Field Notes: A Geography of Mourning

This is a wonderful small book that describes, gently and unhurriedly, the healing that a young woman experiences following the death of her husband, friend, and lover. We move through many landscapes as the author describes her journey "shedding words, shedding connections to the past, shedding pain", emerging whole and ready to connect again to life and love on many levels. Whenever I picked up this book, I felt I was entering a life not unlike my own but wholely different. I entered landscapes I barely knew and, through the author's words, these unique places felt mine. Letting go, at the end, was hard, becuase I had to separate from her life. What was comforting somehow was that I knew that, much as the author had emerged from her own special experiences and become her own woman with her own satisfying life, so had I. At the end, we went our separate ways, having touched softly in the night and parted.This book will always have a special place in my heart.