Rainbow
& Tears: a review
The
Soul Would Have No Rainbow:
If the Eyes Had No Tears
by Guy A. Zona
a Touchstone Book
Published by Simon &
Schuster
ISBN 0-671-79730-1
Retail $10 (USD)
The story that goes along with my finding this book is down right weird -- unless you believe in coincidence or synchronicity or divine intervention or whatever you want to call it. So Hawk & I are in the AZ airport after an amazing, transformational week at the MISS Foundation 2002 Passsages Conference which is an annual bereavement conference for professionals *and* parents *together* -- always a powerful combination. Now, we started teaching at these conferences because of a woman named Joanne Caccitore -- she had a stillborn daughter named Cheyenne. After Cheyenne died, Joanne found herself alone, in devestated pain, on the closet floor, in the dark at three in the morning -- and she vowed to use the rest of her life making sure no other bereaved parent would be so alone after a child's death. I met Joanne after my son Dakota was stillborn which put me on the path of creating KotaPress as a legacy for my son, as a safe space for all of us in pain to give voice to our experiences.
What does this have to do with Zona's book, you are asking. Well, in the AZ airport, I picked up Zona's book and opened the back cover to randomly read part of it -- to see if I wanted to buy the book or not. Now, mind you, I had left Joanne and the grief conference just a half an hour prior. I opened the book and read:
"It
is not good for anyone
to be alone."
-Cheyenne Tribe Proverb
HELLO!!!!??? Okay, so thinking to myself, "Whoa! That's odd," I then flipped the book open randomly to page 29 and read:
"We
will be known forever by
the tracks we leave."
-Dakota Tribe Proverb
Well. Knock me over with a feather. Needless to say, I bought the book immediately and have been reading it and using it in various ways ever since that day. It's a beautifully printed square book. Each page has two or three different Native American Tribe proverbs on it. And it wonderful for reading straight through, or for randomly opening once a day and getting a little prompt for each morning. I've taken it to poetry and bookmaking classes to share with other participants. People will randomly open it, read something, and then write or create a book page from the inspiration. I have used individual proverbs at different times to illustrate a point or give inspiration to another.
It's a wonderful collection. Cheers to Zona for all the work he must have done to collect all these from the various tribes who are now spread far and wide. It is well worth the $10 -- and I bet they could have sold just as many of them for as much as $15 or $17 each. Wonderful collection. Check it out and get your own copy!!
Reviews coming soon:
When Children Grieve by John W. James & Russell Friedman from Harper Collins
The Grief Recovery Handbook by John W. James & Russell Friedman from Harper Collins
Jizo Bodhisattva by Jan Chozen Bays from Tuttle
Reviewer
Biography
Kara L.C. Jones lives, works,
loves, and plays on Vashon
Island in the Puget Sound.
She's a Kevin Smith fan,
guerrilla bookmaker, advocate
for bereaved parents, writer,
founder, editor, wife, daugher,
friend to turtles, lover
of star fish, locator of
sand dollars, and author
of Mrs. Duck & the Woman.
If you have comment or question,
please email her at editor@kotapress.com
