Overview: After losing her husband, a transformational 2650-mile hike helps the author find wholeness. Body and Grace follows this author’s journey over a period of 10 years to completion of the Pacific Crest Trail.

The reader will travel through snowfields, deserts, and fires, as well as nights alone in the woods, getting lost, and finding beauty that transcends.

Verdict: Here within the pages of Body and Grace: A Woman’s Hike to Wholeness on the Pacific Crest Trail, the inner journey of becoming whole after the loss of her life partner is woven through these trail stories. In such a way that as you read it you warm to the author and when you have finished reading it you are left with an amazing amount of empathy for such an incredible human being and the willingness of an accomplished, and dutifully driven spirit within.

“I became a walker in my sixties,” Dami reveals. “Gone were my years of me roaming the world as a young adult. Gone were my years of loving and maturing as a wife and mother. With the death of my husband and children off to college and beyond, I went for a walk to reclaim myself. Who was I at this point in life? I was a counselor to others in my profession, but now I must counsel myself.”

In her twenties she trekked to Nepal, and in her fifties she trekked in the Himalayas for 12 days, but the year she turned 65 she decided to take a longer vacation from work to walk the length of the state of Oregon. “I started in the state’s north and walked home to the south,” Dami adds. “As they say, the rest is history.”

In all honesty, I read this book - which is not my normal cup of tea - in two sittings, whereas my partner started early morning and was done by early afternoon. This should now testify to the fact that this emotionally engaging, vibrantly written, unbridled, profound and wholly impassioned new prose from author Dami Roelse is not only worthy of your time, but should be on your Top 10 book lists of 2026.

For in what is a massively inspirational tale, Body and Grace: A Woman’s Hike to Wholeness on the Pacific Crest Trail may well showcase the depths of life’s sadness, but at the same time the pureness of resilience, the solidifying or purpose, an incredible willingness to become transcendent, whilst at the same time delivers a true story of personal discovery that we can all pay heed to and, moreover, learn from.

About the Author - Dami Roelse was born and raised in Holland. She has traveled the world extensively, lived on different continents and studied with different spiritual teachers. Dami has used her passion for long distance hiking and backpacking as a means to deepen her connection with nature and the universe. Her inner spiritual journey has evolved right along with her outer journey. She lives in Taos, NM.

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