NATURE WALKING WITH CANCER
REUNITING THE HUMAN SPIRIT
WITH THE SOUL OF NATURE
Nature Walking with Cancer advocates embracing life with both hands through activity, nature, creativity, and love, offering a fresh perspective on terminal illness and inspiring readers to live fully despite a cancer diagnosis.
Rejecting the typical cancer narratives of heroic battles and painful endurance, Randy Kidd, DVM, PhD offers a fresh perspective on living with terminal illness. He emphasizes that we are all on a journey toward the inevitable and this realization can motivate us to achieve our true desires and become our best selves.
“Randy Kidd was a polymath, naturalist and master storyteller. His account of how to live with and eventually die from metastatic cancer is remarkable. He sets his soul free to discover what is ultimately to know about everything.” —H. C. Palmer is a poet, physician and veteran of the American War in Vietnam. His book, Feet of the Messenger, BkMk Press was a runner-up for the Balcones Poetry Prize in 2017.
Randy Kidd DVM PhD held doctorates in Veterinary Medicine from The Ohio State University and Veterinary and Clinical Pathology from Kansas State University. After practicing traditional veterinary medicine for many years, he opened Honoring the Animals, a holistic practice in Kansas City, Missouri. Dr. Kidd was the author of two books including “Dr Kidd’s Guide to Herbal Care For Dogs”, a columnist for multiple pet care magazines including Dogs Naturally and Herbs for Health. He was Past President of the American Holistic Veterinary Medical Association and a leader in many other civic and nature-oriented organizations. Retired from active practice, he continued writing, speaking and teaching on the big topic of “Reuniting The Human Spirit With The Soul Of Nature”.
Praise for Nature Walking With Cancer:
Kidd describes his journey with equal measures of humor, intelligence, wit, and grace. A great read not only for those seeking insight into the modalities of holism, but for anyone appreciative of the human spirit and its connections to the wider world. Kidd’s embrace of nature and its teachings, approachable writing style, and words of wisdom in the face of mortality will resonate with readers on numerous levels.
—Eric Anderson (Citizen Potawatomi Nation), Haskell Indian Nations University
Nature Walking with Cancer is an unflinching look at coping with a devastating diagnosis, and finding healing in the planet we inhabit—often without consciousness of its power. By turns contemplative, heartbreaking, and funny, Randy Kidd’s memoir is a testament to the ability of the human spirit to find resiliency and peace in the natural world, and to come to terms with the process of letting go.
—Robin Catalano, SATW Lowell Thomas Award-winning journalist and author
[Kidd’s] book encourages us to live large and on the edge, to communicate with candid vulnerability, and to find our own North Star. His journey certainly covers all the bases: concussions, irresponsible dog walkers, the healing power of nature, and the inescapable mortality of the human condition. Whether you’re living with cancer, or walking through your own dark battles, Randy reminds us that by staying active and grounded to our home, the Earth can give us real life. The wisdom that he leaves behind is a true legacy, and we are all blessed to have this book to ground us and motivate us as we battle life’s fires.
—Ben Postlethwait, Kansas Director, The Nature Conservancy
Randy’s gentle and open approach shines through in these pages, transforming you to a simpler place where love and nature are the cornerstone for a conscious, fulfilled journey.
—Dana Scott, Founder & CEO DogsNaturallyMagazine.com, FourLeafRover.com
Randy Kidd made it happen! He wrote his memoir with grace and a sense of peace, just as one would expect Randy to do. His love for nature and the human spirit shines throughout “Nature Walking with Cancer.” Randy inspires us to live life to the fullest amongst nature, animals, family, and ourselves.
—Sandy Carlson, Program Manager, Symphony in the Flint Hills
Speaking to the vision of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Elie Wiesel stated, “For the dead and the living, we must bear witness. For not only are we responsible for the memories of the dead, we are also responsible for what we are doing with those memories.” The museum’s vision is also it’s gift as visitors are summoned not to turn away from suffering and pain that mark existence but to bear witness to it as an act of keeping faith with the living and the dead.
From beginning to end, in his book Nature Walking With Cancer: Reuniting the Human Spirit with the Soul of Nature, Randy Kidd has offered readers a similar gift, summoning us to keep faith with him as he bears witness to his own journey through life with terminal cancer; all with the hope that we might find our courage, a collective courage, to bear witness to the living through the telling of his story.
Written in the same humane spirit as When Breath Becomes Air, Dying: A Memoir, and The Unwinding of the Miracle, Kidd’s memoir welcomes readers into the inner life world of the finitude all creatures share in, as he candidly describes his thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations with poignant images, humor, and a passion to continue living even as he walks through the valley of the shadow of death.
What differentiates Kidd’s memoir from most comes from his understanding of nature, human nature, medicine, and death that is more closely tethered to and deeply rooted in the wisdom of indigenous peoples. While always remaining critically respectful of the Western, aka…Modern, view of nature and medicine in which he was trained, Kidd nevertheless invites readers to imagine ourselves—our lives, health, illness and even our deaths—through the powerful metaphors and myths; stories and poems of an older wisdom; an ancient wisdom of the supposedly “pre-Modern” peoples many of us are quick to dismiss as outdated and unhelpful. In offering this invitation to his readers, Kidd offers us the gift of bearing witness to the solace he found in this wisdom and gently, but firmly challenges us to explore whether this wisdom might provide us with the solace needed to confront our own inevitable deaths with grace and kindness.
—Kevin Lee, Bereavement & Spiritual Care Coordinator, Hospice, Visiting Nurses Association.
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