Grace and Grit by Ken Wilber

Grace and Grit

by Ken Wilber

Coming soon as a Major Motion Picture

Heartfelt, deeply moving, and incredibly real, this narrative shares the five-year journey of philosopher Ken Wilber and his wife, Treya Killam Wilber, through Treya’s illness, treatment, and death. Ken’s wide-ranging commentary—which questions conventional and New Age approaches to illness and reaches beyond the experience to find wisdom in pain—is combined with Treya’s journals to create a portrait of health and healing, wholeness and harmony, and suffering and surrender. This edition includes a new preface by the author.

Reviewed by wyvernfriend on

5 of 5 stars

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When Ken and Treya met it was love at first touch. They just hugged and hugged. A few months later they were married. 10 days after marrying they found out that Treya had breast cancer. This is the story of how they dealt with the cancer, the treatment and Treya's final days. It deals honestly with the pain and the overwhelming work that dealing with cancer can be both for the patient and the caregiver. Ken is a writer and philosopher and this is quite clearly reflected in the book while the two of them try to come to terms with cancer and try to understand why them and why now.

It is a story with deep sadness but the two of them have such a feeling of heartfelt joy in the world and in their lives that it seeps through. Yes sometimes the philosophising can be a bit much, and you would need to know something about Buddhism to get some of what's going on, but still it's an interesting variation on the theme. A book I could only read in small amounts at a time to fully understand what was going on.

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Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 4 December, 2009: Finished reading
  • 4 December, 2009: Reviewed