Reviews for Grace, Grit and Gratitude

John W. Travis, MD, MPH, co-author, Wellness Workbook
As a Johns Hopkins preventive medicine-trained physician, who developed the first wellness centre in the US I am very aware of the need for balance around health issues. Grace Gawler’s memoirs, Grace, Grit, and Gratitude, apart from being an inspiring and gripping story, alerts the reader to a whole host of assumptions that are prevalent regarding cancer healing. It is a vital exploration into what really heals. The book is aptly named! Knowing Grace personally, I can say that I’ve never seen anyone with more passion for speaking her truth, looking at herself,

and able to write it all down in an easy-to-read style. She takes you along on her healing adventures like you’re sitting next to her (not that much of it was done sitting down). This incredible life story reads like an adventure tale, with villains, heroes, and all sorts of characters in between. Her gracious manner of dealing with adversity, and her expressions of gratitude, where I would be hard- pressed to feel any at all, are truly an inspiration.’

Merran Brown, Psychologist, Queensland.

“It is said it takes a village to raise a child and may it be said it takes a village to assist a cancer patient to live. In this case; Ian’s ex-wife, Grace Gawler (a co-founder of the Centre at Yarra Valley), carried a huge load in Ian’s recovery.

As a Psychologist, I am aware of the extraordinary, tiring and necessary role of the supportive carer. The role of the carer is major in the bid for a cancer patient’s healing and survival.

Grace’s story needs to be told. She is a remarkable woman with a remarkable story.”

Joleen G California USA

I think your book is especially appealing to women and caregivers. It is an inspiring story and has helped me to dig a little deeper to find more power and strength in my own life. It’s absolutely amazing what you’ve gone thru, but you still have so much strength to move forward to help others. It must be your generous spirit that gives you so much strength! It inspires me.
I am also praying and visualizing that your book makes the bestseller list in the U.S. It is worthy of it. I read all the time, and it is one of the few books that completely captured my attention. It truly was hard to put down. It is extremely well written! You are obviously a gifted writer.

Erica Bader – Brisbane, Qld

Very often the role of being a conscientious objector is not that of a choice but a destiny. As in Grace Gawler’s case, the unrelenting events of her life, which read almost in “thriller” like sequence, leave one incredulous that this brave and undaunted woman continues to rise from the ashes of difficulty and sacrifice. She should have collapsed years ago, but like rare women in human history, her role has been to hold the light and move forward while not knowing where her foot will land.

Grace is clearly a person who has never been daunted and through her life experience, she has translated her knowledge into helping thousands of women find moral responsibility and conscience in whatever way that translates for each individual’s life.
Grace, Grit and Gratitude is an inspiration and enrichment for both women and men.

Dawn – Northern Rivers NSW Australia

If your book becomes a movie,
there won’t be a dry eye in the house!
So many times I cried!
So many times I laughed!
So many places I related too!
So much courage!
So many wonderful words of wisdom…
Whatever your beliefs – this is a great thought!
‘God polishes his jewels with the ‘diamond dust of adversity’!
You must be his most precious diamond!

Amazing how people come into our lives when needed.
I feel your story will help other people I know and would like
another copy of your book for my friend in Melbourne.
My copy is going to be ‘on loan’ for a while!
With many thanks for sharing your life, Dawn

Kevin South Australia

Thank you so much for the opportunity to read your memoirs. I have heard and read of your work with women with breast cancer, but I had little understanding of the many ‘hells’ you personally went through. Now I have admiration for you as a person as well as what you have contributed to alleviate human suffering. Your story confirms for me what I have experienced with lots of women who have suffered silently, graciously and then one day feel as if they have been hung out to dry!

As a former minister and then clinical psychologist who jumped the tree in midlife to build a healing centre for people in trauma on the edge of the Barossa Valley. My wife was my rock, my stalwart, my constant encourager. Many thousands of people came to live with us over 20 years and without her, my dream would have evaporated into dust.
Your courage, your ability to minister to Ian during all those years is a heartwarming story that inspires, encourages and gives me faith in our work to help people enter the healing journey. Yes, you have paid a huge price in terms of health, relationship and financially. Yet I do not trace any bitterness. Yes – anger because you felt so pushed aside, taken for granted and could I use the phrase ‘used –up’, yet through it all you followed your heart. You pursued your vision with total commitment and in that I salute you as a model to follow for those who come behind us.

I am sure many have felt you were crazy, and you would have received countless messages of ‘why don’t you’ or ‘you should have’ etc, none of which serve any purpose. I have great respect for those people who are totally true themselves and will not betray their integrity no matter what the cost. Again, I am grateful for those in our field who hold to these values – not all do as you know! But you have – and that fills my heart with a deep feeling of thanksgiving.

I have never met you, but this is my year of gratitude and I am writing to all those people who have inspired me that as I move through my mid 70’s there are others coming up alongside and behind us who will inspire future generations to not so much do as we have done, but to say ‘learn from my experience and follow your heart, but do not sacrifice your head.’

I also appreciated your correction that meditation cured Ian. I am now working at the Cancer Care Centre in Adelaide following a small episode with a lymphoma and I know there is no one way of healing.

