Graceful Women

A number of religious movements were born in the United States in the 1970s as refugees from the counterculture sought new ways of living. In 1969 in Los Angeles, teacher Yogi Bhajan founded the Healthy Happy Holy Organization (3HO) and dedicated it to yoga and healthy living. Many members began to convert to Sikhism, Bhajan's faith, and soon the group numbered in the thousands. Graceful Women is the first look at the women who embraced this community as they sought meaning in their lives. Constance Waeber Elsberg follows members of an ashram over an extended period of time--from affiliation, through their first attempts to apply the teachings of 3HO to everyday life, through upheavals and doubts in the community, and finally, to mature formulations of their own purpose and identity. Both long-term and former members speak about the group and the process of adopting Sikhism and participating in such cultural practices as arranged marriages. In studying this group, Elsberg found women building individual and collective identities and using symbols, narratives, and metaphors to participate in a view of the world that stresses an essential unity beneath the conflicts of contemporary life. A regimen including yoga, meditation, and diet helped the women feel that they could control their responses to everyday stress and manage difficult decisions. A central focus of the book is the Sikh Dharma ideal of the "graceful woman" and the ways in which this concept both empowers and constrains women. Women are free to choose their degree of engagement in the public sphere: some build careers, some are active in the 3HO community, some dedicate their lives to their families. Work in community businesses allows many women to combine family and work lives. Curtailing this freedom of choice, however, is 3HO's teaching that women should also be gracious, undemanding, and willing to defer to those in authority. Elsberg places this movement in the context of other alternative religious organizations and provides a brief history of Sikhism, as well as reviewing events concerning Sikhs today. She explores the range of ways in which gender identities are created, transformed, and contested, particularly as a religion from one part of the world is adopted in a completely different country and culture. The Author: Constance Waeber Elsberg is professor of sociology and anthropology at Northern Virginia Community College.

You know her--the good girl. She's the reliable one who shows up every week at youth group wearing a purity ring and a smile. She gets good grades, makes the team, and doesn't need to be told to come home on time. But deep down she is crushed by the weight of the responsibility to be the good one, the smart one, the one who never messes up. With the same candor and gentle spirit she showed women in Grace for the Good Girl, Emily Freeman now gives young women what they need to be free on the inside, no matter what's going on outside. Through an honest look at the roles girls play, she helps them learn to stop trying and start trusting that the Jesus who came to save them also comes to live with them, right here and now.

"Graceful and Grateful: The Secrets of Women Dancing Through Chaos" celebrates women's resilience, gratitude, and remarkable ability to thrive amidst chaos. Through captivating narratives, this book showcases women's unwavering strength and grace as they navigate unpredictable twists and turns, women who refuse to be defined by their circumstances and instead choose to dance with resilience. Offering a roadmap to finding serenity, "Graceful and Grateful" guides readers in embracing life's unpredictable rhythm. It inspires overcoming adversity, finding joy in everyday moments, and cultivating a deep sense of gratitude. This book serves as a beacon of hope and inspiration, reminding us that amidst the chaos, there's always an opportunity to discover beauty, strength, and gratitude. Are you seeking solace, inspiration, and a renewed sense of purpose? If so, then this book is for you. Embark on a transformative journey of resilience and empowerment by picking up "Graceful and Grateful: The Secrets of Women Dancing Through Chaos" today! Grab your copy now and let the dancing begin!

"WOMEN-The Graceful Creations" is an incredible compilation that celebrates the strength and resilience of women. With 36 authors from different states of India, it showcases the diverse experiences and stories of women across the country. The compiler, *BHAT NADIM MUSHTAQ* from District Baramulla [Jammu and Kashmir], has done a commendable job in bringing together these powerful narratives. This book is a testament to the indomitable spirit of women, highlighting their achievements, struggles, and triumphs. It sheds light on the various roles women play in society and the impact they have on the world around them. Through the pages of this book, readers are taken on a journey that explores the multifaceted nature of womanhood.

Graceful Woman Warrior is a gutsy, thought-provoking and deeply moving posthumous memoir about mindfully living and dying with cancer. Forced to take an honest look at her own mortality after a Stage 4 metastatic breast cancer diagnosis, Terri Luanna da Silva started a blog about her journey. Reeling from the recent death of her mother to cancer, visionary Canadian artist, Jeanne Robinson, Terri asked the big questions in her quest to understand the grace lessons contained in the suffering.

A distinctive aspect of Hindu devotion is the veneration of a human guru, who is not only an exemplar and a teacher but is also understood to be an embodiment of the divine. Historically, the role of guru in the public domain has been exclusive to men. The new visibility of female gurus in India and the U.S. today, and indeed across the globe, has inspired this first-ever scholarly study of the origins, variety, and worldwide popularity of Hindu female gurus. In the Introduction, Karen Pechilis examines the historical emergence of Hindu female gurus with reference to the Hindu philosophy of the self, women spiritual exemplars as wives and saints, Tantric worship of the Goddess, and the internationalization of gurus in the U.S. in the twentieth century. Nine essays profile specific female gurus, presenting biographies of these remarkable women while highlighting overarching issues and themes concerning women's status as religious leaders; these themes are nuanced in the afterword to the volume. The essays explore how Hindu female gurus embody grace in both senses--as a feminine ideal and an attribute of the divine-and argue that their status as leaders is grounded in their negotiation of these two types of grace. This book provides biographical profiles of the following female gurus plus sensitive scholarly analysis of their spiritual paths: Ammachi, Anandamayi Ma, Gauri Ma, Gurumayi, Jayashri Ma, Karunamayi Ma, Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati, Mother Meera, Shree Maa and Sita Devi.

“A portrait of self-creation in the vein of F. Scott Fitzgerald”,” (The Wall Street Journal) An Elegant Woman is “a rich exploration of legacy and memory” (Entertainment Weekly) that follows four generations of women against the sweep of 20th century American history. Drawn from the author’s own family history, this powerful, moving multigenerational saga from National Book Award finalist Martha McPhee masterfully explores the stories we tell ourselves, and what we leave out. As Isadora, a novelist, and two of her sisters sift through the artifacts of their forebears’ lives, trying to decide what to salvage and what to toss, the story shifts to a winter day in 1910 at a train station in Ohio. Two girls wait in the winter cold with their mother—the mercurial Glenna Stewart—to depart for a new life in the West. As Glenna campaigns in Montana for women’s suffrage and teaches in one-room schoolhouses, Tommy takes care of her little sister, Katherine: trapping animals, begging, keeping house, cooking, while Katherine goes to school. When Katherine graduates, Tommy makes a decision that will change the course of both of their lives. Told “with an easy grace many historical novels lack” (Los Angeles Times), An Elegant Woman follows one woman over the course of the 20th century, taking us from a drought-stricken Montana farm to a yellow Victorian in Maine; from the halls of a psychiatric hospital in London to a wedding gown fitting at Bergdorf Goodman; from a house in small town Ohio to a family reunion at a sweltering New Jersey pig roast. Framed by Isadora’s efforts to retell her grandmother’s journey—and understand her own—the novel is “sharp, precise, and, yes, elegant” (The Boston Globe) in its gorgeous depiction of one hundred years in a family’s history.

From the very beginning, God looked to girls and women to teach, to lead, to love, to change the world. Learn their stories in this illustrated companion to Caryn Rivadeneira's critically acclaimed Grit and Grace: Heroic Women of the Bible.