Patterns: The Mystical Journey of an Ordinary Life

by H.L. Gaydos

This is a book about extraordinary experiences in an ordinary life-a life full of doubt but also brimming with hope.



In this collection of midlife memories, the author travels from Texas to the Hudson River Valley, to the Navajo Nation, and finally, to the Rocky Mountains in search of answers to life's big questions. Along the way, she encounters angels, creates sacred art, participates in hidden rituals, faces disappointment, shame, and unexpected transformation.



Through both writing and visual art, Gaydos draws on decades of interdisciplinary scholarship in psychology, mythology, nursing, and creative work to find deep meaning in the open spaces of memory. Traveling with the author through inner and outer landscapes, readers are compelled to reconsider their own memories of extraordinary happenings. Those with a sense of the Infinite who have sought faith without doubt will be inspired by this spiritual memoir of grace and gratitude.

198 pages, Paperback

First published June 11, 2024

About the author

H. L. Gaydos spent forty years sitting with people at the edges of their own lives. As a psychiatric nurse and mental health specialist, she listened to how patients told the stories of themselves, how they remembered, revised, and rebuilt meaning from the raw material of experience. Somewhere inside all of that listening, she built a PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies around a single idea: that the way a person narrates memory is not just how they remember life. It is how they construct who they are.

Then she retired, walked into her studio in Manitou Springs, Colorado, and turned the lens on herself.

Patterns: The Mystical Journey of an Ordinary Life grew out of that turning. It is a memoir about extraordinary experiences in an ordinary life, and about what happens when you finally have the language to understand what your life has been building toward. Her collage work moves through the book alongside the prose, a parallel language saying what words alone cannot reach.

Patterns received a starred review from the Independent Book Review and recognition from Kirkus Reviews and Readers' Favorite. H. L. Gaydos lives and works in Manitou Springs, Colorado, where she continues to write and make art.