Time Off in France

The Wise Child by Sonia Choquete is a wonderful book for you, your family and your children.

Sonia tells us how to guide our children and nurture their intuition so that we all live in peaceful, loving, safe homes and communities without fear. Through her stories, tools, tips and exercises taping into your kid's intuition and wisdom as well as your own we can learn to help our children follow their intuition for the rest of their lives.

Sonia explains how we often have had our own intution squished as children by loving parents, simply ignoring our statements of how we feel "good vibes" or "bad vibes" about people, things, places, and situations. Creating a language in which you and your family speak about what your intuition is telling you allows a child to express themselves without having to explain what they mean. In one story, she talks about her daughter saying she wanted to go home from a 4th of July Fireworks display. She just felt bad vibes and was scared. Her mom took her home and left her husband and other daughter (who was more resilient to noise remain, being aware of taking extra careful around the fireworks. Fifteen minutes later her husband came running in their house stating that their was an accident and the firework tipped over and misfired. Luckily no none was hurt. 

More and more stories and tools are provided that illustrate the benefit of families and kids learning to use their intution to protect themselves and have more joy in their lives in this world. One more sense to use that makes alot of sense to me.

This month I have read three great books. All different...

 Eat, Pray, and Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert, 2006, Viking Books

Gilbert’s best selling adventure through Italy, India, and Indonesia is based on the notion of a woman trying to heal herself from a severe emotional and spiritual crisis. A wonderful book for listening in to her crisis and exploration of self.

JuliaRoberts is actually making the movie so I recommend reading it first or you will only picture Julia traveling the globe.

Two Lipsticks and a Lover by Helena Frith Powell

This book is out of the UK, so you might only find it on the amazon.uk website. Helena a journalist takes on the notion of unlocking your inner French woman with witty tales of her interviews with famous french stylists, journalists, politicians, and the like. Living here she has answered many questions I have had about why French woman are the way they are (difficult to make friends with them) how they always look so stylish, how they treat the indiscretions we here so much about, and how to wear that infamous scarf. A great rid and truly informative!

Slow is Beautiful by Cecile Andrews

A very different book about the new Slow Movement, taking off of Slow Food and other such movements I haven't heard of.. She expands from the Simpicity movement to taking about how our fast pace society is destroying life as we knew it... hello!!! What's interesting is her approach and research which makes you think and wonder. Surprisingly she explains how the biggest predictor of lifespan is that the larger the gap between the rich and the poor the shorter the average lifespan in that country. The USA evidently has been falling and is far behind countries like Switzerland, France, Norway, and Japan..

Secondly, I had to chuckle at her entire section on Leisure and all the research that has been done but no one knows about. Voila! Having a BS and MS in Recreation and Leisure studies I knew this all along!

. If you are interested in new visions of community, leisure and joie de vivre take a read and I think you will enjoy it.