If I could afford it I would give each of my women friends a copy of the hard cover, pink leaf bestseller Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort & Joy by Sarah Ban Breathnach. I’ve been active with daily reading along the Simple Abundance path for over a decade (with only a few years of a timeout), often rereading passages that feel completely fresh and shed a different light around living an authentic life. With each day and year it seems as if I am reading it for the first time all over again!  This book first became well known on The Oprah Winfrey Show and catapulted onto The New York Times Best-Sellers List for Non-Fiction in 1997. Amazon.com includes Sarah Ban Breathnach’s book as one of the 500 Great Books by Women today. It reads as a personal bible of sorts for the contemporary women in keeping in touch with her own spirit, providing tools and advice for new ways to look at oneself. This book is particularly relevant at a time of megacosm of urban sprawl  when we may feel out of touch with the rhythms of Nature and the pace of our Soul.  Personally it is like having a very special friend by my bedside at all times to keep me company for my morning meditation.  My day begins very grounded and centered with these thoughts at the forefront of my mind to ponder and bring into my day a creative mindfulness. 

The book is set up seasonally, monthly and daily, with each month's chapter giving a poetic introduction to it. At the end of the month is a list of wonderful ideas she calls 'Joyful Simplicities' to integrate and balance with the seasons however you may wish to celebrate the events of your life, decorate your home, benefit and plan your leisure time, and grow as a person wholly. Sarah cycles around six practical, creative and spiritual principles: gratitude, simplicity, order, harmony, beauty and joy, and is very consistent throughout, highlighting these in the first chapter to set the tone.  Her suggestion is to read the first month whenever you begin during the year for a new reader to become familiar with the tools, such as keeping a Gratitude Journal, an Illustrated Discovery Journal, the Golden Mirror Meditation, Self-Affirmations, and creating your Personal Treasure Map.  She tends to pose many insightful questions into one's sense of purpose and honors the Self under scintillating and relevant headings for each day. A few morsels to indulge in are "Everywoman's Essence of Paradise", "Rediscovering the Sacred Soulcraft of Homecaring", "Rendevouz with the Authentic Archaeologist", and her January 1st entry to springboard from is "A Transformative Year of Delight & Discovery". Often her  writings reflect her own personal experience as she unfolds a casual story with indepth and universal meanings of something we can all relate to in the littlest and biggest of ways.

I've benefited personally from her generous works, and every time another of Sarah Ban Breathnach's delightful books arrives I'm one of the first in line to read it with unwavering faith.  They promote health, well-being, balance, creativity and peace. I've grown with and expanded the use of the tools and ideas, shaped them into my own process and rituals. Sarah has a soft cover blue leaf book called The Simple Abundance Companion: Following Your Authentic Path to Something More where in it she parallels the pink book and offers a guide to each month with the end of each of the 12 chapters presenting 'moodlings' (questions posed & other exercises) to bring out more individual expression.  Published after Simple Abundance is her yellow leaf book Something More: Excavating Your Authentic Self, graced with ample quotes as she always does so gracefully, nourishing topics and fieldwork for independent exploration and discovery of deep, inner longings to brave.  A Gratitude Journal is something of a must on this journey, to learn to appreciate what one already has and is given and be thankful which is in itself a spiritual principle for abundance, hence the title, and leads often to living a happier, fuller and more fulfilling life.  There is a pale green leaf Gratitude Journal Sarah has in her line of goodies, and also a sienna red binder for focus topics to collage and write in her published The Illustrated Discovery Journal: Creating A Visual Autobiography of Your Authentic Self, too.  She's thought of everything, and now ladies, let's roll up our sleeves and dive in, and enjoy the creative process unfold along the journey of our authentic nature.  What are you waiting for?  'Now' is the optimal time to grab your journals and begin!