It is an unusual and sometimes thrilling experience?despite the Buddhist stillness that characterizes Gates' beautiful, intelligent and often lyric prose?to be a witness to the exquisite, naked, scrupulous, spiritual practice of the process of changing one's mind. Realigning herself with, and stringently re-valuing, the history and inhabitants of this region, Gates reunites herself and her readers with the land, with land itself. (read the entire review)

Deena Metzger, Entering the Ghost River
Shambhala Sun review
 

Gates took a good look around and beneath her neighborhood, studying its sociology, geology, history and spirit. The result is a reflective exploration that inspires readers to examine the meaning of home and family. (Read the entire review)

Susan Parker
San Francisco Chronicle

What would it mean to locate ourselves precisely in the great unfolding web of the universe? Barbara Gates took up the challenge, becoming a cartogographer of the spirit who set about creating a many-dimensional map of "home". Gracefully written, precisely observed, deeply felt, Already Home may send you out to discover the rich history of your own neighborhood and send you in to listen to your body, heart and mind.

Sandy Boucher, author of Hidden Spring:
A Buddhist Woman Confronts Cancer
Turning Wheel review

. . .what started as a quest for wellness evolved into a profound exploration of the environment and her place in it, as well as a deeper sense of what it means to be "home."  The results of her journey are recorded in Already Home, a poignant and inspiring memoir that interweaves themes of family and friendship, ecology and Buddhism, health and home with one woman's search for connection with the world around her. (Read the entire review)
Georgia Rowe
Contra Costa Times, Time Out

While squaring off against a life-threatening illness, Barbara Gates decided to pay more attention to where she lived and what was going on around her.  Gates plunges into an examination of Berkeley California, going all the way back to the shellmound of Native Americans 5,000 years ago and the geological history of the Bay and the hills.  This salutary exploration of the soul of a place is quite inspiring. (Read the entire review)

Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat
Spirituality and Health review

The cofounder and coeditor of the Inquiring Mind provides a thoughtful, elegantly written exploration of the boundary between self and place. Gates?s book-length essay details her years-long effort to know and inhabit her world, her community, her neighborhood, her body, and her self?an encourages us to do the same in our own lives. (Read the entire review)

Phil  Catalfo
Yoga Journal review

Gates' sensitive exploration of the dynamics within her own small sphere of this planet raises questions for all readers about how we connect with our families, ourselves and those living near us. Already Home is a reflective meditation written by an author who's worked with such notables as the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh. Gates admits that the Buddhist view "forms the lens" through which she perceives her neighborhood. For all readers, regardless of background, this book can be a compelling reminder to look around more closely at the world we call our home.

Barbara Sloane
The Montclarion review

Gates plunges herself into the tragic (suicides, people sleeping on sidewalks) as well as the delightful (neighborhood gatherings, backyard gardening, conversations with the mailman), delivering a wise and moving meditation on all that goes into the making of home.

Frances Lefkowitz
Body and Soul Magazine review

Through the pages of her sweetly revealing memoir, Already Home: A Topography of Spirit and Place, Gates offers a social, historic exploration of her 'hood, beautifully written in a journalistic style that explains the migration of communities (flora and fauna, people, businesses and social movements) and celebrates the fundamental nature of extended family and home. (Read the entire review.)

Susan Parker, author of Tumbling After
The Daily Planet review

Already Home is a treasury of all the things that matter--people, pavements, worn steps, dogs, ache in the heart, fear, small acts of courage or kindness, weeds, creek beds, pilgrimage through the ordinary.  All through I can hear her voice--elegantly simple, but sinuously layered.  She?s worked this material until it shines, until its fragrance is released.

Susan Murphy
Australian film maker, Blind Love Tango
 
 

Advance Praise

Gates is a modern American transcontinental settler, with a strangely settling and disturbingly unsettling tale to tell. This is a work of great courage both in the living and in the writing. Her generosity of heart shines through on every page.
Jon Kabat-Zinn, author of Wherever you go, There You Are

This is the sort of book one is homesick for after finishing it. Honest, searching, and as engrossing as a mystery, it pulled me onward. It's a marvelous meditation on how the fear of change and mortality has led us to destroy in the name of preserving.
Annie Gottlieb, author of Do You Believe in Magic? and The Cube: Keep the Secret

The daily particularities of living in Berkeley, the exploration of its history and geology and the venturing forth into the great mysteries and uncertainties of life, love, and time is done with equal honesty, ease, and wisdom. A satisfying, nourishing, ultimately insightful book.
Malcolm Margolin, author of The Ohlone Way

Spanning geologic time and the vast reaches of the human heart, Barbara Gates offers an honest and sensitive look at how we might more fully inhabit our lives. This book is a testament to the healing power of connection with ourselves and with the world around us.
Sharon Salzberg, author of Lovingkindness and Faith

This book shows us the way to find a deeper connection to our family, our neighborhood, and ultimately, all that lives. It inspires us to stop, to look, to see our unique place in a world that is constantly changing, to discover the true meaning of home.
Howard Cutler, M.D., coauthor with the Dalai Lama of The Art of Happiness

As if Thoreau moved his cabin to your neighborhood street corner, Already Home is a beautiful and tender reminder to honor the life around you.
Jack Kornfield, author of A Path With Heart and After the Ecstasy, the Laundry

Ultimately, this beautifully written memoir succeeds in proving to each of us, that all of our lives are shared limitlessly, with our neighbors, the garden plants, and the toxic waste dumps that surround us, that we are linked with all those beings who have lived and died before us if we can summon the love and guts to see it.
Kate Wheeler, author of When Mountains Walked

Gates is a detective, honest and committed in her search for meaning, uncovering the many layers of home.
Sue Bender, author of Plain and Simple

Gates walks her talk-- literally. Thanks to her wild curiosity and total lack of sentimentality, her courage is infectious. She inspires me to seize the moment and live more fully.
Joanna Macy, author of Widening Circles and World as Lover, World as Self

So many of us have been uprooted, scattered across continents, disconnected from our geographic, cultural, and family origins. Barbara Gates's book is a profound and lyrical exploration of our common homelessness.
Wes Nisker, author of Essential Crazy Wisdom and Buddha's Nature

Self and home, garden and neighborhood are continually reborn, with each shift of attention, into the vibrant particular-ness that is never apart from the sacred ground of all place and all time.
Sylvia Boorstein, author of Pay Attention for Goodness' Sake