The challenges we face over the course of a lifetime, especially those that involve major personal loss, can seem devastating, as radio personality and self-help specialist Dr. Raeleen D'Agostino Mautner discovered when her husband suddenly and unexpectedly died of a heart attack. The Italian rituals and lifestyle habits she grew up with—and later began researching—were instrumental in helping her stay grounded, feel comforted, and be gently redirected to a new path of joy and the next level of her own personal transformation.
Lemons Into Limoncello shows readers how to find self-acceptance, comfort, courage, and personal renewal on the heels of adversity—Italian style.
At some point in our lives, most of us will experience the kind of personal devastation that accompanies death of a loved one; or the loss of a job, a home, a pet, finances, health, a friendship; or even the loss of one's self-esteem. When in the throes of such challenges it is hard to believe that we will ever enjoy life again, let alone possibly come away with the courage to live the next phase of our lives with deeper appreciation and clarity. Lemons into Limoncello offers a front-row seat to the Italian ability to arrangiarsi (get by) through elevating ordinary events to the extraordinary, and is the first self-help book to prescribe a traditional Italian cultural approach as a pathway to one's own personal renaissance at a time when it is most needed.
Raeleen D'Agostino Mautner, PhD, is a self-help specialist who advocates preserving Italian cultural wisdom and traditions as the road to physical and emotional well-being. She is an internationally acclaimed author, speaker, and radio personality. Dr. Mautner is the producer and host of The Art of Living Well weekly radio show on WNHU 88.7FM (www.wnhu.net), called 'The show that can change your life' by the New Haven Register. She served as a behavioral expert and media and PR strategist for several studies at Yale University and also taught stress reduction strategies for a cardiac study at Yale.
A dual citizen of the United States and Italy, Dr. Mautner holds a PhD in educational/cognitive psychology and an MA in general/clinical psychology. In addition to an Italian cultural approach to self-help, she also specializes in psychology self-help techniques rooted in research. Her doctoral dissertation involved a U.S.?Italy comparison on body image disturbance. She is a former psychology professor and author of Living la Dolce Vita: Bring the Passion, Laughter, and Serenity of Italy into Your Daily Life (Sourcebooks, Inc), which has been translated into several languages. Dr. Mautner has also written articles for Psychology Today, the Chicago Tribune, eDiets.com, Quirk's Marketing Research, Fra Noi, and Italian America and is a former columnist for American Oggi and the Italian Tribune. Her work has been cited in Seventeen.com, Family Circle, First for Women, Mind/Body/Spirit, Elle, and Weightwatchers.ca. She has appeared on national radio and television and has given presentations in the United States and Italy. Dr. Mautner now conducts resilience retreats in Italy, which you can find out more about by going to her blog at http://raeleenmautner.com.
