Seasons of Solace Endorsements

“Seasons of Solace is a beautiful book—piercing, questioning, honest, profound. These moving poems about death are full of life. ‘Life and death in a slow dance.’ Janelle leads us to the depths of grief and lifts us with the healing power of poetry in a book you won’t want to put down.”
    --Susan Wooldridge, author of poemcrazy: freeing your life with words and Foolsgold: Making Something from Nothing and Freeing your Creative Process

“Janelle Hertzler's spare words take you to deep worlds. Brushing aside all unnecessary syllables, she unveils grief as the blow that it is, and the gift it can be. Through her images she invites the reader to stand with her before the unchangeable, and learn not to turn away. A beautiful telling.”
    --Paula D’Arcy, Grief Psychotherapist, noted speaker, and award-winning author of A Song for Sarah and When People Grieve

“Sometimes the enormity of experience can't be conveyed in sentences made up of words. Hertzler found her release by exploring images - visual and verbal, photographic and poetic. A remarkable resonance results - an unusual reverberation between photos and poems but also echoes of the lived experience of people who have survived all sorts of loss and trauma. No matter what your experience, this book is likely to resonate with you as well.”
    --Howard Zehr, Professor of Restorative Justice at Eastern Mennonite University author of The Little Book of Contemplative Photography and Transcending: Reflections from Crime Victims

“Seasons of Solace is a rare gift. With grace, grit, courage and honesty, Janelle confronts the heartbreaking loss of her young husband, discovering in a process of painful self-exploration the healing power of nature’s images and of words. Her personal journey captures universal truths, the greatest of which is that through great pain comes great growth. A beautiful book, Seasons of Solace reaffirms the preciousness of life and the undying nature of love.”
    --Susan Zimmermann, author of Writing to Heal the Soul and Keeping Kathrine

“Seasons of Solace is a gift from and for the soul. Healing never comes in easy straight-line doses. Like poetry, it bubbles then spreads and disappears only to rise again in unexpected moments and encounters. Janelle has shared from her wellspring of moments and encounters—honest, at times painful, and with covered with hope.
    --John Paul Lederach, Professor of International Peacebuilding at the University of Notre Dame, author of The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace and The Journey Toward Reconciliation

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