MY BOOK

Warrior Mother

Fierce Love, Unbearable Loss, and Rituals that Heal is the true story of a mother’s fierce love and determination, and her willingness to go outside the bounds of the ordinary when two of her three adult children are diagnosed with life-threatening disease.

At a dance workshop, held to address the threat of the pandemic AIDS, the author admits she doesn’t know how to be the mother to her gay son. With the help of women in her spirituality group, she learns to say yes to what life is asking of her son, and of her, as his mother.

The author’s best friend, dying of breast cancer, asks the author to accompany her through what turns out to be, fourteen days of her dying, ironically preparing this mother for what lie ahead with her own children.

Five years later, the author and her family confront again, a life and death circumstance – her 40-year-old daughter’s diagnosis of breast cancer. When the customary treatments fail, her daughter decides on a bone marrow transplant and the author visits a healer in Brazil on her behalf. Experience as a professional social worker and family therapist doesn’t always help the author to cope, but her familiarity with improvisational song, dance, and storytelling, and women’s spirituality rituals carry her through.

The book follows the family through memorials and celebrations of lives well lived, the impact of grief on those left behind, and the rituals that help them heal.

Add “Warrior Mother” to your library.

Warrior Mother Book Trailer

Watch this short intimate trailer with Sheila and how this experience was one that was never supposed to happen.

TESTIMONIALS

What People Are Saying

“Art-making done in a sacred context can transform tremendous loss.”

“We have to make art out of what happens to us,” writes Sheila K Collins. Warrior Mother is a testament to how art-making done in a sacred context can transform tremendous loss. Collins reminds us of the endurance and healng power of love –especially a mother’s love.”

-Elizabeth Jarret Andrew
Author of Writing the Sacred Journey: The Art and Practice of Spiritual Journey

“…her story is bound to enlighten others who have grieved and healed from the loss of a child.”

“With courage and grace, Sheila K Collins’ Warrior Mother generously invites the reader on her heartbreaking journey, with equal doses of candor and sensitivity. Admirably free of self-pity, physically and emotionally precise, her story is bound to enlighten others who have grieved and healed from the loss of a child.”

-Sarah Saffian
Author of Ithaka: A Daughter’s Memoir of Being Found

“What a meaningful, powerful, beautiful book.”

“Just as one survives death, so too does spirit supplant mere survival. Sheila K Collins has faced a parent’s worst fears and learned to still dance in the wake. Warrior Mother is a mother’s manual of profound honesty, hope, and healing.”

-Marc Nieson
Author of Schoolhouse; A memoir in 13 Lessons

“Warrior Mother is a mother’s manual of profound honesty, hope, and healing.”

“I recently finished reading your book, Warrior Mother. What a meaningful, powerful, beautiful book. I admire your willingness to truly “let the reader in” and your openness about the “hard truths.“

-Debbie Rudoy, MSW