Amazon Womankind Category:  Women Publisher: Tate Publishing & Enterprises ISBN-10:  1602475679 Pages: 203 Copyright: October 27, 2007 ISBN-13: 9781602475670 A collection of short stories gleaned from Nancy's International nursing experiences and travels. In a colorful tapestry woven with culture and experience, midwest author Nancy Leigh Harless invites you along on her real-life journey. In her collection of inspiring, sometimes heart-wrenching experiences, you will encounter and learn from the many different women of Nancy's travels. Live, laugh, and love with women around the world as you join the sisterhood of Womankind. Excerpt She was only seventeen years old. She carried the burden of her dark secret alone for almost five years. Until this afternoon when she shared it with an American nurse old enough to be her grandmother, as we sat on the back stairs of the clinic, drank colas, and tried to catch any small breeze that might blow off the water from the bay. The day drenched hot, the air so heavy and thick that the birds wouldn’t even fly. I discarded my white lab coat and wore only a red tank top over a flowered skirt this day. I mopped my forehead with a red bandana and waited quietly for Alison to continue. “I can’t sleep at night,” she whispered looking down at her feet stretched out in front of her across the steps. “I’m scared to go to sleep.”

Stretching Her Soul by Criss Roberts - The Hawk Eye
-- Life can stretch your soul or tear your spirit, the orange seller in a Belize market told Nancy Harless.
In her travels, Harless has seen shredded spirits. She's seen souls souring so high she was graced to have caught sight of them. As a nurse practitioner specializing in women's health, the Wever, Iowa, woman hadn't gone looking for life lessons or inspiration. She began traveling -- often with husband, Norm -- to help women heal, visiting Belize, Guatemala, Peru, southeast Asia, China and war-torn Yugoslavia.
In each stop, in locations usually rural and poor, Harless found women and young girls thriving despite heart-crushing adversity. Burdened with an unending cycle of pregnancy, birth and nursing, these women created small pockets of humanity, tapping into a joy which Harless found crossed languages and borders, living in the universal feminine heart.
Harless brought these stories home like souvenirs, polishing them into a series of written gems in "Womankind: Connection and Wisdom Around the World." It is her first book-length work, published by Tate Publishing, an Oklahoma-based Christian publishing house. Versions of some of her essays have appeared in the Chicken Soup series of inspirational books.
Harless' own life would read like triumph in someone else's book: A single mother with two young girls, she took night classes -- one a semester -- to earn a college degree while working full time.
"I was on the 19-year plan," the sweet-spirited Harless laughed.
When job lay-offs came, she saw it as a chance to attend nursing school, becoming a nurse practitioner in her late 30s. She met a man with six children of his own and they struggled to blend families. Years later, they left the Pacific Northwest and retired to Wever, where Harless writes in a tree house built by her husband. Their brood scattered throughout the country.
"That was the joke. I was the family-planning nurse with eight children," she said.
But that large family gave her credibility in the villages she visited. The women she met knew instinctively that this woman had shared their path, knew their struggles. While Harless could have preached and lectured, she instead offered a safe landing place, gently guiding her patients in a new direction. And with each encounter, she found a new footprint in her own foundation.
Writing was never part of Nancy Harless' dream, but she found that a camera wasn't enough to capture all she wanted to remember of the women she met as a nurse. She began taking notes, then began writing stories that offered life lessons which were so simple that they could have been overlooked by a visitor in search of the exotic.
It was a separate series of chance meetings that shuttled Harless through the publishing world. She found her mentor, writer Deborah Engle, on one of her early trips. She was directed to a women's writing group following a conversation in an Iowa City parking lot.
With the recent release of her first book -- a second featuring women from her Asian travels is in the works -- Harless is doing a series of readings, speaking to groups as diverse as nursing professionals and Bible studies, but as similar as the women in Kosovo and Peru she features in her stories.
Telling those stories isn't the end of Harless' mission. She includes a list of places where readers can take action, as she has, as well as a list of discussion questions for book clubs. She's hoping to weave the threads of wisdom she's brought back from her travels through the lives she touches through her writing.
Life can stretch the soul, Harless learned from a woman in a Belize street market. Or it can tear the spirit.
"You choose," the woman told Harless.
And she has.


