Customer Reviews

Hurricane Season: Living Through a Broken Heart

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

Jeanette Stokes has written a brave, intense, honest, suspense-filled story of a loss being mourned, a grief being redeemed. As a writer I'm fascinated with how she weaves in her journal entries, letters and email messages to inject us directly into the immediacy of her feelings, whatever they might be at any moment -- pain, confusion, anger, exhaustion, even an empathy and serenity borne of unexpected flashes of wisdom and grace. As a minister I appreciate her courage and persistence in seeking to heal and to understand the deeper meaning of what has happened to her. As a reader I relish spending the entire year of the book as her companion, walking with her step by step, breathing along with her breaths, abiding with her in the present moment, and often identifying with her. After all, who of us has not also known loss and grief? Like Stokes, I began to plumb the depths of difficult feelings. Like Stokes, I began to sense a door opening. Like Stokes, I began to feel carried and shaped by forces larger than myself. And like any person who loves a good story, I began to long to know, ultimately, how things will turn out in the end, how brokenness can be made whole.

You don't have to have gone through a divorce to appreciate Hurricane Season. Anyone who has ever suffered loss or rejection (isn't that everyone?) will be moved by the beautiful writing of Jeanette Stokes as she describes her personal pain and the lessons she learns from it. She writes with wit and grace so that the reader can feel her distress without being beaten down by it. And I'm glad to say that this remarkable journey through a dark year ends with light and hope.

I read Hurricane Season at a retreat during a season of my life in which I was deeply grieving contemporary wounds that became a doorway to re-examinine earlier wounds. While I brought other books with me to read, I found this one at the retreat, and began reading it first. Though I didn't know much about the content, other than that stated on the cover, I was amazed at the synchronicity that brought this book into my hands at just the right time. I was touched and inspired by Jeanette's raw honesty and the transformation of her soul as she took this journey. I was impressed with how Jeanette expressed her feelings from the depths of a journey in, through and out of the depths of grief,laced throughout with humour and poignancy.

What touched me most about Hurricane Season was the inherent permission to be fully human that I received through reading it. Though I am a psychotherapist by profession, I experience, among other things, those same human feelings that many of us feel when taking a journey through a grief experience. Those feelings include those of, "What's the matter with me?", and "You're taking these small associated silly thoughts and feelings too seriously". Jeanette's book is a wonderful reminder of our uniqueness and sometimes odd, quirky, poignant and soul-searing experience of being human. I found myself relaxing into my own grief process, freer from self-criticism on my journey, and less alone in the human experience.

Thank you, Jeanette. I recommend Hurricane Season to anyone who wants to feel companioned and affirmed in their humanness.

Pat Webster, Ph.D.
Co-author, Winning at Love
[...]

Hurricane Season is compelling reading. Like C. S. Lewis' A Grief Observed, it is a blazingly clear and detailed description of devastating loss. Its courage, honesty, and wisdom will bring comfort and guidance to others surviving their own personal hells. The author knows that life is indeed designed to break your heart, but that healing and renewal can an do follow heartbreak.

Friday night another LGBTQ/Ally pal and I met up at the bookstore before dinner. I went to check out the local/state authors section (as Carolinians have a way of telling stories, and are excellent writers). I was thrilled to find the new book by Stokes from Durham, as I had read her 25 Years in the Garden book and love her style of writing, not to mention her way of being in the local community! FYI - she is known as "Queen of the South" for supporting OTHER'S creative gifts & works! And, here was one where we got a sense of her own life!!! Anyway, I showed HURRICANE to my guy-friend; he began to peruse it while I scoured the store. I returned, yet he hung onto it. I moseyed past a few more times; he's still reading. Finally, I had to ask for it back! He then inquired, "Is there another?" Ha! I told him, "Keep it, and I'll run for the last copy on the shelf."

A day later we felt like finders of a buried treasure! Now we're hooked (as it's honest, not polite or trite). And, we both agree, "It's hard to put down" as we "want to know what happens next!"

I loved Hurricane Season! Jeanette Stokes expresses her feelings so well as she takes the reader through her journey with heartbreak and metamorphizes it to self discovery. She describes her experience in crisp, raw terms, but then moves from the feelings up to the universal truths she discovers in the process. I have never been through a divorce, but like everyone else, I have definitely experienced loss. I often related to her reactions and shared in her feelings, some of which, until Hurricane Season, I was unable or unwilling to acknowledge to myself. Reading this book was like a scary but ultimately exhilarating roller coaster ride where I, like Ms. Stokes, came out more of a grown up in the process! Kudos to the author for sharing her life with such candor, humor and reflection.

I am five years into my marriage and have a young child. I can appreciate, though not relate to all, the complexities of long term relationships. I devoured this book that intimately and honestly shares one woman's experience through the challenges of love and heart break. Unlike some memoirs that are coyly self congratulating, Stokes' foibles and strengths are "put out there" with beautiful writing and considerable courage. Hurricane Season is a total page turner that also left me with plenty to think about.

In the early days of December, 2008, I visited a friend for warm tea and conversation. On her kitchen table, I found a copy of Jeanette Stoke's Hurricane Season. I read a few paragraphs and asked if I could pay her for this copy - an early copy - of the novel. I went home and couldn't put it down. I came up for air long enough to write the following email to Jeanette:

The holidays and winter are nearing. I should be wrapping gifts, worrying over seeing family, checking my list - twice, responding to email, baking, practicing my apologies to my lovely daughter and husband for being such a stressed out maniac... staying so busy that the pain of this dark season can be minimized, if not avoided altogether...

But then I read another piece of it. And it gets me. I'm in in it. Fear, grief, pain, worry, longing, personal truth... gut-wrenching stuff that is the making of us.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for writing this, for printing it.

Thank you for the reminder in your generous gift of sharing your experience that we are better for our pain, for the storms that loom large and small every day. That feeling the pain, staying with it, even embracing it is vital. That hope and love are clearer, brighter, surer after the storm and after the darkness lifts.

This is the message of the season of Christmas, Chanukah, Ramadan, Earth's solstice...

Every year, I try to watch for the moment, the defining experience that says: Now, this is Christmas! Well, Jeanette Stokes, for me this year that moment is when I am all alone in the house, curled up on my sofa, coffee cooling on the end table, dog curled up near my hip, tears welling in my eyes as I read this great gift you have given.

May this season of darkness and light bring you great joy, peace and love.

Jeanette has done an amazing job in articulating the emotional landscape of grief in a way that resonates with so many of us. As someone who has experienced the trauma of marital separation, I found her words insightful, honest, and true to my own journey. I read the book in one night and was amazed and impressed that she could chronicle those days with such clarity and detail. The trauma of something so painful as the rending of a relationship, the tearing of the heart, doesn't ever really go away. But, I've found that my own losses scoop out hollows in the landscape of my life, leaving depressions that remain but fill with water over time. "Hurricane Season" tells a similar story of pain, survival, and ultimately, joy.

Denise Cumbee Long

As a woman left after a marriage of more than 33 years, I identified strongly with Jeanette Stokes's honest narrative of her struggle with a broken heart. Readers will find much to connect with--in the incredible detail of the horror of those early days and in the slow healing process facilitated by friends. This connection will be found whether in same-sex or heterosexual relationships, in marriage or other committed ties. The only part which did not ring true to me was Stokes's wish for a new relationship within some months after his departure. In my experience, it takes several years to work through all the issues and be open to new possibilities. The book is beautifully written and, in its own way, a page-turner!