Meditation, diet, exercise and positive thinking all help, but what about the unsung Heroes who care silently, patiently day after day, month after month and year after year. You have been there. You did it and your story is a beautiful reminder to other women in a similar position. I too hope they will rise up as you did finally to say – ‘this is my time – I also have a mission’. Thank you and thank you again. I found it hard to put your book down. You have helped me to crystallise my thinking about starting a group where carers are equal participants in the healing journey.
I am convinced that intimacy (feeling safe to be vulnerable) is not just one of our deepest needs, but it is also a very significant contributor in healing of individual maladies. My work with dysfunctional couples who lived in at our residential centre for help convinced me that this search is often desperate. It takes skill and lots of practice, but again we must want it and be prepared to pay the price for it.
I had no intention of writing to you, but on this New Year’s Day, I thought I needed to put my thoughts on paper – for my sake.
I respect you. I am grateful you are part of the world that I love and to which I also have given my life in service. I trust your new journey will unfold as you dream and hope. Again – I am filled with gratitude that you have put up your sail to the wind, to blow where it will and to maintain your integrity. I see too many who have lived with dis-integrity for too long, too often. I hope your book becomes a best seller.
You have distilled so much wisdom. Peace be with you as you continue your mission. I remember another hero who said, ‘I have come to bring release to captives, liberty to who those who cannot see and liberty to the oppressed’ – he was also a beautiful caring human being.
Kind regards, Kevin

Eve Hillary

Grace Gawler’s memoirs kept me reading well into the night. The book is written in an easy style that rewards the reader with insights into Grace as a woman, mother, wife, carer, healer and pioneer of the original supportive care movement for cancer patients in Australia.
A uniquely Australian story, Grace brings alive the 1950’s Australia of her childhood. Her love of animals drew her into vet nursing. She teams up with a young vet and they set up a seemingly idyllic Victorian country vet practise. Almost immediately after their romance develops, he is diagnosed with a usually fatal type of cancer.

Their relationship unfolds in the shadow of his illness.

Later their marriage becomes the fertile ground from which Grace discovers the depth of her ability to love and to heal. Meanwhile, Grace has grown into a beauty and comes to the attention of a modelling agency. She forgoes lucrative modelling opportunities in order to remain her boyfriend’s full time carer-they married when he had a few weeks to live. In time, he becomes well again and for a while, they flourish and are further blessed with four children. Their journey into his healing and their joint establishment of the Gawler Foundation is alone worth reading. However, what was originally a lifeline for Ian comes at a price for Grace.

When Ian leaves the marriage, Grace descends into her own life-and-death battle with a life-threatening condition and near destitution. Alone, she undergoes over sixteen surgeries while struggling with the day-to-day challenges of being a single parent to four children. Her ordeal imposes many losses including her position at the Gawler Foundation. Few would have survived her hardships but Grace always drew on a mysterious hidden reserve – the same one she used to heal others.

The rest of the book shows how Grace healed herself and reclaimed her identity. It reveals, perhaps for the first time, her unique contributions to the Gawler Foundation – and how she has subsequently forged her own solo career in supportive cancer care as a healer and author of self-help books for cancer sufferers. Perhaps her biggest achievement is founding cancer support in Australia. Many health professionals are involved with cancer sufferers but none offer ongoing support and the unique healing that Grace has pioneered over the past thirty years.
Not merely an autobiography of a unique Australian, this book offers useful information and deep insights for cancer sufferers, their carers, family and friends. It shows how seemingly insurmountable obstacles can be overcome and the miracle of healing is revealed in a way that people can experience it, reproduce it and derive inspiration from it.
I finished Grace’s book late on Saturday night; that night I dreamt about the country practice animal stories Grace had vividly told, and for a night, I was in her life. I woke up just before her more demanding challenges came in the story. I think it is fair to say that her book was engaging. Ernest Hemmingway said once: ‘Courage is Grace under pressure.’ Courageous is not too strong a word to describe this woman.
At the very least, this book is a good yarn with a ‘happy-ending’, as Grace is happily re partnered. At most, it’s an awe-inspiring Australian story that will improve supportive cancer care in this country. It is certainly however, a story of redemption – well worth the read.
Eve Hillary is former freelance medical writer and research analyst on issues pertaining to health care, environmental health and the ways in which globalisation erodes Democracy.

Karen Stokke

I have just finished reading Grace, Grit and Gratitude. It is one of the most honest, gut wrenching, funny, sad and heroic books I have ever read.
My father died 4 years ago due to prostate cancer then bone cancer. I am 51 years old and organize weekends away for women.
In her young life and for so many years she showed so much courage. I have now decided that Grace is on my Bucket List. What an extraordinary women. I feel so good in my heart that Grace found such a wonderful partner (Pip Cornall) to share her life with. Thank you Grace, Thank you for being such an honest and truly beautiful soul upon this earth

Deborah Seabrook

Having met both Ian and Grace Gawler in 1989 as part of their live in program at Jumbunna Lodge, I had not known of what had happened in their life post 1990 and was intrigued.
This book is a must read particularly for women. Grace Gawler is an inspiration, from her early life until present day. I do not know how this book has not had more “push” in the literary world. For those who think this book is about meditation and diet, it is not. It is the journey of a remarkable woman’s life and the invaluable lesson’s she has learnt along the way and courageously bares her soul so that we may all learn.

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Reviews for Grace, Grit and Gratitude

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