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Blossoms and Bones: Drawing a Life Back Together
Visionary artist and New York Times bestselling author of The Wild Unknown Kim Krans returns with a decadently illustrated and incredibly raw graphic memoir that chronicles her multi-layered search for truth and recovery from an eating disorder and infertility in the throes of a health and wellness-obsessed culture, touching on the healing potentials of creativity and spirituality.
With pen and paper as her trusted allies, revered visionary artist, spiritual seeker, and bestselling author of The Wild Unknown, Kim Krans chronicles her deeply personal journey of recovery through drawing.
After cancelling her flight home to wellness-obsessed Los Angeles, where Krans had been secretly experiencing a debilitating eating disorder, she finds her way to an ashram and seeks spiritual and creative refuge. For forty days she relies on “drawing the feeling” as a way to realign her relationship to food, addiction, fertility, perfectionism, and the endless messaging of “never enough” echoing throughout current culture. She makes the ashram her home and embarks on the healing process through intricately hand-drawn narration of both her inner and outer worlds, cancelling forthcoming high-profile teaching obligations and international travel. Radical simplification, meditation, community, and creativity bring her through the darkest chapter of her life.
What emerges from Krans’ deeply personal undertaking is a raw and beautiful never-before-seen artists’ document that explores what it means to prioritize truth and self-discovery in a world of relentless expectations and distractions. A memoir at its heart, Blossoms and Bones is a lifeline of light and beauty, a call to embrace our creative power, and a courageous example of realigning with one’s destiny.
With pen and paper as her trusted allies, revered visionary artist, spiritual seeker, and bestselling author of The Wild Unknown, Kim Krans chronicles her deeply personal journey of recovery through drawing.
After cancelling her flight home to wellness-obsessed Los Angeles, where Krans had been secretly experiencing a debilitating eating disorder, she finds her way to an ashram and seeks spiritual and creative refuge. For forty days she relies on “drawing the feeling” as a way to realign her relationship to food, addiction, fertility, perfectionism, and the endless messaging of “never enough” echoing throughout current culture. She makes the ashram her home and embarks on the healing process through intricately hand-drawn narration of both her inner and outer worlds, cancelling forthcoming high-profile teaching obligations and international travel. Radical simplification, meditation, community, and creativity bring her through the darkest chapter of her life.
What emerges from Krans’ deeply personal undertaking is a raw and beautiful never-before-seen artists’ document that explores what it means to prioritize truth and self-discovery in a world of relentless expectations and distractions. A memoir at its heart, Blossoms and Bones is a lifeline of light and beauty, a call to embrace our creative power, and a courageous example of realigning with one’s destiny.
208 pages, Hardcover
First published March 3, 2020
41 people are currently reading
2160 people want to read
About the author
Kim Krans
22 books228 followersKim Krans is an artist, author, and the creator of The New York Times bestseller, The Wild Unknown Tarot. Her publications include ABC Dream, 123 Dream, Hello Sacred Life, and the Animal Spirit Deck and Guidebook. Along with husband and collaborator Arjan Miranda, Kim curates The Wild Unknown, an arts collective offering publications, artwork, music, and events that activate the forces of creativity and radical transformation.
Her work has been featured in The New York Times, New York Magazine, NYLON, Teen Vogue, Design*Sponge, and Marie Claire. She lives in Portland, Oregon.
Find more of Kim's artwork, creations, and other modern tools for self-reflection through her website, www.thewildunknown.com.
Her work has been featured in The New York Times, New York Magazine, NYLON, Teen Vogue, Design*Sponge, and Marie Claire. She lives in Portland, Oregon.
Find more of Kim's artwork, creations, and other modern tools for self-reflection through her website, www.thewildunknown.com.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 112 reviews
July 15, 2020
Kim Krans had an awful year involving infertility, miscarriage, and divorce that led to midlife crisis, depression, an eating disorder, and this book. I feel sorry for what she has undergone, and some readers will probably find this "raw graphic memoir" with its mission statement of "drawing the feeling" to be quite moving. There are some individual pages that are quite remarkable.
Unfortunately, I'm a cynical old bastard and mostly found the "raw" to be messy, the "graphic" to be scribbly, and the "memoir" to be sketchy, withholding, and at times a sort of hair shirt performance piece.
