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My Works

Seasons of Love, A Lasting Marriage

Little did Susan Marquardt imagine that in setting sail for France at 21 years old, she was setting sail for a life of lasting love. She and Pierre, from their first kiss in the azalea bushes in Bellagio, have nourished their love for 66 years. They who are so very different in culture and language, but also in taste and termperament, what has kept them in love? 

As the book weaves its way through the four seasons, there are happy experiences and less happy. Susan and Pierre have confronted darkness: abuse both within the church and within the family, and now Pierre's Parkinsons. In addressing the darkness together, their love continues to grow still stronger. 

"The author unrolls the extraordinary tapestry of her long marriage. This elegant writer shows us the richness of love's power and shared commitment." Wallis Wilde Menozzi, Poet and Author of Silence and Silences

"Susan Tiberghien argues the case for marriage as the testing ground for the human capacity to love through thick and thin. Her story is a daunting achievement both in the living and he telling of it." Murray Stein, Ph.D., author of The Mystery of Transformation 

Writing Toward Wholeness,
Lessons Inspired by C.G.Jung

Writing Toward Wholeness, Lessons Inspired by C.G. Jung
In focusing on insights and excerpts from C.G. Jung's writings, and from many other inspirational writers, Susan Tiberghien brings together psychology, spirituality, and the arts, offering a way to wholeness.

Step by step, from the practice of journalig and active imagination, to exploring dreams and seeing beauty, to learning alchemy and practicing Zen, Tiberghien concludes the last lesson with a vibrant call for readers to take their own words out into the world.
"Tiberghien gives the reader access to Jung's inner thoughts as he dialogues with his soul in his journals.... Calling upon the writings of Etty Hillesum, Thomas Merton and Annie Dillard, she shows us how to write toward wholeness as we engage this 'silent place of the spirit.' A deeply nurturing and inspiring book." Maureen Murdock, author of The Heroine's Journey

 
Circling to the Center, Invitation to Silent Prayer
20th Anniversary Edition, Afterward by Author
 

"Nourished by my prayer, by my reading and writing, and by the steadfast love of the dear man I married over sixty years ago and the family we created, I approach a growing wholeness. Each morning I close the door of my small study. The space becomes a mandala. I sit in silent prayer. Sometimes there is the unresolved. Sometimes the spark flares. Each afternoon I open the door to the multi-layered world around me. The circles multiply, the mandala expands. Sometimes I am lantern." (from the Afterword)

Footsteps, In Love with a Frenchman

Footsteps is a collection of witty, heartfelt stories about the journey of one writer through many kinds of love, a marriage to a Frenchman, raising six children in five different countries, becoming a writer and still staying in love with Pierre.
"A charming, heartfelt journey into European culture and cuisine, the beauty and loneliness of unfamiliar places, and the exquisite good fortune of finding a lifelong companion. Tiberghien's essays are a rich bouillabaisse of scenic detail and delicious memories. Just a lovely book." Dinty W. Moore

Side by Side, Writing Your Love Story

What leads to lasting love? Side by Side is a memoir a 60 year love affair and almost that many years of marriage, where the author relates and relives especially the good moments, focusing on courtship, commitment and celebration, and encouraging the reader to do the same.
"Reading about her ongoing courtship with her husband of over 50 years, Side by Side reminds us about what is possible in a long sustaining love and encourages us to write about our own love story. In language both sensuous and lyrical, Tiberghien reminds us of who we were when the first blush of love opened our hearts to the world.: Maureen Murdock

One Year to a Writing Life, Twelve Lessons to Deepen Every Writer's Art and craft

One Year to a Writing Life opens the door to the writing life, taking the readers on a twelve month journey to discover and develop their own distinct voice. Covering the different literary genres, each lesson dovetails inspiration and instruction, offering a comprehensive approach to the art of writing.

"Tiberghien's advice, encouragement, and wisdom make this an invaluable book for writers at all stages of their writing lives." --Michael Steinberg, Fourth Genre.

"One Year to a Writing Life is the most illuminating and exciting book I have read about the journey to a life in writing." --Marcia Mead Lèbre,Director Paris Writers' Workshop.

