More from and about
Melody Beattie
(biographical info at bottom of page)
  

Other people may be there to help us, teach us, guide us
along our path, but the lesson to be learned is always ours.

   

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life.  It turns what we have into enough, and
more.  It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity.
It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.
Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today,
and creates a vision for tomorrow.

      
I used to spend so much time reacting and responding
to everyone else that my life had no direction. Other
people's lives, problems, and wants set the course for
my life. Once I realized it was okay for me to think
about and identify what I wanted, remarkable things
began to take place in my life.
  
I trust so much in the power of the heart and the soul; I know
that the answer to what we need to do next is in our own hearts.
All we have to do is listen, then take that one step further and
trust what we hear. We will be taught what we need to learn.
   

I didn't have to scramble up and down the ladder from despair to
euphoria anymore, trying to convince myself that life was either
painful and terrible or joyous and wonderful.
The simple truth was that life was both.

     

We decided that sooner or later you had to learn to live without almost
everybody, at least for a while. Even people you didn't think you could live without.

   

  

Now is the time to be. To feel. To go through it. To allow things to happen.
To learn. To let whatever is being worked out in us take its course.

   

Stop coping with events by devaluing yourself.  Instead, respond to life
by loving and taking care of yourself.  Love yourself just as you are.

   

Letting go doesn’t mean we don’t care. Letting go doesn’t mean we
shut down. Letting go means we stop trying to force outcomes and make
people behave. It means we give up resistance to the way things are,
for the moment. It means we stop trying to do the
impossible–controlling that which we cannot–and instead, focus on
what is possible–which usually means taking care of ourselves. And
we do this in gentleness, kindness, and love, as much as possible.

   
    

Melody Beattie is a best selling author and journalist. She has written fourteen books and published hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles during the course of her 24-year writing career.

Born in St. Paul, Minnesota she now lives in Southern California.

Her hobbies include skydiving, Yoga, travel and hiking.

Beattie has been a frequent guest on many national television shows, including Oprah. She and her books have been featured in national publications including Time and People, and most major newspapers in the United States and Canada.

  

  

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