Francis Weller

"It blew me away. I underlined things on nearly every page." ?Anderson Cooper, All There IsThe Wild Edge of Sorrow offers hope and healing for a profoundly fractured world?and a pathway home to the brightness, pains, and gifts of being alive.Introducing the 5 gates of grief, psychotherapist Francis Weller explores how we move through the waters of grief and loss in a culture so fundamentally detached from the needs of the soul.? The first gate recognizes?and invites us to accept?the painful truth that everything we love, we will lose. With this acceptance comes beauty and responsibility?and an openness into which we can pour the full love of our hearts. At the first gate, we meet the sorrow of losing a loved one; the grief of illness; and the unique and profound pains that accompany loss by suicide.? The second gate helps us uncover and tend to the places that have not known love: the neglected pieces of our soul that need restoration and care. These ?places? can be our secret shames, or the parts of us that we feel are undeserving of love. At the second gate, we face our shadows and heal our most tender wounds.? The third gate meets us at the sorrows of the world, inviting us to open to the grave pain of our planet: the destruction of ecosystems, the harms of extractive capitalism, the unfathomable pain of war and occupation. We learn to honor and hold this grief even as we move through it, recommitting ourselves to the actions our souls call upon us to perform in service of healing and renewal.? The fourth gate, what we expected but did not receive, is present in each and every one of our lives. We may need love from a parent or partner unable to give it; we may lack the language to ask for the care we deserve. Each is a loss that must be acknowledged and grieved to move toward wholeness.? The fifth gate opens to our ancestral grief: the traumas, pains, losses, and unrealized dreams of those who came before us. Weller invites us to reconnect to our bodies, our communities, and the ancestral knowledge we hold in our bones...but may have forgotten.Profoundly moving, beautifully written, this book is a balm for the soul and a necessary salve for moving together through difficult times. Grounded in ritual and connection, The Wild Edge of Sorrow welcomes each grief with care and attention, opening us to the feelings, experiences, and sacred knowledge that connect us to each other and ultimately make us whole.

We are at a threshold. As we face uncertain futures, the familiar is falling away. This book invites us to embody new ways of being and connecting so we can navigate troubled times togetherFrom the bestselling author of The Wild Edge of Sorrow, a beautifully packaged collection of 17 essays on meeting this moment with clarity, care, and skill Praise for The Wild Edge of Sorrow: "It blew me away. I underlined things on nearly every page." ?Anderson CooperIn his singular and inimitable voice, psychotherapist and author of The Wild Edge of Sorrow Francis Weller offers 17 soulful essays to help us move together through the anxieties, difficulties, and sacred transitions of 21st-century life.In the Absence of the Ordinary frames our current era as a rough initiation?an upending experience of profound trauma and transformation that demands we reorient our ways of thinking, being, and relating. Through essays like ?Some People Wake Up…,? ?The Gift of Restraint,? and ?Gratitude for All That Is,? Weller offers clarity and wisdom on how to face the sobering stakes of our time?while offering the nourishment and support we need to embody the new roles this initiation requires.Section 1, ?When the Bough Breaks,? names our collective traumas and peels back the false armor of modernity. We?re called to the depths, to understand the power of descent, and to cultivate the necessary skills of initiation.Section 2, ?Care of the Soul,? differentiates between the connected soul and the individualistic self, inviting us back into alignment with the wider world of belonging. We learn to approach our experiences with reverence, work with our grief, and develop restraint, repetition, and self-compassion.Section 3, ?Meanwhile, the World Goes On,? gives shape to the emptiness we carry and the ways modernity has severed us from our birthright of interconnectedness with the natural world. It offers rituals of gratitude and practices of kinship to restore our bond with the living Earth.In each essay, Weller fortifies us to become immense?to meet these unpredictable times with presence and faith, to restore our souls? place in the soul of the world, and to hold steady, amid and for it all.