Traveling Stories - Lessons from the Journey of Life by Terri Clements Dean, PhD

Traveling Stories is a collection of teaching stories drawn from the author’s experiences as a therapist, as a traveler, and as a person in search of the answers to life’s most important questions. Each of the stories is complete in itself, easy to read and entertaining, yet each contains a bit of wisdom that can be applied to any life. The organizing metaphor of the collection is “life is a journey” and the journey is toward greater wholeness. The stories in the collection reveal some of the ways that we learn how to be wholly ourselves and to participate deeply and fully in life. Together, the stories describe the journey and offer advice about how to get the most from it. They offer the opportunity for insight without preaching, judging, moralizing, or dogma, gently urging the reader onward. Told with humor and compassion for the human condition, they nonetheless encourage a fearless, responsible involvement in life with all its complexity. The book draws on a deep study of several disciplines, including Jungian psychology, anthropology, and philosophy as well as the author’s travels, clinical work, and personal experience. Its key points are these: • Life is a journey toward wholeness. • Life’s lessons are found on the journey, • The lessons are offered freely and come in many forms, most importantly in the stories that we tell and hear and in the symptoms and symbols that demand our consideration. • Our part is to be honest, pay attention, trust the process, and work hard. The stories are simultaneously grounded in everyday life and awake to the possibilities for transformation bound in the mysteries of being. Symptom, symbol and ordinary experience reveal themselves to be the teachers that help us answer our deepest questions, learn more of the truth of who we are and can become, and open ourselves to greater freedom and a more precise intention for our lives.