Walkabout
Walkabout by Diane Juliette Sherman offers original works intended to inspire others to look deeply within for answers to the most important questions.
Walkabout is a collection of original poems by Diane Juliette Sherman, a heartfelt homage to life lived without borders. Intended to inspire readers to reconsider their own limitations and unexplored avenues, the collection reveals Sherman’s life experiences inverse.
With a title inspired by the ritual of wandering solitude that young Aboriginal men make as an initiation into adulthood, the collection focuses on the theme of finding one’s way through the dark moments of life and coming out the other side as a more whole, integrated human being. “I stroll through campus, Wordsworth tucked under my arm, rust-colored leaves dangle on dry branches,” Sherman writes in the title poem, recalling the innocence and curiosity of her college years. Featuring vivid, personal memories and lyrical presentations, the poems transport readers through Sherman’s eventful past.
“We are often told to follow rules, regurgitate already chewed on answers, and buck up and follow along,” Sherman says. “How do we find our true passion, our true calling, unless we listen deeply within? This book is an offering from my own curvy path: challenging initiations, the feeling of being lost with no oars on a stormy ocean, obstacles to tackle along the way and ultimately the transformative power of maturation through life's trials.
Intended to entertain and inspire, the collection is filled with detailed images recalling pivotal and pedestrian moments in Sherman’s life. Featuring previously unpublished works, the book offers a definitive statement on Sherman’s perspective as an artist.
A signed copy of Walkabout is only available on my website.
In Borrowed Shoes:
108 Momentary Adventures
on the Road to Inner Freedom
Through her years of journaling, storytelling, and the arts, Diane Sherman reveals the journey of a lifetime. It’s the journey we must all ultimately take, into stillness, into the deeper sense of wholeness and belonging that only an authentically lived life can reveal.
Sherman doesn’t hold back in revealing the crushing events of her early life that eventually led her to the many healing modalities that now comprise her teaching practice.
Through heartbreakingly honest and humorous stories, she invites the reader into her heart, sharing about the loss of her father when she was seven, how religion shaped her early worldview, and her quest to be free of guilt and shame. She shares stories of a car accident that shattered her body and nearly cost her life, how her second marriage shaped and healed her, how divorce and beginning again brought her to her knees, how sitting with her dogs brings her into the present moment, and more.
This memoir is comprised of 108 vignettes. Her writing reveals that each story, whether it’s a grave and serious moment or one that is apparently mundane, can become a meditation. Each meditation is a prayer to open her heart to discover that inner freedom is available right here, right now, in this moment. Sherman discovers that true contentment can be achieved if we open our hearts and say yes to the circumstances and challenges life presents. The gold lies within.