Today I am happy to be a part of the Dianna's Way by John Catenacci blog tour which was put together by Tribute Books, as always thank you for having me. I haven't had a chance to read this one but I am always happy to hear about books that have to do with cancer. I like to spread cancer awareness and think it is very important to do so. What better way to spread awareness than with a book? Today you can get a teaser of the book by reading the excerpt, and learn more about it from the Q&A with the author and even have a chance to win an e-book copy of it. I hope you all enjoy this stop, happy reading.
Dianna is a young woman in her late 20’s when she meets John, a man in his late 40's. They fall in love and marry. A central feature of their life plan is to have one child to fulfill her fervent lifelong dream of being a mother.
Not to be.
Not long into their marriage, Dianna discovers she has an aggressive form of breast cancer.
Hand in hand, they begin a 17 year spiritual journey into the nature of love and healing. Along the way, she discovers and fulfills her life purpose and, in the process, takes John by the hand, gently helping him to reveal, then fulfill, his own.
In the beginning, John, being much older, thought he would be her teacher but gradually discovers in the most important dimensions of life quite the opposite is true. With Dianna’s guidance, he ultimately discovers we are all teachers, we are all students and we are all one.
Theirs is a story of courage, determination and a lightness of being, as they descend into the deepest valleys of crushing disappointment, pain and suffering only to rise again to ever higher peaks of appreciation, gratitude and love. Throughout it all, their journey is laced with light and laughter.
Even today, after her passing, they continue their relationship, piercing the Illusion that veils this reality, exploring its limits while continuing a spiritual journey without end.
Not to be.
Not long into their marriage, Dianna discovers she has an aggressive form of breast cancer.
Hand in hand, they begin a 17 year spiritual journey into the nature of love and healing. Along the way, she discovers and fulfills her life purpose and, in the process, takes John by the hand, gently helping him to reveal, then fulfill, his own.
In the beginning, John, being much older, thought he would be her teacher but gradually discovers in the most important dimensions of life quite the opposite is true. With Dianna’s guidance, he ultimately discovers we are all teachers, we are all students and we are all one.
Theirs is a story of courage, determination and a lightness of being, as they descend into the deepest valleys of crushing disappointment, pain and suffering only to rise again to ever higher peaks of appreciation, gratitude and love. Throughout it all, their journey is laced with light and laughter.
Even today, after her passing, they continue their relationship, piercing the Illusion that veils this reality, exploring its limits while continuing a spiritual journey without end.
Excerpt:
The
End of Something
We are in bed. Dianna is reading a book about healing cancer, while
I’m thumbing through a bird hunting magazine. Dianna lays her book
on the end table and rolls over toward me. I lay down the magazine, too.
She has my undivided attention now.
“I think we make love every day in some way,” I say.
“You know what I mean.”
“Sex.”
“Yes.”
I let out a big sigh. We have not had sex since the transplant. I have
been thinking about this for quite a while, and nothing ever comes up
making sense to me.
“Don’t you find me desirable anymore? Do you still love me?”
“Do you actually have to ask me that?” I’m looking her right in the
eye. “I love you more now than I ever have.”
“Well?”
“I don’t have a way to explain it. It’s not that I don’t find you attractive
or desirable. It’s just with everything that has happened to us, to you, I
just…I don’t know what to say.”
“It’s because I’ve lost my breasts, isn’t it. You never touch them
anymore.”
“Well, honey, we’ve discussed that already. You’ve admitted you
don’t have any feeling there anymore. Why would I touch them? I don’t
fondle doorknobs, either. But, anyway, your breasts have nothing to do
with it.”
“Then, what?”
“The only way I can put it is, I love you very much, and more and
more with each passing year. But expressing my love for you in a sexual
way feels…I don’t know…just feels inappropriate somehow.”
“Like you will hurt me or something?”
“I guess so. No matter how much you love someone, if the person
you love is wounded and bleeding, you don’t try to have sex with them.
Feels… just doesn’t feel…right. You protect them. You care for them, not
have sex with them. Something like that.”
“I’m not a cripple, you know. I’m not a piece of glass. I won’t break.”
“I know that, honey.”
“I’m a woman with womanly needs. I still desire you sexually. I would
love to have sex with you like a normal human being.” She slides her arm
under my arm. “I feel rejected. That hurts.”
“I realize that. I feel terrible about it. Don’t you think I haven’t thought
about how much you’ve lost? You have lost your dream of having a child.
Now your menstrual cycles have ended, reminding you that all you are
going to get from now on is hot flashes instead of the child you so dearly
wanted. You’ve lost your breasts, a part of you, you were always so proud
of…, and you have lost your hair twelve times. You…”
“Three times.”
