This enlightening book examines how the feminist spirituality movement contributes to the establishment of new paradigms of mental health for women. Womens Spirituality, Womens Lives examines possible psychotherapeutic implications for women engaged in feminist spirituality and stimulates much-needed conversation between feminist therapists and feminist theologians/ritualists. Feminist spirituality is part of the current broad challenge to accepted ways of knowing and being. This book argues that as women tell their own stories, they create rituals that enable them to feel a sense of control over the future and to move toward a kind of authority, agency, and autonomy associated with mental health and psychological well-being. Women from many cultural backgrounds and religious perspectives have embraced alternative forms of spiritual expression, based on profound theoretical challenges to mainstream religious beliefs, ranging from calls for the radical reclamation and reconstruction of religious traditions to personal involvement in goddess worship and Wicca. Womens Spirituality, Womens Lives presents theoretical, conceptual, and experiential chapters that analyze the extent to which these proliferating womens groups represent the beginnings of new norms of mental health for women.Womens Spirituality, Womens Lives presents a variety of voices, including Native American, Christian, Jewish, and Wiccan. Chapters are divided into three sections--Laying the Groundwork, Theoretical Challenges, and Living It Out--and explore a diverse array of topics such as:
the “shouting” church and Black womens mental health
