Read an Excerpt

INTRODUCTION:

How and Why to Read This Book

It's pouring, you had a miserable day at work, you got stuck in a traffic jam, and theonly message on the answering machine is a wrong number.

You're late picking up the kids from day care, you've got a splitting headache, thepaper grocery bag splits as you walk to the front door, and you can't remember thelast time you had any time to yourself.
You're exhausted but you won't take time off because everyone is counting on you.The phone rings, you agree to volunteer for another community fund-raiser, but asyou reach to hang up, your back goes out and you end up in bed for a week.
All your friends are out of town, you haven't had a decent date in months, yourroommate ate the last piece of pizza, there's nothing on TV, you don't feel like reading....

Now, what do you do?

1. Buy a gallon of double chocolate chip ice cream and eat the whole thing?
2. Call your mother, who will tell you to stop whining, which will only make you feel worse?
3. Sleep for a month?
4. Pick up The Woman's Comfort Book: A Self-Nurturing Guide for Restoring Balance in Your Life.

Why Nurture Ourselves?

Because self-nurturing is vital. Women take care of others every day. But how often do we turn our wonderful nurturing ability toward ourselves?

Self-care is essential for our survival, it is essential as the basis for healthy, authentic relationships, it is essential if we honestly want tonurture the people we care about.

Self-care is not selfish or self-indulgent. We cannot nurture others from a dry well.

We need to take care of our own needs first, then we can give from our surplus, our abundance. When we nurture others from a place of fullness, we feel renewed instead of taken advantage of. And they feel renewed too, instead of guilty. We have something precious to give others when we have been comforting and caring for ourselves, and building up self-love.

Why We Don't Take Care of Ourselves

The synonyms in my thesaurus for nurturing are female, feminine, gentle, ladylike, tender, and womanly! As women, we are taught to meet everyone else's needs before we nurture ourselves. And as we are groomed into compliant beings, we come to believe that the people in our lives will anticipate and meet our needs as we do theirs. When this does not happen, we begin to feel we have no right to our needs and desires. Add to this the fact that as women we have not traditionally been taught to care for our self-esteem or to value ourselves as independent, worthwhile people. What we end up with is women who are experts at nurturing others -- until we drop of exhaustion or illness or escape into excessive drinking, shopping, or eating. We are goaded into devaluing self-nurturing. We either end up believing we don't deserve self-careor, if we do, that it must be the last thing on our mighty list of Things To Do.

Defining Comfort and Self-Nurturing

I define comfort for the purpose of this book as that warm, safe feeling you get from lying in bed watching the rain fall, knowing you don't have to go out of the house if you don't want to. Comfort is also that vital, connected feeling you get when you talk openly with your partner or a close friend. Comfort is a place to fortify yourself for upcoming or ongoing struggles and for the challenge of inner work.

I define self-nurturing as having the courage to pay attention to your needs. Nurturing also means empowerment, the power that comes when you stretch and fulfill a goal. And finally, nurturing is celebration, taking the time to applaud being alive, being you.

Above all, I define nurturing and comfort as self-acceptance. When we finally learn that self-care begins and ends with ourselves, we no longer demand sustenance and happiness from others for our well-being. In healthy self-care, we can find the freedom to choose and direct our own lives, and that is nurturing indeed.

Why I Wrote the Book

Four years ago I thought my life had fallen apart. The crumbling started with a skiing accident. In the two years that followed, I battled depression, a creative block the size of Texas, and my body rebelling against me. I broke up with my partner of five years. I sold my house and moved into a 600-square-foot guest house owned by nice people who drove me immediately crazy. My dog bit me. I lost the money I had made on my house in the stock market crash. I wrecked my car. My uncle died. But worst of all, I couldn't write. My slim career as a screenwriter faded away.

My life ground to a halt. I could barely function. But that didn't stop me from running a constant litany of self-hate and regret in my mind, while I continued to try to write. I thought I was being brave, pulling myself up by my bootstraps.

I sought counseling and was advised to stop writing. The idea came as such a shock that I remember thinking, "This woman is crazy!" But a few days later, still miserable and not writing, my leg in a brace, I decided to heed her advice. Suddenly I felt a weight lift from my shoulders, and a title, The Woman's Comfort Book, popped into my head.

I now realize that ceasing to write was the most self-nurturing thing I could do. A large part of my problems, culminating in my inability to write, was the result of my putting all my effort into external achievement and placing no importance on caring for myself...

The Woman's Comfort Book. Copyright © by Jennifer Louden. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.