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“A guide focusing on coping with the pain, loss and unpredictability of life…The author draws on her experiences as a therapist to derive a series of lessons…In well-designed chapters, Powers seeks to help her readers achieve what she refers to as “full-spectrum living”, a practice of accepting the highs and lows without becoming either continuously morose or glib…. A highly personal, helpful, and affecting call to learn from life’s hardships.” ~ Kirkus Reviews
With her latest book, Walking on Air: Embracing the Uncertainties of Life Psychotherapist Susan Powers has a simple answer: “Throw Love at It.” Dr. Powers weaves her personal story of traumatic loss with practical tips of how she has learned to “throw love at” her biggest challenges in life, including addiction (her own and close family), grieving (her daughter and husband’s deaths), divorce, illness (including her father’s Alzheimer’s disease) and becoming an elder. Walking on air is living by discovery and spontaneity and having the courage to trust in your journey.
Read the introduction here.
"Dr. Powers offers hope and healing, a way in and a way out. She takes the reader by the hand and leads them through their own darkness and back into the light.” - Tian Dayton, Ph.D, Director, New York Psychodrama Training Institute and author of Emotional Sobriety.
Susan Powers, Ph.D. lost her husband to cancer and three months later her daughter to a heroin overdose. She was flattened by what she describes as an emotional “shock and awe” and post-traumatic stress. She quickly learned that she had to be proactive and single-minded in her attempts to recover by matching her grief with her own zealous action.
Dr. Powers’ creates the concept of ruthless grieving. “Grief takes hold of you and doesn’t let go until it is complete,” she writes. “I found that I had to tap into the ruthless parts of myself in order to push back and through to the other side of loss.” It meant “being on your own side” and sustaining a practice of self-care, ruthlessly, no matter what! Ruthless Grieving is filled with emotional wisdom as well as practical suggestions to guide anyone through deep loss and grief.
The author shares the experience of her daughter’s heroin overdose, or what she calls the “unheroic death” from alcoholism, addiction or suicide. Her stories reflect the anger, people pleasing, co-dependency, guilt and very complex nature of traumatic grief. Dr. Powers found that to confront the personal shame and blame she had to give herself permission to feel, to speak the truth, and tell her daughter’s story of addiction. The book offers inspiration to families struggling with unresolved grief and the sense of betrayal from the unfortunate passing of their loved one.