A Woman's Path: Women's Best Spiritual Travel Writing

by Lucy McCauley (Editor), Amy G. Carlson (Editor), Jennifer Leo

A Woman’s Path presents inspiring stories of spiritual growth and awakening, written by some of the world’s finest women writers. From New Mexico to Niger, Israel to Ireland, India to Chechnya, the wide range of stories in this enthralling collection touch on common themes—letting go, opening up, finding an inner peace. Through these tales, we see again and again the grand and subtle ways that travel awakens us, nudging important questions to the surface, directing us to view life from new angles. And while many of these stories take place while on the road, for others the change of location is purely inward—a new frame of mind, an opening of the heart, a shift in the soul.

Genres: Travel, Spirituality, Nonfiction, Essays, Writing, Memoir, Adventure

288 pages, Paperback

First published August 5, 2003

Reviews

[Carolyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Inspiring, educational, geographically interesting, Social -human interest, this book has all this and more from a miraculous beginning to dealing with ones own demise. From Christian, Catholicism, Jewish Tradition, and also Hindu, Pagan, Buddhism, and New Age Spiritualism. Women Authors like Anne Lamott discuss the greatest spiritual awakenings and reaffirmations of their lives thus far. I love this and it's going back on my shelf for future references.

[Zinta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Appropriately, "A Woman's Path," a collection of women's spiritual travel writing, was a Mother's Day gift from my daughter. I am a writer, too, frequently writing about my journeys across physical geography but equally spiritual terrain. Nothing explores us as much as our exploring of the world around us. Travel means a stretching of our personal comfort zones, as we leave our homes and our routines far behind.

In the more than 30 essays in this collection, women of a wide array of backgrounds perceive the world around them with uniquely feminine perspectives. Authors as known and respected as Anne Lammott, Maya Angelou, Natalie Goldberg, Diane Ackerman, and many others tell of their journeys, inner and outer ones, as they deal with joy, grief, discomfort, sickness, achievement, healing, and enlightenment. Destinations are as varied as Peru, India, France, Ireland, Greece, New York City, Niger, Poland, the Appalachian Trail, and others. These are women undergoing a spiritual transformation, and their travel essays take us along, to be transformed by their accounts. They take on their journeys as women and only women do, coping with societal expectations and prejudices, dealing with the fears of being a woman in the wild, finding courage when all falls down around them. As women do.

I have always believed the best training for life is to travel. Travel teaches us to stretch ourselves. Travel reveals the differences between us and everybody else, instilling understanding of the cultures varied from our own, and then again, travel soothes with the discovery of how alike we all are in our bonds of humanity, crossing all boundaries of class, culture, religion, ethnicity. Travel builds courage, as we are inevitably faced with our fears, only to overcome them. Travel connects - the traveler with the world and its inhabitants, with nature and spirit, with the divine in ourselves and outside of ourselves. The world is surely the best classroom.

If I have only one "wince" about this collection, it is the sidebar boxes interspersed throughout the essays. Each box has a clip by some other author than the one of the essay, the themes often disconnected from the main story. They drew my eye away just when I was immersed in someone's journey. I would suggest deleting them, or transforming them into epigrams prior to each essay.

"A Woman's Path," edited by Lucy McCauley, Amy G. Carlson, and Jennifer Leo, is a pilgrimage to be enjoyed by every woman who reads it, whether on the road herself, or from her armchair, traveling in spirit.

[Carrie · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was not what I expected and the places traveled to here are even adventurous by my standards. It is more about alternative spirituality that occurs as a result of travel.



Author: Anne Lamont, Maya Angelou and others
Publisher: Travelers' Tales
Copyright: 2003
Genre: Spirituality/Women's Travel
Pages: 243
Date Read- 2/11/09 to 2/16/09



