out, often been obsessed with technical fixes to particular problems. But as he says, that would be blaming the victim. He also raises the question of whether it was right for mainstream environmentalism to have chosen to work within the system. Right or wrong, he points out the level of disinformation that has come out of industry and other quarters to water down environmental success, without confronting the rationale itself.

Speth does not believe that solutions are possible within the present economic system - and of course, that was said before the financial collapses that we have seen in recent days. The on issue that perhaps Speth does not dwell upon sufficently is population growth, which complicates everything.

Welcome to Sheville.org Books!

As we are an online magazine for Western North Carolina, we thought we'd love to host an on-line book club. So once a month on Sheville, we're going to announce a book we'd like to share with y'all. We look forward to your comments!