Dwelling
Living Fully from the Space You Call Home
By Mary Beth Lagerborg

Countless TV shows, magazines, books and websites speak to some aspect of the concept of home. But women are looking from more than just storage solutions and trendy paint colors. They are looking for a place where they belong and where others can come for refuge from our hectic world.

With warm, personal writing, Mary Beth Lagerborg helps modern women realize this dream. They can create a home that is both a haven and a starting point from which they can go out and face the world. Lagerborg has interviewed nearly seventy people who possess a healthy sense of home. She shows readers how they can make their dwellings safe and reenergizing places for themselves and those around them. Although Dwelling covers topics like decorating and dining, it doesn't stop there. Chapters on acceptance, making community, the changing dynamics of family and even working from home make this book unique. Dwelling challenges readers to look beyond the superficial and into the true heart of home.

Excerpt from Dwelling

As I round the bend and our house comes into view, it doesn't matter whether the grass needs mowing or the driveway needs shoveling, or even that the empty trash barrels - if it's a Tuesday - are tipped over in a jumble out front.

I pull into the driveway. The drawbridge goes down. I drive in. The drawbridge goes up. I enter the house. Sigh. I'm home.

After greeting family members and Gus, our standard poodle, who is bouncing off the ground on all fours, I head upstairs to change. My at-home uniform waits on a hook just behind the closet door. The soccer pants are the extremely comfy kind with a cotton layer inside and nylon outside. They have a small hole in the left knee from my falling down in the street and, more importantly, an elastic waist. I add a T-shirt or turtleneck and sweatshirt depending on the season, cotton socks, and felt slippers smashed down on the heels.

No matter what the day has been like, now I'm all better. I'm at home.

Home is first and foremost the place where we are accepted, where it's safe to just be. It's a place where it's okay to not wear makeup and where cereal will work for dinner if that's what you have it in you to fix (or to let others fix). Don't we all crave such a place?