Quotes
__________
p.xv
In the act of moving from one place to another, somehow a space is created where, if we're lucky, a moment of clarity alights on us and offers a window into our natures, and the nature of everything around us. Travel to distant places has a way of opening a path inward- to possibitity-to memory, even. ~Lucy Mc Cauley

p.xvi
The act of travel is a potent way in deed of calling forth that inner knowledge. To relearn what we already know on the deepest level; to wake up to it and allow it to change us. ~Lucy Mc Cauley

p.4
I discovered, you do not need to know what you are looking for, only that you are looking for SOMETHING. ~Janine Pommy Vega, Tracking the Serpent: Journeys to Four Continents

p.134
Tibetan Buddhists say that a person should never get rid of their negative energy, that negative energy transformed is the energy of enlightenment, and that the only difference between neurosis and wisdom is struggle. ~Natalie Goldberg

p.165
True joy s a form of ecstasy, a state of being out of our ordinary minds. In the words of St.Augustine (Psalms 99:3) joy is a "song of the soul," a spontaneous response of the human spirit when it is able to step away beyond the confines of its own ego and find itself in the presence of God. ~ Irma Zaleski

p.183
I've come to believe that some prayers are unanswered before you utter a word, that sometimes solutions appear before you realize you have a problem, that healing tools are made available to you long before an illness takes hold. Knowing what to do with those tools is a matter of trusting your deep inner knowing, the God within. Healing then become a matter of faith in your deepest longings, in your truest self. ~ Kim Tinsley

[Renee · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have to confess that I doubt I'm going to finish this one. This collection of essays promised to be entertaining and enlightening, but after reading 3/4 of the way through, I found little of either. There were a few "wow" moments (Kim Tinsley's journey through Gnawa), and the writing of all individuals involved is superior, but after a while I found myself not caring. Which is awful, because these are supposed to be really profound moments (and I'm sure they were in some cases), but it just didn't translate too well. I think they were hampered by the size of the essays--each would have done better to write her own book, and then you'd have 20+ women doling out books on par with Eat, Pray, Love rather than a handful of essays that feel unfinished. All in all, pick this up if you want quick snapshots into the life of other women, but if you need something substantial, find a full-length book.

[Cathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this collection of travel essays with a spiritual component by women travel writers. Some of my favorites were: "Encounter in the Sea" by Diane Ackerman; "Fire and Holy Water" by Peggy Payne; "Prayer for the Wounded World" by Joan Halifax; and "Train Ride to Wisdom" by Natalie Goldberg.

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed some of the stories in this book. Several women contributed travel tales of their own, and some of them I could really connect with and some I felt like I just wasn't at a point in my life where they made sense to me.

[Lindsay Vigue · Rating 3 out of 5]

These short essays are easy reads. They are a joy to read in that they are the little glimpses into the magic of both spiritual connections and travel. Some of the writing is better than others. And in my opinion, Maya Angelou stands out as the best. I just adore her to begin with.

[Lychee]

Had planned to use this as fodder for NaNoWriMo writing, but am enjoying it on its own merits.

[Babs · Rating 2 out of 5]

A real mix of the good, the bad, and the ugly in travel writing. Hip, hip, hooray for the short story format. More than one tale needed to come to an end in short order.

[Katy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is not just for women, it for anyone who enjoys exemplary writing about traveling the world to discover the world within.

[Cathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some really moving travel stories. Some were more mundane than expected, but many offered some real and new insight.

[k8beeZ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great little essays of travel.

[Mily · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this very much. I find travel to be such an adventure and at times a challenge.
Nice variety of female voices on spiritual journeys.

[Jacquelyn Fagan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some stories are quite good in this book of short stories.

[Tracey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting perspectives--the definition of "spiritual" gets a little stretched from time to time.

[Djdee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some stories were very inspiring and some were not.

[Juanita · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a terrific book to read with a group of women. Our conversations have been rich and deep.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid anthology of women's spiritual writing (although, as some reader have noted, the genre of spiritual writing is stretched a bit in some of the essays).

[Stacey McLarty · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve read and re-read this book. The stories of women on their spiritual and physical journeys always entertain an provoke thoughts in the reader.

[Sherilyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perfect book to escape to somewhere with another woman friend. Time to reflect. A pause in the day.

[Grace Mc · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was craving an armchair traveling adventure, and this book delivered. It took me all over the world through a collection of essays written by women. I love how varied the stories and their settings were, and I gained some profound insights into the human condition through several of the essays. Go Beyond! by Abigail Seymour and Trusting the Trail by Kelly Winters are two standouts to me, as they both delve into the struggles of living in the modern world and how travel can be a respite from it all. Perhaps I need a walking holiday...

[Deborah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Many interesting stories of women travelers.

[G · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent, I give this book away to all my friends.

[etherealfire · Rating 5 out of 5]

Library paperback