Our Story Of Home

<p><strong>In <em>Our Story of Home</em> Valerie Andrews considers home as the place we cultivate intimacy and creativity. She begins by examining the role home has played for some of our greatest storytellers-Jane Austen's plots unfold in the confines of an English drawing room; Herman Melville's desk in Massachusetts faced a hill in the shape of a whale; Virginia Woolf's novels were meditations on domestic life; Toni Morrison viewed home as the place to wrestle with salvation; the Celtic bard John O'Donohue was enchanted by firelight; and Mary Oliver describes building a miniature house from scraps crafting it as carefully as she would a poem.</strong></p><p></p><p>Andrews explores the deep psychology of home noting that the psychiatrist C.G. Jung had two houses each corresponding to different aspects of his personality--an elegant house in Küsnacht Switzerland where he entertained his colleagues and raised his family and a rustic retreat on the lake at Bollingen which served as a mirror of his inner world. The soul of home has also been shaped by mythology and folklore-as well as by traditional crafts animals food and music. These are not mere adornments but vital presences that nourish and enrich our daily lives.</p><p></p><p>Next Andrews dissects the grounding aspects of home-describing how music can help us combat loss and grief how a cat's purr can calm us and why the ancient Egyptians had a year of eating linking culinary compatibility to conjugal bliss. She also tackles the cult of minimalism. Decorators have largely ignored the flow from order to chaos yet minimalist artists were anything but; their studios were often overcrowded cramped and organized as haphazardly as a hoarder's den. A comfortable home Andrews suggests might be more like a Japanese garden making room for simplicity and abandon. Architects are now designing dwellings in unexpected places- underground and underwater-at the same time technology increasingly intrudes upon our private space. With a housing crisis and climate change to consider as well how can we affirm our sense of home? Andrews champions Slow Housekeeping (an approach to tending the home akin to the Slow Food movement) recounts the virtues of the analog life and encourages us to view household objects as soulful companions. Drawing on a wealth of sources she shows how home can continue to engage our senses spark our creativity and serve as a much-needed refuge in uncertain times. Our Story of Home includes writing prompts at the end of every chapter that will help readers uncover and share their own tales of longing and belonging. Ideal for writing circles and discussion groups this volume is also fully annotated making it a valuable addition to libraries.</p><p></p><p>A guide to the well-lived life covering everything from our relationships and culture to our place in the natural world. <strong>-Isabel Allende</strong></p><p></p><p>A feast of imagination and memory. Our Story of Home will ground you soulfully and psychologically and remind you that making a home is what makes us human. <strong>-Phil Cousineau</strong></p><p></p><p>A rich and much-needed meditation on where and how we live. Andrews draws on myth politics and personal history to explore our lifelong quest for home and community. <strong>-Jean Shinoda Bolen</strong></p><p></p><p></p>