From what I can glean, Krans dropped out of her daily life to live in an ashram in Pennsylvania for a month while producing this book as a daily diary of her emotional state. It's a variation on the 24-hour comic that has been around for decades. She seems to begin the project aware that she is producing a book, going so far to include a draft for the cover on page 30, just three days into her stay.
She does not disclose in the book whether she has already sold the project to a publisher as she begins or is producing it on spec to shop around afterward. I was curious about the ashram, so I checked the website of the Himalayan Institute in Honesdale, Pennsylvania, and their current posted rates are $160/day for single room with an additional fee of $40/day for amenities (meals, classes, etc.), meaning a 30-day retreat would run $6,000. Also, her stay in the ashram followed a two-week trip to India just two months previous (And there is a New York City sublet in play throughout this?) Admittedly, I don't know what Himalayan Institute rates were in April 2019 or if Krans had some sort of discount, publisher's advance, or other subsidy to cover her stay, but I find myself distracted by all the above, wondering what role finances and/or a possible deadline played in the production of the book.
Having read several books about antiracism in the last few weeks, I'm additionally distracted as I consider the cultural appropriation aspects of Krans' obsession with the spirituality and alternative medicines of India and other countries.
When I could focus on the pages of the book, I found much of them devoted to a skeletal stand-in for the author, which creates an odd dissonance in a work that repeatedly stresses "truth" and not filtering. And I was a bit flummoxed by the climax of the book -- teased repeatedly throughout -- being
Bottom line: This book was not for me, but I do not deny that others may find it compelling or cathartic.
Unfortunately, I'm a cynical old bastard and mostly found the "raw" to be messy, the "graphic" to be scribbly, and the "memoir" to be sketchy, withholding, and at times a sort of hair shirt performance piece.
From what I can glean, Krans dropped out of her daily life to live in an ashram in Pennsylvania for a month while producing this book as a daily diary of her emotional state. It's a variation on the 24-hour comic that has been around for decades. She seems to begin the project aware that she is producing a book, going so far to include a draft for the cover on page 30, just three days into her stay.
She does not disclose in the book whether she has already sold the project to a publisher as she begins or is producing it on spec to shop around afterward. I was curious about the ashram, so I checked the website of the Himalayan Institute in Honesdale, Pennsylvania, and their current posted rates are $160/day for single room with an additional fee of $40/day for amenities (meals, classes, etc.), meaning a 30-day retreat would run $6,000. Also, her stay in the ashram followed a two-week trip to India just two months previous (And there is a New York City sublet in play throughout this?) Admittedly, I don't know what Himalayan Institute rates were in April 2019 or if Krans had some sort of discount, publisher's advance, or other subsidy to cover her stay, but I find myself distracted by all the above, wondering what role finances and/or a possible deadline played in the production of the book.
Having read several books about antiracism in the last few weeks, I'm additionally distracted as I consider the cultural appropriation aspects of Krans' obsession with the spirituality and alternative medicines of India and other countries.
When I could focus on the pages of the book, I found much of them devoted to a skeletal stand-in for the author, which creates an odd dissonance in a work that repeatedly stresses "truth" and not filtering. And I was a bit flummoxed by the climax of the book -- teased repeatedly throughout -- being
Bottom line: This book was not for me, but I do not deny that others may find it compelling or cathartic.
August 28, 2021
A 3.5-star rating.
"This story was written over a period of one-month. I assigned myself the daily task of "drawing the feelings." After about six months of negotiating what was quickly developing into a mid-life eating disorder. Nothing seemed to help my symptoms... I wasn't the eating disorder "type." I was too smart, too confident, too savvy to be involved in such things. Not me. Not food. Not in this lifetime. At a young age I sensed my mom's fixation on food. Emotional eating. I came to recognize its signs & symptoms from across our humble midwest table: hiding, nibbling, seconds then secret thirds. It was a spell that plagued my aunts, my mom's friends, my grandma. Not me, decided. Not in this lifetime.
