Lessons from a Gentle Life: Reflections on Love, Loss and Healing

I just read Lessons from a Gentle Life and was moved by the courageous and beautiful writing. I would like to learn to incorporate more fully the author's ideas: how pretending is like spandex, how everyone needs a focused and attentive listener, how important it is to focus on only one thing at a time rather than multi task, and how sitting in stillness is how to learn to listen. I recognize these truths but so often fall short. The most convicting paragraph in the book for me concerned "fake transformation" or the danger of presenting an "open hearted and enlightened self" to the world rather than authentically participating in actual growth. I am glad I read the story of the author's beloved daughter Cariana.

As a Doctor, and Mother, Janis immediately touches you with her universal physical, cognitive, emotional, spiritual and philosophical dimensions of grief. She shares her transparent multifaceted heart felt response when the news about an illness she can’t control, leads to an unbearable loss, and ultimately to the passing of her young, soulful daughter. Personally, every possible visceral feeling a parent would have is expressed, without denying her need and natural response to mourn. Janis expresses with words her overwhelming experience of hopelessness that taps into her anger, bargaining, depression and all that goes with it. All this leads her to a powerful time of acceptance in order to heal and move on. Her individual personal journey is filled with unexpected humor along side of the profound sadness. Janis embraces the universal light and gift of grace that acceptance offers. This is a gentle love story of another kind!

Whether you are in the recent or remote throes of grief over the death of a loved one, or you would describe your whole life as personally untouched by first-hand grief – there are opportunities to learn important life lessons from Cariana and Dr. Gonzales. I received the gift of their experience, in the many spokes that accompany the wheel of illness, physical death and grief, as well as the transformation to fullness of life, carrying your loved one in your heart. Honest and gritty with punctuations of humor, there is nothing cliché in these pages. Prepare to be challenged, surprised, to laugh, and to cry. A book for Everyone.

Janis's heart wrenching story of the life of her little girl and learning how to go on after her death is a beautiful love story of Cariana. Janis is able to help us all learn how to grieve the losses in our lives. In particular I felt close to Janis and understood her pain when she described going to every spiritual person of any type to try and find her way. After reading this book, Cariana will live in your heart also ... Forever. Elizabeth Schultze

I was a bit worried this book would be too sad, but it was actually a journey of healing with truths we can all apply to our own losses. I was left with love for a child I never met and hope in my heart for those who have faced the worst loss imaginable. Dr. Janis Gonzales is a masterful writer and I was unable to put it down until I had savored every page.

On the surface, this is a heartbreaking story of a mother (a Pediatrician no less) confronting a deadly illness in her daughter and ultimately losing her to this disease. The day to day of treatments, insights about Doctors being parents of patients, and ultimately dealing with a catastrophic loss in the years that follow. It's also much more. A book about acceptance - both of yourself and others, empathy and a little humor thrown in as well. If your grieving a loss, this book is definitely a good place to be - take an afternoon and read it. And if you're not, read this book and walk away a little more grateful and empathetic to people you encounter every day. We don't know that battles others are facing.

Very thoughtful and really a very different perspective that was very helpful. This is a story of love and celebration of life. This story brings hope when dealing with something that is inconceivable, the loss of a child.

This book takes us from love to despair to an opening in a dark curtain when light peeps through toward a new life of hope. Dr. Gonzales has opened up her life of so many roads sought and traveled. Her impassioned journey can touch us all.