Radical Gratitude and other
Life lessons learned in siberia
by andrew bienkowski
and mary akers
At the age of five, Andrew Bienkowski was banished to Siberia with his family. With virtually nothing to see them through the long, cold winter, his grandfather chose to starve to death in order to give his family a chance at survival.
The years that followed were harrowing and difficult but, nevertheless, magical. Warmed by the unexpected kindness of strangers and the beauty of the natural landscape, Andrew’s childhood experiences in Siberia forever altered his approach to life. In spite of his early setbacks, he became inspired to give back, devoting his life to helping others through his work as a clinical therapist.
In this fascinating book, Andrew shares his experiences from Siberia and reminds us all that the greatest fulfillment we can achieve as human beings lies in helping others.
Poignant, haunting and inspiring, Radical Gratitude shows us that the only limits we face are those we place on ourselves.
EXCERPT
It was the winter of 1940 and Vladislav Paluchowski had been hungry for weeks. A great, burning hunger ate up his insides. Lack of sustenance made him see strange things, like visions of flesh evaporating from his bones, traveling up through shafts of sunlight.
Outside, the real sun had long since surrendered its few hours of daylight, setting to a light grey cast: Siberia in winter. The wind raced across the frozen prairie and moaned through the mud hut the family had been fortunate enough to find and inhabit, back when the old man was still strong, still the head of the family, before the hunger consumed him.
This morning, his wife made a fire and moved his straw bed closer, but it didn’t matter. The only warmth the old man felt anymore came from the great, white-hot fire in his belly and the burning fire of his spirit.
When food and water were presented to him for the thirteenth time in as many days, the old man used the last of his energy to turn his head away. In his mind he grabbed his belt and cinched it tighter against a stomach that had long since ceased to rumble. As the man’s strength ebbed, he felt his body sink deeper into the straw and envisioned the future his grandchildren would have, the future that his death would help ensure.
He had long before calculated how much food the five of them would need in order to survive the winter and he knew there wouldn’t be enough to sustain them all. The time had come. To save the others—his wife, his daughter, his two grandsons—he would give up his already meager portions.
He had protected them as best he could, through banishment from their Polish homeland, through the long, dirty train ride that he thought would surely kill them, through moving their meager belongings into this small mud hut, and now his last remaining duty was to save the children. All of those other jobs had been taxing. All had been difficult. By contrast, his current job was simple.
His job was to die.
This is both the extraordinary, true story of one family's survival in Stalinist Siberia and a guide to becoming a person who can give to others.
Publisher: Allen & Unwin (Australia)
Release Date: March 2008
Genre: Inspirational
Length: 264 pages
Paperback ISBN: 9781741754223
