A Change of Habit : Leaving Behind My Husband, Career, and Everything I Owned to Become a Nun - Sister Monica Clare

A Change of Habit

Leaving Behind My Husband, Career, and Everything I Owned to Become a Nun

By: Sister Monica Clare

Hardcover | 29 April 2025

At a Glance

Hardcover


$49.50

or 4 interest-free payments of $12.38 with

 or 

Available: 29th April 2025

Preorder. Will ship when available.

The soulful, hilarious memoir of a chronic people pleaser who surprised everyone in her life by abandoning an unfulfilling career and marriage to join a convent-and learned how much we stand to gain when we fully embrace our authentic selves

The soulful, hilarious memoir of a chronic people pleaser who surprised everyone in her life by abandoning an unfulfilling career and marriage to join a convent-and learned how much we stand to gain when we fully embrace our authentic selves

In her twenties and thirties, Monica Clare was a talented but exhausted photo editor who spent her days getting yelled at by clients who were often strung out on cocaine and megalomania. For years, the voice calling her to a simpler, quieter life had been getting louder. As a little kid, she'd seen Audrey Hepburn in The Nun's Story and thought- That's me. That's how she found herself straightening her habit nervously as she walked into a convent, preparing to live alongside eleven other sisters who'd taken the same vow of poverty and celibacy . . . indefinitely. Could a chronically fidgety, pop culture-obsessed woman of the world ever fit in? she wondered. And why did the other nuns seem so cold and disapproving?

As the months went on, she realized the other nuns were shy, not unfriendly-much like herself. The culture at the convent discouraged giving compliments or even saying "please" or "thank you," since acts of generosity were to be freely given and received. But when Monica rose to the role of Sister Superior, she got the policy against compliments changed. Relationships started to blossom, first awkwardly and then more easily. Who would have predicted that Sister Christina, the one she thought had deeply disliked her from the start, would turn out to be a huge hugger? Or that they'd spend entire afternoons trying to keep a wild turkey from running amok in their community garden?

Equal parts tell-all and rallying cry, A Change of Habit reveals how much we can say yes to when we stop laboring to prove our worth to ourselves and others. In her role as a spiritual counselor, Sister Monica guides people from all walks of life toward resisting the false promises of capitalism, finding healing in small acts of nurture and connection, and ultimately, restoring themselves to a place of wholeness, all while living in this gorgeously messy world of ours.

More in Biographies

The Leadership Genius of Elon Musk - Dennis Kneale

RRP $34.99

$31.75

Source Code : My Beginnings - Bill Gates

RRP $55.00

$35.75

35%
OFF
HOPE : The Autobiography - Pope Francis

RRP $36.99

$33.25

10%
OFF
Memorial Days - Geraldine Brooks

Hardcover

RRP $32.99

$21.50

35%
OFF
Emperor of the Seas : Kublai Khan and the Making of China - Jack Weatherford
Gutsy Girls : Love, Poetry and Sisterhood - Josie McSkimming
Wifedom : Mrs Orwell's Invisible Life : Our July Book of the Month - Anna Funder
Love Stories - Trent Dalton

Hardcover

RRP $34.99

$31.75

Uses for Obsession : A Chef's Memoir - Ben Shewry

RRP $34.99

$33.25

Night : Penguin Modern Classics - Elie Wiesel

RRP $22.99

$17.75

23%
OFF
The Journals of Captain Cook : Penguin Classics - James Cook
The Gulag Archipelago : 1918-56 - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

RRP $37.99

$33.90

11%
OFF
Man's Search For Meaning - Viktor E. Frankl