What the Heart Wants: Stories of Hope and Belonging

Reading Dianne's prose is like walking along a quiet stream, ankle deep in wet grasses on a soft early morning. As I read her stories, I feel my lungs restored to deep full breaths, my heart to opening, and my spirit to courage. Dianne explores psychic and emotional terrain that we need more words for. This work is important and permission giving.

This thin volume bears several readings, its message being profound but subtle. Ms. Grob approaches the world with her senses wide open. In these delicious encounters with the earth's landscapes and creatures--including its human creatures--she arrives at love. She uses it like a sixth sense, a qualitatively different way of knowing the natural riches around her. Right there in that particular form of knowing, hope is born. The author's discriptions of meeting her surroundings with love awakens her reader to his or her own emotional connection to the fragile beauty of the planet.

There is so much good to say about this book: it is moving without being sentimental; it brings the world alive, in a way I could absorb via the author's keen eye and generous heart. The stories are charged with the grandeur of the ordinary. But above all else, the writing is clear: fresh, clean, and alive, like water flowing over smooth stones. Trip Quillman

This small book is not to be read quickly. It is a slow, meditative, intimate conversation with the body and the body of the Earth. Dianne Grob's tender stories made me laugh aloud and moved me to tears. Bets of all, she showed me how to live the teachings of deep ecology--how to feel hope for the natural world while facing the truth of our environmental problems. This is a beautiful gift for yourself, for anyone you love.