Finding Your Way Home: A Soul Survival Kit [Paperback]

Melody Beattie (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 26, 1998

What does it mean to feel at home, truly present with ourselves, comfortable with our choices, and alive to the possibilities of conscious change? How can we develop inner balance and connection, keeping our boundaries clear while opening our hearts to those we love? With practical wisdom and insight, Melody Beattie addresses these questions, encouraging us to reach a higher level of living and loving, and showing us how to be at home with ourselves wherever we are in the world, at whatever stage of life.

Through true stories and take-action exercises, including journaling, visualizations, affirmations, meditations, and prayers, Beattie provides the essential tools to help us discover our own sense of home. Accessible and illuminating, Finding Your Way Home is a soul-searching look at how not to be victimized by ourselves′or other people. Beattie urges us to discover new levels of integrity, to break through barriers that have blocked us for too long. This is a powerful and challenging book about buying back our souls and learning to live a life guided by spirit.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In 1986, Beattie's Codependent No More spoke with a previously unheard voice, naming and describing a dysfunctional way of living that many people identified with but that had never before been publicly acknowledged or understood. Breaking that new ground made the book a bestseller and something of a cultural phenomenon. The author of several books since then (Stop Being Mean to Yourself, etc.), Beattie covers only familiar ground in this digest of the most popular New Age spirituality writings of the past decade. Using eight "doctrines," 12 "remedies" and many "activities," visualizations and "mantras" (ordinary self-help affirmations), she addresses the search for "who we are and who our souls want to be," the power of thoughts and words, chakras, intuition, electromagnetic waves of energy, synchronicity, the clearing of emotions, angels, the quest for God within oneself and the ability to work "with the powers of the universe to cocreate what is desirable and necessary and in our highest good." As always, she personalizes her topics by writing autobiographically, but here in an often vague and general way, and only rarely crediting the sources (which readers of New Age and self-help books will immediately recognize) of her ideas, seeming to imply that they are original. Beattie's writing style is far more polished than it was in 1986, but her message this time lags behind, rather than pushing ahead, of those espoused by many others. $40,000 ad/promo; author tour.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Popular self-help author Beattie (e.g., Stop Being Mean to Yourself, LJ 6/15/97) again captures the zeitgeist with this combination narrative/toolkit for discovering emotional and spiritual power. Beattie bills herself as a "spiritual journalist" who tunes into stories dominating the emotional landscape. About finding your way home, says Beattie, "It's an idea emanating from the soul, from the deeper part of us, an idea that's found its time." Part 1 lays the groundwork. In Part 2, Beattie outlines eight basic beliefs to remember for staying on track. The third section encompasses 12 remedies, i.e., actions to take when pitfalls appear. Throughout, Beattie includes stories from her own journey, plus activities, journal entries, mantras, prayers, and visualizations to expand personal growth while offering understanding, comfort, and challenge. Recommended for public libraries, especially where self-help, 12-step, and Beattie's prior books have large followings.?B.J.M. Salovaara, Chicago P.L.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: HarperOne; 1 edition (August 26, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0062511181
• ISBN-13: 978-0062511188
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #21,951 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #93 in Books > Self-Help > Self-Esteem

More About the Author

Melody Beattie is one of America's most beloved self-help authors and a household name in addiction and recovery circles. Her international bestselling book, Codependent No More, introduced the world to the term "codependency" in 1986. Millions of readers have trusted Melody's words of wisdom and guidance because she knows firsthand what they're going through. In her lifetime, she has survived abandonment, kidnapping, sexual abuse, drug and alcohol addiction, divorce, and the death of a child. "Beattie understands being overboard, which helps her throw bestselling lifelines to those still adrift," said Time Magazine.

Melody was born in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1948. Her father left home when she was a toddler, and she was raised by her mother. She was abducted by a stranger at age four. Although she was rescued the same day, the incident set the tone for a childhood of abuse, and she was sexually abused by a neighbor throughout her youth. Her mother turned a blind eye, just as she had denied the occurrence of abuse in her own past.

"My mother was a classic codependent," Melody recalls. "If she had a migraine, she wouldn't take an aspirin because she didn't do drugs. She believed in suffering." Unlike her mother, Melody was determined to self-medicate her emotional pain. Beattie began drinking at age 12, was a full-blown alcoholic by age 13, and a junkie by 18, even as she graduated from high school with honors. She ran with a crowd called "The Minnesota Mafia" who robbed pharmacies to get drugs. After several arrests, a judge mandated that she had to "go to treatment for as long as it takes or go to jail."

