Website: www.wandaburch.com

Wanda Burch is a fifteen year survivor of breast cancer. She discovered her illness not in a doctor’s office but in her dreams. She has written She Who Dreams, based on personal dream exploration that shows how we can use our dreams for self-diagnosis and self-healing. Her book shows how, through dreaming, we can grow more creative relations with our physicians as well as our families, draw on energy and guidance from deeper sources than the everyday mind, and connect with the deeper story of our lives. This book is a personal journey, which Wanda believes will speak to many.

Wanda Burch comes from a line of strong Irish-American women in the Alabama hills. The first person who encouraged her to dream was her maternal grandmother, a “wise woman” who returned to her in dreams – after she passed – to show her healing plants and to advise her on the nature of the soul’s journey.

Wanda’s dreams gave her specific warning of her disease a year before its diagnosis. Her dreams guided her in the choice of treatment and gave her a rich store of powerful images that helped her through the process of healing and recovery. Her dreams introduced her to deep sources of wisdom and energy, pulled her out of the trough of despair and finally allowed her – in the most literal sense – to renegotiate her life contract and become a dreambringer for others.

This is a book about a life lived and deepened – and a death postponed – through an intimate engagement with the dreamworld. It is also a book that encompasses the common emotions shared by people facing a battle with cancer—hope, fear, sometimes depression, and joy in each day’s survival.

Wanda tells the story of who she is, where she came from, and how she chose to battle a disease that in a woman’s lifetime strikes 1 out of 8 (150,000 a year) and kills 46,000 women (and men) a year. Even more survive, experiencing their own individual conflicts within a common and terrifying experience. When she tells her story, Wanda tells their story.

Wanda Burch has worked for many years as the curator of an important historical site in upstate New York, in an area that is rich in the traditions of the Iroquois Indians, with whom she has shared deep experiences of dreaming. She lives in a tiny hamlet – Glen - where neighbors have taken to sharing dreams with her on an everyday basis, weaving a fascinating web of interlocking dreams that guide and energize their lives. She has published articles on colonial medicine and on dream diagnosis and healing. She is an advocate for breast cancer research, chosen to attend the National Breast Cancer Alliance LEAD workshop in the northeastern region in 2000; and, as a hotline volunteer, has talked to women about their dreams and shares stories of her own. Every cancer patient with whom she has spoken has a story about dreams; and, though some hesitate at first to share, most have at least one dream they recall as a precognitive dream. When they do share their dreams they find that they open themselves to new possibilities of healing.

Wanda writes from the depths of her personal experience. When we need help in confronting a life challenge, we need to hear from someone who has been there. And, as Wanda says in She Who Dreams, she is alive because she dreams.

www.wandaburch.com
Books:

She Who Dreams, the Healing Power of Dreamwork [New World Library, Novato, California, October 2003]. RUSSIAN publisher, Nova Lettera.

Magazines:

Quote Contributor: Coping Magazine, quote on surviving breast cancer, published 2000.

Dream Network, “Dream Diagnosis, Dream Healing,” Vol. 18, #3, pp. 32-40, 1999.

Earthwatch Magazine, Earthwatch Institute, “Field Journal, Archaeology as Healing,” October 2004, pp. 10-11. [Excerpt from West African journal material published in She Who Dreams].

Imagine Magazine, Winter 2004, Issue #3, Little River Publishing, Spokane, Washington. Interview on dream imagery for healing by Kelle Walsh, “Personal Space, Dreaming the Truth,” pp. 8-9. http://www.imaginemagazine.net/.

InnerSelf, Internet newsletter, June 27, 2004, “Healing with Dream Imagery,”
http://www.innerself.com/Health/burch_wanda_62704.htm

Intuition Journal Magazine, Article on using imagery in healing, September, 2003 issue, Connie Holloway Publisher.
7000 N. 16th Street, Suite 120 # 500, Phoenix, Az. 85020.
www.inspiration-journal.com

The Monthly Aspectarian, “Healing Dreams,” July, 2003, issue.
http://www.lightworks.com/index.html

Personal Excellence, the Magazine of Life Enrichment, “Healing Dreams,” p. 9,
October 2003.

SelfGrowth.com, “Healing Dreams, http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/Burch1.html

Shaman’s Drum, “Dance Hall of the Dead, A Journey through Dreams to Healing,”
pp. 21-30, May/June 2004, #66

The Sun, “Reader’s Write” column, “Weddings,” p. 35, October, 2004, Issue #346.