In her bestselling Animals as Teachers and Healers,
author and animal advocate Susan Chernak McElroy
shared how her beloved animal companions guided and sustained her through
her battle with advanced cancer. Twelve years later, when a fire ravaged
her mountain home and reduced her emotional security to ashes, once
again animals - wild animals this time - provided the guidance that
helped her heal and grow through yet another catastrophic life change.
Writing with a passionate love and respect for the
natural world, McElroy invites us to walk with her along the ancient
four-footed path that leads through transformation into wholeness. The
rattlesnake coiled inches from her hand, the broken-winged hummingbird
who sat on her finger and drank sugar water, the red fox and his Saint
Bernard playmate - each becomes an incarnation of life-sustaining powers,
teaching us better, healthier ways of being in the world. These true
stories and a host of others speak to the necessity for ritual, the
value of generosity, and how to deal with essential life changes by
reconnecting to the earth and its rhythms.
McElroy documents rich insights that come from her
animal kin - animals in the wild and those in the inner world of dreams
and visions. A cougar and her cubs bring balance and harmony to the
valley…A friend's chocolate Lab builds medicine wheels around
his human companions, reminding them of the need for community…A
cow elk attacked by wolves faces her own mortality stoically, teaching
us that endings of one kind herald beginnings of another.
But it was the magnificent six-pointed bull elk who
ventured into McElroy's world each day and reappeared in her dreams
at night that led her on her most inspirited soul journey through homelessness,
divorce, and the deep sense of disengagement that she had felt since
cancer had tried to evict her from her body years before.
A powerful, beautifully written story of one woman's
journey of personal transition to a genuine sense of belonging in the
world, the book ends exactly where it should - in a heartfelt sense
of home on earth, a place big enough to welcome all life.
"Susan Chernak McElroy's book is
an inspiration and a source of wisdom for all those ready to learn and
heal their lives. I have discovered it makes far more sense to learn
from the difficulties of others than to have to suffer yourself. So
read, feel, learn, and move on. Let her help you find your path in life
through her searching. Her stories have been a teacher for me."
—Bernie Siegel, M.D., author of Love,
Medicine & Miracles and Prescriptions for Living
"Heart in the Wild will help you
explore new kinds of relationships with a symphony of life-forms that
will sustain you on life's healing journey."
—Carl A. Hammerschlag, M.D., author The Theft of the
Spirit and The Dancing Healers
About The Author:
Susan Chernak McElroy
is the author of the national bestsellers Animals as Teachers and Healers
and Animals as Guides for the Soul. Her writing has also appeared in
national magazines and in numerous anthologies, including Kinship
with the Animals, Chicken Soup for Soul Survivors, Wounded Healers,
and Intimate Relationships: Embracing the Natural World. A
former humane educator and wildlife rehabilitator, McElroy lectures
extensively across the country. She lives in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
