Motherlines

2016 Shelf Unbound Winner, Memoir
2017 IPPY Gold Medal Winner, Autobiography/Memoir

“Motherlines is a deep treasure written in the inimitable voice of a woman whose work was a lighthouse for me when I first wrote Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom. There is pure gold healing in these pages. Let it touch and heal you.”
—Christiane Northrup, MD, OB/GYN physician and author of the New York Times bestsellers Goddesses Never Age; Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom; and The Wisdom of Menopause

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.

Author: Patricia Reis

Publication Date: October 11, 2016

Categories: Award-Winning, Fall 2016, Memoir

Description
About the Author

Description

2016 Shelf Unbound Winner, Memoir
2017 IPPY Gold Medal Winner, Autobiography/Memoir

“Motherlines is a deep treasure written in the inimitable voice of a woman whose work was a lighthouse for me when I first wrote Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom. There is pure gold healing in these pages. Let it touch and heal you.”
—Christiane Northrup, MD, OB/GYN physician and author of the New York Times bestsellers Goddesses Never Age; Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom; and The Wisdom of Menopause

“Dreams, body wisdom, sexual awakening, inspiring relationships―Patricia Reis possesses a deep capacity to hear the soul’s call and the courage to follow it. A spiritual journey and a creative tour de force, this is a potent and tender love song to the motherlines that connect us all.”
—Tina Stromsted, PhD, Jungian analyst, dance/movement therapist, and cofounder of the Authentic Movement Institute in Berkeley, California

“Looking for a book that will feed your mind and your heart? Insight waits on every page of Patricia Reis’s Motherlines ―as do real-life characters who will inhabit your memory and remain friends and advisors long after you close the cover.”
—Mary Johnson, author of An Unquenchable Thirst, named one of the Best Books of the Year by Kirkus Reviews

“A maternal aunt―a nun―who, on three continents and in a series of socio-political challenges, becomes an unexpected hand for Reis to hold. Despite leading very different lives, the two women are surprisingly similar in their yearning and search for what matters most to heart, soul, and spirit.”
—Suzanne Strempek Shea, author of This is Paradise and the New England Book Award–winning Sundays in America

“Motherlines is a riveting memoir. Patricia Reis’s masterful telling of her soulful experience of being lost and found in the dark and light mysteries of midlife is a remarkable story. Motherlines is soul food for all.”
—Sister Karol Jackowski, author of Forever and Ever, Amen: Becoming a Nun in the Sixties

“This memoir of a searching American woman and her aunt, a liberationist Franciscan nun living in Central America, tells an intertwined story. In tandem they move through layers of spiritual exploration and women’s truth to arrive in a knowing sense of fulfillment.”
—cofounder of the US Green Party movement

“Patricia Reis is a fierce and fearless writer. Motherlines is an intimate, movingly honest story about women who seek and yearn for the fullest expression and connection. Grounded and transcendent.”
—Kate Christensen, PEN/Faulkner award-winning author of The Great Man and Blue Plate Special

About the Author

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.