'Divine' Store Shutting After Six Years

Gloria Brown knows too well that there is a season for everything.

The owner of Divine Inspirations Book Store on Franklin Avenue spent 30 years in Corporate America, and the rest of her career working to inspire others to live a better, more holistic lifestyle by presenting workshops, yoga and reiki classes or selling inspiring books and music.

Now, after six years, she will close shop in the next few weeks. She said economic reasons led to her decision, but that her books and items will still be able to be purchased on her website, divinebooks.net.

She also plans to continue hosting workshops at various locations.

In 2000, shortly after retiring as diversity manager from Lucent Technologies, she formed “Global Healing,” with three partners. Its mission was to bring concepts of healing to women in corporations.

“Women work long hours, they weren’t taking care of themselves,” Brown said. “We would give workshops on alternative medicine, menopause. We’d bring them to spas.”

After September 11, things changed. The need to cater to women in the workforce had diminished.

“People started cocooning, stayed home with their children, they stopped working long hours,” she said. “They were doing what we had created the business to help them do.”

Brown decided to take what she had learned from her business and incorporate it into “Divine Inspirations,” a spiritual bookstore and wellness center. There, she brings together books, educational programs, alternative health and spirituality under one roof.

Clients come for yoga, reiki and T’ai Chi. They also come seeking enlightenment, be it through spiritual books or by signing up for workshops. Topics range from how to communicate with angels to meditation.

Brown attracted top names in the area of psychic mediums and energey healers. Brown said she has learned to rely on instinct when booking speakers and others who hold workshops, "It made me tap into my inner knowing as far as the kind of people I bring into the store."

Books encompass all religions and reflect everybody, no matter what their beliefs, she said,“There are books on Islam, Hinduism, Christianity, Mormonism, Buddhism."

The store also sells crystals, jewelry imbued with healing energy, and healing music that clients purchase for loved ones who are ill, she said. It’s the go-to place for those with one goal in mind: healing.

“People come here with burdens, pain, stress, illness,” Brown said. “I notice customers who started with me and to see their progress and how they’ve grown is delightful.”

Opening the shop was the fulfillment to which Brown had aspired and she is sad to see it go,“The store was more for me than it was for them."