All Sickness Is Home Sickness

Beautifully rich prose and poetry by a gifted writer. Evokes a longing for and creates a meeting with the deep essence of healing, the river that must underlie the technical or methodological details in any school of medicine, new or ancient, western or eastern, "religious" or "not so". All these diverse forms of healing must somehow make and sustain a vital connection with life, with life force at a cellular level. The author who is an acupuncturist, a leader in her field, has plenty of technical experience to be respected that she could have highlighted. Yet she has published something very unique -- not another text/reference on techniques, secrets of the ancients, or point prescriptions of which there are already many. Instead she creates a meditative invitation which spirals ever deeper into sacred space, that "home" created in and by relationship, where confrontation with mystery, reverence and life force can bring about change, healing, and transformation. Reading it renews my own quest, joy and wonder for life -- for witnessing nature's deep continuous stream of wisdom and its capacity to transform wounding into healing, often where it is least expected. The beauty of her own prose and the poetic quotes which she has collected over a lifetime illustrate an inner map for travellers who seek BEING, as both the healer and the healed. I and likely others will desire to return home again, over and over, through the pages of her book.

Dianne Connelly has written a book that is informative, enlightening, and soothing to the soul. Through the seamless, almost poetic flow of her words, she conveys a profound and tender respect for the reader that in itself is a healing meditation. Acupuncture is Connelly's particular discipline, but anyone interested in bio-psycho-spiritual healing will draw great comfort from this work. She calls us back again and again to the fact that it is relationship that eases all of our ailments, and it is connection--person to person, ego to Self, psyche to body--that creates wholeness. I re-read All Sickness is Homesickness whenever I need a gentle reminder of the sacredness of my own healing vocation, and I recommend it frequently to my patients.

Reading this work is like reading good poetry--vivid, precise, with an economy of words and a wealth of images that bring the reader into a living conversation with the author. The book is about relationships which is are essence of healing--between patient and practitioner, between individual and symptoms, between the sacred and the mundane, and between the spirit and the body. In an era of new age "presto-change-o" approaches to holistic healing, it is refreshing to encounter a writer with such depth of knowledge and soulful expression. I recommend it to my patients often.