Memoir surprised Berea author, Wanda Hennig
Wanda Hennig is an award-winning travel and food writer/photographer with an extensive international portfolio.
THREE things Durban journalist Wanda Hennig didn’t anticipate when she booked a one-year ticket and headed for San Francisco:
• That she would stay on, become a ‘California girl”, and live there for going on 25 years.
• That she would move into a Zen temple and spend three-and-a-half years as a monk.
• That during her time at the San Francisce Zen Center she would begin writing a book – a travel-ignited inner journey with a powerful and pragmatic self-help focus.
Did some link between infidelity, a blue movie, vegetables and Paris, France, sprout the seed of liberation? Or was it that ‘Aha’ moment on the waterbed in Pocatello?
In Cravings: A Zen-inspired memoir about sensual pleasures, freedom from dark places, and living and eating with abandon (Say Yes Press), the former Sunday Tribune magazine editor, one-time Cosmopolitan Durban bureau chief, UKZN psychology honours graduate and California-certified life coach writes wisely, hilariously — sometimes poignantly — about sex and food; moving solo from one continent to another; overcoming depression and social phobia.
Also meditation, bonobos, lessons gleaned from Zen hospice training, creative mindfulness strategies and lots more.
Hennig, who lives in an apartment on the Berea, spent 12 years at Maris Stella (class one to matric) then worked at the school as their first counsellor before joining the Daily News: her first newspaper job.
She is an award-winning travel and food writer/photographer with an extensive international portfolio. She is also a long-time meditator who has been a regular at the Buddhist Retreat Centre (BRC) in Ixopo for going on 30 years.
Some of the insights and mindfulness practices Hennig shares in Cravings are BRC-related. Others were gained while traveling: in South Africa, the San Francisco Bay Area, Poland, Paris (France), Pocatello (Idaho), Salt Lake City and elsewhere.
The 2017 “Mouth Orgasm edition” of Cravings is available in paperback at Adams Musgrave and the KZNSA store. (Also online through Loot or Amazon.)
