Patricia Hetherington’s career path has encompassed teaching, training,
and selling real estate for twenty years. At midlife she changed gears to complete a master’s degree, becoming a counsellor and publishing a memoir
The Winter Gardener: A Woman’s Journey from Futile to Fertile (2007).She has walked unharmed on hot coals to impress a new lover and trekked the Camino de Santiago in Spain. In 2016 she quit her day job, throwing back the covers and pushing forward to publish a new book.
My soul sparked a desire to burn off the constraints of my life, to allow something ancient and sacred to emerge-something larger, more beautiful, and unfurled..
Chapter 6 “The Gift,” Under The Covers.
Patricia Hetherington lives on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia,Canada. She is the author of Under the Covers: A Life of Gumption, Passion, Gifts, and Secrets (2017) and The Winter Gardener: A Woman’s Journey from Futile to Fertile (2007).
A life of Gumption, Passion, Gifts & Secrets
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This evocative collection of linked stories explores the hope, heartache, and messiness of love and life, revealing how, in the deepest corners of our beings, we long for healing.
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Inspiring Stories
Patricia invokes the presence of her deceased grandmother in a reverie and they reminisce while waiting for a resistant story to emerge. While she navigates the treacherous terrains of family sewing traditions and Spain’s gruelling cross-country pilgrims’ trail, unexpected truths are found in the depths of transformation. A woman’s quest for the perfect cinnamon bun becomes a metaphor for living without regret. Lessons passed from mother to daughter hinge on choosing the perfect coat. But when a crisis inspires the wrong purchase, a mysterious appearance delivers redemption. Through dance comes reckoning-with yearning for fatherly love, with confronting her own raw sexuality, and by accepting the harsh truths of aging. An old flame ignites an obsession and a gutsy reflection yields a potentially life-changing insight. Reaching a tipping point of overwhelm and panic spurs the exploration of harrowing episodes, and wholeness is found in a powerful naming. After a decade of maintaining a rambling heritage home on her own, Patricia feels bitterness rise in herself and slips away from her annual Christmas party. Faced with their father’s impending death, she and her sister, Joann, sense the arrival of their mother from her heavenly abode, which allows them to be together as a family once more.
With intelligent, clear-eyed prose, these stories reach into the heart of what it means to be a woman fully alive to her inner and outer worlds. Lyrical, sensuous, and unflinching, Under the Covers: A Life of Gumption, Passion, Gifts, and Secrets is a poignant, entertaining testimony to a life lived authentically.
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Shortlist AWARD Announcement
Congratulations to Patricia Hetherington, whose book Under the Covers: A Life of Gumption, Passion, Gifts, and Secrets has been nominated for the Whistler Independent Book Award.
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photo copyright Ingeborg Suzanne Hardman | site copyright Patricia Hetherington