This book chronicles Sue Monk Kidd's journey from a Southern Baptist church to a spirituality focused on what she calls The Feminine Divine. She leaves Orthodox Christianity after coming face to face with the sexism in the church and, as she sees it, in the whole Christian religion. Kidd articulates a lot of feelings and questions I myself have had as I have explored what it means to be a woman in the Church. I do not think I come to the same conclusions she does or that I will follow in her path, but I appreciate the research she has done regarding the feminine characteristics of a God that encompasses both genders, which have been long ignored by much of the organized church. I appreciate the questions she is helping me ask and her observations about how the Churches disregard of God's feminine characteristics have influenced the way it interacts with the environment, the state, etc.

This book definitely stirred much inside me! I disagreed so often with her path but knew in my heart the importance of finding and experiencing within my own belief system the feminine, without a "better than" attitude, even in deity. In my disconnect with some of her journey I assessed my own journey thus far and feel the need to pursue without anger and frustration, the next part of the path with some form of courage.

"When a women offers the truth about her struggle to wake up, to grow beyond old models of womanhood and old spiritualities that no longer sustain, when she expresses what it was really like to discover and relate to the Feminine Divine, to heal feminine wounds, to unearth courage, and to reclaim her power, then women's differences tend to give way to something more universal. Often in such stories we find a deep sameness beneath our dissimilarities. We find we are all women, and down deep we ache for what has been lost to us."

In this memoir, I found a "deep sameness" between Sue Monk Kidd's story and mine, and between hers and mine and so many other women's stories of faith transition and searching for the Divine Feminine. I resonated deeply with how Sue Monk Kidd's journey to a Feminine God took her to a greater understanding of unconditional love and the sacredness of the earth and her body.

Reading this memoir for me mostly felt like being wrapped in a warm blanket while a loving older woman is braiding your hair and telling you her story. And I needed that. I needed her comforting words and her understanding and her support and her love that reached out to me through the pages. And all I want to say is thank you, Sue Monk Kidd, for creating a space for women (for me) in spirituality. Thank you for capturing the anger and the hurt and the sadness and also the wonder and hope and forgiveness and autonomy and love that comes with this faith journey.

There was so much that resonated with me in the first half of this book. She voiced a lot of my spiritual experiences and pains. I so appreciated that validation. The second half was about her spiritual journey, which naturally is very individual and I had a hard time getting through it. But it makes me excited to continue my own journey of discovering how I can regularly connect with the divine feminine.

I loved this book! Having very much enjoyed Sue Monk Kidd's fiction ("The Secret Life of Bees", "The Mermaid Chair", etc.) I was quite intrigued by the subtitle, "A Woman's Journey from Christian Tradition to the Sacred Feminine", particularly when I realized this is not fiction, but the author's own personal journey. And it is a courageous one! She shares with us each step of the way, her personal doubts, the challenges she had to overcome, the risks she took along the way - her reputation, her marriage, and how she found support to stay the course. We read so many (male) versions of the "heroic journey". Here is a most refreshing and inspiring "heroine's journey". I recommend this book highly!

I experienced so many different emotions reading the book. I would say that unless you are already very much into feminine spirituality, the idea of Goddess, have made your own spiritual journey, you will find this book alien, perhaps shocking, perhaps off-putting. I did a few times and I DID put the book aside. But I kept coming back to it and in the end am very glad I read it. Although, yes, I wish it had been shorter, AND that the print in my edition had been larger.
Monk Kidd challenges her reader to explore the idea of "feminine" in culture, in history, and especially in spiritual practice. But I would hasten to say that if someone who feels "I'm not religious" could suspend their discomfort, I think they will find things in this book that would be very nourishing to chew on.
My favorite quote, which is actually from Carolyn Heilbrun: "The true representation of power is not a big man beating a smaller man or woman. Nor is it a woman beating up on a man or finding a place in the hierarchy....Power is the ability to take one's place in whatever discourse is essential to action and the right to have one's part matter."

This book feels like a safe space. Kidd voices things I didn’t realize I needed it until I read them. She writes so beautifully and powerfully on the divine feminine and its importance. Her experiences resonated so deeply with me and showed me how hopeful and joyful this journey can be. Definitely a book I want to own to refer back to over and over again.

This book is part memoir, part inspirational writing about her journey to feminine spiritual consciousness and the empowerment it brought. I learned that (Christian)spiritual writing was her career before this "journey." She is now known for her novels, of course.

I was led on a similar journey a few of decades ago, partly through experiences at my church, and partly through reading some of the same books she did. I did not do it as fully and dramatically as she did, however. This seemed like old territory to me, but I felt it was a good review of why, in my religion particularly, I'm a feminist.

The author shared her 6+ year journey from southern baptist writer/mother/wife/daughter through the awakening of her soul as a woman. She witnesses grown men degrade and devalue her teenage daughter, and starts to see the impact the patriarchy of organized religion has had on the psyche of women, men, and society. Her exploration takes her on a journey to find, and get in touch with her innerself, and learn to live in tune with the sacred feminine.

