Sharing Meals Heals: An Italian 'Menu' For Inner Peace - Tapa blanda

This is a self-help book for young adults to seniors. It offers support regarding issues and feelings that we all face in life such as relationships, abandonment, spirituality, grief, frustration, hurt, anger, fear, shame, guilt, etc. The author serves it as a 'meal' complete with 1) antipasto (Italian proverbs); 2) zuppa e l'insalata (soup and salad, a few contemporary ideas the author feels need to be tossed upside down like salads, or diluted like some soups); 3) pasta (the main course, short reflections and biographical sketches of how certain creative and loving people from different walks of life responded to the vicissitudes of human existence and 4) dolci (dessert, a few poems, jokes and prayers). It attests that sharing meals is a way of reconciling with others and that sitting around the table together encourages the recounting of joys, sorrows, hopes and dreams, the mutual disclosing of which heals the mind and spirit. The meal theme is borrowed from Jesus who broke bread often with people to help them restore wholeness. In sum, the book encourages those who want to change to do so, but first suggests self-acceptance since that is the quality that offers energy for personal transformation.

Stating that his girth testifies to his good cooking, Bill Faiella likes to make and eat pasta, pasta va zul. For fun, he occasionally enjoys strumming a guitar, playing charades and scrabble, walking, and listening to rock, country and classical music and making Italian candies and cookies. He is a Roman Catholic Priest belonging to the Congregation of Holy Cross and holds advanced degrees in education, theology, and pastoral counseling from Siena Heights University, the University of Notre Dame, and Loyola University in Baltimore respectively. His holds a doctorate in psychology from California Coast University. His professional and ministerial background includes teaching, school administration, working with juvenile offenders, counseling, spiritual direction, parish work and retreat ministry.