When I spotted Sarah Ban Breathnach’s Something More for $1 at Half-Price Books, I hoped I would find it as helpful and enjoyable as Simple Abundance. I would highly recommend Simple Abundance; Something More (which I’ll refer to as SM)not so much. SM was written shortly after her divorce and that negatively colors her perspective, especially where she deals with the role and status of women in marriage.
The crux of the book is that over time women lose touch with their authentic selves, instead being buried under the expectations and standards and needs of others. She wants us to reconnect with our real person by examining the dreams, loves, and fears of our past to gain self-knowledge and self-worth, to meet our longing for something more. According to her, we need to learn about self-acceptance, self-determination, self-esteem, self-forgiveness, self-respect, self-sufficiency to become authentic. Unfortunately, she crosses from examining to self-absorption. Me, me, me jumps from the pages.
Here is a quote: “Self-sacrifice is not pretty and noble. It is a deadly sin.” Interestingly enough, she goes on to define sin using the Biblical idea of “missing the mark” stating that is where she got the concept. But she’s not talking about the impossibility of meeting God’s holy standard, but of failing to be our authentic self. Sarah has always had a New Age flavor (using Spirit, The Divine instead of God), but in SM she discloses that her spirituality is an amalgamation of ideas and rituals plucked from traditions she finds valuable. Never mind that she uses the New Testament Greek explanation of sin as “missing the mark” out of context; it suits her purpose and thus is borrowed. She speaks of reincarnation several times, too, but then backs off to say it might mean re-embodiments of our true selves in our different stages of life.
Because of this eclectic borrowing, there is no core of beliefs, and she sometimes contradicts herself. She says she believes in love, but her definition of love is not rooted in any faith tradition. She advises her friend that divorcing his wife of 4 decades is a loving thing to do. Not only does it allow him to enjoy his relationship with his new “soulmate”, but his wife deserves a man who loves her and that is no longer him. Thus he is really doing his wife a kindness. Easy to rationalize one’s behavior when one never embraces a religion as a whole.
So, why even read SM? She does have a knack of making thought-provoking statements, asking valuable questions and incorporating stimulating quotes. Here are some examples of things I found of interest:
1. There are only 3 ways to change the trajectory of our lives: crisis, chance, and choice. Your life is a direct result of choices. Conscious choice is the heart of authenticity. Unconscious choice is destructive and how we end up living the life others choose for us or the expectations they have for us.
2. Women loathe themselves because they haven’t quite fulfilled the promise of their astonishing gifts.
3. Dissatisfaction in a relationship settles into detachment whether we physically leave or not.
4. We settle for a passive rather than a passionate life.
5. How do you define comfort? What represents comfort to you? [Earlier in the book she says to get out of one’s comfort zone; here she talks of creating comfort. A contradiction?]
6. What did you love about the various dwelling places throughout your life? Can you incorporate those into your current home?
7. What have been the best moments of your life?
8. How would you define a good relationship? What elements does it include?
9. “The most important thing one woman can do for another is to illuminate and expand her sense of actual possibilities.”—Adrienne Rich. Whose life have you expanded? Who has expanded yours?
10. “You can live a lifetime and, at the end of it, know more about other people than you know about yourself.”—Beryl Markham
11. “Each relationship you have with another person reflects the relationship you have with yourself.”—Alice Deville
Sarah ends SM by encouraging you to reshape, reclaim, and re-create the world in your own image. Discern your authentic needs and wants so you can make the choices necessary to honor them.
Filtering her thoughts thru my perspective, I see a hurting woman trying thru her own efforts to restore a diminished sense of self-worth and lack of self-confidence after a bitter divorce. She hints that we are valuable because we are created by The Divine. There is some truth in that. However, she fails to recognize that she is not worthy of God’s love because of her efforts and behavior, but simply because He chooses to make her the Beloved. She must choose to accept and enter into that relationship to be truly authentic. But it is a path that encompasses self-denial, sacrifice, and service. That is not the something more she is seeking.
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