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Dancing at the Edge of Life: A Memoir

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I feel it's a privilege for me to have followed Gale Warner on her journey: What was her journey? A journey we'll all have to embark on, sooner or later (hopefully, later), since we're all going to die. Gale Warner was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma at age 30 and lived 13 more months. In these months, she wrote in her journal about her thoughts, her insights, her struggle, her pain, and finally her acceptance and serenity: But it was never easy, never simple. Gale Warner saw cancer as the ultimate test of her faith (her particular, private sort of faith). She worked and struggled with her own mortality. In her own words-

"Limits. In order to boil water, you must put it in a pot. The pot sets a limit and so does cancer. When you learn you are not immortal, that you may only have a few years to embrace life, you start doing so. The photo of the Earth on my wall shows its beauty- and its limits. It would not be the same if those same colors and swirls were sloshed all over space".

"Dancing at the edge of life" is an important book, because in the end, everybody has to find their own answers or anyway, start asking their own questions. I would recommend this book to anyone and of course, not only to people with cancer. You don't have to get diagnosed with lymphoma to start thinking of the "big" questions, you don't have to wait to have cancer in order to learn how to live.

Another reason that makes this memoir important, is that Gale Warner must have been a very special, intelligent & sensitive person. She had worked as an environmental journalist & was also an accomplished poet. A person that fully embraced life was ultimately able to fully embrace the journey towards death.

If ever a book had the potential to change lives for the better, it's this one. Gale's diary reveals a sensitive, intelligent and spiritual woman - whose genuine attraction to life reminds me of an infant's sweet, simple fascination with its newly discovered hand. I was most inspired by her courage during the final months of her conflict with cancer: it never faltered - even as she struggled to define her religious beliefs. This book leaves one with a rekindled passion for life. Tonight at dusk I'm going to seek out the sunset ...something I haven't done since I was a kid.

Gale Warner's story is positive proof that each of us, if we make a conscious choice, can see and feel the Spirit of God in everything and everyone, in spite of, and especially during, adversity and pain. It is the little moments, Gale's descriptions of that divine CONNECTEDNESS, consistent and enduring, that touches me the most. Her tender, poetic prose allows us to glimpse the radiant, spiritual essence that is the birthright we all share. During these troubled times, the world finds itself somewhat short of role models, but with the loving gift of "Dancing at the Edge of Life," Gale remains a lasting example. In her own words, she was and is "a daughter of the four winds, a child of the moon and rain and sun ... sister of the whale, and the juniper." I suspect that she now shines brightly in the heavens; each person who reads this book will feel the warmth of her glow, and best of all, will want to share it with others.

Gale's profoundly inspiring and moving book has given me strength to face some of my own challenges. She is a young talented woman who faces her cancer with such love and triumph, I was deeply drawn into her story. I recommend this book to anyone who is facing a health challenge, anyone who loves nature, anyone who loves great writing and poetry. Her spirit is awe inspiring. She faces death and life with such love and gusto that one cannot help be uplifted by contact with such a visionary soul. I am deeply grateful for her vision and would read every word of her journals if they were available.

By letting us into her thoughts as she moved from hope to resignation, Gale Warner has allowed us to witness close-up the emotional process of dying. I've read this book over and over, trying to really grasp what it must have been like to have understood, and written "We are entering a new reality" (the time when she recognized and had to fully comprehend that she was not responding, would not recover, and that death was imminent.) Whether or not you share her profound relationship with the natural world, her assertion that she has had sufficient joy and experience in her life really does ring true. I've never read anything quite like this: it is an amazing gift.

What a mature, positive and loving book by an author who spoke so wonderously of her life.... indeed, of what life can be if experienced so profoundly and openly. It's a beautiful book.