Patricia Reis is passionately interested in how creativity, depth psychology, and the natural world inform a woman’s spiritual life. Along with numerous essays and reviews, Reis is the author of four books: Women’s Voices (co-edited with Nancy Cater), which includes her in-depth interview with naturalist and writer Terry Tempest Williams; The Dreaming Way: Dreamwork and Art for Remembering and Recovery; Daughters of Saturn: From Father’s Daughter to Creative Woman; and Through the Goddess: A Woman’s Way of Healing. Reis holds a BA in English literature from the University of Wisconsin, an MFA from UCLA, and a degree in Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara. She conducts a private psychotherapy practice, primarily for female artists and writers. Currently, she divides her time between Maine and Nova Scotia. Learn more at www.patriciareis.net.

When she was twenty and living a bohemian life, Patricia Reis’s mother asked, “What about your spiritual life?” Years later, this question drives her midlife quest to reconcile the desires of her body with the mandates of her spirit. During the 1980’s—a rich and turbulent period in American history when feminism, the women’s spirituality movement and liberation theology were all very much alive— Reis encounters a number of uncommon women who witness, encourage, and nourish her potential. She discovers an unlikely confidante in her maternal aunt, Ruth, a free-spirited Franciscan nun. Their many letters, and a handful of pivotal visits, bring immediacy and intimacy as they each become radicalized by feminism and a new theology of liberation. Starting in the early 1980s—a rich period in American history when feminism, the women’s spirituality movement, and liberation theology were all very much alive—and continuing over a ten-year period, Reis encounters a number of uncommon women who witness, encourage, and nurture her potential. She discovers an unlikely confidante in her maternal aunt Ruth, a free-spirited Franciscan nun. Their many letters, and a handful of pivotal visits, bring immediacy and intimacy to their unfolding relationship.

Candid and compelling, Motherlines is a story of sex (with men and with women, and of abstaining altogether), illegal abortions, making vows and breaking them, spiritual practices, and creative ambition—and, at its heart, one woman’s quest for a place in her maternal lineage and a spiritual maturity outside religious concepts.