The Gift of a Year: How Give Yourself Most Meaningful Satisfying Pleasurable Year your Life [Hardcover]

Mira Kirshenbaum (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 27, 1999

The first book to help today's over-committed woman put more of who she really is into her life and in the process find success and fulfillment

The Gift of a Year presents for the first time a revolutionary, grassroots method that shows women how to pluck a year from the busy routine of their lives and find the one thing they can do to achieve fulfillment and change their future. In this inspirational, practical book, author Mira Kirshenbaum gives women all the advice and direction they need to find support and feel supported-and find the necessary time to fit their dreams into the lives they already lead. The Gift of a Year is filled with real-life anecdotes from women who have used Kirshenbaum's program successfully. They talk about what they did with their year, why and how they did it, and what they got out of it. The Gift of a Year will show every woman how to get that magic missing ingredient that will make her life more successful, more fulfilling, and, most of all, more her own.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Mira Kirshenbaum is an individual and family psychotherapist in private practice and the clinical director of the Chestnut Hill Institute in Massachusetts. She is the author of four books, including the phenomenally successful Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay (available from Plume), and has appeared on many national television shows, including The Today Show, Maury Povich, Geraldo, Sally Jessy Raphael, and an ABC News special with John Stossel. She is married, has two grown children, and lives in Boston, Massachusetts.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Dutton Adult; First Printing edition (December 27, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0525945296
• ISBN-13: 978-0525945291
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #818,566 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Mira Kirshenbaum is clinical director of the Chestnut Hill Institute, a center for therapy and research in Boston, and has been treating patients in individual and couples therapy for more than thirty years. She is the author of ten other books, including Our Love is Too Good, To Feel So Bad, Everything Happens for a Reason, and When Good People Have Affairs.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

150 of 152 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars She is writing about my life!, February 21, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Gift of a Year: How Give Yourself Most Meaningful Satisfying Pleasurable Year your Life (Hardcover)

This book is truly inspiring. I am ordering 3 more books to give as gifts to dear women friends who are all experiencing the same "emptiness" that has invaded my life. I seem to have it all: the degrees, the family, the relative financial security that the above all bring, but I have lost myself somewhere along the way. "Quiet desperation", but not knowing why. I have FOUND my answer by reading this book. It isn't magic, it isn't "hocus-pocus", it is identifying ME in my world, and taking a year to re-discover what makes me tick, what made me dream, what made me ME so many years ago. In the process, I'm already becoming a better mother, wife, friend, "employee" ... A MUST READ! Each woman inside herself has a spark, so many of us have let our other-self and other-roles smother that spark. No more. Give yourself the gift of this book, and then the gift of a year to regain that sparkle.

109 of 112 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Life Changing & Uplifting, May 22, 2000

By 

Leiza A. Greenwood (The United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Gift of a Year: How Give Yourself Most Meaningful Satisfying Pleasurable Year your Life (Hardcover)

Mira Kirshenbaum spoke to the suffocating woman inside of me. I know she speaks to all women when she asks, "how does a part of yourself ever turn up missing in the first place?"

This was a gift from my mother for my 25th birthday. As a wife, full-time working mother of a four year old and all around self-inflicted super woman, I had a "sense" that a small part of me (okay a huge part) was slowly drowning in that turbulent sea we call everyday life. I trusted & loved my mother enough that if she felt it was important to give this book to me - than perhaps I better read it. I couldn't have anticipated the amazing transformation my soul would undergo. Through reading this book I was given the tools to find a center again that was in me, rather than outside of myself. I have a renewed anticipation of the wonders my life has to offer me. I have now purchased four copies to give to my closests friends, including my mother. I truly feel that it is that crucial and rewarding for all women to read this book.

If you THINK you need to regain your spirit at the start of this book you'll KNOW you need to by the end.

Be prepared to have a few good crys and to have a weight lifted from your shoulders, namely the world. You really can breathe again and she'll show you how.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A great concept and practical ways of making it happen., November 11, 2001

By 

Kim Foster "Kim" (Goleta, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Gift of a Year: How to Achieve the Most Meaningful, Satisfying, and Pleasurable Year of Your Life (Paperback)

I'd give this 5 stars but I haven't finished it yet. What I have read, however, is a powerful statement and justification of taking some time off for yourself and how that can be done regardless of the demands on your time. The biggest obstacle in our way is our reluctance to be selfish - putting ourselves first for a change and realizing that if we don't take care of us, we really can't take proper care of anyone or anything else.

I'm looking forward to choosing the focus of my year and putting it into practice!