I laugh. Then, so does she, a little.
“What I’m trying to say, maybe not very well, is I realize all these
losses assail your femininity, of what it means to be a woman, …and…
not having sex with your partner is just another thing piled on top of all
the rest. It’s the last thing you need to have happen in your life, right now.
I know I can’t feel what you feel exactly…, but I do understand these are
losses you deal with every day. That’s why it hurts me so much to be stuck
like this, this way.”
“Then, I don’t understand why you would want to deprive me of this,
too.”
My eyes are getting wet, and my heart is thick in my throat.
“Believe me, if I could do anything about it, I would. I just can’t. Men
can’t fake it, you know.”
“I don’t want you to fake it.”
I put my arms around her and pull her close to me. I can’t stop the
tears now.
“And so I don’t. I’m not faking my love for you, either. I would do
anything I know how to do for you. I do what I can. I’m so sorry, honey.”
She starts to cry, softly, quietly, burying her head into my neck.
“So am I,” she whispers.
We fall into silence. There doesn’t seem to be anything else to say. I
keep my arms around her, and she keeps her arm over me.
We fall asleep that way.
The
Beginning of Something Else
The next morning, I get up, leaving Dianna
still asleep, and go into thekitchen to make coffee. My back is facing the hallway to the bedroom.
Suddenly I feel her arms around me as she lays her head sideways against
my back.
“I know what love is, John.”
“You do?” I ask without turning toward her.
“Yes.”
“Look at me,” she says.
I turn around and look into her eyes. They look wet, but she’s
smiling. “Love is the way you are with me,” she pauses, then, in a more
perky tone of voice, “And the way I am with you, too.”
Now I can’t help it. I fall apart. She wraps her arms tight around me
and I bury my head into her neck.
“It’s going to be okay,” she says.
“It is okay,” she says, then adds, “More than okay.”
After a minute, she steps back and looks at me with a smirk on her
face. “Do you ever desire other women?”
I think about that minefield, but decide to go ahead anyway. “Of course.
Once in awhile, I do. Some women are sexually attractive and, …and don’t
look wounded to me, I guess. Must be about a billion of ’em out there.”
She smiles, gives me a little kiss on the cheek, then walks over to
the dining room window and looks out over the lake. Finally, she says
quietly, without looking at me, “Maybe one day, honey, you’ll see we are
all wounded.”
I stop pouring water into the coffee pot in midstream, about to enlist
my skills in mental masturbation, when she darts away to a different
flower.
“Oh, honey, I think it’s going to be a beautiful day today. In fact, I’m
sure it is.” She comes across the room and peeks over the bar. “Oh. Are
you making coffee for me?”
“Everything is for you,” I say with a smile.
Q&A
(Dianna)
Q: Please tell us about your current release.
A: I will use the back cover copy as it works pretty well on its
own.
John Catenacci is enthralled from the
start by the beauty, radiance, and mystery of the much younger woman he meets
at a party. Dianna “is in Technicolor and everyone else is in black and white.”
Expecting to be the teacher, not the student, John is humbled by the gradual
discovery that the opposite is true, in their marriage and in life. The author
is profoundly awed by Dianna’s courage, determination, and lightness of being
that remains entirely undiminished in the face of what becomes a seventeen-year
battle with an aggressive form of breast cancer. John accompanies Dianna each
step of the way, and is increasingly amazed by the undeniable healing affect
she has on others. Theirs is a shared spiritual journey into the nature of love
and transformation. Even after her passing, their relationship pierces the
illusion veiling this reality.
Q: Can you tell us about the journey that led you to write your
book?
A: At some point in our life together, I began to notice Dianna was
living her life in a genuinely powerful, almost mysterious (to me) way and
suggested to her that I write her story. She was as delighted as any child
running down the stairs on Christmas morning. But, as her health deteriorated,
I became focused on care giving and put the writing aside. After she died, I
was engulfed in grief and for a couple of years I just couldn’t climb out of
it. One day, I happened upon a book by Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way,
which I credit with guiding me back into the game.
The book is in five parts. The first
four recount our life together with the fifth devoted to my personal spiritual
journey of coming to terms with her leaving, my long view of who she was and
what I learned from her. The first four parts flowed like water once I began to
write but I struggled mightily with the last part. Yet it is this last part
that weaves together the whole of her life, her message, in a way very
satisfying to me.
Q: Can you
tell us about the story behind your book cover?
