Coming Home to Myself, by Marion Woodman

The subtitle says "Reflections for Nurturing a Woman's Body and Soul". That's accurate, as the words in the compilation of poems inside this little book encourage the female reader to be both more forgiving and much harder on oneself than the average person would generally be. She should be forgiving when others judge her too harshly, in worship of a false sense of perfection. Yet she must push herself harder to find out what she really wants, because soul searching is actually the most emotionally painful work a human being will ever do, short of stubbornly holding onto grief or unrequited love.

The cover also says "Marion Woodman with Jill Mellick". While one woman wrote all the poems, the other woman interviewed and analyzed them, taking them apart so as to choose the best and the most relevant for the messages that they both want to convey. There are blue watercolor pictures between all the chapters, perhaps as a meditation on how the soul can be like a body of water, flowing and deep and mysterious.

Each poem uses a lot of symbolism. They are drawn from mythology, drawn from the author's dreams, and can be as simple as two lines, or can be almost a prose poem, going on for three pages about a scenario involving more than one person. Everyone is intertwined, and that is very scary when not all goes well.

My favorite part of this work in its entirety is its tone. It's so very comforting. It's like if someone were to hold me, wearing soft warm cotton, in a friendly way with words. Some may argue that it is a bit preachy, but I don't mind it so much if it's in verse, open to a trillion interpretations, reaching across every culture. It captures the depth of a woman if she looks within hard enough.