A Princess and Her Garden: A Fable of Awakening and Arrival by Dr Patricia Adson… From her spouse or significant other, to a demanding boss, to her children or her parents, the modern woman is excellent at taking care of other people. But the one thing she probably forgets? How to take care of herself.
She’s likely feeling the effects of all that overextension: The 2010 Stress in American Survey (American Psychological Association) reports that almost half of all women (49 percent) surveyed said their stress has increased over the past five years. So how can she set some boundaries, and nurture the one person she’s been neglecting?
In A Princess and Her Garden: A Fable of Awakening and Arrival (Center for Applications of Psychological Type, December 2011), psychologist and author Patricia Adson, Ph.D. guides women through the self-care process, equipping them with tools for growth and emotional healing.
Using the fable of a princess who tends to everybody else’s gardens at the expense of her own, the book illustrates the conundrum so many women find themselves in.
“I wrote this story for a women’s support group I was leading many years ago,” says Adson. “The goal was to give them a vocabulary for their emotional work, without all the psychopathology talk. When I saw the tremendous impact this story had on their healing process, I decided to make it available to more women who might need it.”
A welcome gift book or book club selection, A Princess and Her Garden includes the interactive guided journal “Becoming the Queen of Yourself,” which helps the reader move beyond being the “Princess of Other People.” Journal sections include the gardens of “Then” (growing up, lessons and conditioning from your family), gardens from “The In-Between” (leaving home, people you met along the way, victories as well as painful disappointments), and gardens of “Now” (caring for yourself).
PATRICIA ADSON, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist, certified coach, educator and author. In addition to a private coaching practice, she is a mentor coach and member of the Leadership Team at Hudson Institute of Santa Barbara, where she won the 2009 Excellence in Coaching Award. She is well-known for her work in the areas of personal balance, women in transition, and life purpose, and she is the author of Finding Your Own True North & Helping Others Find Direction in Life (1999), Depth Coaching: Discovering Archetypes for Empowerment, Growth, and Balance (2004) and A Princess and Her Garden (2011). Learn more at aPrincessAndHerGarden.com.