My career as an executive and leadership coach led me to recognize the cost of living in misalignment to what holds meaning for us. This incongruence leads to stress, illness, organizational failures, and a lack of honest connection. My work as a coach, and now designing bespoke, restorative experiences and retreats in Portugal, is to hold space for courageous conversations around meaning, purpose, and human connection. My writing has inspired others to be unapologetic about the life they desire and deserve.
I wrote
The Shaman's Wife: A Mystical Journey of Surrender and Self-Discovery
The Alchemist was one of the first books I read that resonated with my Colombian upbringing around mysticism and spiritual wisdom that I struggled to understand in the context of life in the United States.
Santiago's quest was a metaphor for a journey toward living an authentic life where dreams can come true. Without being didactic, Coelho teaches us that some journeys are worth the cost, even if we discover something new and unexpected.
A global phenomenon, The Alchemist has been read and loved by over 62 million readers, topping bestseller lists in 74 countries worldwide. Now this magical fable is beautifully repackaged in an edition that lovers of Paulo Coelho will want to treasure forever.
Every few decades a book is published that changes the lives of its readers forever. This is such a book - a beautiful parable about learning to listen to your heart, read the omens strewn along life's path and, above all, follow your dreams.
Santiago, a young shepherd living in the hills of Andalucia, feels that there is…
Allende is one of my sheroes in the writing world. Her ability to depict the unseen world of intuition and address the passion that stokes the inner fires of women is unmatched. Her life is an extraordinary journey of love, loss, and resilience during difficult political times in Chile.
In this book, she gives voice to women everywhere who have been oppressed, and they still rise to care for themselves and those they love while striving for the lives they deserve. Calling herself a feminist, she shares how her defiant character was pathologized and, ultimately, how that led her to stand up for herself and other women.
It is both an individual and a collective story about the role of women in the world then and today.
From the New York Times bestselling author of A Long Petal of the Sea comes “a bold exploration of womanhood, feminism, parenting, aging, love and more” (Associated Press).
“The Soul of a Woman is Isabel Allende’s most liberating book yet.”—Elle
“When I say that I was a feminist in kindergarten, I am not exaggerating,” begins Isabel Allende. As a child, she watched her mother, abandoned by her husband, provide for her three small children without “resources or voice.” Isabel became a fierce and defiant little girl, determined to fight for the life her mother couldn’t have.
Homeless following the death of his adoptive parents in a car crash and the subsequent loss of their farm tenancy, Seb decides to enrol as a residential student at the Asklepios Foundation, a College of Natural Medicine, boasting a sanctuary modelled on an ancient Greek healing temple. Spending a night…
While studying for my Leadership Coaching Certification at Georgetown University, I heard Parker Palmer speak and immediately sought out his book.
His concepts of a "circle of trust" and his description of the yearning for an undivided life that encompasses our truth and how we operate in the world helped me navigate my choices and informed my approach to my work with organizational clients.
Through his work, I learned the cost of living a fragmented life and sought wholeness in my life and for my clients.
In A Hidden Wholeness, Parker Palmer reveals the same compassionate intelligence and informed heart that shaped his best-selling books Let Your Life Speak and The Courage to Teach. Here he speaks to our yearning to live undivided lives-lives that are congruent with our inner truth-in a world filled with the forces of fragmentation.
Mapping an inner journey that we take in solitude and in the company of others, Palmer describes a form of community that fits the limits of our active lives. Defining a "circle of trust" as "a space between us that honors the soul," he shows how people…
I was immediately drawn to a fellow Latina's story by virtue of being of Colombian ancestry and experiencing similar mystical and unusual experiences in my family. I have relatives in Colombia who lived through the political violence of the 1980s, and I could understand the dread she described in her book.
The reckoning between a concrete reality and a magical world was part of my writing challenge. I felt as if I had found a kindred spirit who shared a heritage of magic and mystery and the Latina approach to integrating this into our lives unapologetically.
PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • From the bestselling author of Fruit of the Drunken Tree, comes a dazzling, kaleidoscopic memoir reclaiming her family's otherworldly legacy.
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: TIME, NPR, VULTURE, PEOPLE, BOSTON GLOBE, VANITY FAIR, ESQUIRE, & MORE
“Rojas Contreras reacquaints herself with her family’s past, weaving their stories with personal narrative, unraveling legacies of violence, machismo and colonialism… In the process, she has written a spellbinding and genre-defying ancestral history.”—New York Times Book Review
For Ingrid Rojas Contreras, magic runs in the family. Raised amid the political violence of 1980s and…
Hope, Laughter, Survival on the Refugee Trail
by
Eileen Kay,
Dramatic true story with a wacky sense of humor.
Retired English teacher in Budapest meets foreign medical students fleeing the war in Ukraine, producing a sweet and unlikely friendship, spicy soup, and wicked joking. A sense of humor, however dark, can keep us from despair.
Although this is not a book, I found the audiobook insightful and full of practical ideas for those of us who prefer a quiet life. With so much noise and distraction in the world, it is easy to be swept into turbulent tides that take us nowhere.
For those who find the world overwhelming, Susan's 7 steps give us permission to have lives of purpose and meaning without being loud and honoring our preferred approach to life.
Empowering and told from a unique perspective, this globe-spanning memoir of self-discovery and sacrifice has a singular, resounding message for its audience: love is boundless, but it must begin with nurturing oneself.
An extraordinary memoir steeped in spirituality, shamanism, and metaphysics, this is the story of a woman who, through a daring journey of self-discovery, reclaims and embraces her feminine wisdom—and realizes that love is the answer to her lifelong spiritual quest.
South Carolina, 1765. A group of wealthy young friends. A colony terrorized by outlaws. A young woman obsessed.
Jessie Maclaine, the youngest of the group of friends from the Carolina Lowcountry, is a spoiled, passionate girl determined to have her own way and marry Robbie Stewart, who still sees her…
A novel about becoming, healing and courage, which spans over 40 years, interweaving complex characters from different worlds, all gravitating around a common timeless axis: the desire for happiness.
Lia, a tenacious woman who has been working successfully on her own for many years, starts a new project, one that…