Then life tossed me, as it tends to do, a series of unforeseen changes. Soon afterwards, the "thing' that I convinced myself "wasn't a thing," became a "thing." Simply put, I could not stop either eating or not eating. I woke up & went to bed thinking about food. I ate things that were frozen, in the trash, in other people's cupboards, all in secret, all in shame. I could not recognize my body, my thoughts, or my actions. Nor could I control them. Before my eyes I was becoming one of the women I so coldly & consistently rejected. After six, eight, ten months of this (give or take a juice cleansing) I decided no one could help me except the feeling itself. It was powerful & beyond my control. Therefore, it could become something big. I decided to let the feeling out of the closet." Introduction - pgs. 4 & 5
This book and its concept is a marvelous idea and the handwritten text in compilation with the black and white drawings provide the atmosphere of anguish, shame, fear, despair, resistance, frustration that Kim was experiencing with her Life during that time. In revealing her pain and vulnerability she opens up that closet that many, particularly Women are stuck in and offers up a resource that may act as a mirror, confirmation in many cases, and possibly an outlet and or approach that may assist their journey to wellness. I would have liked to see Kim take that extra step in truly fulfilling the mandate she set for herself and excavate more thoroughly, yet succinctly the full depths of her wounding, because without that level of explicitness and disclosure, there's a missed opportunity.
"This story was written over a period of one-month. I assigned myself the daily task of "drawing the feelings." After about six months of negotiating what was quickly developing into a mid-life eating disorder. Nothing seemed to help my symptoms... I wasn't the eating disorder "type." I was too smart, too confident, too savvy to be involved in such things. Not me. Not food. Not in this lifetime. At a young age I sensed my mom's fixation on food. Emotional eating. I came to recognize its signs & symptoms from across our humble midwest table: hiding, nibbling, seconds then secret thirds. It was a spell that plagued my aunts, my mom's friends, my grandma. Not me, decided. Not in this lifetime.
Then life tossed me, as it tends to do, a series of unforeseen changes. Soon afterwards, the "thing' that I convinced myself "wasn't a thing," became a "thing." Simply put, I could not stop either eating or not eating. I woke up & went to bed thinking about food. I ate things that were frozen, in the trash, in other people's cupboards, all in secret, all in shame. I could not recognize my body, my thoughts, or my actions. Nor could I control them. Before my eyes I was becoming one of the women I so coldly & consistently rejected. After six, eight, ten months of this (give or take a juice cleansing) I decided no one could help me except the feeling itself. It was powerful & beyond my control. Therefore, it could become something big. I decided to let the feeling out of the closet." Introduction - pgs. 4 & 5
This book and its concept is a marvelous idea and the handwritten text in compilation with the black and white drawings provide the atmosphere of anguish, shame, fear, despair, resistance, frustration that Kim was experiencing with her Life during that time. In revealing her pain and vulnerability she opens up that closet that many, particularly Women are stuck in and offers up a resource that may act as a mirror, confirmation in many cases, and possibly an outlet and or approach that may assist their journey to wellness. I would have liked to see Kim take that extra step in truly fulfilling the mandate she set for herself and excavate more thoroughly, yet succinctly the full depths of her wounding, because without that level of explicitness and disclosure, there's a missed opportunity.
September 4, 2020
Well, what a journey this was. Never have I had to turn a book this way and that so much just to read its contents. It almost gives House of Leaves a run for its money in that regard. But this is no House of Leaves. It's a memoir. Art project. Book of feelings. Sketchbook. Thing.
This is probably one of the hardest books to review because of what it is. On the one hand, it is an outpouring from an individual, author and artist Kim Krans, during a very painful part of her life. She is recently divorced (or separated?), recently had her fourth miscarriage, and is in the midst of an eating disorder. On the other hand, it is an egotistical self-hug that doesn't live up to the expectations it set for itself (and the reader) in its first pages.
The mantra of this graphic novel is "write the feeling." So each day for 40 days, Krans sits down and "writes the feeling", a month's worth of which is supposed to somehow be a book. And it is a book. A sketchbook. There is no plot. Even Krans' own life is only ever hinted at in piecemeal. A vast majority of this book is the author hemming and hawing over what to write, what feelings to explore, what topics to avoid or confront. Metaphorical friends are created and introduced at random throughout the story, and all they do is argue with the author to keep moving forward, urging her incessantly to continue to "draw the feeling."
I thought I had a book in hand with a subtitle of "Drawing a life back together." I thought I had a book about eating disorders. I thought I had a book about navigating life's hard times. But what was in here? What did Krans do to alleviate herself of suffering? How did she navigate herself out of a well of self-pity and depression? How did she handle her own life's curveballs? This book. Apparently it involves dancing around thoughts and feelings. Apparently it involves secluding yourself in an ashram for a couple of months and planting flowers during sunlight hours. Apparently it involves invoking dreams and visions, finding patterns in the subconscious that reveal deeper, hidden truths. And at the same time, it's nothing. It's examining one's life and just accepting it for what it is and moving on. Anticlimactic? I thought so. Honest and truthful? I guess so.
