Welcome to the exclusive pre-order page for Diana Raab’s upcoming book Hummingbird: Messages from My Ancestors–A Memoir with Reflection and Writing Prompts. Orders placed from this page will be fulfilled on January 15th, 2024 when the book is officially available.
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“In this powerful and timely memoir, Raab offers poignant and thoughtful insights to contemplate and reflect upon in order to help us heal generational trauma.”
—Sonia Choquette, New York Times bestselling author,
The Answer Is Simple and Ask Your Guides
Diana Raab’s Hummingbird: Messages from My Ancestors is a spiritual narrative connecting three generations of women—the author, her mother, and her maternal grandmother, who was Diana’s primary caretaker until she died by suicide when Diana was ten. Exploring such connections can help us all live deeper, fuller lives, Diana believes, and so she provides questions at the end of each chapter for readers to ponder in their own writing.
For more than five decades, her grandmother’s wisdom—much of it gleaned from the elder’s journal—has guided Diana not only in how to live in the world but also in how to follow her intuition and listen to her heart. A photo of her grandmother sits on Diana’s desk. When she stares into her eyes, she receives clear messages, often confirmed by the magic of hummingbirds as they visit the red blossoms on the other side of the window.
With clear-eyed acceptance, Diana recounts the abandonment she and her grandmother both felt as children and links her grandmother’s ordeal during a cholera scourge in Europe with her own ordeal during Covid-19. She relates these stories in the context of her own life journey: being raised by a narcissistic mother, losing loved ones, meeting her soulmate, having children, having cancer (twice!), becoming a grandmother herself, and, now, passing on her legacy. Throughout, Diana shows how her grandmother’s spirit—despite the elder’s suicide—has given her comfort and the will to survive.
Sharing six decades of stories and universal truths, Hummingbird inspires us to connect with our own ancestors in the circle of life. Relationships, empathy, deeper knowing, emotional wellness, perseverance, gratitude, interconnectedness, and the power of storytelling are among the rich themes.
“It’s important to know the stories of our ancestors and that they are also our stories; at the same time, they’re not really our stories,” Diana says. “Instead of holding onto all our ancestors’ grief and tribulations, it is healthier to send them love and compassion while living our own lives. It is all very bittersweet.”
