Folded within the deep friendship cultivated through letters exchanged between Colette Lafia, a spiritual director and retreat leader, and Brother Rene, a Trappist monk, is Lafia's struggle with infertility, insomnia, the loss of her sister, the declining health and eventual death of her father, and her role as caregiver. Brother Rene's compassion and guidance throughout these trials-and Lafia's responses-provide a template for helping readers to surrender to God in their own struggles. Readers will find simple exercises and profound advice for living a more conscious and intentional life, with tips such as, "look at yourself through God's eyes," "notice when fear arrives at your door," and "trust all is well." Readers will ultimately discover a new attitude of acceptance and letting go.

'Colette Lafia writes in a very accessible and personal way about a subject that is part of all our lives. Comfort is a topic close to our hearts and essential in leading a balanced life' - Angeles Arrien, author of "The Second Half of Life and The Four-Fold Way". "Comfort and Joy" is a small book that can engender big and welcomed changes in our lives and our attitude. It's a book to keep handy, to turn to again and again. Lafia offers forty-five vignettes - small stories, pictures of comfort as simple and grand as a plush pillow, a warm cup of tea.Simply reading them is comforting and more than likely to inspire the reader to follow the suggestions in 'Cultivating Comfort', which follows each passage. And because she knows that comfort taken and comfort shared make the world a very much better place, in a section called 'Applied Comfort', Lafia gives us inspiring ways to take comfort and pass it on. A simple and beautiful book with a profound message - learning to comfort ourselves is not a narcissistic pursuit - it's absolutely essential if we want to make any kind of real difference in the world.