WOMANKIND - by rRbert Gelms, Dubuque 365
When I was growing up I clearly remember my mother constantly manipulating my father into believing or doing whatever she wanted him to believe or do, and making him think it was his idea all along. It was at the end of one of those incidents that my mother turned to me and she winked -- she WINKED. It was clear that she knew that I knew what had just happened. It was also clear
that I knew that she knew what would happen to me if I ever let on to my dad what had just happened to him. It was the first and, by the way, not the last time, I saw the Irish Princess / Druid
Priestess that was hard-wired into my mother’s character. In the ensuing years I had some vague conversations with my father about all of this where I learned that he never had a clue that any sorcery was afoot. Every once in a while I would catch glimpses of my mother mostly by her example or occasionally by actual instruction passing some of these techniques on to my FIVE
sisters. Then, my FIVE sisters were turned loose on the world. Jesus, Mary & Joseph, God help us all.
Here is the thing, gentlemen: This happens in every family on Earth regardless of race, creed, color, or national origin. All women belong to this covert society and, although I can’t prove it, I’m sure there is an instruction manual, decoder ring and, for all I know, monthly seminars that we men know nothing about. I used to, sporadically, have this funny feeling. I now have this funny feeling frequently. This frequent, funny feeling feels like this: Women allow men to live in the
illusion that we have a free will and that we have complete control over our lives, our behavior, and the significant women in our lives … from our mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters to just a plain old girlfriend … maybe that should read “especially a plain old girlfriend.” Not to fear, men, part of their plan for world domination has fallen into my hands. It’s called Womankind, by Nancy
Leigh Harless, and a better book about women you are not likely to ever read .I think it’s fair to say that Ms. Harless had no intention of revealing to the entire male population of Planet Earth the inner workings of the strange alien know as Woman, but she has, and she has done also in an elegant, instructive, and entertaining way. I’ll bet even women will like this book but I’ll also bet you won’t find many of them buying it for their fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons or even for just their plain old boyfriends. I’m sure they don’t want us to know how powerful they really are and how they came about this strength in the face of some daunting obstacles, namely, us!
If you look at Womankind’s cover and read some of the blurbs, there is this whole “sisterhood” thing going on. Don’t let that bother you. Buy this book, take it home and read it now. You will have an understanding of how women work the likes of which would be impossible, yes impossible, for you to get on your own. Why “impossible,” you ask, because you are a guy. That should be enough of an answer but if you need more, we don’t think like they do, we don’t want the same things out of life they do and we can’t figure them out without their help. I liked Womankind so much I read it twice. I kept coming back to one of the stories that perfectly illustrates the difference between how men and woman would handle a common life occurrence.
It’s the first story in the book and it’s called “Joy in the Morning.” It concerns a little girl named Cassandra. She is very poor, but doesn’t seem to notice it much. The only plaything she has is a
length of rope she and her friends use in all the usually ways and some very creative non-usual ways as well. One day someone steals it. At that point a guy would go out, find the thief and pummel the SOB so every square inch of his body was covered in bruises. Our thief would then be warned that the next time it won’t be bruised skin but broken bones. Cassandra’s response is so far away from this that I was stunned at the ending. Ihad an epiphany. My first thought was that as humans, men bring culture and civilization to the table because we almost always resort to violence. Women bring to the table all the things, and I mean ALL the things, that make us human
in the first place and I began to see how women had accomplished that extraordinary feat. My
second thought was that other blokes should know about this. Ms. Harless’ life is so interesting, and she has done so many incredible things that it would be fascinating to here her speak. You, luckily, have two opportunities to do so: March 1 at Potters Mill in Bellevue and March 2 at River Lights Second Edition on Main Street here in Dubuque. Go, see, hear, buy, and read! Live long and prosper, Dudes, this book will help you do just that.



Wever nurse's journeys to other nations build respectful connections.
Des Moines Register, The (IA)

November 22, 2007
Women's strength inspires an Iowa author
Author: Kilen Mike
Author: Staff
Edition: DM
Section: Iowa Life
Page: 1E
Estimated printed pages: 3
Article Text:
Wever nurse's journeys to other nations build respectful connections.
By MIKE KILEN
REGISTER STAFF WRITER
Nancy Leigh Harless wears a necklace with a turtle medallion.
"It reminds me that only when you stick your neck out do you move forward. That's my motto," Harless said.
She stuck her neck out in 1997. Living in a tiny southeast Iowa town of Wever, the nurse joined a group sponsored by the Rotary International that performed service work in Belize.
"That month in Belize changed my life," she said.
It sparked several years of international travel to Mexico, the Kingdom of Tonga and the Balkans. Her experiences became her debut book, "Womankind: Connection & Wisdom Around the World" (Tate Publishing, $11.99), which she will discuss at Beaverdale Books on Sunday and the Book Store in downtown Des Moines on Monday.
Courageous women are the focus. But the turtle was a metaphoric character.
Harless was traveling in war-torn Kosovo with a group of women health care workers when a lump in the road caused anxiety. They thought it was a roadside bomb. Then the neck came out.
They laughed and hooted. To Harless the moment symbolized the lives of the women, all with family members who had died in the war. Here they were laughing. Sticking their necks out. Moving forward.
"Women are pretty amazing creatures. They have the ability to stay positive, even when there is nothing to be positive about," she said.
Harless saw it often in women from every country she visited while volunteering to help with women's health issues in poor countries. The pride and nurturing of a Mayan woman who could make the perfect corn tortilla for her family. The determination of a nurse in Mexico facing long odds trying to help poverty-stricken women and their children. The mental toughness and grace of a Guatemalan woman with a philandering husband.
The collection opens with a little girl from Belize whose only joyful possession was a tattered jump rope. It was stolen and she was distraught.
The next day the girl awoke with a smile, reminding an American with so much about gratitude: "Good day, Miss Nancy," the girl said. "It be a bright new day."
If it sounds a little like the popular "Chicken Soup" series of inspirational books, it is. Harless has stories published in those collections, although not focused exclusively on women.
"Women are considered the weaker sex, but I continually saw strong women who did what needed to be done," she said. "That is worldwide. We are going to do what is necessary to take care of our children, like a mama bear."
At age 59, Harless had given up working full time in Iowa. Her husband, Norman, is retired and their eight children are grown and scattered across the country.
For the first time, she was visiting countries not as a tourist but as an active participant.
After her first trip, she returned to Belize and opened a women's clinic in 1999. While there, she heard about the war in Kosovo and told her husband that is where she needed to go next.
The trips awakened her to the world beyond rural southeast Iowa, which she hopes to continue someday in Africa.
The book was formed from journals on her awakening.
"It helps clarify. When I'm traveling the world and seeing so many things that are shocking and appalling, it's a way of processing it," she said. "Without the journal in Kosovo I might have had a breakdown."
It also helped her clarify the bond of women everywhere.
"There is this connection that women have," Harless said. "We've got each other. People say that women are catty or you never want to work in an office with all women. That's not true.
"When we are alone, with no men or children around, we support each other."
In one story, a group of women in Guatemala sat quietly at dinner until the men moved to another room to smoke cigars. One woman rose to perform a sensual, wild dance as the other women cheered, clapped and urged her on.
Their creativity and spirit in a male-dominated culture could not be denied.