Lipstick and Soul
Book Reviews

Read this Book More Than Once!

I have read Joan Shaver’s rich, inviting book a few times and in different ways. One of the things I love about LIPSTICK & SOUL is that it can be experienced on many levels, and each time the reader may learn something new about herself. I know I did. Joan leads us on a journey of self-discovery as she shares her professional expertise in a compassionate, understandable manner, as well as letting us in on some of her own stumbling blocks on the path to living a more authentic, feminine life. The concepts and exercises she presents can be revisited over and again whenever we begin to feel out of sync with our true selves. This is not a fad book; it has legs and depth.

~ Geri Baur

Focus Transform Blossom

Get in deeper touch with your inner and outer beauty, and blossom by focusing on yourself with this must-read for all women.

~ Carole Marissael

A Warm and Positive Voice.

Joan Shaver’s illuminating book encourages you to look closely at your experiences and behaviors and to rethink them. She compassionately guides you towards positive change. With simple, helpful exercises, she supports you on your journey to enjoy your femininity, to take risks, and to move positively towards personal growth.

~ Christine S. Cuddy

Lipstick and Soul

Peer  Reviews

A wonderful book for women struggling to balance all.

Joan Shaver LMFT has written a wonderful book for women who are struggling to balance all the many required roles in today’s life. The book encourages women not to become more like men, but to develop into their feminine wisdom and power. The book is beautifully written, heartfelt, and Ms. Shaver is an excellent example of what she teaches and is obviously walking her talk. Highly recommended.

~ Catherine Auman LMFT

This book is a life changer… the perfect guide for this amazing journey of self-discovery and feminine power.

~ Constance Forrest, Psy. D.

Psychologist and principle, Forrest Painter Design, a Psychological Practice

Joan Shaver is both a colleague and a personal friend. Her expertise in the field of woman’s issues, particularly in connecting with the feminine as a means of self-care, is invaluable professionally and personally.  Women have never had the demands on their giving natures like they do today. This book is an essential guide in giving women the tools to sustain this demand, the fine art to self-care. Every woman deserves to normalize the need to be soothed feeling soothed, and the ability to be soothed. Buy the book and read it! Take the journey of self-care.

~ Connie Wilson, Psy. D.

Psychologist

AAMFT-CA  eNews Winter 2014

 

Peer Review

By  Nadia Brewart, Ph.D. The Positive Psychology Way

Shaver’s evocative title captures a “truth”:  There is a certain mystique to integrating the mundane (lipstick/external world) with the esoteric (soul/internal sense of being) to touch the sublime (self-love/cardinal virtues/ “inner presence”).  Shaver’s experientially-based book invites female readers on a journey to uncover, elucidate and move into a space of presence which she calls the “mysterious” or “inner feminine.”  The mysterious feminine, Shaver declares, “…is a wonderful, warm, loving, all-embracing humane energy that resides within each one of us as well as all around us” (p.xiii).

To enter this space, Shaver offers a format in each chapter, which provides readers tools for reflection, transcendence/expansion of the boundaries of the rational mind, and experience to settle into a place of intuitive knowing through ongoing practice.  To this end, she effectively utilizes various voices (beauty advisor/intimate friend/facilitator-guide), poignant quotations (from celebrities to artists, to philosophers, to ordinary folk with wisdom), metaphors (mostly beauty-oriented), experiences (autobiographical/imaginative), writing activities (stream of consciousness/cognitively-focused); and, while not specifically identified as such, mindfulness-based concepts/approaches (non-judgmental awareness, centering with the breath, mini body scans, mindful eating, mindful activities), and “homework” for further integration, knowledge and guidance along the journey.

The journey itself is three-fold.  In part one, “Book One: Be Bold,” readers assess their current state of openness and their blocks.  In addition to the approaches noted above, through a self-assessment questionnaire, readers are able to identify their “blind spots” and recurrent patterns, which thwart the process of connecting to one’s inner, authentic core.  In this early stage, Shaver encourages readers to freely express their challenges, making room for new possibilities.

New possibilities are cultivated in “Book Two: Be Beautiful,” which embeds two phases.  In the first phase, the veneers (defense mechanisms, unconscious blocks) of the core self are identified and addressed, feelings are experienced and embraced.  Building upon phase one, phase two continues to lead readers to their inner core, experiencing feelings, identifying and confronting the “saboteurs” of the heart. With gentleness, vulnerability and receptivity, a natural beauty emerges.

This natural beauty, a pulchritudinous soul, is where Shaver finds the “mysterious/inner feminine.”  In the final stages of the journey, “Book Three: Be True To Yourself,” readers encounter the flexibility, strength and wholeness of shifting between what Shaver describes as “masculine and feminine presence.”  Here, there is attunement to cognitive and emotional states, rootedness and integration of various facets of self; thus, responses to self and others are grounded-as opposed to reactive. It is this place of the authentic core that beauty emanates, where the well-loved feelings cannot be sullied or compromised by life’s difficulties.

Therapists desiring to move their clients to this place can utilize activities from Shaver’s work.  Her book can also be offered in a women’s group format, which Shaver herself conducts.  As there is much process work, therapists and readers might reap the most benefits from approaching the work slowly, perhaps no more than a chapter a week.  And, clients must be receptive to writing/journaling activities as this tool is heavily focused.  Social constructivists and/or postmodern theorists/therapists for whom the language and gendering of experience and selves are culturally and historically situated may still utilize the activities, while deconstructing-as Shaver does herself in some areas-the implications of gendered notions of the feminine.

Empower the Feminine!

Empower the Feminine!

You Have the Power

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