Cause maybe that's what it's all about. Despite Krans dredging the depths of the ocean for spiritual significance, it seemed to be completely inconsequential to the outcome of this book. Her conclusion is the same conclusion people for millenia have come to about hard times: they happen, get over it, move on. Wow.
The most meaningful part of the entire book was the author writing "thank you" 3,000 times for her ex-husband. It came across as the most beautiful, honest part of the whole thing. I read it, and I believed her. So many other parts felt shallow, self-pitying, menial, avoiding--but this final section was raw. The little comments hidden among the many "thank you"s furthered that point. This was an author who had a huge breakdown, felt unsupported, and found herself with no recourse, no way to deal with her feelings. She sought google's help, she sought spirituality's help, faith healing, herbs, spices, other pseudoscientific wastes of time, and ultimately (yes, with finality) just needed to stop being so hard on herself.
And you know what? That's why I'm most disappointed in this book. Because it wasn't a journey. It wasn't a journey, I wasn't taken from point A to point B, and the author/publisher made me think that's what I'd find here. Instead it was yanking my chain until the last 20 or so pages, acting as if it was building up to something when the whole beginning is essentially meaningless in retrospect. I don't know. It's a sketchbook sold as a memoir.
2/5
Sorry you went through hard times, Kim. Hope things are going better now. I can't understand the depth of your feelings, but I'm glad you seem to have found some hope.
This is probably one of the hardest books to review because of what it is. On the one hand, it is an outpouring from an individual, author and artist Kim Krans, during a very painful part of her life. She is recently divorced (or separated?), recently had her fourth miscarriage, and is in the midst of an eating disorder. On the other hand, it is an egotistical self-hug that doesn't live up to the expectations it set for itself (and the reader) in its first pages.
The mantra of this graphic novel is "write the feeling." So each day for 40 days, Krans sits down and "writes the feeling", a month's worth of which is supposed to somehow be a book. And it is a book. A sketchbook. There is no plot. Even Krans' own life is only ever hinted at in piecemeal. A vast majority of this book is the author hemming and hawing over what to write, what feelings to explore, what topics to avoid or confront. Metaphorical friends are created and introduced at random throughout the story, and all they do is argue with the author to keep moving forward, urging her incessantly to continue to "draw the feeling."
I thought I had a book in hand with a subtitle of "Drawing a life back together." I thought I had a book about eating disorders. I thought I had a book about navigating life's hard times. But what was in here? What did Krans do to alleviate herself of suffering? How did she navigate herself out of a well of self-pity and depression? How did she handle her own life's curveballs? This book. Apparently it involves dancing around thoughts and feelings. Apparently it involves secluding yourself in an ashram for a couple of months and planting flowers during sunlight hours. Apparently it involves invoking dreams and visions, finding patterns in the subconscious that reveal deeper, hidden truths. And at the same time, it's nothing. It's examining one's life and just accepting it for what it is and moving on. Anticlimactic? I thought so. Honest and truthful? I guess so.
Cause maybe that's what it's all about. Despite Krans dredging the depths of the ocean for spiritual significance, it seemed to be completely inconsequential to the outcome of this book. Her conclusion is the same conclusion people for millenia have come to about hard times: they happen, get over it, move on. Wow.
The most meaningful part of the entire book was the author writing "thank you" 3,000 times for her ex-husband. It came across as the most beautiful, honest part of the whole thing. I read it, and I believed her. So many other parts felt shallow, self-pitying, menial, avoiding--but this final section was raw. The little comments hidden among the many "thank you"s furthered that point. This was an author who had a huge breakdown, felt unsupported, and found herself with no recourse, no way to deal with her feelings. She sought google's help, she sought spirituality's help, faith healing, herbs, spices, other pseudoscientific wastes of time, and ultimately (yes, with finality) just needed to stop being so hard on herself.
And you know what? That's why I'm most disappointed in this book. Because it wasn't a journey. It wasn't a journey, I wasn't taken from point A to point B, and the author/publisher made me think that's what I'd find here. Instead it was yanking my chain until the last 20 or so pages, acting as if it was building up to something when the whole beginning is essentially meaningless in retrospect. I don't know. It's a sketchbook sold as a memoir.
