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 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.

The personal narratives of nine 20th-century Catholic female authors -- Monica Baldwin, Antonia White, Mary McCarthy, Mary Gordon, Mary Daly, Barbara Ferraro, Patricia Hussey, Karen Armstrong, and Patricia Hampl -- speak eloquently about the process of departure from the church and its institutions. This study explores each author's breaking of the taboo associated with women leaving their "proper place." It locates five themes at the heart of all of their narratives: reversal, boundary crossing, diaspora, renaming, and recycling. Debra Campbell grapples with the spirituality of departure depicted by all nine women, for whom the very process of leaving Catholic institutions is a Catholic enterprise. These narratives support the popular maxim that no one ever really leaves the church. In the final chapter, Campbell examines narratives of return, confirming the book's overarching theme that neither departure nor return is ever finished.

The graceful woman is one who is carried on the wings of the eagle to fulfill her duties as a woman and destiny (Exodus 19:4). She is a woman who has humbled herself under the mighty hands of God.1Peter 5:6 She is a woman that is lifted and helped by God.1Peter 5:6 The graceful woman is an unqualified person that is qualified by grace like Queen Esther. Queen Esther had no foundation of royalty but Grace found her and connected her to the foundation of kings and queens and she rose from a maid to a queen. What a favour, I decree that the grace of God would find you and put you above your equals in Jesus name.

Experience the grit and grace of seventeen women of the Bible through creative first-person retellings of each person's story. This book connects preteen girls with the women of the Bible, showing them that they are created in the image of God to do mighty things in this world. Grit and Grace is for girls who long to know where they fit in God's kingdom, who want to know they are made for more than the frilly and frivolous, and that they can make a difference in the world around them. Through stories, reflection questions, and action ideas, the book helps readers become the gutsy, grace-filled girls God made them to be.

In 2016, women still hold a shockingly low 14% of top executive positions in the Fortune 500. Trying to get ahead while operating in a man's world, women continue to face immense challenges, constantly being told how to navigate these treacherous waters in a myriad of ways. Yet the gender gap persists. While working for a tech giant in Silicon Valley, the author was faced with a tough decision--should she lead like her male counterparts or try a different approach? This choice gained her unique insights into how women can break through gender bias and become far more effective as leaders, while helping close the gender gap. In Leading Gracefully, Feminine Leadership expert and executive coach, Monique Tallon, presents neuroscience research that tells us that women's brains are wired for empathy, intuition and collaboration, the same qualities people are looking for in their leaders today. Through her extensive research, she has developed a visionary roadmap for women-The Feminine Leadership Model--that plays squarely to women's strengths. Whether you are a senior level executive, a mid-career manager or just starting out, Leading Gracefully is a must-read for women who want to get to the next level in their career and life. Through personal stories and those of female executives and entrepreneurs from the world of technology, science, retail and non-profits, you will learn how to successfully use 'feminine' strengths combined with traditional traits to breakthrough gender bias. Use it as self-coaching 'how-to' guide, with 15 powerful exercises, tips and resources you can apply right away to gain more confidence, authenticity and effectiveness. Are you ready to to be an inclusive leader, fostering innovation and collaboration on the teams and businesses you manage? Are you ready to be a game changer?

“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.

There were many godly women leaders in the Old and New Testament of the Bible. These leaders include Deborah the prophet and judge, Abigail the wise one, Mary the mother of Jesus, Phoebe the deacon, Esther the Queen, Tabitha full of good works, and Eve the mother of all living. The women leaders of the Bible contributed much to their time and ours. There are many women of today who are contributing much as ministers, deacons, and teachers. God is using godly women like our biblical examples and those referenced from our modern world.