Melody continued to score drugs in treatment until a spiritual epiphany transformed her. "I was on the lawn smoking dope when the world turned this purplish color. Everything looked connected--like a Monet painting. It wasn't a hallucination; it was what the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous calls 'a spiritual awakening.' Until then, I'd felt entitled to use drugs. I finally realized that if I put half as much energy into doing the right thing as I had into doing wrong, I could do anything," Beattie said.

After eight months of treatment, Melody left the hospital clean and sober, ready to take on new goals: helping others get sober, and getting married and having a family of her own. She married a former alcoholic who was also a prominent and respected counselor and had two children with him. Although she had stopped drinking and using drugs, she found herself sinking in despair. She discovered that her husband wasn't sober; he'd been drinking and lying about it since before their marriage.

During her work with the spouses of addicts at a treatment center, she realized the problems that had led to her alcoholism were still there. Her pain wasn't about her husband or his drinking; it was about her. There wasn't a word for codependency yet. While Melody didn't coin the term codependency, she became passionate about the subject. What was this thing we were doing to ourselves?

Driven into the ground financially by her husband's alcoholism, Melody turned a life-long passion for writing into a career in journalism, writing about the issues that had consumed her for years. Her 24-year writing career has produced fifteen books published in twenty languages and hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles. She has been a frequent guest on many national television shows, including Oprah. She and her books continue to be featured regularly in national publications including Time, People, and most major periodicals around the world.

Although it almost destroyed her when her twelve-year-old son Shane died in a ski accident in 1991, eventually Melody picked up the pieces of her life again. "I wanted to die, but I kept waking up alive," she says. She began skydiving, mountain-climbing, and teaching others what she'd learned about grief.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Encourages Self Reliance w/in a Spiritual framework, July 7, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Finding Your Way Home: A Soul Survival Kit (Paperback)

I've read many of Ms. Beattie's books before. Her candor is her greatest strength. In this book, she explores being human and believing in God. It is a very refreshing viewpoint. There is no psycho-babble. Some of it is a bit new-agey but overall, it is very practical. It touched on many issues I still deal with even though I've been out of a abusive & alcoholic family for 11 years. The work she recommends and the affirmations make me feel like I can take care of myself w/o therapy or self-help books. I realized I am not alone in my struggles. Ms. Beattie's forthrightness and conversational style lend to the intimacy of the book. When she shares her difficult moments and her associated comments, it is comforting to realize that our own experiences and related emotions are more normal that society would have have us believe. I especially enjoy her "walk with God" approach. It is that mindfulness that has inspired me the most.

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book is a blessing!, February 12, 2005

By 

Jennifer Lanier (Las Vegas, NV USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Finding Your Way Home: A Soul Survival Kit (Paperback)

This is one of those books that seems to have just came to me somehow. These are the books that I needed the most. I love this little book. I didn't really know I was lost until I read it. But after I started reading it, I started crying and all of these emotions were coming to the surface. Emotions that had been holding me back and weighing me down my whole life. It's touching, it's helpful, it's inspiring, and it's well-written and personal. I've read a lot of self-help books or books to help you find God, but this book was like none of the other books I've read. It is sweet, to the point, and it hits your emotional trigger points in a gentle manner, but effectively. This book is full of love! And once you read it, you will be thankful for the love that it awakens in your heart. The main things I gained from this book are the ability to forgive myself and the realization that I truly am NOT alone. I realized that I plow through life often scared, uncertain of who I am or what my purpose is, and too often unsure if God is really with me. After I read some of this book, my heart felt free from the heavy burdens that I had carried my whole life. This is a great book!

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I Know Where My Home Is, April 13, 2001

By 

"mrica" (Weston, wv USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Finding Your Way Home: A Soul Survival Kit (Paperback)

Melody suggests reading the book through and then going back and reading it again to complete the activities. Well, that's how I started, but I connected so much with her introductory descriptions of how people have a sense of not belonging that I knew this book was written for me, for this moment of my life. It took me three weeks to read the book the first time. I read "Finding the Right Path" five mornings in a row. NOW I'm ready to go through this book again. "Finding Your Way Home" is exactly what the cover promises: a soul survival kit - tools for discovering your emotional and spiritual power. Melody's words and activities have helped me find an awareness and excitement about staying in the present.