Customer Reviews

Growing Season: A Healing Journey Into the Hearts of Nature

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This little book--its 200 pages, in an attractive format, take at most two hours to read--is about surviving and growing as a healthy adult, in spite of--or perhaps because of--the obstacles, even tragedies, that occur in ordinary lives.

It is written by a woman who bore and lost two children, and who describes coming to terms not only with her childlessness, but also with the challenges of maintaining a loving relationship with her partner,whose ways of being and of coping with grief are different from hers.

She is a gardener, and her descriptions of working in a garden, and learning from vegetables and flowers about how to cooperate with nature instead of fighting it, and how to live in the present and feel the joy of the moment, are vivid and direct. Her account of creating a garden and of simultaneously learning self-acceptance are often beautiful, and always convincing. The tone is of simplicity and candor; of a voice which is always honest, unpretentious and generous.Here is a typical example, about pruning old grape vines:

" . . . the shapes of the older plants are unorthodox. There is no way to use pruning rules on them. This gives me great freedom, with no judgements attached of right or wrong, too much wood or too little. I give myself permission to stand before each plant, quiet and empty of thought, until I get a visceral sensation, almost an invitation to join in a dance. Then,slowly at first, I'll cut out the fruiting canes from last year . . . I wait for a quickening, as I and the vine communicate, as one shoot or another catches my eye and I accept the invitation or not . . ."

The overdone term "grounded" applies here, and is not intended as a pun. It is because the author really has worked hard in the garden, and because her carrots and grapevines are so solidly known and described, that the undertone of mysticism which runs through the book never runs away with it. She seems to have learned, from meditation and study combined with hard physical work, an acceptance of what is and an appreciation of what can be that, in its modest way, succeeds for the reader in showing how, in an ordinary life, the spiritual and the material can be fused.

Spending time in Arlene Bernstein's garden is an act of love. Her journey through love,pain,planting,marriage,immense grief and joy conspire to make the reader at once more in touch with both the earth and themselves. Her book nourishes and heals.. Her visual imagery of the gorgeous Napa Valley hills is matched by a nurturing insight into our most basic selves. I was moved and awed by her journey. This is time well spent.

I first read this book after my Mom's death in 2002. I also shared this book with my husband after he lost his father last year.

I found this book on a recommended reading display at the library and picked it up by chance. Or was it really chance?

I was blown away.
You are gently invited on your own path to healing.
As Bernstein tells her story, you are there with her in the moments when nature softly embraces her and entices her to move forward and to synchronize with the universal principles of nature's cycles of transformation and growth.

Another exceptional insight you will gain is how two people, can be grieving the same loss, yet in very different ways. We each find our own path and a life partner may not be able to support our process when they are submerged in their own. To know this, grants you a grace of acceptance.

When you finish this book, your grief will not necessarily be diminished. But you will have a completely different relationship with your grief.