Well, originally the cover was going
to be centered on the photo of Dianna that is now on the back cover. I love
this photo of her – it is quintessential Dianna in an image.
However, my editor, Marly Cornell,
convinced me this was going to be an ineffective cover and, after accidentally
seeing the photo of Dianna and me from the rear taken by a dear
friend/professional photographer, Giovanni Sanitate, she instantly said, “This
is the one. Use this one.” Well, it has taken most of my life but I have finally
learned to listen and follow advice when the advice comes from someone I
respect. So, now, everyone gets to see my bald head instead of Dianna. More
mystery, more intriguing, Marly said. Probably because anyone looking at it
would wonder what this young woman is doing with this old man.
Anyway, unwilling to let it go
completely, I pushed Dianna’s photo to the back cover because I wanted it to be
seen and seen in color.
Q: What book on
the market does yours compare to? How is your book different?
A: Everyone is unique. No one could have written this book but me
and no one else has existed nor ever will exist who is like Dianna. So her
story and how I have written it is like no other book anyone has ever read. Of
course, this does not make it a good book but simply a unique one. I have read
quite a few memoirs, many involving illness, care giving – and some of them
were really good. What I think makes this book special is what made Dianna
special, what made our relationship special – so much laughter, optimism, ways
of constantly making lemonade when we needed it, and, finally, the deeply
spiritual orientation to the book’s message – good or bad, there is nothing
fluffy about where Dianna goes in her life nor in the way I have chosen to
examine her life …. and the very meaning of life itself.
Q: What would
you say is your most interesting writing quirk?
I like to write in sentence fragments
and the entire book is a sort of a mosaic – there are chapters that are
conventionally chronological because they had to be but other parts of the book
are like bursts of light shining on an amazing woman so the reader can enjoy
her in the way I – and all who knew her – enjoyed and were inspired by
her. I am so happy with how the entire tapestry came together into a
whole. I think Dianna is too.
Of course I could go into grammar and
punctuation, which I thought I knew. And my love of ellipses and my aversion to
the word “that” and my unconscious tendency to start sentences with “So.”
So, my early readers and editor ripped me to pieces on those
“quirks.”
Q: Open your
book to a random page and tell us what’s happening.
A: In my reality, nothing in life is random — or accidental. When I
was about to write this response, I happened to look out the window and saw
three – three – hummingbirds dancing around a honeysuckle – have never seen
this before – like Dianna saying “talk about the hummingbird chapter.”
While I was writing the book, it
occurred to me to use a hummingbird as one metaphor for how Dianna lived her
life – flitting from person to person, embracing their love whole heartedly
while impregnating each one with a simple grace, unflagging humor and ineffable
love in return, all in one magical spontaneous exchange.
The look of triumph on her face, her
excitement and joy, when the first hummingbird showed up in our yard was
unforgettable. She had worked so hard for several years, planting for them, and
finally there it was, this little Ruby Throated blur. In that moment I saw,
once again, her determination, patience, faith, appreciation and gratitude all
in one tiny vignette during one day of our lives.
Q: Do you plan
any subsequent books?
An already almost fully formed book
is in my mind now. Better writers than I have said don’t talk about a book idea
or the energy for writing it will bleed away, leaving it stillborn.
Q: Tell us what you’re reading at the moment and what you think of
it.
A: The Five Secrets You Must Discover Before You Die by John Izzo and The Five Regrets of the Dying by
Bronnie Ware because I am old enough now where I should pay attention to these
things — probably before tomorrow — and A Broken Sausage Grinder by Hank
Thomas, a friend of mine and The Almost Archer Sisters by Lisa
Gabriele, a relative and friend of mine. I often read several books at a time,
switching back and forth depending on my mood. All are interesting in different
ways and for different reasons.
There is so very much talent in the world isn’t there?
About John Catenacci:
After spending his youth doing cement construction work while getting his education, John Catenacci earned a Bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering. He went on to work on the Apollo 11 Project as a member of the USAF in California, then as an engineer for the Dow Chemical Company in Midland, MI, doing both process research as well as designing and building chemical plants.
Mid-career he became interested in group dynamics, leading to another 20-year career in team building that took him across the U.S., Canada, Europe and Saudi Arabia.
With a sprinkling of published short stories and articles in small magazines along the way, his abiding passion has always been writing, something now coming to fruition in this, his first book.
Mid-career he became interested in group dynamics, leading to another 20-year career in team building that took him across the U.S., Canada, Europe and Saudi Arabia.
With a sprinkling of published short stories and articles in small magazines along the way, his abiding passion has always been writing, something now coming to fruition in this, his first book.
Find John:
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