Between the Covers

February / March, 2012

The Gift of Giving

By Patti Thorn

29 Gifts: How a Month of Giving Can Change Your Life
By Cami Walker
Da Capo Press, 226 pages, $19.95 (hardcover)

Author Cami Walker had every reason to be depressed. Just 33 and newly married, she awoke one day to a frightening new reality: her hands didn't work. "I couldn't bend them; they were stuck like claws," she later recalled. She felt overwhelming fatigue, and soon she had lost the vision in her right eye. Exactly one month after her wedding day, she discovered the reason: she had multiple sclerosis.

It's no wonder she sank into a self-pity so deep she might have drowned in it. Then a woman named Mbali rescued her with a seemingly insensitive comment. "Cami," she said, "I think you need to stop thinking of yourself."

Mbali offered Walker a prescription that had nothing to do with drugs. She suggested Walker give a gift a day for 29 days. It didn't have to be elaborate or even a material gift, but it had to be given with intent. "By giving, you are focusing on what you have to offer others, inviting more abundance into your life," Mbali said. "Giving of any kind is taking a positive action that begins the process of change. It will shift your energy for life."

Walker's simple, sweet book 29 Gifts: How a Month of Giving Can Change Your Life details the month in which she took up the challenge, giving such simple presents as coins to a beggar, a book to a friend she met in rehab, and a belly rub to her cat. These small acts of kindnesses yielded big results. By book's end, her health has improved, she has started a website to promote the idea of giving, and, most importantly, she is feeling hopeful again--the best gift of all.

29 Gifts is an easy read, written in straightforward prose. You can breeze through it in far less than 29 days. It's the message rather than the prose that makes the book worth the price of admission: look outward; think of others with intent; by touching others, you will be blessed, in turn.

In this understated way, Walker's tale is a gift to us all.

Patti Thorn is the former books editor for the Rocky Mountain News. She is now an independent editor specializing in book-length manuscripts and co-founder of BlueInk Review (blueinkreview.com), a service that reviews self-published books. Reach her atpatti.thorn@gmail.com or 303-290-0811.