A personal, conversational guide to successfully working through loss.
A self-help book that explores the many different causes and types of grieving.
Cappello (Soul Exercises for the Open Mind, 2015, etc.) explores various manifestations of grief in this study—from feeling like a victim to bullying others to addiction and depression. Loss isn’t always accidental or shocking, the author points out, and it’s sometimes self-inflicted, but grief can still set in, all the same. He recognizes the universal need for coping practices that can help people to avoid becoming stuck in a cycle of despair. The book prominently notes that calling on virtues, such as compassion and empathy, can help one push through stages of the grieving process, including anger and denial. Cappello also stresses the importance of other virtues, such as steadfastness, thrift, gratitude, reliability, and chastity, which he says can help build one’s self-worth. The book is divided into two parts, with the first looking at grief from a broad perspective and the second exploring specific types of grieving and related healing practices. Throughout, the author relays illustrative stories and anecdotes about his clients as a psychic medium. From its very first pages, this guide effectively reinforces the idea that one shouldn’t pass judgment on other people’s grief—a refreshing approach that avoids normative statements about how to cope with loss. In all, this is a unique guide that provides useful strategies for emotional growth after a loved one’s death. Interestingly, the author uses the first letters of each chapter title to create an acronym (spelling out “HEAL THE HEART”), with each chapter addressing an important element of recovery (“Healing Requires Making a Decision,” “Expressing Gratitude,” “Adaptability,” and so on). The affirmations (such as “I deserve to be happy and live a fulfilled life”) and practical guidance at the end of each chapter make this book a particularly powerful coping tool.
A personal, conversational guide to successfully working through loss.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5043-6268-9
Page Count: 193
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: Feb. 14, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving, heartfelt account of a hospice veteran.
Lessons about life from those preparing to die.
A longtime hospice chaplain, Egan (Fumbling: A Pilgrimage Tale of Love, Grief, and Spiritual Renewal on the Camino de Santiago, 2004) shares what she has learned through the stories of those nearing death. She notices that for every life, there are shared stories of heartbreak, pain, guilt, fear, and regret. “Every one of us will go through things that destroy our inner compass and pull meaning out from under us,” she writes. “Everyone who does not die young will go through some sort of spiritual crisis.” The author is also straightforward in noting that through her experiences with the brokenness of others, and in trying to assist in that brokenness, she has found healing for herself. Several years ago, during a C-section, Egan suffered a bad reaction to the anesthesia, leading to months of psychotic disorders and years of recovery. The experience left her with tremendous emotional pain and latent feelings of shame, regret, and anger. However, with each patient she helped, the author found herself better understanding her own past. Despite her role as a chaplain, Egan notes that she rarely discussed God or religious subjects with her patients. Mainly, when people could talk at all, they discussed their families, “because that is how we talk about God. That is how we talk about the meaning of our lives.” It is through families, Egan began to realize, that “we find meaning, and this is where our purpose becomes clear.” The author’s anecdotes are often thought-provoking combinations of sublime humor and tragic pathos. She is not afraid to point out times where she made mistakes, even downright failures, in the course of her work. However, the nature of her work means “living in the gray,” where right and wrong answers are often hard to identify.
A moving, heartfelt account of a hospice veteran.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-59463-481-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
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