A Life in Light
Meditations on Impermanence
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4.0 • 5 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
A USA Today Must Read New Book
From the bestselling author of Women Rowing North and Reviving Ophelia-a memoir in essays reflecting on radiance, resilience, and the constantly changing nature of reality.
In her luminous new memoir in essays, Mary Pipher-as she did in her New York Times bestseller Women Rowing North-taps into a cultural moment, to offer wisdom, hope, and insight into loss and change. Drawing from her own experiences and expertise as a psychologist specializing in women, trauma, and the effect of our culture on our mental health, she looks inward in A Life in Light to what shaped her as a woman, one who has experienced darkness throughout her life but was always drawn to the light.
Her plainspoken depictions of her hard childhood and life's difficulties are dappled with moments of joy and revelation, tragedies and ordinary miseries, glimmers and shadow. As a child, she was separated from her parents for long periods. Those separations affected her deeply, but in A Life in Light she explores what she's learned about how to balance despair with joy, utilizing and sharing with readers every coping skill she has honed during her lifetime to remind us that there is a silver thread of resilience that flows through all of life, and that despite our despair, the light will return.
In this book, she points us toward that light.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"Resilience is the ability to find light in dark times," writes psychologist Pipher (Reviving Ophelia) in these radiant essays about how joy and loss often coexist. In lyrical vignettes, she traces the bright spots in her life, from her earliest memories—"dancing in the leaves of a tall tree in my grandmother's front yard"—to finding in adulthood a "renewed appreciation for life as it is, not as I wish it to be." But, invoking komorebi—a Japanese word that describes the ethereal "interplay of light and leaves" in trees—Pipher reveals her "sunlight" danced with shadows. In "A Motherless Child," for instance, she describes how she found refuge from her difficult 1950s childhood—neglected by a veteran father who struggled with PTSD—in books, nature, and the "shiny yellow leatherette booth" in her aunt's kitchen. "Pregnancy and Exile," meanwhile, revisits Piper's fraught pregnancy at age 21 "by a man I didn't want to marry" in 1971, and the supportive friends that helped her through it. To nudge readers toward building their own "transcendent narratives," she braids in insights from her 25 years as a therapist, citing how acknowledging "evidence of growth" in one's story, regardless of how big or small, can open up pathways toward healing. Those struggling to overcome darkness will find a guiding light in this incandescent work.
