Letters to Gilda about Sea Glass

I am about half way through your book. It is very powerful. Your understanding of how people and life operate seems kind of like an xray view (or an MRI!) of what I generally experience as chaos and confusion. It is simultaneously unsettling, validating, and liberating to begin to understand my own experience from the perspective that you share in your essays. Certain passages feel especially powerful and relevant to me, and too much to thoroughly process. So I want to take small bites and digest them. But stonger that that desire is the pull to consume more, to discover what else is in there. So I read on, hoping my head, or heart, will not explode.

I could say more, but that's all, for now. Thank you for putting this together and getting it out into the wider world.
—Ben Allan

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“Jungian analyst Gilda Frantz’s new book, Sea Glass: A Jungian Analyst’s Exploration of Suffering and Individuation, is a rare gem. Part memoir, part application of depth psychology to everyday life, it takes the reader on a journey that begins with Frantz’s family history as a child of the Depression who was abandoned by her father and raised by a mother with the spirit of a wandering Gypsy. As the tale unfolds, she marries not only a prominent Jungian analyst but the budding Jungian community in Los Angeles, and eventually becomes an analyst herself. As she grows into womanhood and motherhood, she encounters the dark side of life in ways that few of us do. With a heroic and deeply impassioned attitude she demonstrates in a living way the alchemical principle that wisdom is the refined, distilled byproduct of suffering. With chapter titles like “Growing Up Poor in Los Angeles,” “Birth’s Cruel Secret,” “On the Meaning of Loneliness,” “Dreams and Sudden Death,” and “Redemption,” she fathoms in rich detail what it means to struggle with the opposites within oneself. The warm, inviting tone of Frantz’s writing has the quality of an intimate fireside chat, with reminiscences of days long gone and intimations of eternal mysteries waiting for us. This book is a pleasure to read.”
—Michael Gellert, Jungian analyst and author of Modern Mysticism, The Fate of America, and The Way of the Small

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We have surely met through Amrita and one of her Shantimayi gatherings. But that is beside the point.

I am reading your wonderful wonderful book which i bought at Amrits's urging. Thank goodness. I am in one of those quiet periods when small ailmnts force us blessedly to cancel , rest and be quiet..a perfect time to read.

I can hardly find words to tell you how much i love your book and find it so deeply meaningful. I dont have a jungian background so this is a beautiful window through a woman's voice and one of a similar culture.

I fear when i go the source and/or maria von Franz, there wont be the same resonance.

I just finished the chapters on gender/sexuality and am stunned by their jaw-dropping tenderness and beauty ...and the wisdom of native Americans.
—Carol Moss

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I got home late last night to find Sea Glass at my doorstep.

After reading the introduction and first chapter before going to bed and cried. What a beautiful expression of your life. I can't wait to continue on the journey and will savor each page.

Thank you for listening to that voice and sharing your life and wisdom with the world.
—Shawnee Isaac Smith