While leafing through this book, The Ten Things to Do When Your Life Falls Apart by Daphne Rose Kingma, I ran across a section about why she decided to write this book. A friend of her had these dire circumstances happen to her and wanted comfort. The circumstances? Her boyfriend of six years had just announced he was in love with another woman. Her landlord had given her a thirty day notice to vacate her apartment. Her job as a school librarian was being axed as a consequence of budget cuts. She caught her fourteen-year-old daughter smoking dope, then her eighty-three-year old mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's--the diagnosis coming a week before she was going to send her daughter to live with her mom so the purple-haired girl could get a taste of some good old-fashioned stability.
Then, a second friend faced a similar round of maladies; he lost his job, his wife left him, and his financial portfolio had dwindled to less than a third of its original size. On a moment's noitce he'd had to move from the apartment he'd moved into just six months before, and he'd been diagnosed with a slow-moving degenerative disease that would, ultimately, be fatal. The second friend asked for a list of ten things to do to get through this crisis. This is the list the author came up with. She states, "these ten things--and I don't care what you cal them; ways, steps, practices, teachings--are things to do, to stop doing, to think of, to remember, and to become so that you can find your way through this very hard time. Their purpose is to show you that rather than being random assaults from an uncaring universe, the difficulties you are going through have meaning and purpose. Not only is your crisis here to get you to exercise your coping muscles, and therein discover your strenth; your problems also have a larger purpose. And that is to remind you of the quality of being that you truly are--powerful, loving, eternal."
This book will take you on a path of emotional spiritual healing with particular attention to the complex and freqeuntly overwhelming circumstances of our lives right now. The perfect combination of empathic friend, sage counselor, savvy problem solver, and even gallows humorist, Kingma looks straight intot he predicaments so many of us face. She then offers ten deceptively simple yet profoundly effective strategies for coping on practical, emotional, and spiritual levels. The devastating events cannot be changed, but after reading this book you will be, having recovered a sense of equanimity, spirit and strength. Whether you're struggling with money issues, job loss, relationship problems, an unexpected health crisis, or all of the above, this book will light your path and heal your heart.
And, one of the chapter titles in the introduction I'm going to make my personal mantra: It's not your fault, it's your journey.
Sweater Quest by Adrienne Martini is her year of knitting dangerously. For Martini and countless others, knitting is the linchpin of sanity. As a working mother of two, Martini wanted a challenge that would make her feel in charge. So, she decided to make the Holy Grail of sweaters--her own Mary Tudor--whose mind-numbingly gorgeous pattern is so complicated to knit that its mere mention can hush a roomful of experience knitters. Created by reclusive designer Alice Starmore, the Mary Tudor can be found only in a rare, out-of-print book of Fair Isle-style patterns, Tudor Roses, and requires a discontinued, irreplaceable yarn. The sweater, Martinin explains, "is a Knitter's Mount Everest, or curse, and our compulsion. I want one more than I can begin to tell you." 
