Brian Hobbs - Reflections: A Story of Hope, Healing, Facing Fears, and Finding Purpose

Endorsements

This is a gripping story of life, healing, and the love that shines through it all. It is in lifes exposed inner core that the magical transformation occurs during our final scene. It is there we make the sudden shifts between the revealing light and the invading shadowthe light inescapably insightful and precious.

Everything that had been pushed aside by fear and negligence, by ignorance and complacency, is invited back by Brian Hobbs who, with openness and candor, allows life to finally catch up to him. With incredible loyalty and insight into wholeness and healing, his wife Fia Hobbs navigates them both, in acceptance and in healing. Day by day, moment by moment, all the way to deaths door, which perhaps neednt always divide us, they both stand in our presence as a universal teacher and guide.

The impact of Brians healing at the end of his life leaves an unforgettable touch of hope and purpose, and a reminder of the finiteness that we all need to be reminded of to live in the here and now. My wish is for everyone to take part in this story that sheds light on the inescapably painful part of the totality of life.

Marie Bergman
Swedish singer-songwriter, therapist.

Through Brian and Fias writing I have followed along on their difficult journey and been uplifted by their fighting spirit, strength, wisdom and love for one another and for life itself. The text conveys not only emotion and reflection but guiding advice that can be of great help to many.

The book provides an intimate window into two experiences, one from a cancer patients perspective and the other through the eyes of a loved one and caregiver. Never before have I encountered a book where there was such an intimate and heartfelt exchange between two voices as this one.

Stig Hanno
Chairman of the patient and caregiver
advisory board of Swedish RCC, Regional Cancer Center
Stockholm/Gotland.

A truly inspirational book on life and death and having a purpose in life that will stay with you for a long time.

Kevin Harrington , Original Shark on Shark Tank, Inventor of the Infomercial, Best Selling Author

With heartfelt honesty, this book takes us on the roller coaster ride of having a cancer diagnosis in a most sensitive manner. Although it acknowledges the difficulties that are experienced by most patients and caregivers, it spares us the intimate details of treatments gone wrong, fears that consume us, and the mental and physical toll of caring for someone with cancer, as many books of this nature do. Instead, it focuses on how do we stay present? How do we remain hopeful? What important information has been learned that can be left behind that may help others on this cancer journey?

Written by a brilliantly poetic musician and his compassionate therapist wife, we feel the power of our thoughts on our well-being. We see the critical importance of support. We understand the significance of giving and receiving lovelove of family, friends, nature, our universe and how all of this impacts our physiology, our life, our health, RIGHT NOW, regardless if we are currently ill or well.

Every cancer journey is personal. We all have something to gain from each others experiences if we are privileged enough to be invited in. This is your invitation.

Karen Smith Simonton , Executive Director, Simonton Cancer Center

A Story of HOPE,
HEALING, Facing FEARS,
and Finding PURPOSE

Brian & Fia Hobbs

NEW YORK

LONDONNASHVILLEMELBOURNEVANCOUVER

Reflections

A Story of HOPE, HEALING, Facing FEARS, and Finding PURPOSE

2020 Brian & Fia Hobbs

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or otherexcept for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published in New York, New York, by Morgan James Publishing. Morgan James is a trademark of Morgan James, LLC. www.MorganJamesPublishing.com

ISBN 978-1-64279-706-0 paperback

ISBN 978-1-64279-707-7 eBook

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019908975

Cover Design by:

Chris Treccani

www.3dogcreative.net

Interior Design by:

Bonnie Bushman

The Whole Caboodle Graphic Design

Front Cover Photo:

John Jacobsson

Morgan James is a proud partner of Habitat for Humanity Peninsula and Greater Williamsburg. Partners in building since 2006.

Get involved today! Visit
www.MorganJamesBuilds.com

This book is dedicated to my sons,

Adam and Jeremy Hobbs.

I am so thankful for having you

in my life and for your support.

For you Brian, always present with

your songs and lyrics and in our hearts.

Much Love!

Fia Hobbs

For more than 30 years, the disease called cancer have been the main subject of my studies of life-sciences and my challenging companion as a seeker for better cancer therapies.

It started with the diagnosis of my mother when I was a student in my third year of medical school, continued with her fast progressing breast cancer and her death in my arms when she was 54. It has been the main diagnosis of the patients who see me in my life as a medical doctor ever since.

The book Reflections touched my heart on every page when I read it. It brought back memories from the time I took care of my mother during the last three months of her life and of many patients and their relatives in whose treatment of late stage cancer I was involved. From all these experiences I can say that this book tells us about an important part of our life that we normally do not talk so much about: the chapter of our life when dying and death comes closer. The book reflects on the meaning of that in a very personal, poetic, honest and philosophical way, all at the same time.

This book is a powerful and important aid for the reader because of three factors:

First, it can help everyone who is in a situation like Brians, one of the two main characters, confronted with a non-curable disease and the time that is left to live while the disease relentlessly takes over. Brians open-hearted way of letting us come into his intimate life full of struggle, desperation, gratefulness and deep trust in a divine plan can be a remedy for every cancer patient. In his poems, Brian expresses it better than any academic or psychological description could ever do. It also shows the other side of the drama, beyond the weakening of the body: the insights and change of consciousness that we can get from the existential crisis cancer confronts us with.

Second, it has one simple and fundamental message above all: love is what we live for and what is most important when our lives are at stake.

And third, because it takes us by the hand in a day-to-day practical introduction into the healthy mindset called mindfulness-awareness. It does this through the reflections of Brians wife Fias insightful, non-judgmental, accepting and unconditionally loving attitude. This can be a remedy for everyone who lives with a loved one who is in Brians situation.

I hope this book reaches out to the many, many people who are in a similar situation, to cancer patients, spouses, family members, nurses, medical doctors and friends of those who are challenged with cancer. The insights of this book can make our lives easier, more conscious, more peaceful and more loving.