Swimming In It

Swimming In It Book CoverSwimming In It explores without sensationalism or romanticism, with neither pity nor undue reverence, the strategies that allow women simultaneously to survive and to perpetuate their trauma. Patricia Wild unflinchingly explores the roles that sexual abuse and domestic violence play in too many women’s lives, especially in lives lived out in shelters. Even with a lifeline, some women will drown, some will tread water and swim in it. And some will swim through. Patricia Wild understands that women need long-term, healthy relationships and support, not just structure and guidelines, to heal. She also understands and communicates the importance of luck and the dizziness that comes from personal triumph.

—Katya Fels, founder and former Executive Director, On The Rise, Inc, a drop-in center for chronically-homeless women, Cambridge, MA

Available for purchase on Amazon

Way Opens: A Spiritual Journey

Way Opens Book Cover The old Quaker expression “Way Opens” describes the serendipitous unfolding of God’s will for a person or community. For accomplished Quaker writer Patricia Wild and for us, her readers, way opens unexpectedly, sometimes painfully, and at last redemptively in this powerful, beautifully crafted spiritual memoir. From the very first page, we are drawn into a twisting odyssey of faith confronting the complexities of White privilege and American racism. Patricia Wild writes prose like a poet and tells stories like a trusted friend or favorite neighbor. Her gift is humility, tenderness, humor, humanity, and a wisdom born of experience and struggle. Way Opens establishes Patricia Wild among our finest contemporary spiritual writers, Quaker and otherwise. Profoundly moving, healing, and inspiring, this book bears eloquent witness to the pain of past and present, and the promise of our future.

—Alexander Levering Kern, Executive Director, Center for Spirituality, Dialogue and Service, Northeastern University, Boston, MA

Available for purchase on Quaker Books of FGC