I learned to read before I started school and
I have been a voracious reader all my life.

MANY BOOKS have CHANGED my life, SAVED my life,
INFUSED hope in my struggles, GUIDED me to look more
deeply into my heart and to continually be open to grow,
LIGHTED a dark path, MOTIVATED me to take a step,
and here are just a few . . .

• vocation—ballerina (first memorable book – still have it)
after I read “Tina, the Ballerina,” I knew I wanted to be a ballerina.
My grandmother got me a Tina, the Ballerina doll and made
matching clothes for me and Tina and I started ballet lessons –
health issues stopped my pursuit of that goal at age 7

• basic philosophy—one person in a world
“Foundation Trilogy” by Isaac Asimov was key to an early piece
of my belief system showing how one man with a different perspective
did seemingly small things that made huge differences to a world

• personal power—responses
“Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor Frankl brought me to
a vital key for survival—as a holocaust survivor, a psychiatrist,
he led me to see the value of meaning in life and the fact
that there is only one thing I can control and no one
can take it away from me—my inner response to everything

• personal business practices—relationships
“Hope for the Flowers” by Trina Paulus, the story of moving through
seeming death to a new and more beautiful life and life choices
made along the way, showing a path to transformation

• struggles in life—darkness to light
“Jonathan Livingston Seagull” (Richard Bach), This Present Darkness/Piercing
the Darkness (Frank E Peretti), The Hobbit (Toilken), Divine and Human (Leo Tolstoy),
Purity of Heart (Soren Kierkegaard), The Cloud of Unknowing (anonymous),
The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Joseph Campbell), everything by Thomas Merton,
Divine Milieu (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin), writings by the Desert Fathers/Mothers,
Morality (Jonathan Sacks), studies by Richard Rohr, and many more . . .

books are still changing me . . .
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