"You have within you a blueprint – a map – not written on paper but living in your spirit."

Author Kirikino offers a deeply considered methodology by which readers can analyze their personal challenges and evoke methods and processes that will address, ameliorate, and overcome them. Her emotive manual begins with a description of the sorts of life distresses that are common to many, such as the wish to raise children soundly, to rise beyond the effects of trauma, and to revise family history in positive ways. The author asserts that healing will not happen by accident. It requires recognition, inner seeking, and afterwards, efforts to rebuild, since there can be an "aftershock" from healing.

Sage instruction is provided throughout, including journaling, writing loving letters to oneself and one's offspring, developing the ability to say "yes" to one's own needs, and, for the sensitive reaction to one's children, the realization that their actions may indicate their own inner search for understanding. Kirikino's twenty-four daily exercises are divided into four weeks, or "seasons": Grounding, Expression, Expansion, and Embodiment. Each daily portion includes practice (drawing an emotions chart), reflection prompts (self-questioning), and child-centered activities for parents/carers.

Kirikino is, by her own description, one who has experienced the necessities of creating and adhering to the sorts of processes she so deftly describes, having found within herself the thirst for renewal after her own healing took place. Her guide is designed to demonstrate the ways in which rebuilding can take place, step by step. She has arrayed a multitude of creative suggestions, such as breathing exercises, listening quietly as others explain their distress, establishing a sense of connection to the earth, and creating a healing space for daily solace. Her approach is gentle, empathic, and pragmatic, and can serve to enhearten and inspire her readers to break out of time-worn patterns and forge new physical, mental, and spiritual pathways.

Return to USR Home