Book Review: "Find Your Way Home"

I started this blog because I wanted to inspire women to expand their horizons, try something new and push their comfort zones. For some women that might mean surfing in a hurricane, for some women it means learning to swim. For some women, whose lives have been the hurricane itself, it means finding calm.




Find Your Way Home by the Women of Magdalene
A book review by Lorna Harris

I grab the keys to my house each day without a thought. Sometimes I complain because I can’t find them, they’re lost in the vast array of stuff filling our house. But they’re just keys. That’s all.

Reading Find Your Way Home I realized that a key offers you so much: security, love and a place to come home to. As one of the Women of Magdalene writes, "When I walked in, they handed me a key. I was so thankful to have that key."

This week the Women of Magdalene are celebrating their work and their new book. Written by 20 women, the book includes stories of prostitution, drug abuse and violence but each woman finds her way to the Magdalene community. Each woman is given a key and security.
The women in the community live by 24 rules inspired by the classic Benedictine Rule. Women come to the community and live together for two years, then graduate to become "sisters who are committed to one another for life."

Reading the stories in Find Your Way Home you realize that all of these women have reached a point where they feel there is nowhere else to turn. No one to help them. Some have received a copy of the book in prison and know that then when they leave, they have a place to go home to. Others have been approached on the streets and taken in. The stories are heartbreaking but have a positive outcome. Hopefully the work of the community will continue and more women will be able to turn to Magdalene when they need it.

There are many ways to support the work the community does including buying a copy of the book for yourself or for a local library or prison. Give a copy to a woman you meet on the streets along with toiletry items. Take a picture of a thistle growing in your city and send it to Thistle Farms to be used in their thistle gallery at www.thistlefarms.org.

The name, Thistle Farms, comes from the only flower that grows along the streets and alleys where the women walk. Despite their prickly appearance a beautiful flower emerges with deep roots.

When you pick up your keys this week, take a minute and think about what they mean, the security they offer and the importance of coming home.

By the way, the women of Thistle Farms have just launched their own blog. You can find it here.