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| | Releasing Today
Our Story Of Home: Tales of Longing and Belonging
By Valerie Andrews
In Our Story of Home, 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 storytellersâJane Austenâs plots unfold in the confines of an English drawing room; Herman Melvilleâs desk in Massachusetts faced a hill in the shape of a whale; Virginia Woolfâs novels were meditations on domestic life; Toni Morrison viewed home as the place to wrestle with salvation; the Celtic bard John OâDonohue was enchanted by firelight; and Mary Oliver describes building a miniature house from scraps, crafting it as carefully as she would a poem.
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 KĂźsnacht, 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 folkloreâas well as by traditional crafts, animals, food, and music. These are not mere adornments but vital presences that nourish and enrich our daily lives.
Next, Andrews dissects the grounding aspects of homeâdescribing how music can help us combat loss and grief, how a catâs purr can calm us, and why the ancient Egyptians had a âyear of eating,â 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 hoarderâs 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 placesâ underground and underwaterâat 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.
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| Praise for Our Story of Home
âA guide to the well-lived life, covering everything from our relationships and culture to our place in the natural world.â Isabel Allende
âA 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.â Phil Cousineau
âA 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.â Jean Shinoda Bolen
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Also from Valerie Andrews
Sanctuary: The Inner Life of Home
Featuring contributions from Jean Shinoda Bolen, James Hollis, Tom Singer, Helen Marlo, Gilda Frantz, John Hill and many more
If you want to get to know someone, listen to their story of home. Intimacy builds as we ask: Where do you come from? What did you leave behind? Where do you feel safe? In Sanctuary, these questions are explored by Jungian analysts, architects and historians, scientists, and storytellers. Contributors also consider how climate change, Black Lives Matter, and an unprecedented wave of global refugees are impacting our notions of home and hospitality. |
| | | About the Author Valerie Andrews is a writer and seminar leader specializing in the inner life of home. At the start of the pandemic in 2019, she launched the nonprofit digital magazine, Reinventing Home www.reinventinghome.org
She is the editor of Sanctuary: The Inner Life of Home (Chiron) and author of A Passion for this Earth (Harper). Her articles and reviews have appeared in Jung Journal: Culture and Psyche, Parabola, Vogue, Esquire and New York magazine.
A veteran of 33 moves, Andrews lives with her partner in a Victorian home in Northern California, with too many books, a grand piano that resembles a black swan, and a rambunctious Siberian cat. You can also find her at www.valerieandrews.org |
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