With healing in mind

Young Chang

You hear the words “grieving” and “healing” and “book for the

grieving soul” and immediately expect a how-to book. A book that

tells you it’s ok to feel angry, that the anger will pass and what

you might do to hasten that passing.

Jorie Nolen’s “The Hidden Gardens of Life’s Winter” doesn’t say

anything like that. It’s Nolen’s opinion, in fact, that society is

too often inundated with instructions on what we need or should do

and 12 steps for everything.

Her book, instead, offers thoughts from other people who have

known grief. The words deal with what they went through, and

accompanying photographs show everything and anything that is sweet

and serene.

“It just has to do with how you feel,” said the Newport Beach

resident. “The person who’s grieving can look through it and relate

to it, know that the other person is experiencing what they’re

experiencing.”

“Hidden Gardens” was published two weeks ago and is available at

Martha’s Bookstore on Balboa Island or through

www.creativerealists.com. Nolen signed copies Saturday at Diedrich

Coffee House in Costa Mesa. The title refers to the hidden bright

spots of grief.

“And life’s winter is death,” Nolen said.

The books’ many feelings are split up into seasons -- autumn,

winter, spring and summer.

“That’s as far as I went classifying feelings,” Nolen said.

The 35-year-old mother to three lost her husband six years ago and

her brother more than a decade ago. Nolen and her husband had owned

their own plumbing company. He was electrocuted by a faulty lamp at a

Huntington Beach job site and killed instantly.

Her brother was killed while working on a drilling ship in the

Gulf of Thailand in 1989 when a typhoon capsized the vessel.

Family and friends played an essential part in helping her heal.

Her two young children kept her busy as they needed someone to take

care of them, entertain them, help them get through something as

strange and sad as death.

More than five years ago, Nolen decided to do what her husband had

always urged her to, which was to make a book of her poems and

thoughts.

“I thought it would be good to pursue something beneficial to

myself,” said Nolen, who is remarried now and has a third child. “It

helped me go through the grieving process ... I tried to make it

visually beautiful with the photographs and something pleasing for

[people] during that time of grieving.”

She had two photographers shooting for her and also snapped a few

herself. She wrote most of the thoughtful passages and collected

about 20% of the words from others.

Nolen is most proud today that the book is something very

give-able.

She remembers people wanting to do so much for her when she was

hurting most. They’d come by and offer to help with anything at all

and they’d send her garden-fulls of flowers.

“I like flowers, but they die too,” the writer said.

Nolen’s editor, Balboa Island resident Summer Bailey, said she

loves the book’s absence of “rotten little cliches people want to

spew on you when you’ve lost someone.”

Bailey lost her mother as a teenager.

“I feel the biggest value is that you can give it to someone,” the

editor said. “The book is very healing.”

Nolen said she knew she was done with the book (because how do you

ever really know you’re done?) when she decided to arrange it in a

journal format with lots of blank lines for readers to fill. Her new

husband suggested she add a few blank pages in the back. She went for

the full-on journal.

“It helps to write,” Nolen said.

She mused for a second on how people are starting to open up to,

or admit to, the reality of death.

“You know how people are prepared for weddings and births, but

when it’s death, we just really don’t talk about it or prepare

ourselves for it,” Nolen said. “A lot of times I guess we shield

children from it. Then we shield ourselves from it as well... But one

of us is going to have to deal with it most likely. It’s a good thing

to be prepared for.”

She adds that with being prepared for death comes the need to be

assured that life goes on.

Nolen is working on a line of greeting cards now, some

inspirational accessories and her second book, which is about the

importance of elders.

“Our need to look to them and respect them, especially in this

society,” she said. “That they are there.”