Wildflower Living: Cultivating Inner Strength During Times of Storm or Drought
Duckworth knows a thing or two about sorrow. After several miscarriages, she gave birth to a little girl with severe heart problems who lived only a week. Then after having healthy twin boys, one of them battled bone cancer at the tender age of four (he is now a healthy teenager). Not long after his recovery, Duckworth discovered a lump in her breast and endured a subsequent mastectomy and round of chemotherapy. "This isn't a book in which I will tell you how to endure your losses," she cautions readers. "I don't have 'eight easy ways to get through grief,' or even one easy way. Because it never is easy." Rather, she says, this book is a guide to self-exploration, designed to help women learn to journal about their experiences and losses. She wants readers to understand that it is possible to stake a claim to "wildflower living," and throughout the book uses the metaphor of wildflowers often growing in land that has been scorched or devastated. Spiderwort, for example, is tough in the face of adversity; blue flax thrives during times of drought. And creeping thyme, which quietly spreads its flowers and leaves its scent, offers an example of how individuals can transform their own grief into comforting others.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.