Blossoms and Bones: Drawing a Life Back Together

Description

Visionary artist and New York Times bestselling author of The Wild Unknown Kim Krans returns with a decadently illustrated and incredibly raw graphic memoir that chronicles her multi-layered search for truth and recovery from an eating disorder and infertility in the throes of a health and wellness-obsessed culture, touching on the healing potentials of creativity and spirituality. With pen and paper as her trusted allies, revered visionary artist, spiritual seeker, and bestselling author of The Wild Unknown, Kim Krans chronicles her deeply personal journey of recovery through drawing. After cancelling her flight home to wellness-obsessed Los Angeles, where Krans had been secretly experiencing a debilitating eating disorder, she finds her way to an ashram and seeks spiritual and creative refuge. For forty days she relies on "drawing the feeling" as a way to realign her relationship to food, addiction, fertility, perfectionism, and the endless messaging of "never enough" echoing throughout current culture. She makes the ashram her home and embarks on the healing process through intricately hand-drawn narration of both her inner and outer worlds, cancelling forthcoming high-profile teaching obligations and international travel. Radical simplification, meditation, community, and creativity bring her through the darkest chapter of her life. What emerges from Krans' deeply personal undertaking is a raw and beautiful never-before-seen artists' document that explores what it means to prioritize truth and self-discovery in a world of relentless expectations and distractions. A memoir at its heart, Blossoms and Bones is a lifeline of light and beauty, a call to embrace our creative power, and a courageous example of realigning with one's destiny.

Kim Krans is a visionary artist, author, and creator of The New York Times bestseller The Wild Unknown Tarot, The Wild Unknown Animal Spirit, The Wild Unknown Journal, and The Wild Unknown Archetypes Deck and Guidebook. She is also the author of several children's books, including Hello Sacred Life and ABC Dream. Krans received her BFA in drawing at Cooper Union in NYC, MFA in mixed media at Hunter College, and an MA in depth psychology and creativity at Pacifica Graduate Institute in California. Her seeker's heart has brought her to study in-depth practices of yoga and shamanism in India, Africa, Europe, and the UK. Kim teaches events and workshops that activate the forces of creativity and radical transformation through art, meditation, mysticism, and movement. See more at kimkrans.com

"Blossoms and Bones describes what it's like to have an eating disorder in a way I've never seen described before-the sudden, out-of-the-blue obsession with food and the sudden inability to recognize oneself through the obsession. Krans is a powerful storyteller: she is intuitive and direct in her words and drawings. In describing this thing that I've never seen described, she's taken the power of shame away from it for me-and, I hope, also for herself." - Liana Finck, cartoonist and author of Excuse Me "I wish we all could make books like this: like if a wail could be tender, and if a scribble could contain all of humanity's language. This book amazes." - Tom Hart, New York Times bestselling author of Rosalie Lightning "Required reading for anyone who needs to move through hard times and find the light within us all." - Tommy Rosen, author of Recovery 2.0 "Shocking and compassionate images that produce remarkable insights and eventually crack the bones of sorrow to release the eternal buds of renewal." - Michael Meade, author of The Genius Myth "A revelation...a vast landscape of forgiveness, truth and possibility." - Elena Brower, bestselling author of Practice You "Kim's message is so moving-and incredibly important at this time, when so many people are struggling with disordered eating, addiction, and limiting beliefs. In Blossoms and Bones, Kim combines honest, vulnerable storytelling with beautiful, arresting artwork to create an inspiring and completely original memoir." - Gabrielle Bernstein, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Universe Has Your Back "A combination diary and sketchbook, Krans's depiction of her 40 days spent at an ashram recovering from an eating disorder, divorce, and multiple miscarriages is raw and, for anyone who's wrestled the demons of perfectionism, intensely relatable....Krans's work literally pushes the boundaries of the page. The result is vulnerable and experimental." - Publishers Weekly "Krans communicates far beyond the text...using drawing and lettering styles that range from precise and elegant to sketchy and unsettling. Readers who surrender to the hallucinatory feel and flow of this will be rewarded." - Booklist