Gift from the Sea: 70th Anniversary Edition

What a fantastic book. Still so relevant today. So much to think about. I loved it.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh wrote "Gift from the Sea" while vacationing at a cottage on Florida's Gulf Coast. Her poetic descriptions of the sea and shells draws you into intimate thoughts about life. The words form waves of sentences that have a calming rhythm. As I read I caught a scent memory of salty air and remembered my childhood discovering hermit crabs at the beach. Anne Morrow Lindbergh had incredible powers of poetic description and that makes the book so comforting and beloved. Through this book we realize that the author is seeking peace with herself. She talks about solitude quite a lot. She also talks about the most exhausting things in life and how living on her own terms creates more sincerity. While she contemplates islands, she also speaks of spiritual isolation and the benefits of going inward. Like a good treasure hunter, Anne Morrow Lindbergh sees more than the surface of things. She contemplates marriage, friendship and family and decides people need more time to get away and be with themselves. Had she lived today I have to wonder what her take would be on the Internet. Perhaps she would see now how isolated we all have become. Since the time this book was written the world has changed in unimaginable ways. So it is nice to go back to the past and read what women thought about in the 50s. In some ways that made the book very calming. I enjoyed this book and think women over 50 will really relate to the topics covered. But it can be read at any age if one is willing to look deeply into life and find its beauty. ~The Rebecca Review

Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s Gift from the Sea is a quiet, unhurried book that rewards a certain kind of reader — one willing to slow down and simply sit with her observations. Written during a solitary retreat on the Florida coast, Lindbergh uses a series of seashells as meditative objects to explore simplicity, presence, and the shape of a meaningful life. Her worldview is not mine. The spiritual sensibility here is more naturalistic than traditionally religious, and some of her concluding reflections didn’t fully land for me. But that is almost beside the point. What she does extraordinarily well is create the conditions for wonder — stripping away noise and distraction until the present moment feels genuinely habitable. I found that as I finished the book, I was better prepared to step outside into spring and receive the wildflowers and hillsides with fresh eyes and something closer to gratitude. Sometimes a book’s greatest gift is not the destination the author intended, but the one it quietly prepares you for.

As relevant today as when she wrote it. This is one I will read and read again! Read , enjoy, think.

I only came across this book in 2019....and it was my immediate brand of heroin! It is one of the best books I've read in my entire adult life. Really, yes, that's no exaggeration. The author is so wise, unfortunately because of many heartbreaks in her own life. She rips her heart open with her fingertips, not aggressively, but slowly and allows her hurts to heal you. I was in shock when I realized that this was actually the 50th anniversary edition? It seems as if she was looking me in the eye and writing this solo for me and me alone. This book has become my devotional tool. The wisdom in this book is timeless. She isn't trying to tell you what to do. She is wanting to help you along the way, learning from experiences so that you will make better choices. I have started giving this book to anyone I become good friends with for a birthday gift. the first ones I wanted to give this book to was my daughters.

Anne Morrow Lindberg was a well-educated, highly intelligent person, a gifted writer, and a poet par excellence. She was a loyal and loving yet subservient wife, a wonderful mother, and an accomplished pilot, navigator, and adventurist. She also had quite a story to tell herself and to be told by others. I have seen the movie depictions, read the books about her super hero husband, and most recently read a wonderful historical fiction work by Melanie Benjamin, The Aviator's Wife that filled in numerous voids in what the public knows about the intimacies and facts surrounding the Lindbergs, fictional though some of it may be. All these literary glimpses and silver screen journeys into the private lives of the not so private first family of aviation encouraged me to read Gift from the Sea. Anne Morrow Lindberg was not the first or only woman to suffer, sacrifice, and take up her dutiful place in the shadow of a powerful and influential husband and remain quiet and unimposing up to a point. But she is unique in the fact that she has allowed a look into her mind, heart, and soul through her own works. Gift from the Sea is a treasure to be appreciated slowly and repeatedly because one fast read will not disclose the wonders and beauties of the great pearl formed through the tragedies, irritations, heartbreak, and disappointments that deposited themselves in the oyster of Anne's life. What does a woman subordinated to the egotistical needs and demands of the most famous man in the world, with a vision the size of that world need, want, and dream of in the mature years of her life. Her repayment for years of dedicated service and seemingly unrequited love for a man with an agenda was to betrayal and placed second, third, or fourth in line of her dear, sweet husband and his other lovers and mothers of his illegitimate children. Alone on a beach, in a small cottage, walking along the shoreline with only the gentle rolling surf and waves lapping at the sand to speak to her, Anne finds that she resonates with the beauty, utility, freedom, and natural splendor of the vacated sea shells that she finds. A variety of colorful and gracefully designed shells speak different messages to her soul. And she shares those musings with the readers. The past will not change, the present is being formed in the crucible of her life already lived and the decisions she will make based on where and who she's been. Anne spoke out to the myriad women of the world who could say to and about her life experiences "Amen Sister, speak it, preach it." And preach it she did. Read Gift from the Sea once, put it down and go back again and again. Almost as if the shells are magic the message matures and morphs with age and the frame of mind of the reader at the time of the read. It's a small book, but it contains a wealth of spiritual jewels for the seeker. As a male, I recommend this book to both men and women with the suggestion that oftentimes women are better at sharing their heart than are men. I agree with Anne's daughter Reeve that re-reading the book brings renewed blessings originally penned in 1955 but are still relevant in 2013.

I read this because I read a quote I loved and connected with and I was looking forward to reading more. It turned out the quote wasn't even here so it was a bit disappointing. In the end though, I liked the book. Some of the passages resonated with my current life and I felt understood. BUT… There were other parts I found boring because I am in my mid-twenties, I don't have children, and I'm not married. And there was a whole lot of talk regarding the latter aspects and being a middle-aged woman. Couldn't connect at all. Nevertheless, I might give it another try when I'm older. **FAVORITE QUOTES: "I want first of all to be at peace with myself." "The most exhausting thing in life, I have discovered, is being insincere." "The world today does not understand, in either man or woman, the need to be alone. How inexplicable it seems. Anything else will be accepted as a better excuse. (…) But if one says: I cannot come because that is my hour to be alone, one is considered rude, egotistical or strange." "You never find two alike. Each is fitted and formed by its own life and struggle to survive."

Adore this book. This is my go to as a gift for mamas that have over extended themselves needing a gentle reminder that they are not alone and it's ok to take a moment for some solitude. As an empty nester, I try to reread at least part of A Gift From the Sea once a year as I need reminding too.