The Wisdom of a Broken Heart

Book excerpt: The New York Times bestselling author of The Hard Questions and relationship columnist for Body & Soul looks at the hardest part of a relationship—heartbreak—and provides a practical, steadying, compassionate plan for emerging a stronger, braver, spiritually transformed person. The heart that is broken has been broken open," writes Susan Piver. "When my heart was broken, it changed my life.…From this most painful experience came the ability to find and appreciate lasting love." The anguish and disappointment of a broken heart is devastating and overwhelming, but as Susan Piver reveals in The Wisdom of a Broken Heart, it can also create an opportunity for genuine spiritual transformation, paradoxically leaving one both stronger and softer—and capable of loving even more deeply than before. Filled with on-the-spot practices, exercises, funny stories (often drawn from her own experience), poems, meditations, exercises, and down-to-earth, practical advice on how to cope with day-to-day miseries, The Wisdom of a Broken Heart offers a priceless prescription of solace and encouragement, wisdom and humor. Like an infinitely patient, trusted friend, it tells its readers in a thousand different ways the most important thing to remember and the easiest to forget: "You’re going to be okay."