healing

Song Over Quiet Lake

admin — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000

In Song Over Quiet Lake, Sarah Felix Burns tells several intertwining stories of loss, love, and healing. The novel centers on an unlikely friendship between a young white woman, Sylvia, and a Tlingit elder, Lydie Jim. Both are students at the University of British Columbia, and they meet when Sylvia is assigned to be Lydie’s tutor. Although their relationship is formal at first, they gradually become deeply drawn into each other’s lives.

Sylvia learns the painful story of Lydie’s past: snatched away from her family at a young age and forced to attend a residential boarding school, Lydie has spent her entire life struggling to salvage enough dignity, rootedness, and love to take care of her own children in the face of a world determined to tear First Nations families apart. In return, Lydie learns about the tragedy in Sylvia’s past: the younger brother who was kidnapped as a toddler, leaving Sylvia’s mother frozen in time and grief, unable to love her two remaining children.

Sylvia and Lydie narrate most of the novel, but interspersed with their voices are the voices of the other characters in the web—Sylvia’s erstwhile boyfriend River, Lydie’s sons Jonah and Mitchell, Sylvia’s mother Miriam, and several others. Serving as an overlay to the personal stories, the broader historical narrative shows up in the voice of a priest who was once one of Lydie’s boarding school teachers. Well-intentioned but passive, the elderly priest relives his memories of complicity—his participation in the residential school system, his failure to stop a cruel practical joke that resulted in a young boy’s death, his refusal to demand that Canada grant asylum to Jews fleeing Nazi Germany.

All the characters in Song Over Quiet Lake are victims of the ravages of historical or personal tragedy, and they are victims of the intergenerational transmission of unresolved trauma. They are struggling to move forward with their lives, to emerge from past sorrows in order to build something new. They are also struggling to be able to give at least a little bit to each other, like the song (referenced in the novel’s title) that Lydie’s mother gave to Lydie as a young child. Even when Lydie returned from boarding school having lost her native language, with the result that she could no longer speak with her mother in words, they could still sing together and know they had each other’s love.

The novel’s dialogue is limp and stilted, and the prose as a whole lacks life. However, the characters are convincing and moving, and their complex, interwoven lives tell important stories about national guilt and communal resilience.

Written by: Ri J. Turner, April 7th 2010

Crazy Sexy Cancer Survivor: More Rebellion and Fire or Your Healing Journey

admin — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:03:00 +0000

By Kris Carr

skirt!

Kris Carr was diagnosed with chronic cancer and instead of sitting around and waiting to die, she began to really live. She reshaped her life from the inside physically and mentally. Her first book was Crazy Sexy Cancer Tips and this follow up book gives the reader more support and inspiration.

I do not have cancer, but I found incredible strength and numerous fabulous ideas in this book. Many of the lessons and advice from Carr can be taken by anyone. There are a number of exercises and tasks to do, and blank pages are left to answer the prompts given. I particularly liked the following: “How do you find stability in the midst of unsafety?” and “What does the woman or man you desire to become look like?”

Crazy Sexy Cancer Survivor is peppered with plenty of attitude and humor from Carr, and quotes from famous writers and philosophers are throughout. Carr seems like a trusted friend and adviser, but one who doesn’t take herself too seriously. She looks to her support system—doctors, friends, and her mother—to write brief essays on diet, meditation, and beauty tips.

Many of the ideas seem like common sense, yet it is easy to get bogged down into repetitive and destructive ways of thinking. Writing this as a woman who hasn’t been diagnosed with a life-threatening disease, I can only imagine that challenge is multiplied for cancer patients. Carr reminds us to break out of these patterns, get off our butts, and make things better for ourselves. No one else is going to do it for us, and as she says, we are the CEOs of our own lives.

Carr's website has more support and tips. There are continual updates on physical, emotional, and mental well being, but if you don’t just want to read about how to change your lifestyle, the website gives you the tools to change your physical self as well. Carr recommends juicers, water test kits, raw foods, vitamins, yoga mats, body wash, essential oils, lubricant, and even saunas! Also posted online are Carr's upcoming workshops and events; her passion for life in her book is inspiring, so in person, I’m guessing she’s pretty incredible!

Written by: Kristin Conard, October 7th 2009

The SimplyRaw Living Foods Detox Manual

admin — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 16:16:00 +0000

By Natasha Kyssa

Arsenal Pulp Press

Which should I do first, save my butt or save the planet? The SimplyRaw Living Foods Detox Manual contains much useful information, but it appears that any local food aspirations may conflict with many of the program's staples. Some recipes incorporate avocados, bananas, and papayas. The modern world that poisons us also includes the technology that permits year-round tropical fruits.

