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 together
From 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 initiationan 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 timewhile 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. Were 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 interconnected
