Ann Humphreys, one of the hula-hoopers often seen whirling on the lawn at Weaver Street Market, has published a memoir about hooping, art, loss, friendship, and Taoism. Kimowan Metchewais, an Indigenous Canadian artist who taught for several years at UNC-Chapel Hill, is a main character. The book tells two intertwining stories: one, about the tragic death of Humphreys’ father from a brain tumor when she was a teenager; the other, about learning to hula-hoop with Metchewais as he was living through a similarly deadly diagnosis.

The book--which is a mixture of memoir, philosophy and spiritual inquiry, with a dash of self-help thrown in--guides the reader along the path Humphreys took as a middle-aged newbie hooper, showing how the hula-hoop taught her the crucial life lesson of how to feel. Not which emotions are appropriate to feel at any given moment, but rather, how to embrace the embodied experience of all emotions--especially those we do not wish to feel--and be transformed by that embrace.

Self-published, 2021

6” x 9”

139 pages