My psychologist recommended this book to me when I was going through a difficult break-up. She told me she’d checked around with colleagues, and this book was unanimously approved by all of them.

I tracked a copy down and flipped through it in the bookstore. When I saw that every other page had a poem, I immediately thought this book wasn’t for me . I thought it would be silly new age stuff that I wouldn’t find useful to me at all. I definitely felt like I needed a lot more than some stupid poems.

But I was also really grasping for anything that could help me get through the pain, and so I took the book home. And it WORKED. Even the poems. This book was the only one I read that actually helped me. It encouraged me to be gentle and kind with myself, when I was filled with such anger and sorrow. It convinced me that things were going to be okay, when I felt totally alone and hopeless. And it even got me to write a few poems of my own.