2/5
Sorry you went through hard times, Kim. Hope things are going better now. I can't understand the depth of your feelings, but I'm glad you seem to have found some hope.
March 5, 2020
As naive as I am in selecting books, I do judge my books by the covers and rarely read the synopsis, as an avid gardener I assumed i was going to be reading about flowers... This was a wildly different experience, sobering and stunning, I even fought back tears. Brave, creative, cathartic, healing, all graphically displayed, it was an unforgettable journey and I admire the depths of her soul searching to the bare bones.
July 12, 2020
Book blurb: A raw graphic memoir that chronicles her multi-layered search for truth and recovery from an eating disorder and infertility in the throes of a health and wellness-obsessed culture, touching on the healing potentials of creativity and spirituality.
This book is a journal/sketchbook/safe place for the author's journey back to health. While the sketchy black and white art was not exactly to my taste, I did appreciate what the author was going for here. Recovery is messy and awkward and painful and raw, and that is well captured in this illustrated memoir.
This book is a journal/sketchbook/safe place for the author's journey back to health. While the sketchy black and white art was not exactly to my taste, I did appreciate what the author was going for here. Recovery is messy and awkward and painful and raw, and that is well captured in this illustrated memoir.
April 13, 2020
This book was very overwhelming for me to read. But in an important way. The images were powerful. I could almost feel all of the heartache and pain she was trying to navigate when writing/drawing this work. I appreciate how she laid her whole being down on this paper.
June 14, 2021
I think Kim is an extremely talented illustrator. Her children’s books and new age publications speak for themselves. At her best, her artwork is explosive and moving, with earnest intensity and respect for nature.
This book has the potential to move someone, and to help them learn how to sit with their own discomfort and grow beyond it/heal... but besides the part where she thanked her ex-husband, it did not move me.
It felt entirely performative. For all the talk of “raw beauty,” everything here up until the end felt very manufactured for an audience and, understandably, vague. Maybe that is to be applauded, that the artist’s pain and struggle be made accessible. But it just felt shallow, like a cash grab.
The “trippy as hell skeleton story” [48] wasn’t trippy at all. Skeleton imagery is old, old hat—and as Ms. Krans writes, all people have skeletons. Her skeleton motif was just an edgy tease to try and help the reader to feel that she was truly cutting into her inner self.
Is this work vulnerable? Yes. Is it beautiful? Sometimes. But I am sorry to say that I would only recommend it to someone who is having trouble facing their inner demons on even a remote level.
I felt that Ms. Krans was trying to get into the territory of Allie Brosh’s work mixed with the banal confessional poetry trend that’s popular right now. Allie Brosh is much more self-aware and seems to be less at the mercy of her ego.
I apologize for the negative review, but I feel the need to balance out those calling this “brave.” I felt put on by this memoir.
This book has the potential to move someone, and to help them learn how to sit with their own discomfort and grow beyond it/heal... but besides the part where she thanked her ex-husband, it did not move me.
It felt entirely performative. For all the talk of “raw beauty,” everything here up until the end felt very manufactured for an audience and, understandably, vague. Maybe that is to be applauded, that the artist’s pain and struggle be made accessible. But it just felt shallow, like a cash grab.
The “trippy as hell skeleton story” [48] wasn’t trippy at all. Skeleton imagery is old, old hat—and as Ms. Krans writes, all people have skeletons. Her skeleton motif was just an edgy tease to try and help the reader to feel that she was truly cutting into her inner self.
Is this work vulnerable? Yes. Is it beautiful? Sometimes. But I am sorry to say that I would only recommend it to someone who is having trouble facing their inner demons on even a remote level.
I felt that Ms. Krans was trying to get into the territory of Allie Brosh’s work mixed with the banal confessional poetry trend that’s popular right now. Allie Brosh is much more self-aware and seems to be less at the mercy of her ego.
I apologize for the negative review, but I feel the need to balance out those calling this “brave.” I felt put on by this memoir.
