Radical Gratitude: And Other Life Lessons Learned in Siberia

(Paperback)

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Self help is only the beginning of the journey - to progress, we move beyond this to help others. Andrew Bienkowski learned this as a young Polish boy at the age of five when, exiled with his immediate family, he watched his grandfather starve to death so they could survive. Reminiscent of Viktor Frankel's great classic, Man's Search for Meaning, this extraordinary book moves back and forth from the family's terrible journey of survival in Siberia, to how to become a person who can give to others.

Each chapter details powerful ways to achieve this with such concepts as radical gratitude (being grateful for small gestures instead of seeing them as incomplete), who we can and cannot help, genuine being with others in need, and the remarkable changes that we can experience when we do.

The feel of this book can best be summed up by Churchill's famous saying - 'We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.'

Author Bio

ANDREW BIENKOWSKI has spent more than 40 years as a clinical therapist. At the age of six, he and his family were forced to leave their Polish homeland for Siberia where his grandfather deliberately starved to death so that the women and children might have enough to eat. The years that followed were harrowing, difficult and magical and influenced his entire life. After Siberia, the family spent a year in an Iranian refugee camp where Andrew nearly died from dysentery, malaria and malnutrition. Three years in Palestine followed, a year in England, before he finally immigrated to America where he went on to earn a Masters in Clinical Psychology and to be a psychotherapist. MARY AKERS' work has appeared in literary journals, many related to health and healing. Her story, 'Wild, Wild Horses' was named a Notable Story of 2004 and she was a 1997 winner in the Robert Hughes Prose Writing Competition sponsored by the Maui Writers Conference and a three-time recipient of Bread Loaf work study