So focused in our day to day work we often overlook the big picture that surrounds our lives. When it hits though, the realization of our existence conjures difficult questions. Who am I? Where am I going? What am I doing all of this for? This week we’re shining a light on four books that awaken sleeping souls to worlds both within and around the self in their own unique ways.

Transitions: How Women Embrace Change and Celebrate Life by Abigail Brenner

Abigail Brenner, M.D., author of Transitions: How Women Embrace Change and Celebrate Life, is a board certified psychiatrist currently in private practices as well as an ordained interfaith minister who helps people design, create, and perform personally meaningful rituals. She is also author of  SHIFT: How to Deal When Life Changes, and the co-author of The Essential Guide To Baby’s First Year, to be released April 2011. Transitions: How Women Embrace Change and Celebrate Life from CreateSpace is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

The Map of True Places by Brunonia Barry

From Brunonia Barry, the New York Times bestselling author of The Lace Reader, comes an emotionally compelling novel about finding your true place in the world.

A respected Boston psychotherapist, Zee Finch has come a long way from a motherless childhood spent stealing boats. But the actions of a patient throw Zee into emotional chaos and take her back to places she thought she’d left behind.

The Map of True Places from HarperCollins is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Blessed: Living A Grateful Life by Ellen Michaud

Sometimes we just need to stop for a moment and absorb the quiet moments in the world around us–to take a deep breath and appreciate the things in life that make us thankful and bring us joy. Blessed: Living a Grateful Life is a call to do just that. In this heartfelt collection of her online columns from Diane, the flagship magazine of the Curves women’s fitness center organization, author Ellen Michaud reminds us of the everyday blessings that surround us, but we all tend to overlook.

Blessed: Living A Grateful Life from Reader’s Digest is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Into My Father’s Wake by Eric Best

From Eric Best, a solo sailing odyssey and journey of personal discovery in which the author, a former journalist and Wall street strategist, comes to terms with his dead father and learns the meaning of forgiveness.

Into My Father’s Wake from CreateSpace is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

From the constant push and pull in our personal and work lives, it’s a disappointing fact that many people find well-being and happiness far from reach.  Through Buddhism and Zen meditation, Lewis Richmond aims to educate people and encourage sufferers of daily life to discover what healthy awakenings await those who take bold steps and traverse new spiritual terrain.

• “leaving the house without one or the other of Lewis’s practices in mind is like venturing into the wilderness without my boots.”

–Peter Coyote, movie actor and author of Sleeping Where I Fall

• “This book on utilizing the workplace as a place for spiritual growth comes straight from the workshop of the heart”

–Lama Surya Das, author of Awakening the Buddha Within

• “An exquisite guide to finding happiness and health in one’s work.”

–NAPRA ReView

• “an accessible, personal, witty, and poetic book that will be helpful, even transformative, for anyone who works for a living.”

–Sylvia Boorstein, author of It’s Easier Than  You Think: The Buddhist Way to Happiness

Read Lewis Richmond:

• Buddhist Teaching on Aging Spiritually: Worry Less, Care More and Find Out What Love is Before You Die
• Buddhism and Wealth: Defining ‘Right Livelihood’

• Everything is aging, all the time. We age from our first breath.

• Fear of Life, Fear of Death
• Illness: Fear and Fearlessness

Lewis Richmond: