Literature Link 9/18/22 — Belonging; Attachment
• A Home for Goddesses and Dogs by Leslie Connor. [middle school novel] This novel sings about loss and love and finding joy in new friendships and a loving family, along with the world’s best bad dog. An uplifting middle grade novel about recovery featuring strong female characters, an adorable dog, and the girl who comes to love him. It’s a life-altering New Year for thirteen-year-old Lydia when she uproots to a Connecticut farm to live with her aunt following her mother’s death. Aunt Brat and her jovial wife, Eileen, and their ancient live-in landlord, Elloroy, are welcoming — and a little quirky. Lydia’s struggle for a sense of belonging in her new family is highlighted when the women adopt a big yellow dog just days after the girl’s arrival.” The Look Inside feature lets you read the first 6 pages. https://www.amazon.com/Home-Goddesses-Dogs-Leslie-Connor/dp/006279678X
• Poet and Philosopher David Whyte on Belonging and How to Be at Home in Yourself. from Maria Popova’s website, “The Marginalian.” “ To feel as if you belong is one of the great triumphs of human existence — and especially to sustain a life of belonging and to invite others into that… But it’s interesting to think that … our sense of slight woundedness around not belonging is actually one of our core competencies;” There is a very nice short audio of him. https://www.themarginalian.org/2015/06/29/david-whyte-belonging/
• “How Uniting Blooms: A Poem on Our Need to Belong” by Hanna Snyder. This piece is about how can we define belonging. “Some say, it’s like waking up daily / to sun warming your skin
A perfect circle promise / Restful, rush-less / Content.
https://archive.yellowco.co/blog/2018/07/30/how-uniting-blooms-belong-poem/
• Belong: Find Your People, Create Community, and Live a More Connected Life by Radha Agrawal. [non-fiction] Read the description about this “guidebook.” The Look Inside feature offers much, a powerful foreword and pages 3–17 which got me hooked. “ How is it that the internet connects us to a world of people, yet so many of us feel more isolated than ever? That we have hundreds, even thousands of friends on social media, but not a single person to truly confide in? Radha Agrawal calls this “community confusion,” and in Belong she offers every reader a blueprint to find their people and build and nurture community, because connectedness — as more and more studies show — is our key to happiness, fulfillment, and success." https://www.amazon.com/Belong-People-Create-Community-Connected/dp/1523502053?asin=1523502053&revisionId=&format=4&depth=1
• “Desiderata” by Max Ehrmann. Here is the classic, famous text. And a nice rendition on YouTube.
“ Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFxvV7-JDRw
In faith,
Dale Dunnigan