Barbara Becker's Blog: Gold Nautilus Award! - Posts Tagged "loss"
My interview with Publishers Weekly
Thank you, Publishers Weekly, for including this interview along with Heartwood's starred review! I'm so glad to be getting the word out on working with grief during COVID.
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/b...
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/b...
A great review in Shelf-Awareness!
Book Review
Review: Heartwood: The Art of Living with the End in Mind
An unfortunate feature of contemporary Western culture is the denial of death. But as interfaith minister Barbara Becker demonstrates in her emotionally forthright, often inspiring Heartwood: The Art of Living with the End in Mind, a conscious engagement with this "last and greatest taboo" can be an invaluable resource in living a life filled with meaning and purpose.
Becker is eclectic in her selection of teachings from various spiritual traditions that illuminate brief but revealing vignettes, including her story of losing two daughters to miscarriages (she has two sons), and accounts of her experiences as a Zen Buddhist-trained hospice volunteer in New York City. Some of her most moving anecdotes involve her father, a neurosurgeon, whose first wife was killed in a boating accident only months after their wedding. Becker also offers a frank description of her parents' deaths, as her father's incisive mind crumbles in the face of Alzheimer's disease and her mother succumbs to heart failure. But her stories are not all somber, as illustrated by the history of Felix, a skeleton first used by her grandfather as a medical student and that remained a family heirloom for two more generations of doctors over 100 years.
Becker also finds deep meaning in a commemoration at the site of the Wounded Knee Massacre at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, and in an improvised ceremony with a friend named Generous Bear at Manhattan's Corlears Hook Park, the site of a 17th-century massacre of Native Americans near her Lower East Side home. Her ability to integrate multicultural perspectives like these into her teaching adds breadth to her insights.
The portraits of Becker's encounters with hospice patients are equally revealing. Despite her training, she feared she would be unable to be a source of comfort to dying patients. But as she describes "Mrs. B," whom she assisted in writing farewell letters to family and friends, or "Mr. R," a Muslim man who was soothed by her repetition of a simple Sufi chant, little more was required of her than simple presence. With its many stories like these, Heartwood is a disarmingly unaffected book, but it would be an error to equate that accessible style with a lack of depth. This is a resource filled with wisdom and one that readers will find themselves returning to often in both good times and bad. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer
Shelf Talker: Interfaith minister Barbara Becker draws thoughtfully on diverse spiritual traditions to show how death can be one of life's great teachers.
Review: Heartwood: The Art of Living with the End in Mind
An unfortunate feature of contemporary Western culture is the denial of death. But as interfaith minister Barbara Becker demonstrates in her emotionally forthright, often inspiring Heartwood: The Art of Living with the End in Mind, a conscious engagement with this "last and greatest taboo" can be an invaluable resource in living a life filled with meaning and purpose.
Becker is eclectic in her selection of teachings from various spiritual traditions that illuminate brief but revealing vignettes, including her story of losing two daughters to miscarriages (she has two sons), and accounts of her experiences as a Zen Buddhist-trained hospice volunteer in New York City. Some of her most moving anecdotes involve her father, a neurosurgeon, whose first wife was killed in a boating accident only months after their wedding. Becker also offers a frank description of her parents' deaths, as her father's incisive mind crumbles in the face of Alzheimer's disease and her mother succumbs to heart failure. But her stories are not all somber, as illustrated by the history of Felix, a skeleton first used by her grandfather as a medical student and that remained a family heirloom for two more generations of doctors over 100 years.
Becker also finds deep meaning in a commemoration at the site of the Wounded Knee Massacre at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, and in an improvised ceremony with a friend named Generous Bear at Manhattan's Corlears Hook Park, the site of a 17th-century massacre of Native Americans near her Lower East Side home. Her ability to integrate multicultural perspectives like these into her teaching adds breadth to her insights.
The portraits of Becker's encounters with hospice patients are equally revealing. Despite her training, she feared she would be unable to be a source of comfort to dying patients. But as she describes "Mrs. B," whom she assisted in writing farewell letters to family and friends, or "Mr. R," a Muslim man who was soothed by her repetition of a simple Sufi chant, little more was required of her than simple presence. With its many stories like these, Heartwood is a disarmingly unaffected book, but it would be an error to equate that accessible style with a lack of depth. This is a resource filled with wisdom and one that readers will find themselves returning to often in both good times and bad. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer
Shelf Talker: Interfaith minister Barbara Becker draws thoughtfully on diverse spiritual traditions to show how death can be one of life's great teachers.
Gold Nautilus Award!
I have some exciting news to share!
HEARTWOOD has won a Gold Nautilus Book Award! Nautilus’s mission is “Better Books for a Better World.” I’m so grateful to the reviewers and judges who made this hap ...more
HEARTWOOD has won a Gold Nautilus Book Award! Nautilus’s mission is “Better Books for a Better World.” I’m so grateful to the reviewers and judges who made this hap ...more
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