Grace and Grit: Spirituality and Healing in the Life and Death of Treya Killam Wilber (Paperback)

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Key Phrases: life had twisted suddenly, passionate equanimity, enzyme program, San Francisco, Ken Wilber, Ramana Maharshi (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Ten days after transpersonal psychologist Wilber married Terry Killam in 1983, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. This harrowing account of her losing battle against disease is unusual in several respects. Killam (who changed her first name to Treya) shared her husband's belief in the "perennial philosophy" of the world's wisdom traditions embracing rebirth, enlightenment and the all-pervasiveness of Spirit. Her condition tested their faith simultaneously. Her lengthy, candid journal entries, interwoven with his narrative, form a tremendously moving love story. Killam, who died in 1989, combined orthodox treatment with such alternative therapies as diet, meditation and psychotherapy. Wilber ( The Spectrum of Consciousness ) disputes the imputed New Age view that mind alone causes all physical illness. He intimately participated in his wife's ordeal, and here presents cancer as a healing crisis, an occasion for self-confrontation and growth.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"A tremendously moving love story. Wilber presents cancer as a healing crisis, an occasion for self-confrontation and growth."—Publishers Weekly



"A singular achievement. It succeeds as a story of one cancer patient's experience, as a guidebook for patients and their caretakers, as a love story, as a survey of the world's mystical traditions, as an examination of death and dying, and as an exploration of relationship as a means for spiritual development."—Natural Health

"A deep and searing look at living, dying, loving, death, and resurrection."—M. Scott Peck, M.D.



"A rare book—a love story that brings the perennial wisdom of the ages to life in all the anguish and exaltation that comprise the human condition. Treya Killam Wilber's honesty, vibrancy, and compassion speak through her many journal entries, masterfully woven with Ken's text, to make Grace and Grit a true experience of sacred partnership."—Joan Borysenko, Ph.D.; author of Minding the Body, Mending the Mind and Guilt Is the Teacher, Love Is the Lesson

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 504 pages
• Publisher: Shambhala; 2 edition (February 6, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1570627428
• ISBN-13: 978-1570627422
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (48 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #46,095 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Masterful, September 29, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Grace and Grit: Spirituality and Healing in the Life and Death of Treya Killam Wilber (Paperback)

An extraordinary story which makes such a welcome and necessary change from the superficial and happy-clappy stories about illness that all have such happy endings. This has a sad, powerful, truthful, enlightening ending. Treya dies, just like nearly all cancer patients and yet her dying IS meaningful, but not in the New Age way of "its all just your karma, or a life lesson you have brought upon yourself" - puke!

The philosophy is outstanding. Highly intelligent and compassionate. No-one I have ever read about worked at hard as getting her spirit well (in case that might cure her cancer) as Treya and yet she dies. A definitive repost indeed to all the Caroline Myss and Louise Hay's of the world. I have grown deeply angry with the "you can heal your life/ you create your own reality" approaches as I struggle with (I hope) grace and grit through my own, possibly terminal, illness. This book is a rare shining example of truth - bright, brilliant, loving truth - in amongst the heap of self-righteous publications out there.

Read it to be moved. To be enlightened. To grow in wisdom and courage.

68 of 73 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Blew the roof off my 5-star ceiling, August 3, 2002

By	F. Boyd "Frankspeare" (Phoenix, AZ) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I'll admit it. I've written a lot of five star reviews. I tend to comment when I have praise to offer. This book just took me to a whole new level of appreciation for a writer. It's like the difference between, "Yes, I think you are a lovely person" and "There isn't one thing about you which I don't find absolutely loveable."

I urge you to buy this book, and expand your own vision of what is possible: in a loving relationship, as one approaches the end of this physical existence, and within the human heart and soul.

This book woke me up. It reminded me about Love. (Saying that, the words seem so inadequate) The truth is, I can't come close to conveying the Love which comes through in this book. Its personal love directed toward a wife, a husband, a family. It's universal Love which calls to you to find your way home. It beckons "Promise you will find me again."

I just finished reading the last chapter, and I cried and cried. I remembered what it was like when my mom died. Dannion Brinkley said that when someone dies, the doors to Heaven open up, and energy flows in both directions. I'll second that. My mothers death was one of the most sacred experiences of my life.

