"This book deepens our understanding of the creative power of narrative for finding a way through problems and even catastrophes.  Psychotherapists will strengthen their practice by reading it, but because it is so rich in narrative and so deftly unencumbered with jargon, it is a book to pass on to friends or clients going through difficult periods -- or simply to read and hold in memory as a resource for the unknown future."
—Mary Catherine Bateson, author of Composing a Life and Willing to Learn: Passages of Personal Discovery.

Bravo! Ellen Pulleyblank Coffey has written a hard-to-put-down book about how to live with the hard times. She takes us along on her own journey to see beyond the dread of ambiguity and guilt surrounding illness and suffering, teaching us through mesmerizing narratives of profoundly interesting women about how to live well despite troubles. As if we were sitting around a campfire, listening to others tell their stories, we learn that indeed, happiness exists side-by-side with pain. —Pauline Boss, author of Loss, Trauma and Resilience, and Ambiguous Loss..

Through her stories, Ellen Pulleyblank Coffey reveals how wisdom is dispersed throughout a network of people— whether one receives,, learns from, or gives to the other. She shows convincingly how a person’s lifetime accrues all the world’s knowledge if there is a listener nearby who asks good questions while blowing on embers. —James Griffith, M.D. author with Griffith ME:  The Body Speaks:  Therapeutic Dialogues for Mind/Body Problems and Engaging the Sacred in Psychotherapy:  How to Talk with People about their Spiritual Lives.

This is a wonderful and inspirational book. Affirming the resilience of the human spirit, Pulleyblank Coffey is masterful in describing and bringing forward the essence of the detailed stories of remarkable women coming through some of life’s greatest challenges. The narratives highlight a core principle that growth through the hardest of times is an ongoing process in connection with others. It is a terrific resource for all of us – women, men, lay persons, and professionals. —John S. Rolland, M.D. author of Families, Illness, & Disability: An Integrative Treatment Model.

The voices in Blowing on Embers are those of women who have faced enormous adversities and have found ways of living with them. Their voices are brought together here so that we can learn from them how to live with loss, and grief, and hope for the
future.—Joan Berzoff, co-editor of Living with Dying: Handbook for End-of-Life Care Practitioners.

About the Book     

With disasters around us, hard times are never far away, even if life seems calm in the moment. Everyone needs stories for survival, yet known stories often fail to provide a map through life’s most difficult moments. These stories of six women from different backgrounds take us through crisis, struggle and renewal--the phases of catastrophe. Drawing on her personal knowledge of disaster and thirty years of professional work with people facing hardship, their healer Ellen Coffey names these women Keepers, Seekers and Teachers for where they find resources when they are most in need.

Anyone hurting can learn from the women in the book and find new stories that will sustain them. Embers is for those who live with catastrophe now and want to know how to act when action is possible and how to let go when letting go is necessary. It’s also for those who will face difficulties in the future and are willing to ask hard questions and participate in challenging conversations in order to arrive at ethical possibilities.