In this beautifully written and profoundly affecting new book, Dr. Jean Shinoda Bolen explores what it means when serious illness brings one "close to the bone": close to the soul's needs. As in her critically acclaimed best-seller Goddesses in Everywoman, the author weaves myth, experience, and story to produce a book which at once illuminates the experience of the seriously ill patient and shows that facing one's mortality can be a life-transforming, and even a life-saving, process. Close to the Bone follows the patients and their loved ones on a path which, soon after diagnosis, brings them into a kind of underworld of experience, a state of emotional trauma that has the potential to strip away what become merely superfluous concerns, focusing the individual on what is truly important. This process can be enhanced by prayer, meditation, participation in rituals, the sharing of stories, and a deeper and more honest level of communication with those we love and with ourselves.
- ISBN10 0684822377
- ISBN13 9780684822372
- Publish Date 28 October 1996 (first published 1 October 1996)
- Publish Status Unknown
- Out of Print 16 March 2007
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Prentice Hall (a Pearson Education company)
- Imprint Prentice Hall & IBD
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 224
- Language English