Reading this, I also remembered Love. A friend of mine used to tease his wife. She would say "Honey, do you love me?" And he would respond, "Only when I stop and think about it." Love is like that isn't it? If we don't stop and become present to Love, then Love isn't present in our awareness, and that which isn't present in our awareness isn't real to us in the present moment. At best, it is a myth about a "Once upon a time/somewhere someday" experience.

This book, and especially the last chapter increased my awareness of Love so dramatically, I felt like I just woke up. And then it repeated the experience. I just kept waking up to more and more love. I am overflowing with humble gratitude for the gift that reading this book is to me.

Thank you Ken. Thank you Treya. Thanks for reminding me of what I live for.

I have a request of you the reader. If you do nothing else, go to a bookstore and read the last chapter. I promise that if you are anything like me, it will flat out blow you away. Your reading that chapter will further the conversation of freedom. It will further the conversation of Love as a present moment reality. And it will further the conversation of death being beautiful in its own way, at its own time.

You will not regret the time invested. I promise.

--Frank Boyd

53 of 56 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "My life twisted suddenly, unexpectedly.", February 12, 2001

By	G. Merritt (Boulder, CO) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

"Because I can no longer ignore death, I pay more attention to life," Treya Wilber observes in the face of cancer (p. 407). Shambhala recently published the Second Edition of this book, twelve years after the death of Ken Wilber's wife. Heart wrenching and profound, this book lives up to its title by taking its reader through all the grace and grit of his wife's five year struggle with cancer. "Grace and grit" summarizes Treya's entire life, Wilber writes. "Being and doing. Equanimity and passion. Surrender and will. Total acceptance and fierce determination. Those two sides of her soul, the two sides she wrestled with all her life, the two sides that she had finally brought together into one harmonious whole" (pp. 390-91). Derived in part directly from Treya's journals, Wilber's book is as much about Treya's "nightmarish tour through medical hell" (p. 23), as it is about the couple's ability to "stay open to life and grow in compassion" (p. 341) through "profound inner change" (p. 164).

"GRACE AND GRIT is her story; and our story," Wilber writes (p. x). It is a real love story that unfolds against a Buddhist backdrop that tells us: "Life is a bubble, a dream, a reflection, a mirage" (p. 363). At age 36, Treya met the man of her dreams, in 1983. They married four months later. Ten days after the wedding, Treya discovered she had breast cancer, and then underwent surgery and radiation. Eight months later, she suffered a recurrence, followed by more surgery and eight months of soul-poisoning chemotherapy (p. 279) and baldness. Eight months later, Treya was diagnosed with diabetes, followed by years of recurrent tumors throughout her lungs and brain (pp. 240; 268).

Her cancer teaches Treya many things, including real suffering: "There is suffering in this world, no way around that one" (p. 280). However, through tonglen meditation, Treya finds compassion for it (p. 315). She learns "to be human. To be truly human. That is most important" (p. 170). Treya learns to "live in the present, not in the future, giving her allegiance to what is, not what might be" (p. 312). She discovers "passionate equanimity--to be fully passionate about all aspects of life, about one's relationship with spirit, to care to the depths of one's being but with no trace of clinging or holding" (pp. 335-6).

Of the five Wilber books I've read, this one comes closest to a memoir, offering its reader a revealing look at Ken Wilber, the man and "support person." "I'm a ... " he says (p. 361), as he silently performs his "daily chores" for Treya, including cleaning, laundry, cooking, dishes, groceries, and vegetable juicing (pp. 336, 362). He writes, "learning to make friends with cancer; learning to make friends with the possibility of an early and perhaps painful death, has taught me a great deal about making friends with myself, as I am, and a great deal about making friends with life, as it is" (p. 356). He also learns to "practice the wound of love:" "Real love hurts; real love makes you totally vulnerable and open; real love will take you far beyond yourself; and therefore real love will devastate you. I kept thinking, if love does not shatter you, you do not know love" (p. 396).

"Treya's story is everyperson's story," Wilber writes in his Introduction to the the Second Edition of his book. As such, it has much to offer any reader interested in personal growth, spirituality, relationships, illness, or caretaking, and it deserves a large audience. It also offers an easy introduction to Ken Wilber's vision. This is both a five-star book, and a five-pointed cosmic star book, "luminous and radiant."

G. Merritt