SimplyRaw is a company that assists people in improving health and well-being. Natasha Kyssa, a raw foods cook and lifestyle coach, is its founder. This manual details her twenty-eight-day raw-and-living-foods-only detox program. Raw and living foods are those that have been soaked, sprouted, or fermented.

The last time I followed a naturopathic food plan, I definitely felt better, but I am not certain that it would be considered 'gentle.' This method claims to be kind and effective, purging poisons from the body and supplying healing nutrients. Her site cites National Geographic: "Chemicals that suffuse modern life—from well-known toxins to newer compounds with unknown effect—are building up in our bodies and sometimes staying there for years."

Given decades of accumulation, it seems rather ambitious to clean out one's system in a month, but the claimed benefits include increased energy levels, better digestion, weight loss, clear sinuses, and improved sleeping in addition to decreased toxicity. This book provides over one hundred recipes nutritional information and implementation suggestions. There are descriptions of complementary therapies such as dry skin brushing, tongue scraping, mini-trampolines, saltbaths, and colonics. Lists of recommended whole foods and herbal teas are also included.

Written by: Erika Mikkalo, October 5th 2009

Magic and the Power of the Goddess: Initiation, Worship, and Ritual in the Western Mystery Tradition

admin — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 22:06:00 +0000

By Gareth Knight

Destiny Books

The planet is in turmoil and, according to Magic and the Power of the Goddess by Gareth Knight, we can heal it by connecting with the Goddess - the feminine energy that runs though our world. To fully connect with the Goddess though, one must study how she has been represented in various cultures throughout history.

The first part of the book deals with exercises and rituals (most involve meditation, circles, and candles) that one can perform in order to become more in sync with nature and the energy that runs through the planet. Knight claims that this energy is feminine and takes the form of the Goddess. By focusing on this energy, we should be able to heal not only ourselves, but the environment around us. The rest of the book concentrates on different myths from various cultures and how the Goddess is represented in each of these stories. Isis, Andromeda, Psyche, and the Virgin Mary are just a few of the women that Knight cites in these chapters.

Personally, I found this book to be a bit much. To me, meditation is a simple, stress-free practice, and I found Knight’s almost scientific approach to be very unappealing and complicated. The same goes for his take on ancient myths. I would have appreciated an in-depth analysis of how women and goddesses have been represented in mythology over time, but Knight’s analysis just seems to go in circles, never reaching any real conclusion. I’ve read a few new age books before, and while I’ve never really been a follower of what they preach, I could appreciate the author’s point of view. This book was different. I found Knight to be longwinded, rambling and, worst of all, boring. Maybe if I practiced Wicca I would be more impressed with Magic and the Power of the Goddess, but somehow I doubt it.

Written by: Victoria Kroeger, June 11th 2008

Strange Piece of Paradise

admin — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 22:05:00 +0000

By Terri Jentz

Picador

When I picked up this memoir in early July, I was expecting to navigate a woman’s difficult journey from surviving a brutal, anonymous trauma into an enlightened state through making peace with the crime scene and its effected community. What I did not anticipate was the systemic analysis of social problems, personal depth and conscious processing that this book contains. Trying to describe Jentz’s words with my own feels trite and insulting, but because this is one of the most important books I’ve ever read, I owe this story’s survivor that much.

On a summer bicycle trip across the country in 1977, Jentz, along with her traveling companion and college roommate, were attacked by an axe-wielding cowboy in an Oregon park. Surviving the attack with only large laceration scars on her arm as physical proof, Jentz and her friend were shuttled home and the case was never solved (those two details are somewhat unrelated). After long years of unprocessed traumatic grief and anger took their toll, Jentz decided the only way to attain peace was to retrace her steps, solve her own attempted murder and confront the community that was left in the wake of her personal tragedy.

But in addition to Jentz’s own remarkable journey back to small towns in rural Oregon, she positions her passage in conjunction to problems far larger than her own. With a poignant deconstruction of misogyny—“mass psychosis in humankind everywhere that devalues women”—alongside a very revealing look at the survivor, Jentz transports you into a world where deep emotions are commonplace, tragedy touches everyone, and community is real. She also speaks to the very real anxiety many women face daily, just in living their lives, and many times, I would have to limit how much I would read in a day or week to prevent my own neurosis from overtaking me. This is perhaps the greatest compliment I can give to the depth and breadth of Jentz’s work. Collective consciousness should be forced to bear the weight of women’s fears in a way it currently does not, and by communing with this story of total reclamation and survival, I felt less alone in a world that doesn’t yet morally or legally protect us.

Often left speechless when trying to summarize Strange Piece of Paradise, this is one of the best books of my lifetime. Terri Jentz’s reflexive, powerful words can be retraumatizing at time, but I’ve never felt safer putting my own experience within the context of someone else’s. May her words travel as far as she has.

Written by: Brittany Shoot, October 2nd 2007