Book Recommendation: ‘Gift From the Sea’: Inspiration From Seashells

Anne Morrow Lindbergh found inspiration from the seashells she found on Florida’s Captiva Island. “The Seashell,” 1912, by Odilon Redon. Musée d'Orsay. (Public Domain)

Sadly, the names of Charles and Anne Lindbergh are most closely associated with the tragic kidnapping and subsequent murder of their first-born infant, 20-month-old Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr., in 1932. To escape the hysteria and American press, the Lindberghs moved to Europe in 1935. They returned in 1939.

Anne and her husband Charles Lindbergh had triumphs and tragedies during their marriage, here in an undated photograph. (PD-US)

Charles Lindbergh was a decorated pioneer aviator in the early ‘30s. Anne Morrow Lindbergh was also an aviator and accompanied him on many of his exploratory flights and aerial surveys.  She served as radio operator and his copilot. She became the first woman to receive a U.S. glider pilot license.

It was after World War II that Anne Morrow Lindbergh began writing poetry and nonfiction. Lindbergh has many writings to her name, but it was her essay-style work “Gift from the Sea” that has garnered a following that has lasted for generations. I picked up this slim volume decades ago. Lindbergh’s sensitive and original mind looks delicately into questions of how one balances one’s life and relationships. I found it inspirational then and a notable book to share with readers who may have not yet discovered her. It seems an appropriate read as we enter a particularly hectic season.

Resonating Through the Ages

In early 1950s, Anne Morrow Lindbergh took a brief vacation from her husband and five children and their home on the Connecticut coast to spend a few weeks in solitude at the seashore. While there, she wrote “Gift from the Sea,” in which she reflects on the gifts of space, time, and being alone with your thoughts and aspirations.

Staying in a small cottage on Florida’s Captiva Island, Lindbergh spent much of her time walking alone on the beach, where she discovered, to her delight, a myriad of seashells. Each of them spoke to her in different ways as she reflected on the lives of Americans in the mid-20th century.

When she found a pristine Channelled Whelk with its inwardly winding spiral staircase, she wrote:

Simplification of outward life is not enough. It is merely the outside. But I am starting with the outside. I am looking at the outside of a shell, the outside of my life—the shell. The complete answer is not to be found on the outside, in an outward mode of living. This is only a technique—a road to grace. The final answer, I know, is always inside. But the outside can give a clue, can help one to find the inside answer. One is free, like the hermit crab, to change one’s shell.

She continued to draw inspiration from the shells she found. Her musings, while geared toward American women, continue to offer new understanding to both men and women at any stage of life.

This small volume offers the wonderful perspective she found as she chose to step away, temporarily, to give herself time to refresh, restore, and renew. In her essays, she tackles complicated emotional topics with a realistic and unsentimental look at the trappings of modernity and the distractions of multiple commitments that potentially can pull you from family. Simplicity, for Lindbergh, is one key that can unlock a life of serenity: Unclutter your life rather than allowing gadgets and social obligations to overwhelm you.

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Anne Morrow Lindbergh, in this image from Jan. 1, 1929, stayed at Florida's Captiva Island to write her classic, "Gift from the Sea." Library of Congress. (Public Domain)

Being close to the sea is a great restorer for many. Her insights into the stages of relationships, opportunities for personal growth, and the joy to be found in nature’s daily miracles are musings that she wrote down during her sojourn close to the sea, sharing lessons of patience, faith, and truth as the waves repeatedly fingered the coastline and left behind treasures to be discovered and pondered. Gifts in the form of shells which, when examined closely, offer insights into the unique designs and patterns of our own lives.

In “Gift of the Sea,” Lindbergh leaves herself open to all emotional and spiritual opportunities that this precious time away affords her. She shares her thoughts with delicate grace and remarkable resiliency. Her narrative style is warm, inviting, and deeply engaging.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh's "Gift from the Sea" has garnered a following that has lasted for generations.

In the edition I have, Lindbergh offers an afterword written in 1975, 20 years after the book’s first publication in 1955, in which she expresses her astonishment and pleasure that readers were still finding her words resonating. Much changed during those 20 years in terms of women’s role in the world—and even more so since then. But fundamentally, her enduring insights on youth, age, love and marriage, peace, solitude, and contentment still ring true.

At last count, “Gift from the Sea” has sold over 3 million copies and has been translated into 45 languages. According to Publishers Weekly, the book was the top nonfiction bestseller in the United States for 1955.

Give yourself a gift and pick up this generous, heart-felt, and gentle read.

This beautifully written book can offer great and simple wisdom for readers of every generation.

‘Gift from the Sea’ By Anne Morrow Lindbergh Pantheon Books, 1955 Hardcover: 127 pages