Jewels of the Forest: A Memoir

The forest is a metaphor for the third phase of life in ancient yoga tradition. As one who has practiced yoga for decades, Bonnie Raber Wickes chose this metaphor for her personal memoir, generally capturing her years from the age of fifty to seventy-five. At the beginning of her time as a forest dweller, she travelled to India to see the Dalai Lama at a millennium celebration in the Himalayas. In the years that followed, each of her parents passed away, a marker for many in this third phase of life. She experienced her first crack in near perfect health when she was diagnosed and treated for cancer in her mid-fifties. Her only child married. Grandchildren were born, influencing her decisions about work and retirement. She changed the focus of her work from a private practice in psychotherapy to the provision of counseling on military bases both near and far from her home in Alaska. Raber Wickes takes you on this journey with her, threading her experiences with reflections on her childhood, the beauty of nature, her marriage and relationships with friends and family, her meaningful work and travels to places like Hiroshima, her political leanings, her evolving spirituality, and her eventual decision to retire. Finally, the disease of Covid-19 presented challenges in finding ways to cope with the shock and loss of a world-wide pandemic. The jewels of the forest represent not only her modest personal collection of beads and gems and textiles, but also the meaning and context stored in each. This is a a memoir about inheritance that may jog readers' own thoughts about what it is they have received from family, friends and experiences, and what it is they want to leave behind.