When the Heart Has Healed Again: A Memoir of Tragedy and Forgiveness by Julie White

When the Heart Has Healed Again is a story of family tragedy and of healing, healing that came through connection with the sea. Illustrated with nine full-page photographs of the sea and its environs, this book brings hope and insight where there could have been only pain and loss. Julie White, the author and a marine biologist, creates a whole through her love for the ocean and its animals and plant life of what had been only fragments of broken lives.

First there was: Something horrible. So horrible it’s difficult to think there was ever any goodness. Three family killings and a suicide—illness, murder, suicide. Four gruesome deaths, the deaths of loved ones.

Then there came: I wanted to know how to forgive. I thought only a priest would have such answers. And he did. He said, "You know you are free to hate. Go ahead. Hate. But you must know, and you must always remember your hate is your own. It’s got nothing to do with them. You may have your grievance here. Nurture it. Let it grow. But don’t effort love, if you’re unwilling to let go of hate."

And now there is: I am not naïve. I know what I have seen. But my anguishing cannot last. It is not a way of life. And so when I look over my clear blue sea, or sink my body down within it deep, I remember a memory of life, of life that is sweet.

The author’s note: This book is about my family: my mother, my father, my brother, my sister and myself. The story is not fictitious; the characters are not fabrications. The book is, however, an interpretation which may or may not be accurate. It is only one of countless interpretations possible. The characters I describe may or may not resemble the persons themselves. The story, nonetheless, is true.

From the Foreword of When the Heart Has Healed Again, a quote by Herman Hesse from his novel Steppenwolf:

And these men [and women]…live at times with such strength and indescribable beauty, the spray of their moment’s happiness is flung so high and dazzling over the wide sea of suffering, that the light of it, spreading its radiance, touches others too with its enchantment. Thus, like a precious, fleeting foam over the sea of suffering arise all those works of art, in which a single individual lifts himself [or herself] for an hour so high about his [her] personal destiny that his [her] happiness shines like a star and appears to all who see it as something eternal and as a happiness of their own.

Quality Paperback. ISBN: 0-937897-87-6 Dimensions in inches: 0.30 x 8.0 x 6.0 9 original b/w photographs by photographer Ken Appelt. $9.00

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About the Author

About the Author Julie White: Julie White, trained as a marine biologist, is formerly the Associate Curator of Marine Biology for the Oakland Museum. She has taught adult and children’s classes on marine biology for the Oakland Museum and the Oceanic Society. Julie White has published articles on sea spiders, desert pupfishes, and limpets in the Dolphin Log, a magazine published by the Cousteau Society.