Looking for Gold, A Year in Jungian Analysis

Here is the search for wholeness, for bringing together the visible and the invisible. The author calls is "seeing with her eyes closed."
Tiberghien shares one year of dreams, analysis, daily life. A writer, mother, woman in love, she enters her inner world, experiencing vertigo and breathlessness, until she lets the light and darkness fuse within her.

"Looking for Gold is a laboratory for artists, dreamers, and all who seek for ways to realize their true gold." Robert Bosnak,The Little Course in Dreams

"Tiberghien is a writer...Looking for Gold tells a gripping tale that will inspire anyone who hears soul’s subtle invitation and sets out." Kathleen Packard, Contemporary Contributions to Jungian Psychology

Circling to the Center, One Woman’s Encounter with Silent Prayer

Susan Tiberghien tackles the spiritual memoir to luminous results. While her style is contemplative, she reflects on earthy matters, her childhood summoned up the by death of her father, her marriage to a Frenchman and moving away to Europe, her parenting an adopted child, her caring for an aging mother-in-law.
Drawing from Julian of Norwich, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Thomas Merton, she incorporates themes from Taoist, Hindu, Sufi, and Native American cultures, along with insights of Jungian psychology.

"Everyone who yearns for a deeper life of prayer will delight in this book... The story rings true; it is not speculation about life, but life itself breaking through words." William H. Shannon, Silence on Fire

"Beautifully written and illusrated, this ecumenical document of sharing can inspire each of us to follow our own path of contemplation and prayer." Robert Hinshaw, C.G. Jung Institute, Kusnacht, Switzerland


Personal Essays

A Baroque Sunset, In Memory of Amy Clampitt

"Amy was teaching her first poetry workshop and longed for distraction from her jittery nerves. We talked about zinnias and sparrows, about Manhattan and Geneva. We talked about voyages, about southern France, the Italian lakes, 'imaginary Italy, the never-never vista, framed, of Stresa on Lago Maggiore...'"
A Baroque Sunset was written for International PEN in memory of Amy Clampitt.
Read the essay in "The Circle Continues," gathered by Judith Duerk (Innisfree Press,Philadelphia, 2001).

Ode to the Potato

"My French husband and I do not perceive the potato the same way. Recently at the Krüller-Muller Museum in the Netherlands, in front of Van Gogh's "The Potato Eaters", I realized that the potato was proof of our differenct cultures. Pierre stared at the dark painting as intensely as if he were looking at the "Last Supper." I turned away, thinking how stange such a solemn gathering around a platter of potatoes..."
This essay was first published in the Christian Science Monitor. Read it in the following anthologies: "Cupid's Wild Arrows," edited by Dianne Dicks (Bergli Books, Basel, Switzerland, 1993); "They Only Laughed Lated," edited by Carol Allen, (Europublication, 1997).

Swaying

"When I waved goodbye, my parents said, "Don't fall in love with a Frenchman!" I laughed and said, "Of course not." I arrived in the fall, fresh out of college, with years of French behind me, only to discover that I couldn't pronounce the name of the place where I was going. Grenoble. Or rather I couldn't pronounce it the French way.... People would look at me and say, "Pardon?" They made it sound like another place. I said Grenoble, they said Pardon..."
Published in "Swaying, Essays on Intercultural Love," edited by Jessie Carroll Grearson & Lauren B. Smith (University of Iowa Press, Iowa City, 1995).

Madame Michel

It was summertime wyhen we arrived in the small village of Istres, with its white walls and red, sun-baked roofs, built on a hillside in southern France. My husband, Pierre, was assigned to the Air Force base, hidden in the vast fields of lavender surrounding the village.
This story was my first published essay, under the title Spécialité Provençale, in the Albany Review, 1986. Since then it has appeared in several anthologies, the most recent,`France, A Love Story, edited by Camille Cusumano, Seal Press, 2004

Now Write! Nonfiction (Penguin 2009)

"Letting the Experience Choose You" Writing the personal essay is both inventive and fulfilling. Inventive, because the writer b ecom es storytteller and poet. And fulfilling because in this artful crafting of personal experience, the writer shares its meaning with the reader. In my workshops, I teach four steps to writing the personal essay. First, choose a personal experience or rather let it choose you. What experience wishes to be shared? Sit quietly, close your eyes, go within. Wait for the experience to surface on its own...
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