Living Alone and Loving It [Paperback]

After a relationship impasse, Barbara Feldon -- universally known as the effervescent spy 99 onGet Smart-- found herself living alone. Little did she know that this time would become one of the most enriching and joyous periods of her life.
Now Feldon shares her secrets for living alone and loving it. Prescribing antidotes for loneliness, salves for fears, and answers for just about every question that arises in an unpartnered day, she covers both the practical and emotional aspects of the solo life, including how to:

Stop imagining that marriage is a solution for loneliness • Nurture a glowing self-image that is not dependent on an admirer • Value connections that might be overlooked • Develop your creative side • End negative thinking

Whether you are blessed with the promise of youth or the wisdom of age,Living Alone & Loving Itwill instill the know-how to forge a life with few maps and many adventures.What comes is not to be avoided

what goes is not to be followed.

-- Master Daibai

living alone

(freedom is hard to love)

It is Saturday morning in Manhattan. I wake up today in my wallpapered room tucked over my neighbors' courtyard gardens. The spring foliage is transparent in the sun, birds chirp from the comfort of branches; all else is silent. After living alone for twenty years I'm still filled with arias of praise for the blessings of my sweet solitude.

But I haven't always felt this way.

We complex creatures have a baffling talent for entertaining two opposite desires at the same time. Even while I was intoxicated by the idea of merging with an imagined beloved, I got a renegade thrill from contemplating living independently, freely choosing pleasures to include and intrusions to exclude in order to allow my life to sing. Owning myself had the allure of an exotic perfume.

As a child I would lie in bed at night listening to my parents' sl.