Read
December 28, 2022i hadnt heard of this book until i took a workshop on "meta comics" - that is, comics where there is also an element of Making The Comic intrinsic to the comic itself. the person leading the workshop brought this memoir up as an example and i found it interesting, so i read it. as someone who finds Limitation compelling (e.g. time limitation, form limitation), the timeboxing element of this book was definitely interesting, and made me wonder if i might be drawn to work on a similar project, but then i have to ask, is it a similar project if im not going through crisis? is the crisis inherent to the work? questions like that are fun to mull over and wrestle with. plus questions like "how does the vulnerability/honesty in your work change if/when you know someone else will read it?" i set out to read this memoir in the context of meta comics, & it delivered in that regard for sure.
January 1, 2022
My last book of 2021, this was a good one for that. The irony of this being an Xmas gift from my mother is not lost on me (it was on my list, it's not like she knew what she was giving me).
To remember: Both/and. Art connecting to what you FEEL. Allowing for nothing. Writing the messy pain.
I loved this. It's emotional and raw, even as it can also be avoidant and polished. It's weird that way, just like all of us. I recommend. It's lovely.
To remember: Both/and. Art connecting to what you FEEL. Allowing for nothing. Writing the messy pain.
I loved this. It's emotional and raw, even as it can also be avoidant and polished. It's weird that way, just like all of us. I recommend. It's lovely.
July 12, 2022
This artwork is so unbelievably beautiful! this whole book was basically like reading a diary, it was so so personal and emotional. It was a journey from beginning to finish, with ups and downs but oh man, the miscarriage page… that was the most heart wrenching illustration I’ve seen. Kim has such an amazing storytelling ability through mixing art and words, I really loved this book
June 16, 2020
Deeply personal graphic memoir about author’s eating disorder and finding herself. Very creative, raw, and honest.
December 22, 2021
Underneath the strange execution, there were important topics (mental health, miscarriage, etc.). You don’t learn that much more anyways, because the storytelling is purposely obtuse. There could have been a lot to empathize with here if the reader was allowed to get closer. It felt a bit cringey, a white author doing an entire book based on her experiences in an ashram and similar types of healing (also mentions India, Ganesh, etc.). Felt awkward, like appropriation. I don’t think there is any problem with exploring other religions or finding other ways to heal. I think maybe writing a book about that culture as if it was always yours might be the line? (And profiting off of it).
I will have to say though, there are a handful of pages, usually full spreads, that are just gorgeous art. Art that obviously had a lot of care and effort put into it. The pages of “thank yous” to her husband (including notes in between) were moving.
I will have to say though, there are a handful of pages, usually full spreads, that are just gorgeous art. Art that obviously had a lot of care and effort put into it. The pages of “thank yous” to her husband (including notes in between) were moving.
March 31, 2020
And so I promise you, though I cannot be perfect, I can be honest. And with this promise I ask you to join me. This time we go together.
Kim Krans is the creator of The Wild Unknown Tarot, a deck I've been using for five years in my daily practice. This graphic memoir is gut-wrenching especially because I associate Kim's work with being all open & bare myself, and this time was no exception. I am not saying I know exactly how Kim felt, but I know exactly how I felt while she held the mirror for me to face myself. Woah.
Intense, unusual, exceptional. True Kim Krans fashion. Thank you Kim for this beacon of light.
Kim Krans is the creator of The Wild Unknown Tarot, a deck I've been using for five years in my daily practice. This graphic memoir is gut-wrenching especially because I associate Kim's work with being all open & bare myself, and this time was no exception. I am not saying I know exactly how Kim felt, but I know exactly how I felt while she held the mirror for me to face myself. Woah.
Intense, unusual, exceptional. True Kim Krans fashion. Thank you Kim for this beacon of light.
August 11, 2020
A messy self-indulgence. Couldn't get through it.
November 13, 2023
Liked this project concept & there are some very lovely pages. Otherwise, this went nowhere, disclosed nothing, & made me feel dragged around. “The Wild Unknown” projects & aesthetics have always felt so… For show. Lacking depth. Krans even admits toward the end of the “story” that she can’t tell an unpolished truth. Only 25% of this book had substance. She literally dedicated a spread to plugging one of her Instagram pages - come on 🙄
August 2, 2024
Emotional, raw, real and inspiring!
This is beautiful and shows the mental anguish addiction can create. As a fan of Kim Krans, and an addict in recovery for ten years, this was something I needed to read. Addiction can take on many different face’s and show up a different times in our lives. Kim, opens up her pain, anger, confusion and shares it with others. A real look at how addiction, any addiction can make us feel. A book I know doubt read again and share with others.
