Self Portraits in the Nude

Here is the deep inner picture of the popular writer Hannah Blue Heron. Although a totally standalone book, this also serves as the third volume of Hannah's memoirs. Journal entries, short stories, poems, dreams, daydreams, past life experiences, and thoughtful essays all work together to give a far richer picture of her growth and development in later life than could the factual chronological style that she has used in earlier books.

New readers will marvel at the almost universally applicable qualities of depth and perception in the variety of thoughts that are shared here by Blue Heron as she reaches her eightieth birthday. She has been a professional violinist, a nun for seventeen years, a hippie, a member of the women's back-to-the-land movement, and a prolific feminist writer. Readers of the stories of her childhood in Growing Tall in Colorado, and the both heartbreaking and beautiful account of her middle years in That Strange Intimacy will recognize the same open and honest sharing in Self Portraits in the Nude, but with a new intensity.

Under six headings: Lesbian Love, Love and Healing, Past Lives, Vivid Dreams, Mystical Musings, and finally On Growing Old, we are given insights into one woman's progress in learning and loving and living joyously. One very special and practical gift in this book, is Hannah's story of learning and growing in the practice of meditation and the inclusion of a CD illustrating her creative use of music as an aid to that practice.