Swimming in Stories by Rosanna Hille

Rosanna Hille has been many things to many people in her life: a daughter, a student, a seeker, a wife, a mother, an artist, a gardener, an educator, and the chair of an international aid organization. In the last ten years she has finally followed up on a long-held desire, and become a writer. Swimming In Stories is her first book, and it follows the winding river of Rosanna’s life.

This memoir begins with family history, both mythic and historic, with Rosanna’s European parents meeting in South Africa during World War II. Her postwar childhood in Denmark was interrupted by a secret upheaval leading to immigration to Canada, with the family landing in Northern BC. The book follows Rosanna as she comes of age in a year of Danish Quaker school, navigates the turbulent 1960s as a UBC student in Vancouver, meets her future husband, and joins a spiritual group in search of a different kind of life. Raising her children in a rural community, she begins to explore her creativity as a textile artist, and when the family returns to the city she considers becoming an architect but instead moves into community development.

The next phase of Rosanna’s life is spent travelling the world as the chair of Susila Dharma International, a humanitarian NGO that supports community development projects around the globe. Whether she is visiting schools in Colombia, canoeing down a river in Indonesia, or dancing with village women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rosanna writes with curiosity and humility, always searching for the right way to be present. The final chapter of Swimming In Stories finds Rosanna in her garden at home in Vancouver, contemplating a life of questions, service, connection, and love.