F o r B o o k C l u b s
If your book club would like to invite Colleen to Zoom in for your meeting, you can contact her at pressedclovercreative@gmail.com. She’s happy to chat!
Please schedule early and provide some details about your club: How many members do you expect to attend? Will they attend on Zoom or in person? Would the group prefer a Q/A and discussion or a reading and “book talk”? Lastly, please let Colleen know how much time you’d like her to spend with you. She’ll undoubtedly be looking forward to talking with you, but Opal, her dog, gets pretty impatient if it cuts her walk short!
Here’s a lovely article about inviting authors to attend your club’s meeting if you’d like to have a look!
“That’s why I love literature—the ancient works to modern read like an emotional history of humankind. Whatever you feel has been felt before.”
~from In the Ether: A Memoir of Holding Space
by Colleen Hildebrand
Questions for Discussion
1
In telling this story, Colleen Hildebrand exposes much of herself and her loved ones, with their full consent. Can you imagine surrendering to the level of vulnerability required to tell such a story? What would it require of you and your relationships to do so?
2
The memoir is structured in such a way that with each episode in Abby’s and Ryan’s relationship, Colleen circles back to some memory of her own life in order to understand their hardships, concerns, and risk-taking better. What event in your life has made you more understanding, receptive, or tolerant of others’ choices and behaviors? Have the difficulties you’ve encountered made you more or less empathetic to others? In what ways do you draw on your own past to better understand people?
3
Throughout the story, Colleen notes the synchronicities—those strange little coincidences—that occur among Abby, Ryan, and herself. Have you ever noticed such things in your own life? What is something you’ve experienced that you just can’t explain? How do you feel about it?
4
The book offers some commentary in subtle ways about a few social concerns we’ve seen in news coverage over the last few years. In your opinion, how does the story contribute to the conversations about the #metoo movement, policing, mental health/trauma?
5
More than anything, this is a memoir about family relationships. Colleen states that, like her mother, she valued communication over control after Abby reached her teens. Do you agree or disagree with this approach to parenting? How does your own adolescence inform your opinion?
6
In the Ether presents three very different personalities in its main characters. With whom do you identify most? Least? What traits of theirs resonate with you?
7
The memoir pulls lots of academic information into the book at times—references to literature and philosophy (see the accompanying list of titles). What was familiar to you? What, if anything, was new to you? How do you think literature and the learning of the past can play a useful role in emotional healing?
8
The memoir’s subtitle is “a memoir of holding space.” What does that phrase mean to you? What do you think prevents people from having enough emotional room within themselves to feel and show compassion toward others? When was a time someone unexpectedly “held space” for you?
9
What did you find most challenging as you read In the Ether?
10
Now that you’ve finished the book, are there any characters, scenes, or ideas you still think about from it? What a
re your takeaways? Why do you think you’ve held on to them?
Reading List
Fiction and Nonfiction from in In the Ether in order of reference
“Meditation 17” by John Donne
Into the Wild by John Krakauer
Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
The Things We Carried by Tim O’Brien
The Goldfinch by Donna Tart
Dr. Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Chariots of the Gods by Erich Von Daniken
The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
1984 by George Orwell
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, M.D.*
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
The Crucible by Arthur Miller
A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Ryan’s Reading:
The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, M.D.*
The Rare Coin Score by Donald Westlake
The Prison Angel by Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan
Mutant Message from Down Under by Marlo Morgan
Brimstone by Robert B. Parker
Gai Jin by James Clavell
The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell
The Pale Horseman by Bernard Cornwell
Lords of the North by Bernard Cornwell
Paradise Lost by John Milton
Inferno by Dante Alighieri
*Of any book on this list, The Body Keeps the Score is by far the one that Colleen and Ryan consider the most important.
Ryan credited it with saving his life during his time in prison.
Please visit the “Education and Resources” tab at https://www.colleenhildebrand.com for more reading recommendations concerning healing from trauma.
If you or a loved one has suffered traumatic experiences and needs help coping, please seek the guidance of a trusted mental health professional.
Colleen would like to thank each of you, each reader, for choosing to read In the Ether, a work that has become so much more than it was originally planned to be.
It is her greatest hope that the events it documents provide you with a sense of connection, inspiration, and wisdom you can carry into your own life.
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