Based on the author's background, she constantly seeks to find ways to merge the faith she loves with the Goddess, and is comforted to find evidence that Christianity did once embrace a God-ess with masculine and feminine qualities before "she" was stripped away and God was masculinized..... by men of the early church.

As the author points out, every human has their own path or journey to travel. My personal journey began in middle school. I had the same misgivings about the marginalization of women in the bible, as well as in my family. I was the oldest of 7 granddaughters, and the disappointment of "not being a boy, thus a consolation" seldom drifted far from my center of attention. Like the author points out, I became a perfectionist, but never felt like it was enough. My personal journey, although it has been rockier and missing all the world travel, has taken me on a similar path to the sacred feminine and to an ever-evolving relationship with spirit. I feel it. I commune with it. I listen to it. I call upon it for strength, however, I stopped playing the role of victim in "HIS plan for my life". I took back my power.

Whether you need the faith of organized religion in your life, or have more pagan (or other) leanings, this book will have something for you, without alienating anyone(in my opinion). The author finds peace in the oneness of all life, living in the present moment, and her place in the circle of life as a granddaughter, daughter, mother, and female in nature.

Highly recommended for women, and men.

My friend lent me this book for a day and I started to read it. I was amazed after only a few pages. The woman sounded like me. Like ME! So many of the thoughts and ideas she was presenting were familiar, even in the way she articulated them. When my friend returned to collect her book the next day, I went to Barnes and Noble and bought it. I finished reading it several days later with lots of marked up bits in the margins. It was like water on parched ground to read the true journey of a woman who was a product of a strongly patriarchal religious culture who wanted to find the divine feminine for her own soul's sake.

Now, lest you think that everything in the book resonated, there are a few things I want to point out in this review (but the book still highly deserves the five stars).

First, even though she makes a strong case for the divine feminine, the Goddess, Mother in Heaven, or whatever you want to call Her, she makes this lame-brained statement partway through the book about how, of course we all know that God actually has no gender whatsoever and that speaking of a female divine is just for our own sake . . . My note in the margin at the point was fairly explosive. From what I could see, she was backing down on everything that she had built up and come to find in her own soul. She had dismissed the glory of her own self and the glory of God. And why? The only reason I could find was to be politically correct. Well, bah.

Second, while the majority of the book is about her claiming the power and beauty of her own divine soul and basking in the glory of the divine feminine, there are moments in the book where she places her power outside of herself and tries to make it more mystical (dancing around a tortoise shell in the moonlight, for example). This cheapens the reality of her soul's journey. And it also puts her new found empowerment in a dangerous place: outside of herself where other influences can take it and twist it and manipulate it. These parts of the book didn't resonate with me. They didn't necessarily alarm me, but they didn't feed that place in my soul.

I recommend this book in conjunction with A God Who Looks Like Me.

If I could give this book 10 stars here, I would. I cannot put into words how much this book has helped me. There were times in this book that I could not believe what I was reading because it was so similar to my own experience. This is the Bible for feminine awakening in my opinion.

I wish I was reading my own copy of this book because there were so many tidbits and profound thoughts that I would have loved to go highlight and go back to peruse and ponder later. This might just have to be a yearly reading for me.

I recommend this to any Christian woman who has ever struggled with depression, anxiety, lack of purpose, etc. I think we could rid the woman of the world of a lot of negative things by teaching them about the feminine divine and that it lives in you. We are all part of it and we need to see Her in ourselves.

Thank you, Sue Monk Kidd. I hope someday I can meet you so we can cry with happiness together. You are a beautiful mentor for me.

I ordered this book from the library on a whim while researching something else and then discovered that it's been on my To Read list for a long time. Apparently, it was time. I devoured this book in only a few days while taking pages of notes, journaling furiously and recording several quotes that I plan to use creatively as part of my continued journey.

I recognized a lot of myself in this book because this journey to the Divine Feminine is ubiquitous at its core. The events of our journey are nothing alike and yet the connection is undeniable. I can't even say when exactly this journey began for me. It certainly wasn't a signpost dream like she had but it has a beginning and some day I may find it or maybe it doesn't matter.

It may have been in the small voice that questioned my Lutheran roots, asking my teachers and leaders WHY when things didn't make sense to me...which meant basically everything about Christianity. As it turns out, we weren't made for each other. It may have been that moment in business school when I realized that the simple stance my male classmate assumed when giving a presentation made him look casual and charismatic and would have led me to be sexualized and judged. It may have been when I had children of my own and began the process of discarding all of the traditions I grew up with in favor of things that held meaning for me which led me strongly toward the feminine Pagan traditions.

Who can say when the boulder started rolling? All I know is that it's been rolling strong for some time now and yet there is more to learn, more room to grow. Sometimes I forget and need a reminder and that's what this book was for me. It reawakened some things that were forgotten. It revitalized things that I had let go dormant. I am so grateful that this book came to me when it did and I am grateful to SMK for sharing her vulnerable, powerful, necessary, and deeply feminine story with all of us.