The Roadmap Home – A Book Review

 

Home.

For many of us, there is a sense of comfort in the word.

The word conjures up feelings of family, a place of safety, a place that contains some items of importance or perhaps it is a place where we can feel like we can really be ourselves.

But home is not just a physical place, a physical structure that contains or enables these things.

Oftentimes it can also be a state of mind, a place within our own sense of spirit where we feel safe, where we can be ourselves and where we feel most comfortable.

For many of us who accept that such a place of spiritual centeredness exists, there have been many times when we felt that we were not “home”.  Perhaps there were times when we were not only not home, but we had no knowledge of how to get home.

Finding Your Way Home

For all of those people who wonder how to find their way home, “The Roadmap Home – Your GPS to Inner Peace” may be just the book that one needs.

The author, Leonard Szymczak, has been a psychotherapist and educator for over 35 years.  He has impressive credentials, including Director of The Family Therapy Program at the Marriage and Family Centre in Sydney, Australia, and later serving as a senior affiliate therapist with the Family Institute at Northwestern University.

I could say that Mr. Szymczak’s writing style is engaging for it is indeed that.

I could also suggest that his insights into the challenges of finding our way home are profound for they are incredibly powerful.

I could even suggest that his exercises in self-exploration are powerful and resonate with the reader because they definitely do that also.

However, the thing that I found to be most impactful in Mr. Szymczak’s book is his incredible, personal story.

Many authors tell a story of the path to personal growth or freedom but they do it from the standpoint of “I have never had these challenges but since you do, I think this is the best way to solve them”.  Such books leave many readers disconnected from the author as the reader thinks “what do you know of my journey?”.

Such is not the case with Mr. Szymczak’s life journey.

Consider this from the opening pages:

Home is about belonging – to a place, a group of people, a wellspring of love. A place where one is comforted, nurtured and protected. Where one can feel safe and secure and can gather strength in the face of adversity. Most importantly, it’s a place to live one’s truth.

That was not my home. Mine was a place ravaged by my father’s mental illness, domestic violence, blaming parents, and their impending divorce. It was a place riddled with conflict, fear and anxiety. Home was not a fortress of protection. Rather, it was a crumbling castle with dragons spewing hot flames. I felt insecure and unsafe, and realized later that I had lost a more sacred space – that place of inner knowing where I had inalienable rights – the right to exist, to feel, to think and act, to love and be loved, to express myself and be heard, to see my potential and have it recognized and blessed. That home was clearly lost by the time I visited the orphanage.

I knew as I read these opening lines that this was going to be an intimate, heart-to-heart sharing.

I was so unprepared for what followed.

Beginning the Journey

As you read this book, you feel like you have a life-long friend beside you, guiding you back to your place of inner peace.  You feel like you have a mentor who has lived your life in the past, been blessed and challenged by those experiences and now wants to share his observations and lessons with you.

Using powerful examples from his personal life that resonate with the reader’s own life, Mr. Szymczak guides the reader on a powerful journey back to their own sense of self – a place where they appreciate their great gifts and the miracle that they are.

They find a way to rediscover how incredible they are and what an incredibly important piece of the puzzle of Life that they represent.

He makes the reader feel loved and important in the greater scheme of Life.

Mr. Szymczak’s process is gentle and yet focused.  He guides the reader through the process of identifying where home is.  After all, you can’t get there if you don’t know where you are and where you need to go.

He then helps the reader, using powerful exercises and visualization techniques, to follow a guided journey that helps the reader identify the guideposts that assure them they are on the right path.

He adeptly shows the reader how to shake off the wounds of our past that so often are the primary obstacles that prevent us from finding our way home.

Having helped the reader find their way home, he then provides the means for helping the reader stay there, living a life of fulfillment from a place of spiritual power, personal strength and personal authenticity.

Creating a Powerful Message

The book “The Roadmap Home” is the most powerful book I have read in a long time in the genre of personal growth.

I think the book owes much of this to Mr. Szymczak’s background as a psychotherapist.

However I think most of the power of this book comes from the fact that Mr. Szymczak has been there – he has lived a life where he was a long way from home.  He has spent his life journeying back to the place that he calls home and now his heart calls him to share this roadmap with others.

This is one of those books where you will want to write the author to thank him for the profound impact he had on your life.

I did.

If you want to read a book that makes a powerful impact on your life, then “The Roadmap Home” is such a book.

As I write this on Thanksgiving Day 2009, I am reminded of the power of the simple expression “welcome home”.  Home is a place of personal and spiritual power - a place filled with love and acceptance of the beauty of every person.

This book can help you get there.

Welcome home.

In service and servanthood.

Harry