Return to the Sea: Reflections on Anne Morrow Lindbergh'S, "Gift from the Sea

In 1955, Anne Morrow Lindbergh gave a gift to millions of women in her much beloved Gift from the Sea. Two generations later, Anne Johnson invites women to discover the beauty and meaning of Lindbergh's timeless "shells" all over again in Return to the Sea. Lindbergh's book revealed how the sea has gifts to give to all who find their lives too busy and out of focus. Using the metaphor of shells to explore the inner spiritual path, Lindbergh gently led her readers to practice simplifying, quieting, shedding, and centering. Today, women are struggling to balance career, family, creative, and spiritual needs. Many of us have long since let go of the idealistic contemplative corner that Lindbergh envisioned, but not of our longing for it. In Return to the Sea, we are led back to Lindbergh's beach where the shells can be our teachers once again. Using experiences from her own spiritual journey-as a mother, career woman, and therapist-Johnson offers her readers a renewed vision of ways to create intentional space in our lives for personal and spiritual growth. Shell illustrations, along with meditations, centering and journal writing exercises, enhance each chapter's reflections on Lindbergh's original shell passages.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh, who will turn 92 in June, is well known for her marriage to Charles Lindbergh, the kidnapping and death of her first child and her wonderful writing. Her most popular book is the beloved Gift from the Sea, the 1955 classic in which she speaks to women about simplifying their busy lives and focusing on inner quiet and peace. Using Morrow Lindbergh's different "seashells," Johnson shares meditations from her own busy contemporary life as a wife, mother, therapist and writer, ending each chapter with a reflective exercise. For example, Johnson writes about the "Sea of Inner Stillness" as the location from which we draw our strength, acceptance and love. Moreover, she writes, "it is in the spiral dance to deep waters of quiet and back to the surface of activity that we experience the joy and rhythm of life. The time for reflection is never over." Johnson's simple reflections on Lindbergh's Gift from the Sea invite readers to step into the waters of Lindbergh's writing.
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