This is beautiful and shows the mental anguish addiction can create. As a fan of Kim Krans, and an addict in recovery for ten years, this was something I needed to read. Addiction can take on many different face’s and show up a different times in our lives. Kim, opens up her pain, anger, confusion and shares it with others. A real look at how addiction, any addiction can make us feel. A book I know doubt read again and share with others.
January 5, 2021
Oof, that was heavy. Very very good, but not easy to read or understand - both because of the depth and heaviness of the subject matter and writing, and also because of the tricky, loopy, sketchy writing. But I liked that this book made me focus very hard on reading it. The art was naturally wonderful. This will take some digesting, but I definitely feel closer to my Wild Unknown tarot deck now!
March 29, 2020
This felt disjointed in the way a skeleton who has disarticulated with death and time might. The bones begin scattered, and—as the author heals— are brought back together. As someone entirely new to Kim’s artwork and stories, this was an extraordinary find/read for me. Here, an artist lays bare the mess and shame of healing. It’s not a story so much as an exploratory journey. Told intuitively. Sometimes challenging to read (both emotionally and because, well, journals don’t always have the neatest handwriting, oh well). Very lovely and thought provoking.
April 19, 2020
Kim is one of my favorite artists. This book is beautiful, and does a great job taking you on a journey of struggle + healing.
June 28, 2020
I feel seen. I feel safe. I feel hugged. I feel shiny. I feel hopeful.
August 7, 2020
My one word review — Wow.
Two words — Read it.
More words — I’m interested in alternative forms of memoir, ones that combine image and text in interesting ways. Blossoms and Bones gives me lots of ideas.It’s powerful, especially if you read it in one sitting as I’ve just done.
Two words — Read it.
More words — I’m interested in alternative forms of memoir, ones that combine image and text in interesting ways. Blossoms and Bones gives me lots of ideas.It’s powerful, especially if you read it in one sitting as I’ve just done.
September 15, 2025
One of the most honest stories I have read. A painfully raw look at what it feels like to go into the darkness and come out on the other side. Captivating front to back.
March 3, 2020
A cathartic 40-day "draw your feelings" journey from messed-up addiction to self-respect and freedom. Glorious as much as visceral and raw.
March 7, 2020
3.5 stars
August 4, 2021
"May I be tender with myself as I become myself."
The vulnerability that Krans displays is so raw and powerful. The images and drawings are detailed and distraught at the same time. Few words can commentate on what Krans did in this journey.
The vulnerability that Krans displays is so raw and powerful. The images and drawings are detailed and distraught at the same time. Few words can commentate on what Krans did in this journey.
March 28, 2021
Very raw and inspiring. I like the concept of healing through art. I recommend this for anyone struggling emotionally, especially if that struggle involves an eating disorder, divorce, or infertility. Overall, this book reminds us to be kind to ourselves and others.
September 10, 2025
unbelievably beautiful, hopeful and inspiring
November 19, 2019
Very visceral - memoirs, especially of the graphic variety, are always very personal and intimate to the author/artist.
Blossoms and Bones is no different. Parts did not resonate with me, but the overarching theme did. I think it’s brave now matter how you do it or how you say it to admit your struggles and seek out help. The more we acknowledge we all struggle, the better prepared we are to lift each other up.
Blossoms and Bones is no different. Parts did not resonate with me, but the overarching theme did. I think it’s brave now matter how you do it or how you say it to admit your struggles and seek out help. The more we acknowledge we all struggle, the better prepared we are to lift each other up.
August 30, 2021
As compelling as I found the harsh imagery and truthful depiction of pain from the author’s multiple horrifying trials, I was expecting a little more plot. It was emotional to be led through an artist’s work for 40 days through a difficult time, but would’ve been more meaningful if the 40 days had been a longer, more realistic look at recovery. Of course, recovery looks different to everyone, so maybe this was Krans’ true perspective. Either way, I was honored to witness it.
March 5, 2020
Kindle Version is Hard to Read
This book was wonderful and strange and also difficult to read (emotionally). I recommend the actual book version. The Kindle version did not separate the pages correctly, so I couldn’t turn it sideways to read two side by side pages together. Instead, I would get the previous page and the first half of the next page.
This book was wonderful and strange and also difficult to read (emotionally). I recommend the actual book version. The Kindle version did not separate the pages correctly, so I couldn’t turn it sideways to read two side by side pages together. Instead, I would get the previous page and the first half of the next page.
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