Jay Griffiths

Pet-owners and animal-lovers instinctively know that animals heal. This book offers the evidence, drawing widely on scientific discoveries, history, and Indigenous knowledge.

 

We meet a pot-bellied pig who saved her owner's life, lions who guarded a girl from kidnappers, dolphins and whales rescuing people in danger, and dogs who can smell cancer and phone the Emergency Services.

 

Animal sounds, from insects to birdsong and the purring of cats, are directly medicinal and their presence can heal the pain of loneliness. Animals, including donkeys, can be natural therapists for the hurt psyche, alleviating trauma, fear and depression.

 

In this original, revelatory and exuberant book, Jay Griffiths explores how animals can have a role in every level of healing, from the individual to the collective, guiding us in how we might create societies that are healthier, fairer and kinder. Wolves may be teachers of ethics; monkeys and dogs can object to unfairness and bees take collective decisions. Animals are irresistible medicine for a healthy culture, animating the arts with spectacular vitality and verve, as poetry knows.

 

Open-hearted, playful and wise, How Animals Heal Us puts animals at the heart of a restorative vision of health.

 

REVIEWS AND ENDORSEMENTS

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'No book has changed my thinking about Nature more quickly and more fundamentally than this moving, essential work. Nobody writes about Nature - the world and us in it - with more beauty and grace than Jay Griffiths. She senses connections so deep and so resonant that they ring on and on in my mind.'

- Brian Eno 

 

‘A wise, deep, and tender account of animal healing for humans, written in lyrical language that sings with compassion. This is one of my favourite books of all time’

-Pascale Petit

 

'A pure praise poem to the more than human world, a poem filled with love, respect and joy. It thrums with wit, wisdom, understanding and research. But mostly the joy of being connected to life, from the smallest insect to the great whales.'

-Jackie Morris

 

"Who else but Jay Griffiths could kaleidoscopically invert our view of animals to ask questions such as, “Did wolves have ethics before the dawn of humankind? Did Ravens teach us to play? Weaving humor, empathy, pathos, and so, so much more, Griffiths shows that animals are braided throughout the human psyche. An absolute fountain of fact, culture, and raw animal power!"

-Carl Safina, author of Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel

 

‘Griffiths has done it again. Done it as no one else can. A surging, deeply resonant hymn to the joys of entanglement with the more-than-human world; a shrewd, funny, tender, downright clever mapping of the human soul; a celebration of the potency of relationship; a prescription that can heal and save, if we’ll take it, and an astringent political antiseptic. Literally marvellous, urgently important and compellingly readable’

-Charles Foster, author of Being a Beast

 

‘Animal magic in Jay Griffiths’ uniquely beautiful voice. Facts have never been so lovingly told’

-Laline Paull, author of The Bees

 

 

'Humans can never get enough of animals. We know they are just like us, and also completely different. Now imagine meeting someone on a train who turns to you and starts telling you the most amazing stories about animals. Each one makes you go “wow!” And she can talk for hours—eloquently, magically. This is Jay Griffiths. Then she puts it all in a wonderful book, and you can return to these tales again and again. If animals can’t heal us, I don’t know what can.'

-David Rothenberg, author of Why Birds Sing

 

'How Animals Heal Us is a book of boundless passion and compassion. As she explores the worlds of animals, Jay Griffiths make the case for a different way of living: a joyous, vital inclusivity. This is how a book should be - genuinely mind-expanding.'

- Tom Bullough, author of Sarn Helen

 

‘Evocative and heart-warming, this brilliantly researched book is joyful, generous and wise in equal measure’

- John Lister-Kaye, author of At the Water's Edge

 

 

‘An exhilarating epic journey that made me see our companions through Griffiths’s fresh and compassionate eyes. What we owe our fellow animals is humbling’

- Gwyneth Lewis, author of Nightshade Mother: A Disentangling

 

'Deeply researched and highly readable, this is a moving and exquisitely written exploration of how we live with, and are shaped by, different creatures from tigers to teddy bears.'

- Caroline Eden, author of Samarkand

 

'Griffiths's genius is to reveal the familiar as wondrous, strange, miraculous. Packed with incredible facts and heart-wrenching tales, this gift of a book will shift your relationship to animals.'

- Ben Rawlence, author of The Treeline

 

‘A wild and vital treasure trove of stories, woven together with Griffiths's characteristic exuberance and her joyfully untamed mind’

-Helen Jukes, author of A Honeybee Heart Has Five Openings

 

'Griffiths weaves a poetic tapestry of wonders; a searing, soaring manifesto for reviving our vital communion with other creatures’

-Natalie Lawrence, author of Enchanted Creatures

 

‘Jay Griffiths is an artist, and this book is poetry – buzzing with courage and honesty. How Animals Heal Us is wonder and grief combined, speaking passionately to vibrant ways of being, a true visionary work’

-Laura Coleman, author of The Puma Years

 

'Revelatory and utterly fascinating, a moving, inspiring and joyous book'

-James Macdonald Lockhart, author of Wild Air

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‘Beautiful and important... Griffiths provides a deeply personal and intelligent account of the vital importance of having animals in our lives, and in our world.’

- Dr Hannah Burgon, author of Equine-Assisted Therapy

 

‘Essential reading... When we figure out how to live compassionately alongside all other animals on this planet, we will resolve our human problems...That is no easy task, but after reading Griffiths’s wonderful book, it is at least an easy choice’

- Dr Alex Lockwood, author of The Pig in Thin Air

 

‘I am so grateful to Jay Griffiths for breathing fresh and poetic life into a subject that is not only dear to my heart but that I feel is so crucial to the very survival of the human animal . . . It is my deepest hope that this book reaches as many people as possible’

-Dr Dawn Prince-Hughes, author of Songs of the Gorilla Nation: My Journey Through Autism

 

'Expansive, immersive, tender and poignant. Jay Griffiths forensically reveals the layers and depths of the human-animal bond, the imperative for sensitivity and attention to the animal realm around us, and why humanity must change direction as deftly as a swift to ensure our health and wellbeing. An absorbing and thought-provoking read’

-Dr Sean Wensley, author of Through A Vet's Eyes