Louise Nayer, a professor at City College and Virginia Lang, the former CEO of the Children's Hospital of San Francisco, have put together a wonderfully creative and easy-to-implement rituals for everyday experiences. The authors believe that these rituals can forge family solidarity and bring meaning to our days and our doings.
Here you will find a wonderful mix of ways to observe holidays, anniversaries and new stages of life. We loved their inventive rituals for a nightly hug, your morning shower, going off to college, voting for the first time, city walks, losing a job, remembering a loved pet, and observing the Day of the Dead.
Here is an example of Lang and Nayer's perspective in this paperback; it is on loss:
"To live a full life is to experience many small deaths, to often tumble out of the comfortable nest of our expectations, to learn about grief. When we find the courage to meet life head on, the loss of a family member, loss of a friend, loss of health, or loss of youth can all be our teachers, the ways we learn the meaning of compassion.
"The pain of loss forces us to think, to discover, and to seek out others, drawing them to us in new and intimate ways. Loss is an entryway to new understandings, an invitation to explore the rain-soaked, rutted roads of our lives, and an admonition to cherish times of comfort and joy."
