Creating New Life, Nurturing Families: A Woman's Perspective (Called to Holiness: Spirituality for Catholic Women)

When women choose to marry and have children, they start on a daring venture. It takes courage to commit mind, body and heart to another person and to found a family in which the labors and joys, the risks and struggles remain unknown.-From Chapter One What makes a woman a hero? Does she need to possess almost superhuman qualities or an ability to leap tall to-do lists in a single day? Must she grab headlines or set out to save our world? No, says Sidney Callahan. A hero is simply a woman who makes small, daily self-sacrifices out of love for others. Nowhere is this definition more embodied than in the love of wives and mothers for their families. Digging deeply into the various dimensions of women's journeys and discussing love and marriage, sex, mothering, work and transforming joy amidst suffering, Callahan shows how a woman's commitment to the well-being of her husband and children is a participation in the very life of the Trinity. She explores the many ways that a wife and mother pours out her love for her family, as Christ poured out his love for us, and shows how that humbling of yourself, day after day, ensures that God's message of hope and salvation will be passed on to generations to come.

SIDNEY CALLAHAN, Ph.D., author, scholar and licensed psychologist, earned her B.A. in English from Bryn Mawr College, her M.A. in psychology from Sarah Lawrence College and a Ph.D. in social and personality psychology from the City University of New York. She has written books, articles and columns devoted to religious, psychological and ethical questions. She has been a tenured professor of psychology and held visiting chairs of moral theology and psychology at Georgetown University and St. John’s University in New York. She is a Distinguished Scholar at The Hastings Center. She and Daniel Callahan have been married since 1954 and have six children and four grandchildren.