We wear busyness as a badge of accomplishment and personal success. But when we use it to fill a void, being busy can become an addiction. Busyness helps us feel better—or feel nothing—but the benefit doesn’t come without cost.
Adoptee Linda Hoye used it to ease the ache she felt over the loss of her first mother’s love. She retired from the corporate world, looking forward to the opportunity to slow down and turn her attention to creative pursuits like photography, writing, and gardening, but found herself stuck. So accustomed to being busy, she had forgotten how to be anything else.
This is a spiritual memoir about a longing many of us have for something we struggle to articulate. It’s about fear, brokenness, and the mystery of stillness, solitude, and silence. It is the story of a sacred journey to a lost mother, a found family, and an encounter with divine love.
Buy “The Presence of Absence” at
Ask for it at your favourite bookstore or local library.
Linda Hoye is one of the most authentic, spiritual, and faith-filled writers of today. This book is a testimony to those qualities. I find it comforting to know that a copy of The Presence of Absence is within arm’s reach to read again. It brings comfort, solace, and truth to its readers through the pen of its author. Linda has given us a beautifully written introspective on what it is to find self-worth and peace.
– Sherrey Meyer
Culminating in mystical experience sustained by reading classical spiritual literature, her story will offer hope to all who recognize in themselves an inconsolable, unnamed, melancholy and joyful, longing.
– Shirley Showalter, author of Blush: A Mennonite Girl Meets a Glittering World
Both memoir and spiritual journal, this memoir gently invites the reader to join the writer in her sacred search.
– Marian L. Beaman, author of Mennonite Daughter: The Story of a Plain Girl
Linda Hoye lives in British Columbia, Canada with her husband and their doted-upon Yorkshire Terrier but will always be a Saskatchewan prairie girl. She is the author of The Presence of Absence: A Story About Busyness, Brokenness, and Being Beloved and Two Hearts: An Adoptee’s Journey Through Grief to Gratitude. She spends her days wrestling the siren call of busyness by playing with words, paying attention through the practices of photography and watercolor painting, and leaning into stillness, solitude, and silence.