A good half of the art of living is resilience Alain de Botton This has been my vocation to make music of what remains Itzhak Perlman Ever since emmy Werner PhD conducted her first surprising studies on the resilience of high risk children researchers have been plumbing the depth and breadth of the remarkable human spirit Werner followed 700 children for decades and found that many kids in troubled or abusive homes went on to live healthy and productive lives ann s Masten PhD a professor of child psychology at the University of Minnesota twin Cities coined the term ordinary magic to explain this mysterious resilience it is a magic available to us all When i first conceived The Hugging Tree i was thinking of my own struggles growing up in a difficult household and wondering how i personally had come by that little candlelight of hope and resolve in my own life i thought of trees that grow in unlikely places how does a seedling prevail even in rock how does a tree root as small as a finger slowly displace a few hundred feet of stone how did the famous Lone Cypress perched precariously on an inhospitable rocky ocean outcropping in northern California thrive and become an international tourist attraction the title and subject of this book might call to mind the most famous children’s book about a tree The Giving Tree by author and illustrator shel silverstein Certainly the title gives homage to silverstein’s tree trees are and always have been dear to us We see in them our protectors We sense in them the continuity of life and we find in their steadfastness our own steadfastness We marvel at the towering redwoods the giant sequoias with their immense trunks Buddhist monks ordain trees wrapping them in orange robes towns name their favorite trees lovers carve their names in trees people save trees from being razed to make way for housing projects and of course nature lovers are inevitably called tree huggers trees hold us fast in their embrace The Hugging Tree is about a tree that in spite of harsh circumstances grows until it can hold and shelter others it is about each one of us Jill Neimark
On a bleak and lonely rock by a vast and mighty sea grew a lonely little tree where no tree should ever be how she got there no one knew she sprouted stems and little leaves as any tiny seed will do there’s hardly any dirt for me no forest breeze no birds no bees But i will do the best i can to make this rock my home
